Open Wide Zippered Pouch

It's January, and I really don't have much I have to sew.  I mean I never have to sew anything, but there's no special occasions, no holidays, no birthdays, or any other pressing reason to be sewing something.  Sew, when I stumbled upon Noodlehead's Open Wide Zippered Pouch tutorial that comes in 3 sizes, I thought what the heck!  I'm going to make all three just because I can.

I have no real idea what I'm going to use these for.  I mean I know I'll probably use them when I travel, and maybe one will end up with all my make-up in it, and I'm sure my kids stuff will be put in one or more of these at some point in time.  But, really I just wanted to own three pretty bags.

Pretty bags that all fit inside each other.

For Christmas my sister-in-law, Blue Susan, generously got me a signed copy of Anna Maria's Needleworks Notebook AND 2 Jennifer Paganelli fat quarters.  I'm not sure I'm going to pick up needlework, but the projects in Anna Maria's book look like they want to come and be a part of my house, so who knows.  As for the fat quarters, I put them to good use in these nesting bags.  Can you tell which two are from the same designer??  The medium and large bags' floral fabric are Jennifer Paganelli.  The small bag's floral fabric is a Sandi Henderson fabric that I found last time I was at Michael Levine's in LA.

The Noodlehead tutorial, as always, was a good one.  Do be careful and read the directions carefully when it comes to the zippers if you make these.  It's a little tricky.  Not pictured in this blog post is my sample pouch where I learned the hard way that I hadn't followed Anna from Noodlehead's directions correctly.  Read carefully!

Also, as a hot tip, I went ahead and made freezer paper patterns for all the different size pouches.  It's 3 rectangles per bag.  All the pattern pieces took me about 30 minutes to measure, draw, and cut out.  I think this step is worth it should I ever want to make this pouch again.

Now to figure out how I'm going to use these beauties.  They might just need to sit on display in my house for a while before I actually put them to use.

For the sewing schedule tonight I'm suppose to be tracing out another Hannah Dress.  It's only 8, so I have plenty of time to do this, but I'm feeling so tired.  Hopefully I forge ahead despite my exhaustion.  I'm tired of being tired all the time!  (I know this probably means I should go to bed earlier, but there is no fun in that, so I'm not even considering it as an option.)

The Hannah Dress

Back in October after KCWC, I found this smashing dress in the KCWC flickr pool.  I followed the link in the description and found the link the pattern that was used.  It was the Hannah Dress by an Etsy shop in Thailand and was a PDF pattern for $5.95.  Pretty sweet deal!

For whatever reason it has taken me until this week to finally move this dress to the top of the sewing priority list and get it done.

As far as the pattern goes,  you get what you pay for.  I had to do a lot of front end work because the pattern didn't include seam allowances.  Sew, I pinned all my pattern pieces down to my fabric, and then I laboriously measured 1/2" away from every edge BEFORE I could cut.

Cutting this beauty out took me close to 2 hours.  Granted I was distracted a wee little bit finishing up Downton Abbey Season 2, but all the same, this step in the dress creating took longer than expected.

Next up came the sewing.  I was bound and determined to have 3 blog posts this week AND a new dress for Grace to wear to church on Sunday, the Hannah Dress being the dress in consideration.  Last night, even though I was so tired and could have probably collapsed into my bed at 8 and slept soundly all night, I forced myself to sit at my sewing machine.  Funny how when I do that, I'm rarely disappointed.  Last night was no different.

I'm so happy I sewed this dress last night, however, this pattern lacks a TON of written instructions.  There are 21 short sentences to this entire dress.  That's sleeves, a collar, pleats, etc. The saving grace of the pattern is the pictures, but even that wasn't quite enough at times.  Luckily I kind of know what I'm doing, so my knowledge of basic dress construction was called on to help see this little number through until the end.

If you look at the pattern, she does add a closure to the bodice which I omitted.  I didn't care for the look of it.  The dress I found on Flickr had a zipper added to the bodice, and I just wasn't going to go to that trouble, and I wasn't sure it was going to look right.  In the end I didn't do anything.  I'm not sure how I'd fix it should I make another one, so for now the dress will need a shirt or tank top under it.

Grace did think it was super comfy which is pretty much the number one factor in making her clothes.  She also seemed to not mind my fabric choices which at times can cause some tears.

While this dress is definitely a summer dress, I think it looks fine with a long sleeve shirt, leggings, and boots.  However, we did a FAST photo shoot seeing as the high today is barely going to be 50 here, and for us wimps in California it's just cold!!!

Sew, there you have it.  A new dress, another item off of my sewing To Do List, and a simple pattern review.  Oh, and 3 blog posts this week!!  Granted most people aren't blog reading on Saturday, but I kept my own personal goal.  My husband will quote me a Steven Covey teaching when he reads that I kept my personal goal, and I'll tease him relentlessly.  All the same, I did it.  And I kind of feel proud of my small success.

Off to make pizza and to get the crying baby from his crib.  Never a dull moment.  I feel like Grace needs more handmade clothes in her wardrobe.  I just need to figure out what's next.  Maybe even just some simple Lazy Day Skirts would be a nice thing to add to her collection.   Who knows, maybe I'll feel really crazy and set out to finish the Oliver & S pattern I drafted ONE YEAR ago.  Too bad I'm sure I'll need to redraft the pattern.

