Creating 100

I’ve recently joined a group on Facebook called Creating 100 or More.

This is a group for those of us who have a lot items in our stash – be it yarn, fabric or whatever.  As a member of the group, you try to not buy any more fabric, yarn, etc until you have made at least 100 items using what you already have on hand.  The idea is to use up some of that stash!

This group is exactly what I need!  Although I have bought a lot of fabric and yarn, I have probably been given about triple the amount I have bought for myself.  I have kept the fabric and yarn, even when it’s not my favourite because it could be used for something.  And yet, there it still sits on my shelf.

We get to create our own guidelines, so for myself, if I need thread or a zipper, etc for part of a project, it is okay for me to buy that.  I am going to try to sew from my own patterns and free ones online as much as possible, but I may buy a pattern or two if I need it.

Want to join me?  I would love the company!  I plan to share some of my projects here with you and I hope it will offer you with some inspiration.

I have started a board on Pinterest called Sewing with Scraps.  I have also started adding projects using scrap yarn and single skeins of yarn to my crochet board.  There are so many great ideas out there!  You can follow me on Pinterest here.

Happy crafting!

Read Full Post »

Finding A Balance

What is it that makes us feel that we should be able to accomplish everything all the time?  How do we find a way to balance family, work and household chores?

I am always surprised by the women who seem to be on top of it all.  But are they really on top of it all?

I am a mom.  My day starts early and ends late.  I am at-home, so my house should be immaculate and my family should always be fed a good wholesome, home-cooked meal, right?  Umm.. no.

In my home, there is laundry scattered throughout the house, dishes on the counter, papers stacked up that need to be dealt with, garbage waiting to be taken out and you can bet dinner is just not happening today.  Cereal anyone?  Okay… not every day is like that.

I am a stay-at-home mom to 3 children.  I provide daycare 2 days a week.  I try to find time to sew in order to bring in a bit of extra money.  I have one child that wakes at 4:30-5:00am every day and the last one is asleep around 9:00pm.  I have a toddler in that mix (2 on daycare days).  I don’t clean at night – I am much too tired.  I don’t sew at night (I used to, but now that we have such early days I am too tired at the end of the day).

I am left trying to find a way to fit it all in.

It is a huge challenge.

(Picture taken from pinterest)

I have tried cleaning schedules of all sorts.  Checklists.  You name it.  I also meal plan (but that often doesn’t go as planned because you have to remember to pull things out of the freezer if you want to cook with them!).

Sometimes I am lucky and I get into a groove.  The chores are mostly done.  The family is well fed.  I might even find a bit of time to sew.  I love those weeks days.

The reality is, I find this job to be a challenging one.

And so I wanted to share with you.  Because chances are, there are others out there who are trying to make their way through this juggling act too.

(Picture taken from Pinterest)

Now if only I could find time to get some exercise!

Read Full Post »

Organizing My Scraps and a Giveaway!!!

Are you excited to see what I did with my scraps?

Well, I sorted, tossed, pressed and in some cases cut my scraps.  And here is what I have now…

Now I have to either put them in a drawer, or box, or ??

Want to see some of the fun stuff in there?

Some fun border print –

And fabric to match it.

Some lace edging –

And some really fun retro stuff!

And my personal favourite –

How can you not love that hair??!?!

I also promised you a giveaway!  It’s not much, but if you like little bits and pieces, perhaps there is something here for you.

Prize #1 –  Mixed Strips

Prize #2 – Michael Miller’s Gypsy Caravan -Tiny Squares and Strips

Let me know which prize you would like.  I will ship to anywhere in Canada and the U.S.   Winner will be chosen August 31st.

Read Full Post »

Scraps, Scraps and More Scraps!

As you probably know, I am moving my sewing space.  This has meant that I have to go through my fabric.  I have a horrible thrifty habit of picking up free fabric that often includes scraps.  I have so many scraps!

I’m going to start going through them more thoroughly and I hope to show you a bit along the way.  It also means that I am going to have a giveaway soon!!!  Don’t worry – I won’t just send you a crumpled pile of scraps.  I’ll be pressing them and cutting them.  Only time will tell which fabrics end up in the giveaway though!

So, stay tuned….

Read Full Post »

A Spectacular Place and A New Creative Space

Taking time off to be with my family is always a great thing.  Spending time at local beaches with my family reminds me about how much I love living here.  It makes the pricey cost of living here not so important.  Because how can you beat this?

We had a great time building a big sandcastle this weekend ~

It even survived the tide coming in!

In other news, I have been moving my sewing space away from the kitchen table and into our basement.  I’m trying to do this with spending little to no money.  I might have to spend a bit on storage containers, but am hoping to not have to buy too many.  Here’s a sneak peek at the start of the move.

