Bloomers!

Back in November 2008, I realized that Elena was going to soon grow out of one of my all-time fave dresses for her.

I didn’t make this dress, but I did edit it some.  The straps were a rainbow ribbon and stood out unattractively.  Luckily, the bottoms of the strap were the pink/white polka dot, so I took the straps off, flipped them over,  sewed them back in, and voila!  Cuteness!

Anyway, I thought matching dresses for the girls would be super-cute, and I had found a similar smaller pink/white polka dot fabric at Joann’s.  And thus I made Julia her own dress and took the girls for some pictures:

I didn’t finish the bloomers in time for the pictures, but I had them cut out.  What might not be immediately discernible is that Julia is SWIMMING in her dress.  It came out HUGE!  I don’t know if I measured wrong or what, but it didn’t work.  I had to bring clothes pins to hold the dress up on Julia, as you can see on Julia’s back in the below picture:

(She wore the clothespin the whole time, but I remembered to have the photo studio “erase” it before printing the first picture.)

Since I knew the dress wouldn’t fit for a LONG time, there was no urgency to sew up the bloomers.  So there they hung, all cut-out and with their instructions, on my bulletin board, for a year-and-a-half.

But the dress *finally* fits Julia properly…

…and it was time to sew up some bloomers!  My latest personal challenge forced me to get it down and done, and TADA!

In sum, this project has been on my list since, oh, November 2008!  And it really was just a simple pair of bloomers!

But they’re done!

By the way, the pattern for Julia’s dress is McCall’s M5084. I tried linking up to it, but it’s not on McCall’s website, so maybe it’s out of print?   I don’t really have any further review of the pattern and how easy/hard it was to make because I don’t remember!  But it did come out HUGE.  (Um, maybe that’s why it’s not on their website anymore??)  🙂  This baby pattern (I made size 1)  finally fits my daughter at 2.5 years old!

Auditions

I have been auditioning.  What?!?!

Okay, not *me* really.  I have been auditioning borders!

I decided that Julia’s baptism quilt really did need borders.  It just wasn’t finished.  But the border I mocked up here just wasn’t doing anything for anybody.  It was *way* too dark.

So I went through my fabrics and auditioned auditioned and auditioned some more.  Light green?  Medium green?  yellow piping?  pink inner border or green then pink then green again?

And then when I finally decided on something, I didn’t have enough of it.

So I went to the store and auditioned their choices.  And initially bought incorrectly.  Incorrectly in that it didn’t work either.  I blame that on the 7 a.m. sale skewing my senses!

BUT!  I finally have my border choices made!  YIPPEE!  Good thing too, because this quilt needs to be done for the quilt show in September – Yikes!

More pictures to come soon enough.  🙂

Framed Hairbow Holders

Back for my sister’s baby shower, I made her a more awesome hairbow holder than I had made for myself. (See them both here.)

That was unacceptable.

So, as soon as Joann’s had the appropriate sale, I ran out and bought frames to make my own for my own girls.

And then the frames just sat in my closet.  For months.  Because I had went out and bought all the supplies.  Wasn’t that enough???!?  (Does that ever happen to you?  You are so excited about a project that you go out and buy everything you need to make it, and then once you have all the supplies at home your enthusiasm just fizzles??)

I *finally* fished out those frames from my crafting closet and completed my project – YAY!

OH, and I also put them up with a few of the pictures taken by Brandy Leigh Photography back in May— so happy to have some of the pictures up on my wall!

The hairbow frames are 10×13 openings, and the pictures are 8×10 openings.  I didn’t realize I would fill up the hairbow holder frames completely –oops!  I guess I don’t need to add to our collection!

By the way, brief directions for the hairbow frames are in the previous post about the one I made for my sister.  Just one clarification:  to be sure the glass – now wrapped in fabric and batting – fits back into the frame, DO NOT wrap the batting around the edges.  It will make it too thick!  Cut the batting the same size as the glass and use the fabric to hold it in place.  The fabric is thin enough it shouldn’t cause problems with popping the glass back in — at least, it caused no problems for me).

OH, and because my falling-apart French Memo board that I previously made to hold the hairbows was completely defunct, I took it down to its original corkboard.   It was a regular brown corkboard with a wood frame, and had writing all over it.  So I painted it bright pink with a white frame and gave Elena a picture board for her room.

She is in LOVE and keeps asking me for more pictures.

This was completed as part of my personal challenge – YAY! I finished it on time!

In Progress

I had planned on detailing my every step on this quilt along the way, but, um, yeah…  But I can share now!

2 years ago, my Julia was baptized.

At her party, I had everyone sign a “flower” signature block.  I knew I was doing square flowers, but didn’t have much of anything else planned out.  And really, they ended up as square flowers because cutting anything else out was too much work the night before her baptism.  (No, I never get anything done early!)

I think everyone thought I was nuts that these squares were “flowers” — well, everyone except my Mom and sister who helped me with the idea.  But everyone else has learned to humor me since this is like the 3rd signature quilt I’ve had them all sign for me.

A few months later, I ran into this picture on the Internet and TADA!  Inspiration!!!

