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!