Holiday handtowels

It doesn't take much to dress up some handtowels. With these, I found some holiday fabric, then cut them into strips, and ironed all the raw edges in about 1/4 inch. Then I pinned the fabric to the towel where I wanted it and stitched. Super easy and the I love the way they turned out.

Hemming jeans

I'm on the shorter side, but not extremely short. The problem I run into when wearing jeans is that petite jeans still look like high waters, but I'm not tall enough to wear normal jeans without heals and rarely do I want to get that dressed up. I came across this blog via Koala Brains and thought it was worth trying. What's cool about hemming jeans this way, is you get to keep the hem that's already there. I have to admit that usually I just wear my jeans extra long but since turning 32, I've decided I should probably stop dressing like a sloppy teenager. I'm not going to post a tutorial because I wouldn't be able to make the instructions any clearer.

Excuse the fingerprints on the mirror. It's my 4 year old's room I'm taking the picture in because it had the best lighting. I should have known.

Evening purse

I attended another stitch-out class. In this class, we used our embroidery design software and we started with the letter "P". Using just that letter, we stretched it, duplicated it, rotated it and transformed it into our design. Then we stitched it out onto our fabric and made a small purse. What was neat about this project was it was done entirely in our embroidery hoop. Even the button holes on the back side. No sewing reqired. Can you see the "P's"

Mae doll

My sister, Stephanie, had an emergency appendectomy the day before she and her husband were to be moving, because they had just bought a house. I had just gotten off work when I found out and had worked 108 hours that week. I was exhausted, but nothing was going to keep me from helping Stephanie. She watched Riley for two weeks when I was in the hospital the year I was pregnant with Nicholas. The good news was that my parents and one of my other sisters came up as well, so I got to give Carly her birthday present!

I wasn't able to take a picture of Carly with it. Maybe Heidi will be kind enough to do so and send me a picture. I hope she likes it. I've never sewn a doll before, so I am quite happy with it. The best part about this gift was it cost me about $2.00 to make. Don't let that fool you as to the qualitly of it. I'll definately be making more of these.

Christmas stockings

I went to my first stitch out class at one of the semi-local fabric stores. This particular stitch out class is for people who have embroidery design software as well as an embroidery/sewing machine. I'm in still in the middle of taking my embriodery design software classes, but I have already done all the tutorials on my own, so the instructors invited me to class anyway. We were making Christmas stockings today. First we used our laptops and software to design what we wanted to embroider on the stockings.

Then we sent our design to our embroidery machine to stitch it out. I have a USB stick that I save my designs on and then just stick that into my embroidery machine.

Our next step was to sew the stocking together. I didn't get a picture of this part. I put piping on the cuff of the stocking, which I'd never done before. We also added a tassel and ribbon to hang it with.

These pictures were taken in very bad light, so it looks a lot better in person. I still have to get rid of some the aqua film stabilizer that you can see from where I embroidered.

I wasn't thrilled when I found out that this was the project we were doing, but I after working on it all day, I must say that I am thrilled with it. If I did it again, I would make a few minor changes with the embroidery colors, but overall, I like it a lot. So much so, that I bought supplies to make all the boys one. One will get one like mine, and two will get red ones. You know me...we've got to have coordinating Christmas stockings.

Carly's present

I haven't been neglecting my sewing, just my blog. I haven't really sewn anything blog worthy lately...unless altering my husbands turnout jacket and pants for work counts. I've put those off as long as I could because altering them didn't interest me, but I guess that's the price I pay for having an incredibly supportive husband that lets me buy the sewing machine of my dreams and lets me sew to my hearts content.
I have sewn one thing I think is very blog worthy, but I can't post a picture until I wrap it up nice and my niece, Carly, opens it. Not that Carly would care...she's only a year old, but it's a surprise for my sister, Heidi, too. I am so happy with the way her gift turned out, having never sewn this before, and I've let Heidi know that I am pleased with it. I only hope I haven't hyped it up too much. It would be like seeing a movie everyone else loves so you have high expectations for it, so when you see it, it's actually a little disappointing because you thought it would be better. Regardless, here's a teaser picture of Carly's gift. I hope they both like it. I'll post a real picture of it after Carly opens it. Unfortunately, it may be a while.

Strike two

I'm actually grateful I struck out on this refashion attempt. I attempted to refashion this tank top I found on clearance at Target into a girls summer dress, similar to this one. What I didn't realize was that the bust was gathered, so it looked funny after I took in the side seams and cut off the straps and the top of the bodice. So, no, I'm not going to finish this one either. What's the point, really? It wears funny, so I would never give it to anyone. Besides, I learned a lesson so it wasn't entirely in vain. The reason I'm grateful I struck out on this one was because I would rather have struck out on a clearance tank at Target, than the one I originally had in mind that cost me $18.

I didn't take an after picture, but here's the before. It had so much potential.