Still kickin’

Been a while since I’ve posted on here, and a lot has happened since then.

Simplicity Amazing Fit skirt: Still working on it. It may have been a blessing that it was too small, considering the fact that the thread I used is nearly impossible to pick out since it keeps shredding. I tossed the spool, it must have been old, and I would have been terribly upset to not only probably have a wardrobe malfunction in public, but also that it might have fallen apart quickly. So I’ve been slowly picking out the stitches on it, since I have to do every. single. stitch. one at a time or it shreds, it’s been really slow going.

While I’ve been working on the skirt, I’ve also done a few other things. I patched my husband’s cover-alls (my sewing machine doesn’t like those any more than it likes red vinyl), a couple pairs of jeans, and finished up a couple of small UFO’s that were sitting around the sewing room. It’s nice to get that stuff out of my way. 🙂

Speaking of jeans, I traced off the pieces for Jalie 2908. I cut/basted the pieces together in a non-stretch denim, which since the pattern was for stretch denim I wasn’t expecting it to come out perfect. They were snug, but not any more so than some of the jeans in my closet. I’m pretty excited, because that means that if I cut them out of stretch denim I’ll have it nailed perfectly. Turns out my problem with the pattern last time is that I didn’t fix the curve from the hip to the waist. It’s designed for an hourglass figure, whereas my waist is only like 2″ smaller than my hips. So I just swung it out with my French curve two or three sizes to straighten out the side seam. It was hard to remember to do it for all the corresponding pieces, but I think I did it on all of them. It fit together when I basted it, if that’s any indication.

I’m pretty excited, over the weekend, hubby and I helped my mom put together a bed for my little brother. The great thing about it is, now we know what to do when we build the same one for ourselves. 🙂 It went together pretty fast once we got all the pieces cut out. I think we had it 80% assembled (that’s where we quit for the night) within an hour and a half. If we would have had a decent saw to work with, I think we could have cut it out in about an hour and a half as well–as it was, it took like 4 hours to cut it all out. My skills with the cordless drill are getting better too, so I’m pretty excited about that. 🙂

I’ve got a ton of different foods to cook up today so that I can stash it in the freezer, so I’d better get started. Hope everyone has a great day! 🙂

Blood, sweat, & tears

You know that saying about how you worked on something so hard you invested blood, sweat, and tears? Well, I officially put the blood and tears into my project today. I’d put plenty of sweat into it over the years we’ve had the dining room table/chairs, but today it got the rest of the saying. My poor thumb. 😦

I split the top of my thumb open pretty good while trying to remove the old veneer off of the leaves. I should just throw this stupid table in the trash…I’ve had it for 4 years, moved it 4 times, and my husband is convinced that I’ll never get it finished. Perhaps I should just let him be right for a change? It’s not even that pretty of a table, though I was hoping it would be once it was all painted black with newly upholstered chairs. Plus the size was perfect for us, while it expanded enough to be perfect for entertaining as well.

Should I toss it? Or should I try to salvage it?

Christmas Loot!

It’s taken me a few days to get this posted, but I’m so excited about some of the really cool stuff we got for Christmas. First of all, I got a DRESSFORM!! *Happy Dance!* I had to exchange it for the petite one since I’m so darn short, but I’m super excited about it. It’s the Dritz Twin-Fit, and I’m currently thinking up a name for her. I’m also on the prowl for a good deal on one of those craft lamps with the magnifying glass built in, because that’s what I decided to do with some of my Christmas cash…so far the hunt has been kind of crazy–who knew there were so many choices of those things?! And the rest of my Christmas cash is going to the Fabulous Fit system to pad out my dressform with.

