it's 2015 already?

i thought i'd pop in and say happy new year before it's too late!
my holidays were busy and festive, and bffbf and i rang in the new year at disneyland.  it was my first visit there ever, and i was surprised to find just how much i LOVE the place.   i will most definitely need to pay it another visit, and soon!

here is a glimpse at the nye countdown and fireworks display.  it was such a fun night.

i also wanted to share the only handmade gift i made for christmas this past year.  my mom requested that i make her a hand towel that she can tie to her oven handle.  she had been using the same one for probably at least a decade, and it was time for a replacement.  

i made her new (more modern looking) hand towel with some white terry cloth, marimekko fabric, and lime grosgrain ribbon that i had in my craft cabinet.   the construction was very simple.  you can't tell from the image, but i made each side a double layer of terry cloth for extra absorbancy.

unfortunately, i didn't take many pictures so i'm not writing a full tutorial on this one, but it would be pretty easy to replicate just from the ones i'm posting.    

here is the final product--oddly, this may possibly be the very first gift i've ever given my mother that she actually liked!

how were your holidays?

heart blouse

until i made bffbf's costume (aang the airbender) a few weeks ago, it had been over three months since i had sewn anything.  i spent most of the summer baking, cooking, and working out, and just didn't set aside time to pull out my sewing machine.  inspired by the success of his costume, i decided i wanted to sew some more.  i had recently purchased some apparel fabric and using an old shirt as a guide, made a pattern for a basic blouse.  

here's the front view.   it's a little hard to tell but the front is scooped.  the back (below) has a v-neck with a strap across it. 

and here it is on.   i would love to say that i was able to whip this up in a couple of hours, but it actually took me many hours from pattern making to finish.  i'm really out of practice!   but it still felt great to sew again.

paper heart garlands

i'm not particularly attached to the romantic connotations attached to valentine's day, but i am fond of the excess of pink + red, hearts, and chocolate.     

i made a couple paper heart garlands this weekend to festive-fy (not a word you say? it is now) my cube at work. the image above doesn't portray the colors that accurately, but you get the idea.  the other strand is in the front part of my cube.  

i cut out a bunch of hearts in various sizes (and some circles) with my silhouette and sewed them together using pink and white thread.  i really love meshing paper crafting and sewing.

i'm starting to notice that my current silhouette mat is already losing it's stickiness, and my blade is getting dull. they really don't last very long!

do you ever decorate your office space?

valentine's day cards revisited

valentine's will be upon us in about a week, so i thought i'd re-post a couple card ideas from last year, in case you were feeling crafty or desperate for a freebie.

follow my tutorial here to make these stitched felt heart flat notecards.

and check out my post here regarding the free printable card below, and download it here.

marimekko christmas stockings

when bffbf announced that he wanted christmas stockings this year, my mind immediately began whirling. 

I LOVE CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS!!!

i have a sad childhood story that i won't bother boring you with, but the consequence of this trauma has been an unhealthy obsession with stockings and the tiny surprises inside.

in previous years i made felt stockings to gift, sell, and use, but i failed to move them to san diego with me.  so i got busy and extracted my three file boxes of fabric from the armoire.  after many minutes of obsessing, i found myself with a large pile of fabric, paired by type and style.

after some consideration, i reluctantly put back a couple before presenting the options to bffbf.  clearly, i could not be left to make such an important decision alone.

i had many non-traditional color schemes and patterns in the mix, and i hoped in vain that he would favor those.  but, as i suspected, bffbf voted for the traditional red and green, and with some negotiation, chose two marimekko patterns (i personally was rooting for gray and orange).

it's a good thing that i've been saving remnants of red on red marimekko samovaari fabric for you know, like, 5 years.  the marimekko karmiini fabric also wound up being quite fitting in stocking form.

here they are, hung by our white tinsel tree.  are stockings part of your christmas tradition?  what does yours look like? would it be crazy if i made different stockings every year?