Tootles for now.

Patchwork Prism Pillow

Over a year ago, Annee created her beautiful Patchwork Prism Quilt.  I've been a little envious of it ever since.  However, since I know how labor intensive quilts could be, I decided to take a short cut and just make the pillow.  Anna Maria created THIS free tutorial based off of the Patchwork Prism Quilt Pattern.

At first I was going to make this a pillow to go on my couch.  However, once I read the specifics of it, I realized that it creates a king size pillow sham which is 36 inches wide (or is it long?).  I wasn't sure that would look just right on my couch.

While bouncing around ideas in my head as to how I should make the pillow and where I should put it, I realized that I really wanted to change my duvet cover on my bed.  Remember when I made these curtains?  

I still totally love them, but both of my duvet covers are too loud to go with the already loud duvet covers I have.  Then I found my new bedding at West Elm, and I then I realized that the Patchwork Prism would look so fabulous sitting on such a mild background.  (Fabulous in my opinion. Wink, wink.)

Sew, I set out designing my pillow.  I pulled mainly all fabrics from Anna Maria stash.  I have quite a few, and I only had to pull in a couple of non-AMH fabrics, but I'm not sure you could figure it out unless you really studied the pillow.

I have a king size bed, and my bed is HUGE, so the pillow almost looks small if you ask me.

Kind of makes me think it looks a little lonely.

 Maybe I'll need to make it a friend or two.

I'll keep you posted if I do.

I have a pattern all cut out for a dress for Grace, but I need to go and get diapers.  I think diapers might be a little more important, although it's on my list of things to do before I can go to bed to cut out the dress.  Here's to hoping I get it all done!

New Wall Collage

The Master bedroom has been in a sad state of affairs for several months.  While I really am grateful just to have a designated space to sew in, it's quite an eye sore having my sewing stuff crammed on my side of the bed.  I must not complain though.  I used to think having to sew in the laundry room was a hardship.  This is my punishment for not being grateful for what I have.  (Just kidding.  Kind of.)  Lesson learned.  I'm happy to have a space.  I just need to make it as pretty as possible.  Sew, I thought I should look at a wall full of pretty things while I work.  Hence, the new wall collage.  I used to have Bs on this wall.  It was nice, but I was getting sick of it.

I first laid out on my bed (probably should have done it on a surface that isn't so busy but I did this activity while all my kids were roaming around me).  I made three rows with 4 things in each row.  I found that made my wall collage balanced.  I've had some of these pieces up randomly on my wall for a while, and I knew random placement wasn't what I wanted.  So I made a grid like shape.  However, I didn't want everything to be the exact same size in each row and each column.  It's kind of a pattern, but not really a pattern.  See?

I measured how high and how wide I was going to hang pieces in my collage.  My bed, even though a busy background, was actually the perfect space because it's as wide as I was going to go.  When I went to hang my artwork, I used a piece of painters tape along the bottom of where my wall collage would be.  With a leveler I made sure the tape was level.  I started hanging pieces from the bottom up.

My wall includes several pieces of art that Grace made at school last year.  I've been moving the four pieces I included from one pile in my house to another.  I've wanted to hang them, but because I know we'll get more artwork this year, I didn't want to buy frames for them all.  I think having some framed pieces and some not add an eclectic element to the wall which is kind of my style. (If I have a style.  And probably I'm more an organized eclectic which is kind of an oxy moron.)  The piece below is probably my favorite.

I also didn't want to have just square pieces in my collage.  I threw in 2 Bs, a round clock, and a bicycle. The round clock was my wedding present from Annee many moons ago.  Sorry the picture is blurry.

Below the collage, I added a couple of new storage items to help keep my sewing space looking neat and tidy when I'm not using it.  It also helps me keep fabric in my sewing space as opposed to storing it all in the laundry room.  I sew at night, and Henry sleeps in the laundry room, so it gets tricky selecting fabric in the dark with a flashlight.  As you can see, I used every darn inch of wall space getting the 2 cubby wall expedit (an Ikea purchase) to fit.  

Remember how I said the kiddos were roaming around while I was working.  George was slightly bored by the time I started taking pictures.  So sorry little guy.  Guess it's time for school to start again.

I also added a mini cart that has 3 drawers which is also from Ikea.  I'm hoping to get more organized this week with school starting up again, and I'll have this cart better set up with sewing supplies.  For now it's actually rather empty, but I have high hopes of it holding my needed supplies, and then hiding them quickly when I'm done working.

The sewing wall with my not so helpful helper waiting for me to entertain him.  

The sewing wall.

Now off to sew.

Oh, and I'll be back soon to share a project I started and completed last week.  It felt like the good old days of having an idea, starting the project one day and seeing it through until it was done.  Actually pre-Henry days I would have finished the darn thing in one night, but post-Henry I don't think I've started and finished a project in 2 days.  Anyway, my new project goes with some new bedding that is set to arrive tomorrow.  I'm sew excited!  Stay tuned!

