Category: Everything Else

Spoonflower–a company that allows you to design, upload and print your own fabric–has a weekly design contest with a specific theme for people to design. I’ve always enjoyed following and voting for fabrics each week. I also toyed with the idea of trying some fabric designs myself. The SYTYC competition ended and I figured I was pretty much done with competitions for a bit.

Then I got an email saying Spoonflower teamed up with Michael Miller Fabrics to have a special design competition. It’s titled Project Selvage. To enter the contest people could design a fabric with a baby boy theme. So I decided to toss my hat into the ring and design boy fabric. It looks like I wasn’t the only one trying my hand at this fabric design idea. They got over 1000 entries.

The judges now have the difficult task of narrowing down the entries to 75. On Thursday, they will post the 75 semifinalists and allow the public to vote for their favorite. The top 10 go to the finals and design 5 additional fabrics.

This was my Project Selvage contest entry:

If I make the semifinals, I’ll be over the moon excited.

We just got back today from our girls weekend trip to NYC and had a blast. I have pictures and all to share, but first I need some sleep!

This weekend my mom, my sister, and I are going to NYC for a girls weekend. We are so excited. We have all been there before so this time we aren’t doing to typical touristy stuff. We are planning to head over to The American Folk Art Museum’s quilt show at the Park Avenue Armory. It’s an exhibit of 650 red and white quilts on loan from one private collector. Can you imagine?

We also plan to head over to Mood. Melissa went there before, but I think it would be fun to go. If you watch Project Runway, you know Mood.

We will also head to SoHo for a trip to Purl Bee.

I’ve left room in my suitcase for fabric shopping. I also love little thrifty places.

Where else should we go? Any suggestions?

Today Emily was assigned snacks for her kindergarten class and I signed up in Madison’s preschool class to bring cookies for today. So I decided to take cookies to both classes.  I found this wonderful blog that is full of fun cookie ideas. I followed her tutorial on making these cookies. Callye’s cookies look much better than mine, but I’m tickled with how my turned out anyway. Four and 5 year olds are going to be eating them and I’m pretty sure they will like them. I still need to learn better technique on how to do the icing and all, but that’s going to take more practice.

Callye also encourages everyone to think outside the box when they are needing a cookie cutter they don’t have. She used a squished flower and a cauldron to make her cookies. I used a pumpkin. It worked!

We also have a special leprechaun that visits the house during the night and makes our milk green. The girls think that’s fun too!

Enjoy you St Patty’s Day!

It’s down to Melissa and Amy competing for the title of SYTYC Season 6 winner. They both made cute projects. I like the room Amy did for her kids. It looks like a fun space, but of course, I’m supporting my sister in her efforts to win with her playhouse.

Doesn’t it look like so much fun? So head over and vote in the finale. The site has been cranky the last 2 days, so if it’s down, please try again later.

Congratulations to you both, Amy and Melissa. It was a fun season competing with you both!

We are so excited about spring being just around the corner. The flowers are blooming, the trees are beautiful and the warmer weather is wonderful.

I thought a few butterfly hair accessories would help make spring feel even closer.

Hopefully our butterfly bush will bloom soon too so that this won’t be the only butterfly hanging around the backyard.

If you take your husband to the airport for a 2 week business trip, he’ll want you to pick him up when he gets home.

You will realize the morning that he’s coming home that the house looks like he has been gone for 2 weeks, so you will decide to start cleaning.

If you start vacuuming,  you will see 5 socks stuck in random places around the house because your kids lost them on the way to the dirty clothes basket.

When you stop vacuuming to pick up the socks, you will realize you also need to strip the sheets off your bed and wash them.

On you way to the laundry room, you will notice the laundry basket full of clean clothes you haven’t put away.

You will forget about the vacuum in the middle of the living room and grab the laundry basket.

