Two Days to Go!

After a full day's work at the office, I've been rushing home and sewing like mad trying to get these dresses hemmed, ironed, and photographed before they leave my studio forever!  It's been a satisfying work and I'm really excited about sharing them with the little girls of Haiti.  That being said, it is beginning to look like I won't be getting done until the first full week of the new year.  I guess that'll have to do!!

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.  And though I plan on spending most of the afternoon with my husband celebrating the end of what was a challenging year for our family, I also hope to sneak away for a short time to get a little work done.  

Commitment Almost Met

Last December, I committed myself to making fifty dresses for an organization that supplies dresses for little girls in Haiti.  Now that I'm running out of time, I've decided to take inventory and find out what's left for me to do.  So here it is: I have fourteen dresses needing hems, and six dresses need to be made outright!  Four days to go?  No sweat!  I've got this!  Deadline Schmedline!  

Before I ship these dresses off, I make one more commitment to posting a picture of all of them on my website for you to see and enjoy.

Good night!

A Year Almost Gone

With the Christmas holiday being over and a new year staring me down, I begin the process of considering what projects I would like to work on during the first quarter of 2015.  I have found it way too easy to let crafting fall by the wayside when I don't have a plan in mind.  The purpose isn't to overload myself with work or stress myself out with deadlines, but to give myself basic goals to work towards, allowing for a variety of crafting experiences, as well as room for creative growth.  

I hope the new year finds you enjoying being in the craft room.

Christmas at The Poe House

On Christmas Eve I got a whopping two hours off from work to do whatever I wanted.  I chose to use part of that time to finish "The Poe House" sign.  I just started to learn how to wood burn and used this small board that I found in a box of weight equipment I purchased a few months ago.  I saved the board just in case I needed it for something in the future; I hate to throw anything out because I never know when I might find it handy! 

To explain the sign a little: My husband's last name is Poe and during one of our trips somewhere we learned that Poe meant peacock in one of the Scandinavian languages (Old Norse).  It was intended to be a practice sign but we decided we liked it well enough to use.  I guess I'll be adding hooks and a strap to it for hanging on our porch.

Christmas Eve is Finally Here!!

 For the past week crafting has been the theme of my home for both my husband and myself.  I have been busy knitting and sewing, while my husband has been making cheesecake after cheesecake after cheesecake. The house smells wonderful and our hearts are filled with joy.  We both hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday season.  

 

So far, I've only been blogging about my adventures in dress making, while completely neglecting the goings on with my knitting needles.  I have been making roughly one dishcloth a day for the past couple of week.  To the left are just some of the ones that I've managed to get done.  I haven't started working on today's dishcloth (Christmas Even is my longest and busiest work day of the year) but hope to get it done sometime tonight.  And for some inexplicable reason, I have this strange desire to knit a dishcloth with a pine tree on it.  Why is that, I wonder??? 

Working Without a Pattern

If you're anything like me, when you go to a craft fair you spend lots of time looking at all the wonderful creations around you all the while thinking to yourself, "I can make that!"  Well, perhaps that's true and perhaps it isn't.  I don't think it's necessary to test the theory out. Confidence in yourself isn't a bad thing, just remember to appreciate the talents of others.    

Today I decided I would make a toddler dress without a physical pattern based on dresses I've seen on Pinterest.  The dress didn't come out perfectly, but I did learn some things about dress making during the process.  These are definitely skills that I hope to develop some more in the coming year.  

      

Christmas Dress Time!

The Christmas season has given me the desire to make a dress with red in it.  For the dress I chose a red fabric that has tiny stars printed all over it and combined it with the jean material I've using this past week.  Since I had run out of jean material for the bodice portion of several dresses earlier this week, I decided the entire bodice of this one would be cut from the red material and the binding would be cut from the remnant jean material.  Everything worked out, to my utter joy, and the end result I found to be rather lovely!

Lots of Skirts!

Last night I was able to make five smocked skirts.  The skirts follow the same basic design as the smocked dresses only with fewer rows of elastic at the top.  The skirts will fit a slightly older girl (older than toddler, that is).  

It makes me happy to see smocking popular among children's clothing again.  It really brings me back to when I was a little girl running around with my smocked tops.  Only back then they didn't come with straps.  At least mine didn't.  Am I misremembering or did we call them tube tops?  Anyhow, it was a fun night of crafting.  

Smock Night

Last night I decided I would work on making smocked dresses. I learned to do these a couple of years ago after watching a YouTube tutorial. They are very easy to make and are absolutely adorable!  (I still need to add straps to a few of the dresses).    

I used the elastic thread in the bobbin method for making these dresses, though I have seen some people use skinny elastic to create the smock top.  I've never tried the other method, though perhaps I will someday.       

I hope to get a video loaded up to YouTube soon, showing you how to make these dresses.  (The video I watched happened to be in Spanish, sorry.  If you want that link, I'd be happy to share it with you.)  I imagine there are plenty of English language tutorials already on YouTube for making this type of dress, however since I haven't watched them I cannot make a recommendation as to which ones are useful.  

Enjoy your day!      

Terrific Tuesday!

It would have been very easy to let the challenges of the last two days get the better of me.  But, eager to move on to better things, I boldly entered my studio and began crafting.  In an hour and fifteen minutes I pieced together another lovely dress.  Everything went smoothly and all I can do is sing, "Hallelujah!!"  (If the Hallelujah Chorus popped into your mind then you're understanding me).  

I haven't yet decided on what today's crafting adventure will include.  But I'm sure you'll find out pretty soon.  Will it be more of the same?  Or will I share something new with you?  Stay tuned!      

Sunday's Boo boos are Monday's Challenges

Well, I thought I had corrected all of Sunday's mistakes only to be plagued with them again on Monday.  Woe is me!!  In my haste to correct the problems that occurred in my cutting process, I failed to remember that the bodice of the dresses I am working on (pictured above) has a left and a right side.  This means, that the fabric needs to be cut on the right side and on the wrong side for each dress.  I, of course, cut all of the pieces on the right side of the fabric, leaving me with two right sides of the bodice for 5 of the 6 dresses I cut.  Solution?  Buy more fabric and move on!!    

Not-So-Spectacular Sunday!!

This afternoon I had grand ideas about what I wanted to do in my craft studio.  I set aside five hours to cut the fabric for all the dresses I wanted to sew for the entire week.  I was very excited about jumping in and getting right to work!  It wasn't until the third hour or so that I realized I had made some errors when cutting my fabric.  The dresses I wanted to make are part jean and part decorative cotton fabric and somehow I managed to get the picture of the dress all confused in my head and ended up cutting parts of it from the wrong fabric.  This left me short on fabric by the time I realized my error.  I spent the next two hours of my craft day trying to correct my mistakes all the while making more mistakes!  Oh the humanity!!  My frustration level was high.  I later mentioned it to my sister, and she felt badly for me, of course. And that's when it hit me!  The most frustrating day in the craft room is incredibly-super duper-just plain better than the best day at the office.  I'll have to keep that in mind the next time everything seems to go wrong.  Perhaps a little note of reminder on my studio wall is in order.

When all was said and done, I only had enough material for six dresses.