Lots o' pants!

Since Nin won't stop growing, I made her some more pants.  On a side note, she has grown a little over an inch since May of this year.  In 4 months!  Since both girls are now so tall, I can't get a pair out of 1 yard anymore.  So the only corduroy that I had that was longer than 1 yard so was olive green and a brown floral.  I showed them to her and she liked them.  At first. 

So I spend several hours (until 2 am) making these super slim cords.  Once complete, I showed them to her and she immediately turned up her nose and said that she didn't like the fabric anymore.  So I used a little reverse pyschology and told her that I would give them to her sister (since they wear the same size) and she said "oh ok, I will take them now."  Roughly translated, that means that she will wear them, so that her sister can't have them.  Girls!

Pattern:  Ottobre Design 4/2009 #31.  These are a size 134.  With a big hem at the bottom so I can let it out as she grows.



What's not to like about plain ol' cords with a rainbow waistband and fun zippers!



The brown floral is a little much, but she picked out the material!





I found a pattern in one of my Ottobre magazines for a pair of cords and they were super cute. So I traced those out for TheoLeo. I saw an idea for flipping the pattern piece on the corduroy that the wales are going different directions for a little visual interest.

Pattern: Ottobre Design 4/2010 #11 in size 86. The waistband and cuffs on the pants are made out of cotton lycra, with a piece of elastic in the waist to help keep them up!



The knee pieces



pockets lined with baseballs!



a little helicopter tag under the pocket



Although there are only 3 pairs, they were a lot of work!

Conkerr cancer

One of the ways to earn points in Stash Game is to sew for charity.  This time around the charity is Conkerr Cancer.  A group who collects bright, fun pillowcases for children who are undergoing cancer treatment.  I decided to sew up some pillowcases that would use up some of the many yards of flannel I purchased on Black Friday last year.  And the year before.  And the year before that....  It's just so cheap that day!  Cheaper than any other day of the year! 

I thought I would start off with ten and see if I could get those sewn up in one night.  Success!  I sat down Friday night at about 9 or so and finished up all the pillowcases by 11 something.  I even made a pillowcase for my brother.  I found the fabric for that one in a tub of fabric I purchased from a coworker.  It was 1994 Power Ranger fabric with all the original Power Rangers on it!  Daniel has loved the Power Rangers since he was young (he was 3 in 1994).  I couldn't figure out what to do with this as 1 yard wasn't enough for pj pants or a button up shirt.  So it was destined to become a pillowcase! 

I made all these pillowcases and then discovered that the only place in ALL of Kansas that accepts them is a hospital about an hour away.  I want to try and get about 10 more finished in the next 10 days and then mail them all at once!





I know the fabric is kind of hard to see but there is Muppets, Barbie, Hannah Montana, kitties, Dale Earnhardt Jr, pirates, and gold fish.
You can go here and learn more about what you can do to help!

Do you sudoku, and other stuff

I love making the Sudoku skirts from Ottobre 1/2009.  And I especially love making them during Stash Game since they give me lots of points!  But really, how many of these same skirts do my girls need?  I mean, we have like 4 floating around the house.  So I made a couple for the other little girls in my life. 

Let me tell you, I spent an hour hemming and ruffling the bottom ruffle to these skirts.  That doesn't even include attaching it or topstitching it.  Hemming and ruffling.  Aaack!  But those ruffles are so lovely!  The bottom ruffle on each skirt is like 28 feet long and then gathered to fit the skirt. Ridiculous! 
For an explanation of how I put them together take a look at past Sudoku's.  Each of these has 24 different scraps in them. 

Pattern:  Ottobre Design 1/2009







A look up at all those ruffles!





And the other stuff! A few long sleeve shirts.

Ottobre Design 4/09 #35 in size 134
I love the way this shirt is cut and the stripes face different directions! I barely eeked this shirt out of the fabric I had left though and the sleeves ended up being barely long enough so there was no way I could hem them. I solved that problem by hemming them with picot elastic. Perfect!







A tunic for KK. I ordered a yard of this fabric from Girl Charlee awhile back and liked it so much that I re-ordered 2 more yards of it when I placed another order! :)

Pattern: Ottobre Design 1/2009 #28 size 134
(Have I mentioned lately how my girls are 3 years apart in age and wear the same size? I'm sure you are thinking, great they can share clothes and I don't have to buy as many. Yeah right, they fight over everything. Each girl must have their own!)

(Have I mentioned lately that Ottobre 1/2009 is my favorite issue? I have made most everything in that issue!)



The pockets are a little hard to see..



Finally, a Mamu Sabrina for Nin. I also ordered this butterfly cotton lycra from Girl Charlee. Very nice fabric and the girls love the butterflies! Maybe I should just have my paycheck direct deposited to Girl Charlee's bacnk account? She has such great stuff though! Do you know how hard it is to stay away during SG?

The thing I love about the Sabrina pattern is that it is open to personalization. Hood or no hood, long sleeve, short sleeve, cap sleeves, puff sleeves, pocket, tunic or dress length.

This just happens to be a dress with a pocket, no hood and long sleeves! I promise it's not wonky in real life. Just on the hanger...