I was thinking of getting a new desk.. but in the interest of saving some money, I used this table we had stored from a Christmas dinner we hosted a couple of years ago.

Trying out different ways of storing things.   I will have to keep looking around for more containers though because I have a lot more ribbon than this!

My quilting cottons (stored above the DVDs, video games and controllers – this is in our TV/Family room!).

Bins of other fabrics.

I’m going to need more bins though because I have all of this…

..plus four more boxes and bags to sort through still!!

Read Full Post »

The Lost Sock Solution

First off, I’m not going to take credit for this awesome idea.  I saw it somewhere on the web a while ago and today as I was sorting through many, many socks, I remembered it.

Up until now, I have always thrown the single socks into a basket.  With 5 people in the family, it can get pretty full at times and definitely overwhelming.  Today, I did this to our lonely socks ~

We now each have our own hanger of lonely socks hanging up in the laundry room.  I hope this will make things a little easier and hopefully we will find friends for all our lonesome socks.  If not, then I think I see some crafting in our future!

Read Full Post »

Backseat Organizer

I am a minivan mom.  My van is a constant mess – except for the day I clean it.  The next day it is a mess again!

It is amazing how much stuff ends up in the van when you have three kids, 2 adults and a variety of guest riders.

So I made a couple of these…

It will be great for out-of-town trips and hopefully will at least give them a place to keep books and pencils that always seem to fill the van on a daily basis.

(Don’t look too close!  I whipped these up super fast with not much attention to detail and didn’t even have matching thread!)

 

Read Full Post »

Keeping the Hubby Organized

The other day, when I was tidying up hubby’s and my bedroom, I saw that my wonderful husband had a collection of papers, coins and more on his night stand. This seems to be the holding place for all those things that accumulate in his pocket during the day. I knew there must be something I could make to keep it all a little tidier looking.

I was fortunate to recently get the book One Yard Wonders. A nice book filled with lots of fun little projects. It had the perfect project!

This is a view of the back of the basket.  It has an opening for your cell phone/iPod charging cord.  Very cool!

I was supposed to make the bias tape, but was lazy and used some store-bought stuff. I really struggled getting it on though as it was a little on the narrow side. It would have been much, much easier had I chosen a wider tape. Nevertheless, this was a super fun project to make and nothing like what I have made in the past. I got to work with many layers of interfacing and even do a bit of quilting!

Look at this beautiful quilting job!

Hmm… well, yes, there are blue lines there.  That would be the blue dressmakers pencil that I used.  I thought it would just brush off since it seemed to be wiping off a bit when I was drawing the lines.

All in all, I think the project turned out pretty good.

In other news, I’ve also been working on the Reversible Tunic Top again – this time making it reversible.  I tried making the sleeves the ‘easy’ way and this is not working for me either.  Thankfully, I have a friend who is more experienced at sewing who will be popping by today to teach me how it’s done!

Read Full Post »

Friday Favourites?

Although I enjoy sharing some of my favourite things, I am not enjoying writing them down every Friday as much as I had hoped.  No worries though.

So, I am going to continue to write about my sewing  journey, and sometimes baking, but I will also write about other interesting things I find on the web – just not always on Friday.  I’m sure I must have more to share than I do, so I am going to try to write more often.

Other than doing some seam ripping on my attempted summer pajama bottoms, I have spent the past two days cleaning and organizing.

A lot of what I had to clean up was my fabric stash.  I had a bunch of fabric freebies that I acquired and they were taking over.  Fabric was spilling all over the hall closet and on our bedroom floor.  Yesterday, I sorted it all into colours and then into solids and patterns and put them all neatly away in containers.  I labelled the containers and stacked them all in the back of my closet.  Now, we can get into the hall closet again to get to the puzzles and board games (yay!) and my bedroom actually looks clean for a change.

We are supposed to be getting some sunny days this weekend, so I spent today cleaning up our deck.  It was covered in dirt, pine needles, empty plant pots, kids toys and  clothes pegs.  I cleaned up and put away all the toys and plant pots.  I gave the deck a good sweep, I picked up the clothes pegs and threw out the mildewy, rusty and broken ones.  The clothes pegs had made a stain of rust on our deck, so I got out a scrub brush and scrubbed it clean.  I ran out to the store, bought a clothes peg bag, a pack of new clothes pegs and an outdoor tablecloth for our stained hand-me-down deck table.  I planted some flowers in a long planter box.  It took a great deal of my day today and it felt so good to get it done!  I am looking forward to enjoying some time out there this weekend.  I hope the weatherman is right and we finally get some sun!!!

It always feels so good to get things clean and organized!

Read Full Post »