dritz plier kit review

i frequently find myself attaching snaps to my craft projects.  even with practice, i found the old fashioned method of using a hammer and a spool a thread a little too unreliable results wise.  so then i turned to this plastic contraption, which i quickly realized wasn't better at all... and in fact was possibly worse.

one day i was at joann's clutching a 50% off coupon with nothing to buy until i stumbled upon this plier kit.  at half off,  i decided it would be interesting to give it a try.  the tool also can double as an eyelet attacher, and it came with a handful of eyelets and snaps.

that was over a year ago.  

the other day i decided it'd be wise to get a head start on christmas gifts, so i made a couple baby bibs and tested out the plier applicator... jaw... thing. 

doesn't it look like some sort of robot dinosaur? 

the directions from dritz are on the back of the package, and as usual i found the instructions rather lack luster.   i figured out that the rubber pieces included in the kit were supposed to go over the metal pieces  as you see above.  the idea is simple enough-- each snap is comprised of 4 pieces, and the tool is used to clamp together each half of the snap (so 2 + 2).  

i immediately liked how the rubber kept the pieces from moving around, so they'd be perfectly aligned. this can be a little trickier when done the most basic way with a spool of thread and hammer.

however, when i squeezed the clamp together, i realized the fundamental flaw with the applicator--the pressure is difficult to make even on all sides, so you run the risk of one side of the pieces not being fully attached to each other.  i wound up doing some extra hammering to secure them tightly.  i tested a handful of these snaps, and the results were unimpressive- about half were ruined.  

overall, i was pretty unimpressed. i may give it a couple more tries in the future or just go back to the most basic method.

getting back into it?

over the last few years, i've noticed that my craft productivity is directly correlated with my stress level.   the more stressed out i am, the less creative i am.  for the first time in months and months, i felt the urge to sew and to complete some pending household projects.   i finally unpacked my serger, plugged in my sewing machine, and sewed a throw pillow for the couch.

it's a strange feeling to do an activity so familiar after such a long stretch a time.  i half expected to completely botch up my very basic project.  but aside from the usual issues with threading my serger, turns out sewing is sort of like riding a bicycle.

grey lotus root [not shower] curtain

i thought i could get away with my room mostly as is, but i was wrong, because turns out i had to make curtains.

i really didn't want to.

you see, the vampire in me has an extreme aversion to light when i'm sleeping.   while i love sunlight during all other waking moments, it is a huge no-no during slumber.   i tried hard to just live with the flood of light coming through my window every morning.  i would smash my face into my pillow.  hide under the covers.  pull a t-shirt over my face.  but none of it was working for me.   i suppose getting out of bed would have been an option, but considering one of the few perks of unemployment is sleeping in, i want to milk it as long as i can.

i have made many sets of curtains over the years.  all of which i either no longer own, or didn't bring to san diego.  not that they would have necessarily worked in my room anyway.   i didn't want to spend too much money on making or buying new ones, considering the fate of the old ones.  so i examined my fabric stash and found a few yards of my grey lotus root fabric that i had purchased ages ago with the intention of making a shower curtain for the second bathroom in boston.  that obviously didn't happen.

i was not ready to let go of the idea of turning this fabric into a shower curtain in the future.  because my window is conveniently not that large, i decided to go ahead and make it the curtain so that it could fit both the window now and repurpose it as a shower curtain later on.

i pieced it together with a strip of the white fabric that had been patiently waiting around with the lotus root fabric and lined the back with some black out curtain material i purchased from joann's.  with a coupon, this is significantly cheaper than buying a ready made blackout curtain.  i made the curtain the same size as my current shower curtain 72"x72".

when my window curtain is ready to become a shower curtain, i intend on cutting off the blackout curtain (or i suppose i could leave it there), and creating button holes along the top to put in the shower rings.  maybe one day i'll switch my current shower curtain with the lotus root curtain.  now that's an idea.

now i have the opposite problem, where i find it really hard to get out of bed because it's so nice and dark in my room when it's time to get up!

do you have a problem with sleeping with sunlight seeping in, as i do?

