Hershey Kiss cookies

Hershey Kiss cookies, originally uploaded by pearljamfanatic.

Obviously not sewing, but yummy! This is what I'm working on tonight - Hershey Kiss cookies.

Free holiday embroidery patterns

Urban Threads is offering some super cute gingerbread man embroidery patterns and clip art for free through the end of December. There are patterns for both machine and hand embroidery. Don't miss these! Be sure to check out the other stuff they offer - these aren't your mom's embroidery patterns!

Pretty simple but cool site

Voor Nop seems to be the name of the site, but whatever it's called it has a bunch of free patterns for baby and toddler clothing. What's great is that many use repurposed adult clothing! What do you have to lose in trying?

Love it.

Advent calendar tutorial

It might be a little to late to get a start on a handmade advent calendar this year, but I'm definitely keeping Purl Bee's tutorial in mind for next December.

How cute is this?

Blogs, potholders, and tutorials

November 2008 024, originally uploaded by pearljamfanatic.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! I took a little break from blogging and sewing to just sit back and enjoy time with my family. Now, I'm anxious and ready to get back to sewing!

First, I wanted to mention a blog I came across recently which I love. Well, more than the blog, I love the things they create and show in it! Beautiful handcrafted items from a pair of sisters down under. They publish their own patterns as well.

Melly & Me

Here is one of the potholders I've made to replace my own ratty ones that needed to be tossed. I used more of the Moda fabric that I've had for far too long. I think I'm going to see just how many things I can make from this fat quarter collection. The tally so far is 3 pillows, three potholders, and one bag.

A tutorial for making potholders like the one I made can be found at BubbaChic, along with more cute ideas!

little frog

little frog, originally uploaded by pearljamfanatic.

My son has been asking me to make him this little amigurumi frog for Christmas for about a month now. He doesn't know it's done but I hope he likes it! I can picture it sticking out of the top of his stocking ready to jump.

Embellished Travel Tissue Holder

Here's a fun and unique little gift to make for someone you know. It's a holder for those little travel tissue packs!

Embellished Travel Tissue Holder

You could make these as simple or as fancy as you want. I made several a couple of years ago and gave them as little gifts to my military wife friends at a meet up that we had. I wish I had taken pictures to post here, but I didn't. I will say they are easy and quick, especially made in assembly line style!

Utilitarian sewing

Last year's PJ pants were starting to look more like PJ capris on the kids. For that reason, I whipped up a couple of pairs for the girl out of fabric found in various nooks and crannies of my sewing room.



The boy will be getting a pair or two next.

This very well may be the last year that I can get away with making a pair of pants for them out of only one yard. :(

Free doll skirt patterns

YouCanMakeThis.com is once again offering free doll skirt patterns as a way to help with charity sewing. The Toys for Tots programs was started with one woman who handcrafted a doll and couldn't find a place to donate it.

These doll skirts are another great way to use up small cotton scraps!

Download the free patterns, a twirl or wrap skirt, here.

Project Linus

Project Linus is a wonderful organization that makes blankets as comfort items for children. Here is part of their mission statement:

First, it is our mission to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer “blanketeers.”

Save your cotton scraps and make a small quilt for a child to love on!

Sense and Sensibility Patterns

Sense and Sensibility Patterns is a small company that produces sewing patterns for historic, beautiful clothes. Because of so many requests, they're now offering many of their patterns in digital form. No waiting for the mail! Instant gratification - I love it! The prices are very reasonable too. There are items for adults as well as children and even dolls.

Check their new e-patterns out!

Here's a model shot of the Little Red Riding Hood costume for tonight. She spilled a little bubble juice on the apron, but you get the picture. She hasn't decided whether to carry her jack-o-lantern bucket or a basket for trick or treating. Such tough decisions!

What's old is new

Check out what the UPS guy brought to the house in three large packages yesterday!



The husband got it for me for Christmas, although his surprise was ruined because one box had an old rusty bolt sticking out. I knew he had bought me something on eBay and it was large and that I'd been talking about my grandmother's old treadle Singer. I only had to put two and two together. :)

It's a Singer 115, dated 1915. You should see all the cool attachments that came with it - ruffler foot, tucking foot, binding attachment, what looks to be the original manual, and more. Here's a picture of all that stuff.



