Stress

I’ve been a little down on myself lately.

I’ve been super busy at work, on what turned out to be a pretty stressful project.  In my life stress means I don’t take care of myself, I’m tired, and I don’t want to do anything.

My days consist of getting the kids ready in the morning, working all day, and then taking care of the kids again around 4pm when they are done with school/sitters, etc.  Once the kids are in bed at 8:30pm, I’ll admit I often just head straight to bed myself, that is how tired I am.  In fact my husband and I have hardly had any time to speak to each other lately.  We usually eat dinner together, but besides that we have the divide and conquer theory of taking care of the kids, since they like to do such different things.  And if we are both going to sleep as soon as the kids are asleep, well we don’t have any alone time together either.

I also haven’t really been concentrating on eating good.  Whatever is easy, fast, and minimal clean up is what has been going on the table around here.  I noticed on our last months budget we had almost tripled the amount of money spent on going out to eat.  That directly affects how I have been feeling about myself, how my clothes have become tighter in the past month.  I also have been so tired that the thought of doing any physical exercise makes me want to curl up and ignore the world.

I was so excited for the school year to start.  To have both kids taken care of and doing exciting activities on their own for the majority of the day – 5 days a week.  Except after being at school for only 2 days, both kids got sick.  And then a few days later, I caught their same cold.  More miserableness for our household ensued.

We are finally at the tail end of our colds.  My stressful project at work is finally over.  Both kids are loving school.  I am finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  One that I hope stays bright for quite awhile before the next thing hits us…because it always does.

I have been itching to be creative again, to eat better/prepare more meals, and yes to even get in more exercise.

So I have jumped off and am tackling a huge daunting project.

We have this kitchen table and chair set that we bought off craigslist a couple of years ago.  It was ugly when we bought it, and I always had plans to change it.  Here is an old picture (Oct. ‘12) showing the set with it’s usual mess on top.

My plan was the re-stain the table a deeper color like the photo below and to make a slipcover for the chairs.

I may have talked about these plans before, but I have actually started working on it.

And now that I have started the project I am asking myself if having fabric chairs around young children is really a smart thing to do?  I will just have to hope that the stain guard I spray on them really works, and that if needed since the fabric will slip off, I can wash it and not ruin it. 

Anyone else have fabric kitchen chairs and young children?

Blue Ribbon Cherry Pie

I sewed up a little outfit for Bella the other day.

It’s becoming apparent that I will soon be sewing a lot of her clothes.  Her situation might be a little unique, but a lot of people can probably relate when their kids are not the normal size for clothes.  Bella has a really long waist, so her tops need to be long in length.  Her legs are really short.  Now to complicate matters she has a spine brace.  This makes her chest really wide.  Which I guess means she just needs larger tops, so they fit around her chest/waist, and are long enough.  But then the neck is super wide open, and the sleeves are huge.

Like I said, it looks like I will be making a lot of her clothes from now on.

So here is her new look “Blue Ribbon Cherry Pie”.

I’m Still Here

I’m still here.  I just haven’t had time to do anything creative.  Too many hours logged at work, and getting things ready behind the scenes for the kids to start school next week.

Plus I am completely over summer and ready for Fall.

I still have one item I wanted to finish up from my summer pinterest challenge.

It should be a super simple piece of artwork to create for the dinning room.  I believe canvas is on sale this weekend at JoAnn’s, so I need to make time to run over there and pick some up.

The next goal is to finish sewing up some new school clothes for both kids.

Then maybe I can allow myself to pick out some new inspiration for fall.

Of course to get all that done, I need to find time, and I’m not sure that is going to happen.

Wardrobe Redo

Digging back into my closet I located 3 pieces of clothing that I didn’t really wear because they didn’t fit me correctly.

All three pieces were probably bought back in 2008, and have each been worn about 2 times.

It took me about 30 minutes total time to take in the shirt and to hem the skirt so it fit me better.

The change is pretty slight, but overall it’s tailored a little better.

With the cropped jacket, I actually ended up turning it into a vest.  Here the back gives you a better idea of what I did.

After making all the changes I decided I probably wouldn’t wear all three pieces together.  So for fun, here is how I would wear the pieces.

First Day of Kindergarten Jumper

I just finished up Bella’s dress for her first day of Kindergarten.  I also sewed up some little legging shorts to go underneath.
Here is a sneak peak of the jumper.

I used the same pattern I had previously used for Bella’s 4th of July dress, which was the first item of clothing I had ever made.
Back then I had cut the pattern to a size 3, now I needed to tape everything back together and I cut out a size 7.  Maybe that should teach me not to cut out the smaller sizes on children’s clothing, since they grow so quickly!