stitched felt heart valentine's cards (ways to rid yourself of 30 yards of felt #7)

a couple weeks into the new year, and as expected, valentine's day products are already littering the aisles in shops all over.  here is a simple but slightly whimsical flat card that can be easily whipped together. send one or send twenty!

to make these cards, cut a sheet of 8.5"x11" cardstock into four. i used my awesome brand spanking new paper cutter (a christmas gift, thank you, thank you, bff!).  

hand cut little hearts with your felt.  twelve little hearts, to be exact. three for each card.  i used red and pink from my stash.

thread your sewing machine with thread (a color that will pop off the page and go with your hearts-- i used pink), and stitch three hearts down the middle with the centers of the hearts about an inch into the card.  

you may find it helpful to use a ruler and lightly mark with a pencil the line down the paper where you intend to sew. cut the threads flush (or you could leave them hanging a little longer if you like) to the card, and you should find yourself with something like this:

how do you feel about valentine's day?  love it? hate it? look forward to it every year? wish it didn't exist? 

ways to rid yourself of 30 yards of felt #6: make coasters

a little over two years ago, i found myself with an abundance of leftover felt.

even though i have technically moved six times (not with all my stuff, mind you) since i wrote my last felt post, i still mysteriously find myself with a box full of felt.

it's absurd. i know. you don't have to tell me.

i was, however, grateful to have this box of felt when i found myself itching to sew my first project in san diego. something easy. something useful.  something i needed.    

like coasters.

i drew a pattern on a piece of paper and cut two pieces of different colors of felt.  i cut a hole out of the top so the bottom color peeks through, and then sewed them together.

although i'm just making these for myself, these might make a cute stocking stuffer idea or just a small homemade gift for a friend. 

just throwing that idea out there.   

craft therapy

i've been flitting across the globe like a directionally challenged wild goose in the past two years, and this year has been exceptionally intense.  i am hoping this next stop will be a place i can call home for a little while, even though i still have a long way to go in piecing my life back together.   

between reorganizing my boxed up life for the next big move, i couldn't help but unpack some of my supplies and sneak in some craft therapy (aka, procrastination).  it may be a while yet, but i have hopes that i will have many uses for the new clearlytangled stickers, tags, and fabric labels that i spent an afternoon creating. 

i printed my stickers on full sheet labels, and will punch them out using my 2-inch fiskars circle punch (one of my favorite craft investments of all times).   i plan on doing the same for my cardstock labels, with an additional 1/8" hole punched in the top.

i designed a few different size variations of my color-fast fabric labels, mostly hang tags, which i find the most convenient and time-efficient for projects, since i can sew them right into the seam.  however, i still made a small stack of labels that have to be completely stitched in separately.  you know, just in case. 

i printed these on color-fast printable fabric.  they come in 8.5"x11" sheets that you can stick straight into your inkjet printer.  to make them color-fast, the sheets have to be rinsed and heat set. i have generally had solid results with these, and while they aren't designed to be used for frequently washed items (supposedly detergent will cause them to fade very quickly, perhaps even immediately), i actually haven't had much problem with over-fading yet.  i did, however, have some new issues with bleeding ink and the fabric wrinkling up through my mom's printer feed, so i think it greatly depends on the printer you're using.   

now they are neatly packed and stored away, patiently waiting to discover their purpose. 

kiwi bird parade baby outfit

whenever i receive a notification that more of my fabric has been sold, i am not only filled with joy, but also with curiosity.

who is this person?  what are they making? is it for themselves? is it a gift for someone else?

most of the time i am simply left wondering, until several months ago, i was sent this picture.
and look...

a little baby outfit.  what a fun idea to turn this fabric into a diaper cover.

thank you, melissa from australia for sending this picture, and so sorry it took me this long to post it!

a long absence

my last post is dated february 14th, 2012, and it is now nearly november.  in the grand scheme of time nine months may seem insignificant, but for me they have been filled with change.

the last time i posted, i was married.
now i am not.
the last time i posted, i was in my twenties.
now i am not.
the last time i posted, i was living in boston.
now i am not.  

