First, the Cute. This is a set of cloth napkins I did for one of my best friends and her family. My kids love having their name on something so I figured hers do too and who doesn’t love porcupines?
And now the Creepy. One doesn’t often think of embroidery as something that could be disturbing and I admit, the following is a little weird, but it also makes me laugh. This is a set of cloth napkins I embroidered for my brother and his wife. It should be noted that they are both horror writers and movie makers so this is nothing for them.
I got all the patterns from Sublime Stitching - which is a great site to order fun and funky embroidery patterns. I have a bunch and love them - everything from cute to creepy. I don’t embroider a lot but these types of things are perfect for me because they go so quickly. I’m very into instant gratification these days!
I love making things for my kids, but there are about 3 times as many ideas and patterns out there for little girls as there are for little boys. There are more girl fabrics, more girl yarn, more girl everything. And I admit, as a girl, I like this. Sewing up a cute little dress is so straightforward, even if you don’t really have a pattern. However, I have a hard time finding something to make for my son that doesn’t end up girly looking, and while he doesn’t care right now, I do. It just doesn’t seem fair to him. Anyway, here’s my first attempt at a bag for him. He loves to put things in bags so I made this little lined messenger bag out of two fat quarters for him. He picked out the fabric and was excited that I was making something just for him. Dalmatians and cowboys! But it still looks girly to me. Sigh.
You’ll notice there is no flap on this bag, mostly because I wasn’t thinking when I put the lining in (I’m still learning!) but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Its easier to fill with sticks, dirt and stones without a flap anyway.
So it’s not perfect, but it was fast and he seems to like it quite well. And now we have one more place to look for his shoes when we can’t find them.
I’ve had the book Weekend Sewing for at least a month now and while it is so fun to just look through, I’ve been itching to make something out of it. I found this great fabric at my local quilt shop and decided to make the smocked sundress for my daughter.
I was most interested in trying the elastic smocking and it is totally cool. Basically, you put elastic thread in the bobbin, regular thread in the top and sew straight lines. It puckers while you’re sewing from the tension being added by the machine, but then, you spray the whole thing down with water and press with a hot iron. It shrinks up and smocks all fancy-like! Who knew? There are full instructions in the book, but it really is quite simple.
The rest of the dress is very straightforward, basically a tube with some straps and a hem. Sewing for girls is so easy! Next time, I think I will do the straps a little differently. The directions tell you to turn under and press the top 1/4″ twice before you start smocking, which I did. The problem was that after the smocking, with its puckers and with the iron, my pretty lines from before were all but gone. It didn’t really matter because its all scrunched up, but it took a lot longer than I’m guessing it was supposed to. I’m not sure where I went wrong.
My daughter wanted the length to be to her ankles (to match a new dress I have. so sweet!) but I think it makes it a little cumbersome for her to play in. Next one will be to just below her knees I think. She’s cute though, and I will try making this dress again, it was a fun, quick sew.
My husband made a wonderful brunch for Mother’s Day - yeast waffles, whip cream, strawberries, eggs, sausage and asparagus. Yum! He’s so good. 
I picked up some fresh cream yesterday at Whole Foods from a local dairy (exciting!) and so I made fresh butter for breakfast too. You know, just because we didn’t have enough to eat already 
Anyway, there are a lot of tutorials on the web for making butter and I’m here to say that it is really, really easy and the result is really, really good. Basically, you put heavy cream in your stand mixer, beat it past whip cream and all the sudden, it turns into butter and buttermilk. It took maybe 2 minutes to turn the cream into butter. After the separation occurs, you drain off the buttermilk, then rinse the butter in cool water, stirring with a spoon, drain, and then repeat until the water drains clear. From what I understand, its not critical to get the water out, but the more water/buttermilk you remove, the longer the butter will last. Once the water was clear, I added 2 pinches of salt, stirred it all up and it was done! Its very easy to do and the result is quite good. Try it out for yourself, its easy!
Trickling Spring Dairy cream
Here’s the cream just starting out
Here’s what it looks like just past whipped cream. Kind of grainy balls of butter - I was surprised it was so yellow!
Here’s the butter and buttermilk before straining out the buttermilk
And here’s the final product. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes and that was with me trying to figure things out. Who knew?
I finally got back in the saddle and started sewing again. We’ve moved to my mom’s house while we’re trying to sell our house and I have packed up my old sewing machine, intending to use my mom’s. Her machine is new and much fancier than my 15 year old model. Bobbins load differently, it does 66 different stitches, and it’ll even stitch using a button rather than just the foot pedal. Needless to say, I was excited but nervous to try it. Fortunately for my productivity, my sister in law is having a baby this month and the baby shower was just what I needed to get sewing again. I made these cute shoes and a bib, all in a matching little bag. Satisfying, fun, and quick!