The machine is in working condition already, though I had to order a new belt. The cabinet is in pretty good condition but I need to do some cleaning, same with the machine itself.

I'll be sure to post new pictures once we get it all done!

Burdastyle

BurdaStyle is a wonderful open source sewing site. There are tons of free patterns to download as well as a blog, forum, how to's, and user creations. Burda is a well known pattern company, so when they came out with this site a while back, it was very exciting! The site has evolved to involve a lot more of its users' content and that is just cool. Check it out!

Little Red Riding Hood costume

For Halloween, my daughter finally made up her mind and decided to be Little Red Riding Hood. I ended up morphing some tried and true Ottobre patterns together with some improvisation by me and it turned out super cute!

I stitched out the Obama pattern onto a red t-shirt and it came out okay. I hooped it like I normally do with knit fabrics but the whole pattern didn't line up perfectly. Also, I think the design is a bit too dense for t-shirt knits. Overall, though, I'm happy to have my own Obama shirt!

Now, check this cute tutorial out. We're talking a super cute idea for a holiday gift for a lucky kid.

Fabric Dollhouse

I can think of so many variations on the theme - police station, school, store, gymnastics class, dance studio... the possibilities are endless!

Free political embroidery designs!

Apex Embroidery has both Obama and McCain embroidery designs available for free download. There are two designs for each candidate, in a variety of download formats. I'm planning to use an Obama one on a red t-shirt today; I will post my results later on!

Click here for free downloads

Knit One, Save One

Save the Children is hosting their Knit One, Save One campaign again this year. It's a great project for anyone that enjoys knitting or crocheting, or even craft groups. I sent off a hat last year with a note attached, and they sent me a postcard this year to inform me that it's that time again. Neat!

If you're interested, check it out!

Great use for leftover flannel scraps

My kids just started kindergarten and have been taking their lunches to school. For the first few days I was sending along some paper napkins that we had from their birthday party. Well, being the novice lunch packer that I am, I failed to realize that putting a paper napkin in an insulated lunch box with an ice pack doesn't work so well. The condensation gets the napkin all wet.

So yesterday I went though my scrap fabric bin and pulled out all the flannel I had in there. It wasn't a lot, but I had enough to make some lunch napkins for the kids. I just cut out some kid sized squares, sewed them right sides together, turned, and topstitched.

They turned out cute and the kids love that they have their own little napkins. It also saves trees and cuts down on waste.

The added bonus is that if they get a little wet, it will help them wash the lunch off their face a little better. We'll see if my son comes home with spaghetti sauce on his face today!

Here is a snapshot of what a pattern sheet looks like in Ottobre. I use lightweight sew in interfacing as a pattern medium. I previously used that tracing material with the dots on it (sorry don't know the technical name), but I like the stiffer interfacing better. It's all personal preference.

Other patterns that need to be traced look like this as well, but are often all in black and white. Sometimes the lines for each size are slightly different to help with tracing.

Lots of people are intimidated by the aspect of tracing after looking at these kinds of patterns. It's really not too bad! And if you do mess up, so what? Try again!

I love this fabric. I'm not really into camo all that much but I bought this fabric probably because it was on sale knowing me. I can't really remember to be honest.

When I received it in the mail, however, I fell in love. It's so girly and the colors are vibrant. I think it will remain vibrant after many washings.

Pattern is from Ottobre, 3/08, #12, size 110cm.

This is the shirt that gave me fits yesterday

See? I told you it was just a simple peasant top.

I think it turned out cute even after pulling out and re-doing all the shirring. The body of the shirt was shirred too tightly after the first attempt. I pulled that out and went with a blue ribbon (same color as the bow in the photo) across the front that tied in back. It was very cute and then I pressed the shirt after it was done. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Yeah, the iron was too hot for the ribbon and it melted it a little bit. I couldn't believe how dumb I was. So I got my trusty seam ripper and took the ribbon off. I decided to go back to the 2 lines of shirring for future practicality purposes and rewound the elastic thread on the bobbin to be a bit looser. After that I was *finally* done and glad for it!