semi-circle knit top

a couple months ago, my cousin did a clothing swap with a friend of hers and received this in the exchange: 

she showed me the shirt in exasperation, wondering what possessed her friend to

1) buy a shirt with a giant hello kitty face on it

2) thought she'd want it  

my cousin quickly admitted that the top has a cute cut and is extremely comfortable.  she then very generously gave me the shirt, and said i could use it as a pattern to make her a new shirt.  

ha.  

so i did.  

if you can't tell from the photo, the shirt is basically a semi-circle.  i chose a navy knit for her.  

fun sleeves, no?  sent it in the mail, and it was well received.  two of our other cousins saw it and immediately texted me asking me to make them shirts too.  maybe after i make one... for myself. 

my name is edison

i love to eat ramen, and bananas covered with chocolate and chili.
i like to sing, take bubble baths, and afternoon naps.  

on nights when the weather is nice, i often look out and contemplate the stars.   

please take good care of me, and hold me while you sleep, every night.

if you would like to make a ridiculously cute friend like edison, DIYfluffies sells a great pattern.

barely autumn dress

autumn has snuck up upon us in the northeast, but not before i could make one last summer dress for the year (maybe).  i made this dress by copying a dress i already owned and adding an elastic waist to change it up a little.  the original dress was pink on top and black on the bottom, and a-lined out.  

i bought the floral fabric on our last trip to finland, and the maker is liberty- which i believe is a english brand.  the cotton is very comfortable and superb quality.

somehow the dress became shorter than i intended. i guess my legs aren't as short as i thought!  

marimekko guest post

i'm guest blogging today on marimekko (surprised?) over at imadeitso.com.

pop on over and take a moment to meet ana.  she has a fabulous blog, and also believes in the minimal use  of her shift key.   my kind of gal. 

another laptop case...

this time for my macbook.   

the outside (canvas) fabric is made by another finnish company, finlayson.  i have it in two color ways, and felt that a laptop case would be a worthy use of this grey, brown, and white one.  the inside is lined with a basic purple cotton fabric.  i padded it with stiff interfacing and two layers of felt, much like in my kindle tutorial. 

on the "front", i chose to pleat it the same way i pleated this clutch, thanks to noodlehead's tutorial.  

stripes, stripes, and stripes

as i was unpacking my bags during my last vacation, i surveyed what i brought, and realized that 95% of the clothes in my suitcase had stripes.   horizontal. diagonal. vertical....  multidirectional.  thin. wide. colorful, monotone.  they are all different, yet all the same.

i felt the need to further expand my stripe collection by sewing a loose knit top.  i bought the knit during our last trip to finland.  the store had a huge selection of nice quality knits, and i visited several times admiring their collection.  i traced another top (also striped), and altered the pattern a little to create this shirt.  i keep on forgetting that my shoulders are narrow, though, and made the neckline too wide.  seems to be becoming a habit of mine.  i'll just pretend that i meant the shirt to fall off one shoulder, all 80s-esque.  

i forecast that my next clothing obsession will be tiny floral prints (which is so unlike me).  what trends do you see in your current wardrobe? 

marimekko unikko skirt

i have a tendency to buy multiples of clothing and shoes i am particularly fond of.  after making my marimekko samovaari elastic waist skirt (which, btw, had a dye-wash mini disaster... a story for another day), i thought it'd be nice to have two.  i whipped up one using marimekko unikko fabric and black elastic before we left for our trip to finland.  it seems so fitting to flounce around town and the cottage (as pictured here) in such a nationally recognized fabric.  for those of you unfamiliar with this pattern, it has been in print in different color and size variations since the 50s.  

these photos were taken in the woods by the family cottage (in finland), and is a very typical scene in finnish nature. i am always particularly struck by the beauty of birch trees.  i think they may very well be my favorite type of tree. 

so tall and sleek! it's difficult to say whether the finnish countryside is most beautiful at the height of summer or in the dead of winter... although i'd choose the summer temperatures over the winter in a heartbeat.