Stripe Foldover Clutch Tutorial

There are other tutorials out there for a foldover clutch.  I liked the idea of adding a stripe down the center and adding some fun leather and stitching details.

If you would like to sew up one yourself, keep reading.

Materials I used:

Main body was a neutral colored 7oz. Duck Canvas

Stripe was a non-fray synthetic suede

Lining was a cotton scrap

Leather accents were from a used purse, but could also use any scrap leather or leather from craft store.

Craft weight interfacing

10” zipper in coordinating color, I used mine from a old purse.

Coordinating thread, I used a extra strong thread strength, this made the thread thicker which makes it show up better in detailing.

First you need to cut out all your pieces.  I find a rotary mat and cutter work great for square/rectangular shapes.

In your main color fabric cut:

(4) 4 1/4” x 14” strips

In your coordinating suede fabric cut:

(2) 2 1/2” x 14” strips

In your lining fabric cut:

(2) 10” x 14” strips

In your leather fabric cut:

(1) 8”x4” strip, (1) 1 1/2” x 11” strip

In your craft weight interfacing cut:

(2) 8” x 10” strips

Sew your main body strips to your suede strip with right sides together using 1/4” seams.  You are making two panels one for the front and one for the back, each one is identical.

Iron your front and back panels with the seams toward the main body color, as seen above.

Make sure you test your fabrics on an iron first before you iron the finished product, as you can see above, the suede I bought did not take to the iron and shrank up. 

Top stitch 1/8” from center stripe, on each side of strip, on both front and back panels.

Now we are going to create the hand strap.

Take your strip of leather and fold it in half, right side together, sew along the long length.  Turn leather right side out, put seam to middle back of tube.  I left my small edges raw, since the fabric did not fray and I knew I would be sewing those edges onto the front panel.

Edge stitch on each side of the leather strap. (Unlike my picture above shows, do this step first before you sew the strap onto the bag).

Sew leather strap onto front panel, creating a rectangular pattern on each end.  Make sure you have enough room to comfortable fit your whole hand through the strap.  Center the strap and bring it down approximately 5” from the edge.

After I sew on the strap I tested it with my hand and realized I needed to make the spacing smaller, so I sewed on a couple more lines of stitching on each end.

Next we are going to sew on the zipper.  Pin the right side of the zipper onto the right side of the front panel (make sure you line up the edge of the panel closest to the leather strap you just installed on the front). 

Place the right side of the lining onto the wrong side of the zipper, but right side of the front panel, pin through all three layers and baste stitch as close to the zipper as possible.

Pull the fabric away from zipper that you just sewed to expose the opposite side of the zipper and repeat these same steps on the other side of the zipper to create the back panel.

Iron on your fusible interfacing to the exterior front and back panel on the bottom edge (opposite the zipper).

Take your 1 1/2” x 11” leather strip and cut out the center 1/2” of it so that the zipper would peek through (as seen below).

Sew your leather strip as close as possible to the zipper on both sides, you will be sewing through both the exterior panels and the lining on each side.  Then sew again on the out edge of the leather strip, do not sew down the short sides as this should be overhanging the fabric.

Next step you can do either of two ways.

1.  Make sure to have the zipper open and sew the front panel to the back panel with right sides together, do not sew the lining together in this step.  Sew along both sides and bottom, making sure to not sew in the top leather strip over the zipper that overhangs the sides.  Sew the lining together with wrong sides together and trim seems with a set of pinking shears or zigzag the stitches to keep the cotton from fraying.

or

2.  Make sure to have the zipper open and sew the front panel to the back panel having the lining attached, so the sewing sandwich should be wrong side of lining to wrong side of back panel, right side of back panel to right side of front panel, wrong side of front panel to wrong side of lining.  Sew all four layers of fabric together on the sides and bottom.  When near the top make sure to not sew in the top leather strip that overhangs.

In each of these scenarios you will have an exposed stitching in the lining, but as shown below the bag is so deep you will not be able to see it.

Turn the bag right side out through the zipper.  Sew down the small sides of the top leather strip, making sure you tuck any exposed edges of front or back panel, so that they will not be seen once you sew the sides together of the leather.

Now go on and enjoy your new bag that you accomplished yourself!

KCWC–Day Four

Pajama set for Oliver.

We did an impromptu photo shoot this morning just as he woke up.  I let him wear the pajamas last night, but since Mom and Dad went out and the babysitter put the kids to bed, I wasn’t around to take pictures or post last night.

So here he is just getting up.  He looks so big in his crib.

Here are the shorts I finished up yesterday.  I made a boxer brief style short for him. 

If you notice the pink pillow, it once was Bella’s and I have been meaning to recover it in a boy fabric.  Just hasn’t made it to the top of my to-do list yet.

Check out the crazy bed hair!

Done with the pictures yet mom…it’s time to go downstairs.