On your way through the kitchen you will notice the time on the clock and realize you have 30 minutes before your youngest child needs to go to preschool. You will then ditch the laundry because you realize you have not taken a shower and you cannot skip  showering because your husband is coming home and would appreciate a clean wife.

When you hop into the shower, you will  also have to shave your legs and other hairy areas of your body.

If you lather, rinse and repeat as quickly as you can and are agile with a razor, you will think you have plenty of time to finish getting ready before you head out the door.

When you are dried off, you will have to head to the closet and try on several different outfits to find the one that is just right for the exciting day.

Once the outfit is on your body, you think back and realize you took your preschooler to drop off your other kids at school while she in her pajamas. She is still wearing those said pajamas.

If you head back to that same pile of laundry to find something for her to wear, she will want to wear something different and you will have to dig again.

If you get her dressed in the outfit she wants, she will then complain that she didn’t want to stop playing her game to get dressed and that she doesn’t like the taste of the toothpaste when you try to brush her teeth.

When you ignore her complaining and brush her teeth anyway, you catch a peek of yourself in the mirror and realize your hair is still wet and you have no make up on.

If you head back to your bathroom to dry your hair the best you can in 1 minute, you will flip your head over to start drying and notice the nail polish on your toes looks terrible.

When you look back in the mirror, you will see that your hair is drier, but not looking good. You check the time and realize it’s time for school to start so you figure you can finish your hair when you get back home. You quickly decide to throw on some blush and mascara and leave the toe nails until you return home to finish your hair.

If you take your child to school a few minutes late, you will not notice that you parked next to the news crew van there shooting a special about the school.

If you hold your child’s hand and quickly walk through the parking lot, you will avoid walking directly in the path of the reporter woman, but you will not notice the camera man is actually filming you and your child as you enter the school.

As you see the camera, you will curse yourself for not finishing your hair, but praise yourself for at least getting on some blush and mascara.

If you spend too much time thinking about how you are looking on camera, you will miss that the camera man is actually filming your child and not you. Your child is close to the ground and you realize you should have opted for the toenail polish instead.

If you hurry back home to finish getting the house and yourself ready, you will have to head to the airport.

If you pick your husband up at the airport, he will want you to take him again in a few weeks.

Whew! That was a busy 8 weeks! I’m so proud of myself finishing in 3rd place. I wish Amy and Melissa all the best as they head into the final competition. I can’t wait to see their projects.

Thank you to my family and friends for all the support, love and encouragement I received during this competition!

This last weeks was “Scraps Only” and I made this fabric pail. I wove strips of fabric to make the shape and I love the bright colors. Here’s my entry for the contest, in case you missed it.

For scraps week, I decided to make a fabric basket. I wove strips into this form to make a rectangular pail shape. Then I added a handle to carry it around easier. The button on the side makes it easy to move the handle up and down.

I can think of so many uses for this fabric container, but I decided to make it into our “Positive Attitude Pail.”

I filled the pail with note cards and wrote positive messages on them. Some are inspirational quotes, others are personal affirmations and some are words of inspiration and encouragement for the kids. Each day we draw a card from the pail so we can read and talk about it.

So now we can start each day with a positive thought from the scrap fabric pail.

I think I will be making several more of these fabric containers in several different shapes and sizes. I have lots more scrap fabric just sitting around waiting.

Click here for the tutorial.

Last week on the SYTYC competition, the theme was wall decor. I decided to make a burlap clock and a jute wreath to fill the empty space above our tv. I made it to the final 3 with this entry and I”m so excited about that.

Below is my entry for last week, so you can see the pictures, in case you missed it.

This was one of the toughest weeks for me yet. Wall decor is such a personal thing and in my efforts to keep my crafting for this competition aligned with making things we actually need, I wasn’t sure where to start.

When watching tv, we are always getting up to look at a clock in the kitchen and we had a big naked area of wall space over the tv. So I finally settled on the idea to make a clock and a wreath for wall decor week.