This pattern is from Ottobre 1/2007, #16, size 110cm. I modified it a bit to lengthen it and did away with all the lines of shirring (how many times in the last two posts can I say shirring?) at the bottom.

Sometimes things just go wrong

You think you're just going to sew a simple shirt. Then as you're constructing it, every step just seems to go wrong. I think no matter how long you've been sewing everyone has days like this.

Today was a day like that for me. I'm in the middle of making a simple peasant shirt. I've made many of them so no problem, right? Shouldn't have been! From sewing the back on sideways to the sleeve (which amazingly matched in length to the wrong edge I attached), to shirring too tightly, to incorrectly lengthening the front and back pieces... Maybe if I'd had a few it would go along better.

On top of that, I went to remove a needle from my serger to do a rolled hem and can't find my allen wrench anywhere. I always keep it on my magnetic needle tray - that thing not only attracts metal but my son as well. No matter how many times I tell the kids to not touch Mommy's sewing stuff they can't seem to help themselves.

So now my serger's allen wrench is missing, probably at the bottom of his toy box or that place where lone socks go. Super hubby came to the rescue with a little set of allen wrenches so all was not lost.

Thankfully, all the errors are fixable and I think it will come out even cuter after a certain design change. I will be sure to post it when it's finished.

On a good note, I sewed the matching headband correctly on the first try. Woo!

Material Mama's sewing resources

Material Mama has an awesome page of sewing resources. I use several of those sites on a regular basis and she has them nicely laid out in an organized fashion. Everything from online fabric stores to snap sources. Great stuff. Don't forget to check out the Material Mama podcast as well!

5th Birthday shirts

Here they are for birthday number 5 - the annual number t-shirts!

This year I used an applique design from Embroidery Library instead of "freehanding" it. I think they turned out nice.

Capes and more capes!

When I was laying in bed the other night, not able to fall asleep, I was thinking about what I could put in the treat bags for the kids coming to my kids' birthday party. I didn't want to put candy or junky plastic things made in China that would get lost or broken within 10 minutes.

I thought about how cool it would be to make capes for them, but since it was only a couple of days away I figured it was too late. Surely I wouldn't have time to sew them up with family coming to town and all that.

Well, today we were at the craft store and the satin happened to be on sale and in a moment of craziness I decided to go for it! So here they are - five reversible capes. It's not my best sewing, but it was among my fastest! One is for my daughter so it's a more girly purple.

I'm sure tomorrow will be a flurry of 4 & 5 year olds running around like lunatics. But they'll have something to take with them that will last and provide lots and lots of fun and an outlet for their imaginations!

(Pattern is from Ottobre Design, 4/04 issue)

Ottobre Design

One popular magazine dedicated to children's clothing designs is Ottobre Design. I have found that a subscription is very much worth the cost, especially when sewing for more than one child. Since I do sew at least half of their clothes these days it's always great to have inspiration and new patterns on hand.

You can view inside every one of their issues online, find some free patterns, and even subscribe online if you wish. Pattern sizing is a little different being a European magazine, but not hard to follow. Sizes in each issue range from newborn to teenager and there are probably 30-40 patterns in each issue! A couple of times a year they have a women's issue as well.

You can order individual issues either from Ottobre or stateside from Sewzanne's Fabrics (super fast shipping!). Ordering from Sewzanne's also helps a WAHM!

If you do decide to get into Ottobre sewing, make sure you check out the Ottobre Flickr group as well as the Ottobre Yahoo group.

Moda Uptown Pillows

These are a few of the pillows I made to sell at Zakka Craft a couple of months ago. I loved the way they turned out with these fabrics. If you look closely you can see the elusive paint by number birds in it. I had no idea how sought after that fabric is until I went to try and buy more of it! I love it and it seems I'm not the only one. It's funny that I bought the entire line in fat quarters on clearance a long time ago. Lucky break!

Free Heather Ross pattern!

Heather Ross, fabric designer extraordinaire, has posted a free sundress pattern on her blog that's available for a limited time. It is super cute and a perfect way to use some of her new Mendocino fabrics!