These all are (or will be) pockets for Denyse Schmidt’s shimy, shake, and bake apron. The first and the fourth ones I made with the pattern in her book, but I feel a little funny using a pattern for something that is made specifically to look unplanned and a little wonky. I can do wonky just fine on my own. So I just winged (wung? wang?) it with the other two and they came out just fine. The grey fabric was very thin and puckered quite a bit–can anyone explain to me why and how to remedy it? I don’t know if I’ll do it over, or leave it and just consider it extra homemade.

I do love me some egg fabric. I have reams of this stuff. why?

Today is Monday, so my daughter and I had a little crafty time together.  I wanted to try making a collage with contact paper for a while now.  She’s only just 2 and she hasn’t quite mastered the glue stick yet. We gathered our supplies: contact paper, tissue paper, leaves and twigs we picked up on a walk, and fabric scraps.  We slapped everything down –well, I arranged mine–on the sticky side and then put another piece of contact paper (sticky side down) on top of it all. It looked like this:

Then I cut out leaves and taped them to the window.  I think this is a good craft for the toddler set.  Tearing paper and sticky things are pretty exciting to my daughter so this project actually held her interest for a while.  Contact paper isn’t all that sticky, so the tissue paper worked best.  But if you are crazy like me and save the tiniest scrap, well they work too and I think thread would look nice.  Leaves work if they’re pressed (ours weren’t) and you get leaves in leaves at the end, which is exciting only to me.  You could, of course, cut any shape out: turkeys, christmas trees, vacuum cleaners, whatever.  When it came time for cutting, my daughter was already on to other things, but 10 quiet minutes is pretty huge.

just a little pincushion (from this tutorial) and a needlebook: christmas presents for a crafty friend.  Have you started making for christmas?  I pulled out all my old martha stewarts for ideas and some unfinished christmas projects from last year as well.  I started making stockings for my family, but never finished.   And though I don’t know much about sewing now, I really didn’t know much then–so there is a lot of ripping and rethinking before they can hang on our mantle.   I’m sure you have all seen the daily gift tutorials on Sew Mama Sew (if not, go look), but did you know Jane (from janeandtheducks) is posting christmas gifts she has made everyday.  Makes me feel like I’m sitting on my ass just a little too much.  So I’m going to get up.      right        now.

I posted about these little guys when I was working on them, but now they are all sewn up and ready to be wrapped.  Five presents down, many many more to go.  My sister (hi judith!) picked up this little tree at her local thrift store for me last summer, but I hadn’t taken it out of the box until today.  It’s a perfect little charlie brown tree! I can’t wait to put it in my daughters room and help her decorate it.  We went to Target the other day and had to go around and around their christmas display a hundred times. I liked christmas before, but christmas with a 2 year old is going to be ridiculously fun.

the last day of color week. I had a nice time playing with my new camera and taking pictures around my home–I don’t do either as much as I should.

There are four of these shelves above my sink. I feel like an ass setting up little vignettes, but the shelves aren’t good for much else.  And really they are nice to look at while I am up to my elbows in dirty dishes.

(Don’t worry the beetle is long dead.)