Showing posts with label skills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skills. Show all posts

Monday, October 15, 2012

I've been sewing and studying!!

I'm back....did you miss me?  Oh, you didn't realize I was gone huh....I kind of figured...lol!!!  I've been busy with school stuff.  
Well I'm glad you're here now to see what I have to show you. 

I've been working on different ways to sew my bags.  Like one handle instead of two or using batting instead of interfacing, buttons and zippers, pockets or no pockets.  This bag has no pockets, I used batting and is big and squishy and I totally love it!!  

I call it - The Squishy Catch-All tote.
(Sorry for the bad pics, we've had some rain and I could never get any good lighting from the window.)




You can just throw anything in there.

Linking up to the wonderful parties on my Party page and here:


Whimsically Homemade

Thanks for stopping by....till next time!!

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Sunday, July 8, 2012

Embroidery Art - Day of the Dead Pillow

 Where has the year gone?  Can you believe by the end of this week we're already half way through July.  I'm already counting down till we get to October.....I can start decorating for the Holiday's. Woo-Hoo!!!

This project that I'm going to share with you was for one of our great friends Birthday.  Her lovely parents were the lucky ones to receive the Patriotic Pillow.  I want to thank all of the lovely blogger's who featured it.  I tried to grab all of the feature buttons, if I'm missed one I'm sorry - please let me know if you don't see yours.

The theme of this pillow is a little early in the year to celebrate....that is if you do! It is usually celebrated November 1st.  I don't celebrate the day, but I do love the art work of everything.  Some of the art work is simply stunning. If you like that sort of thing. I went on-line to get some inspiration for this project.  If you look up Day of the Dead art, you'll see skulls with flowers, hearts, webs, crosses and swirls, in many different colors.  Well my friend LOOOOOVES this kind of stuff and I knew she would be extremely happy when she saw what I made for her.

Here is some information on Day of the Dead History

(Picture quality is not the best, but I'll try to explain as best as I can.)
1.) I folded a sheet of paper and drew a couple of half skull shapes.
2.) Then I cut them out and decided on the one I liked the best.
3.) I traced (2) skulls on a sheet of blank paper and made copies of that.
4.) Then with the inspiration from the net, I drew out the skulls.  You know it's not very easy to draw teeth.  I had such a hard time, I kept drawing and erasing. 
1.) I ended up drawing (8) different skulls, I chose the 4 I liked the best.
2.) I pinned the skulls onto foam board with tissue paper over it to trace.
3.) I then traced the skulls with black permanent marker.
4.)  I cut out the tissue traced skulls and set them aside.
5.)  Now I was ready to start.  I pinned it onto the fabric, then put it onto the hoop. 
       Embroidering on the tissue paper was easy, I was able to tear away and pick out the pieces.  I didn't really have a plan, I just picked different colors.  As I finished each skull I took it off the hoop to pin the next skull where I wanted it to be.  I really loved the way it all came out.
Drawing out the skulls, embroidery and sewing took me about 27 hours combined....it probably would have been less if I wasn't watching re-runs of Ugly Betty or The Office, lol.
For the back I chose a black with white polka dots.  I have to say my favorite skull has to be the last  one with the blue flower.

  I'm happy to say that she was really excited to receive this gift.  I'm glad!!

Thanks for stopping by to view this weeks project.

Everyone have a fabulous week.

Linking up Here and










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Friday, January 13, 2012

I'm just a learning machine!!

Look what I can do!!

Okay, it's not much and this will probably be the world's longest scarf until I learn how to finish it off or do something fancy.  I recently learned how to knit, recently as in this past Monday 1/9/12.  Thanks to Youtube and the Stitch  n' Bitch video's that people have posted.  Here  is a link to the official stitch n' bitch website, you can find your very own knitting group. I have yet to do that though. 

We're having a cold weekend down here near Houston, so I think I'll be knitting and watching movies.  If the hubs doesn't drag me outdoors.

Everyone have a lovely weekend!!  Can't wait to see what everyone did on their weekend! 

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Friday, January 6, 2012

1 week down, 51 to go! 2012 is going to be great!

**updated pic of finished pillow added


Wow...what a year, I mean week!  lol!  I hope that everyone had a super awesome New Years Day!!  We hosted about 20 people, adults and children this year. We were all very excited to pop fireworks since we had a fire ban in place since before July 4th. So we all kind of went crazy buying tons of fireworks.  It was pretty awesome, most of the neighbors were out as well so it was quite a show that night.  Looking forward to many great things this year.

This 1st week of the year has been wonderful.  I have started on a lot of new sewing projects.  Lots and lots of cutting has been going on in the craft room. I'm going to be trying a lot of new techniques and skills.  I don't ever really follow patterns or measurement....which can be good and bad! It's always in my head....I'll cut something then measure and write it down. I usually can never find the piece of paper I wrote it down on...so I guess that's the bad part. I try it out first to see if I like it, if I do I'll do it over to make it look neater and more aligned. 

Right now I'm trying my hand at Cathedral Window's.  I've seen this done for quilts, pillows or bags.  they are all very lovely but I feel like the fabric used makes it seem "old".  I want to make it look modern. I hope I didn't offend anyone. 

I have a stack of scrap circles that was to be used for making Yo-yo's, but I stole some and have been putting them together.  I put together some reds, blues and denim circles. Again this is my first time doing this, so it's not the greatest.  When I'm done sewing the curves down I'll sew it into a throw pillow.

I LOVE red!

I guess if I were to measure correctly, this would probably look much more aligned.

It looks a little better with the curves that are sewn down.

I'm still not too sure if I liked sewing these....it just takes too long.  I like quick results. lol!  But, I'll just have to work at it I guess.  Leave comments and let me know what you think.  I'll post updated pics when I'm finally done.


**updated pic added






Linking up at Today's Creative Blog here