A New Year!

Made on Maple has been a wee bit neglected over the last month.  I'm sure it comes as no surprise to most of you that December is the busiest month of the year.  I do have a very exciting project to share in this post, but let's do a quick, and I mean QUICK, wrap up of December 2012.

Sneak peak of my exciting project.

This year I gave myself a pass on making handmade gifts.  I've had some years where I've sewn almost all of my Christmas gifts, and I've loved creating special handmade gifts for all those on my Christmas list.  However, I knew in the weeks and months leading up to Christmas that my sewing time is so sporadic, and to take on making lots of Christmas gifts would just add to an already stressful time of year.  I made ornaments for my mom and myself, and then I sewed pajamas for my kids.  That was all.  That's not very much sewing for a whole month, but between school obligations, getting Christmas ready for my own kids, and I took on doing an activity advent calendar for my kids, so I'm okay with having done such a small amount of sewing.

My kids slept in their new pajamas Christmas Eve and loved them.  I used 3 different patterns for the pajama pants and all of them have minor issues.  The reindeer pattern came from Noodles and Milk and is a must pin if you ask me.  It's a totally cute applique project.  It's a bit tricky sewing around the antlers, but worth all the trouble.

Next, and this is just a yummy recipe from me to you.  I made homemade caramel popcorn with cashew for New Year's Eve.  Mmmmmm.  I've eaten way too much of this stuff, but the popcorn makes it healthy, right?!  Here's a quick recipe.  I'm making this for friends and neighbors next year.  I cut the recipe in half and it made a ton!

Caramel Popcorn

2 to 3 cups unpopped popcorn.  I used white popcorn, my whirly popper, and used olive oil and a little kosher salt when I popped it.

Next, make the caramel.

1 cube of butter

1 lb of brown sugar

1 cup Karo Syrup

Bring to boil.

Take off the stove top.

Add 1 can of sweet and condensed milk.

Put back on stove top, but do not boil.  Heat for 5 minutes.

Take 1 can of 1/2 cashews (or cashew pieces) and add to the popcorn.

Then working in small batches, add caramel to popcorn and cashews.  I filled up a large bowl of popcorn, poured caramel over the top, mixed it up until the popcorn was evenly coated, and then poured out the popcorn on wax paper to cool.  Repeat until all popcorn is coated.  Leave a little extra caramel in the bottom of the sauce pan to lick.  It's soooo good!

Enjoy.  Try not to eat too much.  Good luck with that.

 Okay, I saved the best for last.  My Ringing in the New Year quilt!  This quilt started months ago when Denyse Schmidt re-released her Flea Market Fancy line.  It was a pretty big deal, and I got caught up in the excitement of it all, and I bought myself 21 fat quarters of the FMF - one of each of the prints in the line.  I was so excited when I got them.  Then came the months of trying to figure out what to do with them.

By July, I had the idea to make a wonky star quilt.  I have no idea where I saw it, but I found a mini quilt, probably 18 inches by 24 inches, of a small wonky stars laid out to minimize the white space between each star.  I was smitten, and dreamed of having it a larger size.  The Flea Market Fancy would be perfect for this.

I had no real idea what I was doing when I set out to make this quilt.  I started by cutting and sewing 20 wonky stars.  Then once I laid those out, I realized I probably needed double that amount, and set out to make 40 more squares.

Here's what my original plan looked like once I realized I was going to need more stars. This was also my guide in figuring out how to make the edges straight since I was going to need 1/2 stars, 3/4 stars, and 1/4 stars.  Wrap your brain around that!  I'm sure this sheet makes absolutely no sense to anyone but me, but it was my guide.

Some time after I made this sheet, and probably while in the midst of sewing all those extra stars and starting to feel slightly defeated and wondering how this was going to work out, I found myself blog surfing.  I checked in on Oh, Fransson, and guess what?!  She made a wonky star quilt, but she calls it Sparkle Punch Quilt.   It was a sew-a-long quilt on her blog.  Well wouldn't that have been helpful before I went all rogue and drew up my own quilt pattern!

Now you know if you are in the mood to make a wonky star quilt.

 

Call it pride or masochism, but I didn't even use her sew-a-long once I discovered it.  I figured I'd made it this far, so I could figure the rest out on my own.  This might look tricky, but once you lay it all out, it's really so simple.

Once all my stars were completed, I laid out my quilt, and started sewing.

Then I skipped batting, and just used minky on the back.  I also used straight lines to quilt because I wanted this quilt to be soft and one you'd want to use to stay warm while lounging on the couch watching a movie.

I also wanted it to be a quilt that was large enough to share, hence the reason while I made 40 additional stars.

My kids always want things to be big enough to use while playing.

I think we are all happy with the Ringing in the New Year quilt.

I have a new duvet cover and shams coming this week for my bed.  I'm thinking of making a chic lumbar pillow to  add to it.  The Italian loves throw pillows so much, so he's really hoping I get on the pillow projects soon. Wink, wink.

I have one more non-sewing project to share, but it's a DIY project, so I might be back later this week to share it. My new year's resolution for MOM is to blog more frequently then once a month.  Here's to hoping I can make good on that!