By the way, if anyone knows whose quilt this is, please let me know!  I would *love* to properly credit the maker as my inspiration for my own block-setting.  I obviously went a completely different direction with colors and shapes of the flowers, but this quilt did greatly influence mine.  Thanks for any help!

Anyway:

*signature blocks written?  Check!

*decision made about setting of signature blocks? Check!

*Quilt made? Ummmm, 2 years later and we’re getting there!

A month ago I finally pulled out the blocks and started getting down to work.  I decided that I will be entering this in my local quilt show, so I needed to,  um, start it!

First, I debated the backgrounds.  Do all blue and green backgrounds?

Or a rainbow of backgrounds?

I really liked the blue & green backgrounds, but it lacked some pizazz.  SO, rainbow it was.  I really thought the orange added something that the quilt really needed.

And then I started making the blocks.  I had decided on a 11″x14″ finished block size.  But then my first attempt at the wonky block ended up a bit smaller than planned, and instead of reworking the block I decided to just change the size to 10″ x 14″ finished size!

This part took forever.  The first 8 blocks went quickly but then I decided I needed to really think about what else the quilt needed.  So I’d mock-up a new block on the board and there it’d sit for hours days while I thought about whether it truly belonged.

Straight or tilted? Straight or tilted? Decisions, decisions…  Tell me, how did people quilt before the advent of the digital camera???

Here is where we stand this morning:

A maybe-finished quilt top!!!!  YAY!!! ALL the flowers and butterflies are satin-stitched down, and ALL the blocks are sewn together! YAY!!!!

By the way, I only noticed last night after sewing all the rows together that all my butterflies landed on blocks with green backgrounds!  Totally NOT planned!  And tell me how much you love the butterflies, because I LOVE the butterflies!

I’m now trying to decide whether it’s done and just needs a nice pink binding (as can be seen on left), OR whether it needs some sort of border (a sample border mocked-up on the right). It is 40″x56″ currently, so is fine size-wise but has room to grow if needed.  Ahhh, decisions decisions. Any opinions???  HELP!

Ten on Monday!

1.  WOW.  If you ever want your blog stats to jump HIGH, be sure to win one of crazymomquilts’ giveaways!  I think most quilters in blog land know her website, so suffice it to say I think we all enjoy it!

I don’t know if I will receive the dusty or the bright color story of the Robert Kaufman roll, but I’ll admit I’m hoping for the classic.  Really, though, can’t go wrong with either and I can’t wait to play with one of them!

2.  I recently also won a giveaway at Blue Nickel Studios – Yay!  The Anna Maria Horner fabric has already  integrated itself into my stash, and I can’t wait to use it.  I enjoy Blue Nickel Studios’ blog simply because I’m amazed how he can get a stack of fabric and come up with a quilt idea for it SO quickly!  These things sit on my shelves forever!

By the way, the giveaway made it so quickly into my stash I neglected to take a picture, so I borrowed a picture from BNS’s website.  I won the top stack without the notepad:

3.  I have been busy on Julia’s baptism signature quilt.  I’ve decided to add some butterflies to the top, and am currently auditioning those butterflies:

Isn’t it cute?!?!?

4.  For those of you who may doubt how many stuffed animals Julia sleeps with, this is her waking up yesterday morning with her entourage:

5.  Sometimes the girls play with my camera. (It’s just a point and shoot.)   I found this picture recently when I was downloading pictures.  It cracks me up because (1) how the heck did Elena get in the cloth laundry hamper without it collapsing?? and (2) Julia took the picture!  Gotta love the perspective!

6.  My list of 10 projects to be completed by August 1st is going….slowly.  I’ve really been stuck on the one quilt and haven’t wanted to move on from there until it is D.O.N.E.

7.  I should have a lot of sewing time later this week, so I’m hoping to knock several things off that list!  Wish me luck!

8.  As some of you probably noticed in this post, Elena has a broken arm.  She was jumping from a sofa chair in my bedroom to the bed and apparently landed poorly.  The fairy wings she was wearing at the time were apparently defective.

9.  It took us overnight to realize that yes, she really did break her arm. It didn’t bruise or swell or anything!  She mainly just refused to use it.  Luckily once we figured it out (a buckle fracture of both arm bones near the wrist), Elena really liked her bright pink cast and we didn’t have any problems with it.  We paid extra to get it waterproofed (it was made of bubble wrap in the inside!) and so we still went swimming every other day.

Elena loves her sparkly shoes, all torn up or not.  And really, I do try to get Julia to put her crocs on the correct feet, but sometimes, apparently, I miss it…

10.  Well, we kind of sort of didn’t have any problems with it. She managed to bust it between the thumb and forefinger. Oops! SO, 2 weeks early, it was removed:

She is now wearing a splint for 3 more weeks.  Oh, by the way, isn’t she very Little House on the Prairie in this picture?  She saw something the other day and BEGGED me to “buy” her braids.  Instead, I showed her how I could just do them.

And then she insisted on adding lots of Elena bling to them in the form of butterfly clips!