I covered the clock in burlap because I love the texture and look of the stuff. To balance out the burlap, I used jute to make the wreath. I made a sailboat for our clock, but you can put anything you love on the clock to make it totally yours. Although it’s difficult to tell the size in the picture, the clock is a large 18 inch square.

Now when I sit down to relax and watch tv, I can also enjoy the decor on the wall. It’s pretty handy to know the time too.

This project is a basic sewing project that doesn’t take long, so you can be outside relaxing as quickly as possible.

Things you need:

6×9 foot canvas drop cloth

heavy duty thread and needle for your sewing machine

19 feet of clothesline

1 piece of 1x4x6 wood (cut in half to make two 3 foot pieces)

Optional Supplies

Freezer paper

Craft paint and foam brush

Instructions

1 . Remove the drop cloth from the package and iron it really well. Using a lot of water may help get out the creases from being packaged. After I finished ironing the drop cloth, my mom said she’s heard mixing water and vinegar to spray on fabric will help release wrinkles, so you may want to try that too.

2. Fold the drop cloth in half, lengthwise so it is now 3 feet by 9 feet. Crease the fold with an iron.

3. Cut a stencil out of freezer paper. I decided to use the word relax. I traced the letters onto the freezer paper and cut out the letters. Keep any small pieces you need to replace in the stencil before painting (like in the e and a). Iron the freezer paper to the drop cloth.

4. Use a foam brush to apply paint to the stencil. Brush away from the edges to minimize bleeding under the freezer paper. Be sure to open up the drop cloth and place a protective barrier under the side you plan to paint. The paint may bleed a bit through the top layer.

5. Wait until the paint dries and apply a second coat, if necessary. After all coats fully dry, remove the freezer paper. Or, if you are impatient like me, go ahead and pull off the freezer paper while it is still wet, just know you will end up with a lot of paint on your hands.

6. Fold the drop cloth lengthwise with the right sides together (if you didn’t wait for the paint to dry in the previous step…wait for that before moving to this one).

7. Stitch along the long side from the top to the bottom. Sew as close to the finished seem as possible.

8. Turn the drop cloth back so the right sides face out again.

9. Run clothesline along the inside of the drop cloth. You will need one 10 foot piece for each side, but doing one at a time is easiest. Line the clothesline with the sides of the drop cloth and tie a knot where the clothesline comes out of the top and bottom. This will help anchor it for you while you sew.

10. Stitch as close to the clothesline as possible, from one end of the drop cloth to the other. Repeat on the other long side of the drop cloth. This stitch forms the casing for the clothesline that runs up and down the sides of the hammock.

11. Cut the knots from the ends of the clothesline to make the next step easier to stitch.

12. Turn the short ends of the drop cloth back 4 inches to form a casing for the wood. Since the drop cloth already has a finished seam, you don’t have to worry about turning the end under.

13. Stitch all the way across, from one side to the other and sew through the clothesline and all. Be prepared to break some needles at this point. I used a pretty heavy one and broke a couple making this hammock. Go slow and hand turn the wheel if you need to when you get to the thick edges.

14. Measure about an inch from the end of the wood and cut out a notch so the rope does not slide. Cut a notch at each end of both pieces of wood so you have 4 notches total. This was easy to do using a hand saw and the split in my kitchen table as a makeshift sawhorse. Shhh…don’t tell my husband…I had all the sawdust cleaned up by the time he got home and he doesn’t really want to know that’s how I use his tools and the table.

15. Slide the wood into the casings at the top and bottom and string your rope. Be sure to use rope that will support the weight you plan to put on the hammock. The rope I used was good up to 90 lbs and since it is Katelyn’s hammock, she has some time before reaching that limit. Hang the hammock between two trees. We screwed eye hooks into these trees in our back yard and they work great with a hook to connect the hammocks.

16. Now go take a nap in your new hammock.

It’s wall decor week over at So You Think You’re Crafty and I’ve made it to the final 4! Go on over and vote for your favorite project.