10

Ten years ago I sat in my hospital bed holding my new baby while watching the horrific events of 9/11 unfold on the hospital tv.  A lot has changed in 10 years! 

KK turned 10 today, 2 hands worth of birthdays!  She wore her new outfit to school that she picked out at Justice and took rice krispy treats to share with her classmates. 

Here she is in 2008.  No glasses and such a baby face!



A year and a half ago. Same face, but longer hair and glasses!



Here she is today on her 10th birthday!



And one with me!   I made Nin take this pic!



Happy Birthday KK!!

Apple tops

A while back I purchased some french terry from Girl Charlee that had apples on it.  I planned on making some hoodies out of it for the girls.  Thankfully they each liked it!  Maybe because it had pink in it?  At any rate I had purchased a vest pattern for the girls last year and never got around to making it so I cut out the vest for KK.  And since we didn't need 2 of the exact same vests I cut out a hoodie for Nin.

Let me just tell you that KK loved the vest so much that she wore it to school the first day she could!

Pattern: DMK warm hooded vest in size 9 ( you can find her patterns on Etsy!)  This pattern was well written and easy to complete.  After I had the vest cut out, I sat down and finished it in under an hour!  Yay for that!!!  I did add snaps at the top instead of buttons or a tie. 

P.S.  This is a vest, she was just wearing a long sleeve pink shirt under it!  The vest is fully lined though and in this one, it is a dark pink lining so it makes it hard to tell where the vest starts and the shirt ends! 





Pink snaps!



Nin's hoodie was not complicated but it has just a little flare to it. Not the usual zip up hoodie, it's more of a pullover.

Pattern: Ottobre Design 4/2007 #34 in size 134. This girl is now in the same size clothes as her sister and grew about an inch and a half in 4 months this summer.





She actually liked hers so much that she has worn it multiple times in the last 10 days!

These girls can't ever hold still when I pull out the camera. They immediately start posing...



Even after these 2 tops, I still have about 1/2 a yard of this material left.  Not enough to make anything for my girls.  Maybe doll clothes?  A top for Averie?

Moon flower

A friend from work was out walking one day and spotted a landscaping company thinning some moon flowers so she stopped to ask if she could have the shoots they were throwing away!  They said yes, so she grabbed a handful and came back to work, wrapped them in wet paper towels and stuck them in  a bag.  She happened to stop me in the hall to ask if I wanted some.  Sure I told her! 
I brought home these 2 little shoots, that were kind of puny by the end of the day.  Not knowing a thing about them or how they would grow, or how much room they would need, I stuck them in the ground.  I was afraid they would die if I waited any longer!  So I put them in the ground between the basil and the carrots.  They grew and grew and grew.  As they got bigger I wondered if I had made a mistake in my choice of placement!  I googled them and found that they prefer to be trellised as they will grow very tall! 

Well crap, perhaps I should have googled before planting?  At any rate, I didn't trellis so my plant is more like a bush.  But that's ok!  They are called moon flowers because they bloom at dusk and through the night. And they smell fantastic!

For the longest time I didn't have any flower blooms, but a couple weeks ago, I spotted 2 small buds.  Over the last couple weeks, they got bigger and bigger, about 6 inches long.  I kept going outside checking the buds at least once a night, sometimes twice because I didn't want to miss the bloom! This weekend was the right time and they opened up into these beautiful flowers!

I had been taking pictures almost everyday to catch the progression of the bloom, but then my memory card ate the pictures.... So this is all I got! 

I am so ridiculously proud of these 2 blooms!  A little over protective the last couple days!  But last night I noticed that there are at least a dozen more buds forming!! 













This bloom has a little cricket in there!

The great Sharpie experiment

The girls and I did a cool experiment awhile back involving Sharpies.  Now, I generally keep Sharpies out of the girls hands, every since the Sharpie stick figure was drawn on the living room wall and Nin wrote her name in black Sharpie on her new $40 mini blinds.  I am here to tell you that Magic Erasers do not take Sharpie stick figures off the wall. 

I found this cool link while browsing the web one day and thought I would try it out. 

Sharpie tie dye

Basically what you do is gather some fabric, a disposable cup, some rubbing alcohol, a dropper and a bunch of colored Sharpies. 
Place your fabric over the cup, you can either hold it with your hand or rubberband it.  In the middle of the circle that is stretched over the cup draw a design about the size of a quarter.  Once the design is complete, using a dropper place one drop of rubbing alcohol in the center of the design (which is still over the cup).  Keep dropping the rubbing alcohol on the design one drop at a time until the design has flowed out to the edge of your cup.  You need to keep the fabric over the cup because some of the rubbing alcohol will seep through during the process. 

The reason you use rubbing alcohol is becuase Sharpie ink is formulated to be resistant to water.  However, alcohol will dilute the ink causing it to spread.  Once we finished our fabric I washed and dried it on hot to set the ink and get rid of the smell! 

















I then used the fabric as sleeves for some fun Farbenmix Antonia's!









Ok, except this one. I used an old t-shirt for the upper sleeve part.



The sleeves on KK's ended up being too short. Either she has grown or I forgot to add length.... Hmm