Cupcakes

You might have noticed that in the previous post there were some homemade goodies! YUM, cupcakes!

Now that I’m done waxing eloquent on my second-born, it’s time to give the lowdown on these great cupcake goodies.

First, Julia’s dress! The morning of her birthday party I got up and ran to the sewing room — and made this dress!

It is New Look 6796, which I made previously into her Day of the Dead dress here and later into her Pocahontas costume here.  Obviously, the pattern is easy and I’m a big fan.  The cupcake fabric is by Lakehouse Dry Goods if you want to look for it — it’s a year or so old, but can still be found in some stores.

It isn’t the most neatly made dress, but it was done in time for her to PAR-TAY.

Well, at least in time for her to seriously decorate her cupcake at her party.

And since I had a bit of a cupcake theme going on for her party, I also made fabric cupcake goodies for Julia’s birthday gift and to go home with all her friends.

Julia received her cupcakes in a cute little cupcake pan, but the kiddos just got to take one home with them.  By the way, I would totally do this as gifts for other kids, but now that all the kids I know were at the birthday party and got a cupcake each, I wasted that gift idea!  Ack!

I made the cupcakes using Cindy Taylor Oates’ cupcake pincushion pattern.  And I LOVE them.  And the girls LOVE them — definitely one of their most-played-with fake foods.

As for the making of them, the pattern called for them to be made mostly with sand.  With so much sand, the cupcakes ended up very heavy and not as cute.  The one I made per the instructions is the one in front with the little flower on top:

Definitely not as cute as the others – or the pattern – in terms of its shape.  (Admittedly that is hard to tell in the picture, but really!)

With the rest of the cupcakes, I put stuffing in the top, then a bunch of sand, and then a little bit more stuffing in the bottom. They still are heavy, but not quite a ton, and definitely both more cute and more fluffy.

Just look at those cute little striped bottoms!

Now, for the party I finished 15 of these tasty treats the night before the party. I am *so* not all about hand-sewing, and putting the fluffy balls on top and hand-closing the bottoms had my fingers sore. Ouch!

By the way, the one with the flower on top is now my pincushion, but the rest are playthings for the girls.  Just be sure if you give them to kids to be careful because your decorations on top could become choking hazards!

2.5

Back in December, I half-wrote a post all about Julia turning 2.  It never got posted because I didn’t get her 2-year-old pictures taken then.  In fact, they didn’t get taken until February.

Since she wasn’t honored on her 2nd birthday, I thought I’d take a few moments to talk about my beloved spunky little girl here when she’s now 2.5 years old — and a couple weeks.

But first, here’s a bit of what I wrote about her at 2:

She is getting so big already, but she is still our little baby.  And she insists on it!  I called her a Big Girl on her birthday, only for her to correct me:  “Baby, Mommy, BABY!” as she patted her chest.

Now, just half-a-year later, she does insist that she’s a Big Girl, except when I ask her to use the potty.  THEN she’s a baby and “babies poopoo in diaper Mommy!  Not on potty!!”

My husband and I argue about whom Julia looks like.  He believes Julia is his daughter through and through, while I think Julia looks more like *me*, thankyouverymuch.  The mommy has to get some credit here!  Julia does have more of his personality though, we all admit.

We’re both still arguing about this!

She has a great smile and often a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, especially when she nods her head up and down as she starts doing something she knows would be a ‘no.’

HA!

Julia loves swinging. She MUST try out every swing on the playground.

ALL still true!

What else:

*Julia has started letting us do pigtails.  Once I stopped lying about how it wouldn’t hurt at all, and instead stated that “it will only hurt for one minute while I put them in”, she let me do them.

*I love the pigtails.  They totally show off Julia’s spunk.

*Julia’s winter boots in 95 degree weather also shows off her spunk.  Love that girl!

*  Julia sleeps with “Big Huge Fluffy Bunny” and “Little Tiny Bear,” as seen in the above picture, as well as about a dozen other different animals.  I used to think it was so cute when she would hug and sleep with elephant:

However, now she spends anywhere from 30 minutes up to an hour arranging and rearranging her animals each night before she goes to sleep.  AND she calls out to me to watch her rearrange them.  NOT my favorite part of our bedtime routine.

*Julia can’t pronounce L’s.  So it is absolutely hilarious when she sings Snow White’s song:  “I’m wishing, I’m wishing, for the one I WUV.”

*Julia LOVES her big sister Elena.  Absolutely adores.  I think Julia and I both will have a hard time when Elena starts school in less than 2 months.  (!)

*For whatever reason, here at 2.5-years-old, Julia’s been having some HUGE separation anxiety issues.  SO hard on me!

*She loves Peanut Butter.  And eats a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch most days.   She eats oatmeal for breakfast most days.  And nothing for dinner most days — she is a P.I.C.K.Y. eater.

*She loves trains, dressing up as a princess, gymnastics, flowers, Little Einsteins, Toy Story, and playing with whatever toy her sister is playing with.

I could go on and on, and even had more pictures I wanted to include, but I’ll stop for now and instead of writing about Julia, go play with her and her sister!