On the “woodworking” side of things, I have been eyeing a couple of different things–like a Porter-Cable router and a Kreg Jig, but we’ll have to see how expensive those things are, and exactly what model I’m looking for. I’ve got several projects in mind to work on in the shop, but they will most likely have to wait until spring, unless I opt to spend a good chunk of my Christmas money on a heater for the garage instead of tools. After that though? I’m totally going to build a couch. I’ve even got the fabric for it. I want to make mine a smidge different than hers, but I think it will still turn out well. 🙂

Too many irons in the fire

I’m not sure where that saying came from, but based on what I know to be its meaning it definitely applies. I’ve got several projects going on right now, and I don’t seem to be doing a decent job getting anywhere with any of them. Here’s what I’m working on:

*Building two bookshelves (which are time consuming because I’m making them have adjustable shelves and have to drill out each hole individually).
*Sewing up two or three pairs of pants for my son.
*Reupholstering/cleaning a chair.
*Sewing up two garments for myself.

It doesn’t seem nearly as impressive on this list, but it seems a lot more daunting in real life. Sometimes I wonder why I always seem to insist on doing multiple projects at once–especially since I always get to the point that I’m at now where I just want to ignore all the projects and do something else. I wonder if other people do these same sorts of crazy things…?

To add piping or not add piping, that is the question

A few months ago, my husband’s workplace was clearing out some of their old stuff–office furniture–and I ended up with this:

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is an ugly chair. The upholstery is brown for Pete’s sake! It’s also grungy, which is easily fixed, but other than that, there is little wrong with it. It’s structurally sound (after I glue the front edge of the arm back to it’s post), the finish is in good condition (probably because it was so coated in gunk), and has very few scratches. And the bonus? It was free–it and 3 of its friends that are in similar shape, since no one wanted them, we got our pick of the last 7 chairs, and we took 3 like the one above and the 4th one is an old-school leather office chair in near perfect shape.

But, I digress….the point of this post is to ask whether or not I should add piping to the front edge (like what was on it originally). I’m kind of leaning towards the “not” because I’m lazy and don’t want to do the extra work (pathetic, huh?) In my defense though, I have this fabric:

that I found at Jo-Ann’s yesterday and I’m having the stripes run from front to back. I made the effort to make it so that the stripes would match up and I’m not sure I want to break up that matching with the piping. Whatcha think?

Finished kid’s bed

We moved the bed into the kiddo’s room today. It was pretty exciting, and he seems pretty excited about it. I don’t really feel terribly chatty, so I’ll just get straight to the pictures. Enjoy! 🙂

In the bottom one you can see what the actual color looks like if you are looking just at the headboard. The rest of the picture is kind of washed out or something so you can’t see the true color on the full thing very well. It’s more of an “off black” than a grey according to my husband. 😉 LOVE the color, and plan to use it for our bed too. 🙂

One thing I learned after this little “photo shoot” is that we need a bigger blanket for this bed. The only ones we have for him (except the UFO quilt that I’m going to finish soon, promise!) are crib sized blankets. Well, I guess I also learned that his room isn’t big enough to take very good pictures–I was flattened against the wall trying to get these and the whole thing just barely fit in the picture.

Have a great evening!

I’m the nailing Queen!

Back when I was a seventh-grader, my school split my (already small) class in half and put us into two different classes. One had (very basic) sewing for the first semester (*snore* because I’d already known more than what was taught) and woodworking the second, and the other half of the class was the opposite. I got stuck in the sewing-then-woodworking group, and unfortunately, my parents decided that after the first semester it was a “brilliant” idea to move so my sister and I had to change schools. This absolutely sucked, because I missed out on woodworking class.

Turns out, I’m pretty freakin’ good at woodworking. And? I like it. So, for my first woodworking project, we are making our kiddo this awesome bed. I even have some of the typical crappy photos that I take for your visual non-enjoyment!

The headboard:

Miscellaneous pictures of the bed as we worked on it:

We still have the legs and some trim pieces to put on before we paint it (we’d like it to be a dark gunmetal grey–can you get a decent selection of metallic paint colors for wood???) and then move it into the bedroom before putting the headboard on. 🙂 It’s far from perfect (we need a planer!!), but for a first project, we’re thrilled at how it’s turning out.