Stockings Were Hung

We are very fortunate to live in the same town as both sets of grandparents. At the holidays, family comes to us, and we stay put. We have plenty of time, especially immediately after Christmas, to loll around the house doing absolutely nothing. I haven't even turned on the sewing machine in six days. To make a blog post, I need to trot out the last project I finished. It's a set of stockings (3 of the 4 I made) for my my friend, A. She went against the red and greed grain as she selected fabric that suits the members of her family and the fabrics already in her family room. I banded stockings in natural linen with a strip of a favored Japanese scooter fabric to tie the four different body fabrics together some.

Christmas Chorus Line

I once made an advent calendar with 24 six-inch paper-pieced Santas to represent the count-down to Christmas. It's a fun pattern; while making the wall hanging, I worked out how to keep directional fabric straight, even with an angled seam. An enlarged Santa fits on the front of a decorative holiday pillow, now for sale at the Holiday Market at Lincoln Square. I used colored snaps for eyes. I've made about a dozen Santas so far, but still have in mind trying versions with blue fabrics, dishes fabric and maybe tomato fabric.

Spoonflower Special

My friend G is an elementary school social worker. For the last couple of years, she has imagined a pouch design to take to her annual state-wide conference of fellow social workers. This year the theme is a play on Superman; she designed t-shirts and rounded out the superhero merchandise with pouches. We used Spoonflower to print custom fabric. With some lead time, Spoonflower is a marvelous tool for custom designs on fabric. I have in mind to make pouches with initials on them in some colorful and graphic style.

Stop On By

Lincoln Square's Holiday Market opens this coming Saturday. Running from 8am to 1pm every Saturday through December 15th, the Holiday Market features food and craft vendors on a mission to help you out with your holiday gift list. For sale at my booth I will have items ranging from $2 to $40, including pre-wrapped hostess gifts, Santa pillows and baskets, and purses and pouches of various sizes to organize daily whatnot. You are invited!

Divided Basket

My friend A loves color and pattern. She also wants her things, and her kids' things, to be organized. I've made several fabric baskets for her to contain mail, Legos, and random items. Today I finished a fabric basket with an internal divider for holding board books and toys between the carseats in the back of the car. By piecing the canvas lining instead of beginning with one large rectangle, I was able to insert the dividing panel in partially-sewn seams right before joining the lining to the outside of the bucket. I'm pleased that my puzzling skills yielded the result I intended. That doesn't always happen with fresh projects.

Halloween Bucket

My new nephew is gearing up for his first Halloween. He plans to go around the neighborhood dressed as a penguin. Even though he's only a little over 4 months old, folks are sure to give him candy. He'll need a place to store it until he eats that kind of food, or has teeth, for that matter. I reprised a cute scarecrow applique-patterned fabric bucket for the job. Made exactly according to the pattern, it still looks different from the same bucket I made for my son and another made for an older nephew. Once again, I prove to myself that I really do need to keep buying fresh fabric. That way, when I repeat old patterns, the result still looks brand new.

This Is Why We Don't Have Pets

The month after my first child was born, I got it in my head that I needed a new hobby. It would need to be something I could do while the baby napped, an event I imagined would happen so regularly and in such length that I would need a meaty hobby to fill my vast spare time. So, I bought a sewing machine. I planned to make marvelous quilts and assorted items for my home, so I splurged on a glorious German sewing machine. The truth of young children allowed years of dust to gather on the machine, but I've sewn and quilted periodically over the years. Since launching a farmers' market business, the machine chugs along nearly every day....until now. In one week, the fuse has blown on a circuit board the company no longer makes, and the bobbin hook has failed completely. Somehow, my geeky husband replaced the fuse (after taking this colorful reference photo of the guts of the sewing machine), and the hook was swapped out. The lady at Sew Sassy who replaced the damaged bobbin hook advised me to start researching a replacement machine. I don't want a replacement. I want my regular machine; I know how it works; I know how it sounds. My fingers find the function buttons without my eyes needing to look for them. I am experiencing the hobby version of stages of grief over the impending loss of my best tool and toy, and I don't like it. The whole process of frustration and denial and grief reminds me why we don't have real pets. My sewing machine has been my pet, and it will be some time before a replacement feels as comforting.

Rainbow Room Rest

My niece would like her whole bedroom to reflect her current favorite color scheme: rainbows. My sister has repainted the wooden stuff-and-stuff bins on her shelves in all the colors of the rainbow and clustered multi-hued paper lanterns up at the ceiling in one corner of the room. To jazz up the bed, I made these two-sided chevron pillow covers with piping. They are huge (26 inches square) and will comprise the last layer of pillows on a rainbow-themed bed. I'll mail them in the morning because I know that everything for a 6-year-old is time-sensitive. They are washable (flu season is coming) and generic enough to migrate to another kid-friendly room in the house when my niece moves on to her next theme.

But Wait, There's More

I just couldn't resist. The Urbana Market at the Square runs into November each year. Typically, I commit to the summer Saturdays I will have a booth there during the winter. This year, I'm ready for a little more. I have registered for another Saturday market, this coming Saturday. Expect to see some of my new fabric made into new baskets, pouches, purses and key fobs. I will also have small Halloween-themed baskets for holding the prime candy of the upcoming season.

Maxi Piping

The kids are back at school. The rush of summer farmers' markets is over. The holiday craft market season has yet to begin. I have crafting time on my hands. Sewing is an easy venue for me to employ the life strategies I would wish to use all the time. For example, when I have more time, I'd like divert extra energy to learning something new. Right now, I'm curious about piping. Thanks to the internet and Pinterest for the directions to add piping to pillows and bean bags. When the kids aren't home, my family room looks coordinated and customized with zippered and (even) piped pillow covers and a bean bag piped in turquoise.

Fitted Cover

My friend K is changing the scheme in her family room. Part of the make-over is a slip-cover for a large ottoman she uses as a coffee table. She found lovely fabric online, and I constructed this basic boxy cover. I aimed to have the diamonds on the fabric march around the four sides. They cooperated. Installed in her home with a tray on top, the ottoman coordinates with new persimmon-colored couches and chairs to be slip-covered in painter's cloth (my next furniture project). Photographed here is K's ottoman next to my own gray couch. I like it! As a bonus, I had to pick up the Legos and books from the family room floor to take the picture. Even without a new-looking ottoman, my house is refreshed.

Y2K Pegs

My first child was born in April of 2000. At the time my husband and I were painting the new baby's bedroom gender-neutral yellow stripes and buying teenie diapers and back-up pacifiers, the news ran stories of folks stock-piling general essentials in case computers, traffic lights and banking systems went hay-wire when the century changed. One baby's room project was a peg board for displaying cute clothes. My husband carved frolicking rabbits into the board, then bought pre-made maple pegs to finish up. The pegs came in a box of 50, vastly more than he needed, but much cheaper on a per-peg basis than just buying the 6 he would use. Let's call it his Y2K preparations.

We have been working through that box of pegs ever since. Now that our son is half-way through middle school, we have reached the bottom of the box. I love, love, love my new wall storage rack for oil cloth and laminated cotton rolls. Three rows of stout maple pegs give plenty of support to my raw materials. No trip to the hardware store is necessary; we have the ingredients for countless projects right here at home.