Feeling Cozy.... again

Our holiday this year had a pretty limited handmade factor to it, partly because I havn't been spending much time in my craft room, and partly because we switched up our family gift giving to be in a Secret Santa format to limit the number of gifts (and $) we were spending as our family grows in number. 

My Sectret Santa partner put in a special request that I was happy to oblige her with.  She wanted a tea cosy, and was willing to give out bonus points given if it was handmade.

So, before the holidays I whipped up a personalized tea cosy for my tea drinking, chihuahua loving Secret Santa partner (with the help of some festive EggNog of course!).

Like last time, I used thermal batting, which in my opinion is totally worth the few extra bucks as it does an amazing job at keeping the tea warm) combined with and some bright fun fabric- including a healthy dose of a fun dog print fabric.  A little ric rac trim later (I mean seriously... who doesn't love ric rac?!) and two beads with an S and a V on them (my initials) later and it was ready to wrap up and put under the tree.

Working on this cosy got me back to thinking about the 2nd tea cozy I had planned out for H and I.... I guess it's time to spend a bit more time and energy in the craft room to stop procrastinating on all of the planned out and partially finished projects that are lurking in there!

How did I manage to start a collection of these things?!

Umm..... so I'm not sure how it's happened, but I've accidentally started a vintage Singer collection. My newest acquisition was totally by accident (happy accident, but an accident none the less). Since most of our stuff is in storage, and we are making my parent's house look like a hoarder lives there (remember this post?), I've put myself on a furniture purchasing ban. The only allowed exceptions were bedside tables, and outdoor furniture since we had a shortage/none respectively. I was in the local Sally Ann, and ran across this...

A perfectly cute solid wood bedside table, simple but with a little detail to jazz it up, sweet! The next thing I noticed was the price....

Yup, $49.99 and then an extra 20% off, bringing it in a $40, double sweet. I pulled it out of the pile of furniture for a closer look, and thought to myself, dang this thing is heavy! After a little investigation I figured out why....... there was something hiding inside it...

Yup, my little bedside table is actually a portable sewing table by Mr Singer! I thought to myself, $40 for a table with a vintage sewing machine, triple sweet!!! bring it on baby bring it home baby!!

My little table is quite the transformer, they sure do not make things like they used to... not only is this thing super ingenious, it also is totally portable since the legs screw off and them it's just a wooden box, with the sewing machine safely tucked inside!

This one is Celia's younger sister since she is from 1936, but as she's electric (vs Celia's hand wheel), and in full working order, I may actually use this one. According to what I've found online, I have a No. 49 Cabinet, and she's come with all her parts, including the knee control (goodbye shin splints from a day putting the pedal to the metal), and it's Singer task light. There is one mystery part we are still trying to figure out what it is for.... apparently a friend of my Mom's learnt to sew on the identical machine, so I am hoping she can solve the mystery for me.

Now, I am just working on cleaning her up a bit, you know how much we enjoy stripping at Casa Waffles ;)

Indecisive much?!

I'm not sure what is going on with me, but I've been super indecisive recently... too much wedding planning maybe?!

I am planning the "challenge" I'll be throwing out to the peeps in MMSB and Eurovision quilters.

My months for Eurovision isn't until April, but of course the idea for that block came to me the most easily-- Mondrian (see Mom and Dad, that minor in Art History is paying off!!).

So I had a plan, but which colours to use. I asked H for his 2 cents worth and he said the "real colours"- which I thought might be a bit too wild many colours for our living room. So, in Publisher (I seriously heart publisher!) I whipped some alternative colour combos to convince H that an ode to Mondrian, may be a better choice. The problem was I couldn't choose which I liked the best, so I decided to leave it up to the Eurovision ladies to pick the colours they would work with.

The plan for MMSB has been proving elusive... I've been lying awake at night trying to decide what to do. I know it'll be for a picnic quilt, but what design.... maverick stars or a string quilt

or maybe a bento box or double hourglass.... arg, it's been driving me mental!!

So, in an effort to put myself out of my misery, and because I have to order any necessary fabric ASAP if it will get here before I leave for the holidays, I sat H down tonight to help me make a decision (see... totally uncharacteristically indecisive- I seriously hope it's temporary!)... and I think we did...

No drawing yet (maybe this Sunday?!), but we're thinking food words (ie. apple, spicy, tasty, BBQ...) done in wonky piecing, and double hourglass blocks done in food/kitchen fabrics --- you can see how H's influenced this one, but I guess it's only fair considering he'll be making most of the food we will enjoy on said picnics ;)

So... aaaahhhhh, I hope I can sleep better tonight!

Facing my fears

I can't remember when my mom first started to teach me to sew, it must have been when I was a little kid. when my brothers and I were young she used to make a lot of our clothes (she even made her own wedding dress- yeah, she has skilz!). As I got older, my mom's sewing became more important to me as we designed all of my figure skating dresses (and she'd then make our drawings reality- and hand beaded all the sequins on the darn things! Thanks Mom!).

As the only daughter I guess it was normal for me to follow in my Mom's footprints- and it's come in handy for me too- my friend Brea still talks about how I saved her butt in 8th grade Home Economics (in my high school everyone had to take Home Ec., which was a course divided into 5 sections: sewing, cooking, drafting, woodwork, and metal work). But hey it wasn't always smooth sailing! I remember that in that course one of the things we had to make were sweat pants, and because the legs of my size were too short I just went up pattern sizes until I had long enough legs (it didn't occur to me to add inches just to the legs... I was following a pattern!) So, I made an XXL sweat pant and just cinched in the waist with elastic-- I ended up looking like MC Hammer!

Anways -- there is a point to this post I promise! . Currently H and I are still work with separate bank accounts and we have a joint one for rent and household stuff. As the one who carries the purse (literally), I typically end up paying for stuff, and with Europe a bit behind in terms of paying with plastic, I usually carry some joint account cash with me. However, I was always getting my money and joint account money confused in my wallet. So with my new zipper foot and some cute fabrics I decided to make a little zippered pouch.

But... one of the things I've always been afraid of/hated/was too lazy to do properly, was zippers. I could never get them to work properly. Recently I had a flash of understanding as to why my previous zipper attempts were pretty crap, when I found out that my sewing machine has a zipper foot (amazing what you learn when you read your manual!), so tonightwith manual at hane, I set about to conquer my fears...

I don't really know why, but I decided to go all McFancy by making it lined, adding a layer of fabric stiffener so it was not too floppy, and double hemming the zipper. After about 5 attempts at the mother f****ing zipper, I finally got it. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than some of the shoddy efforts in the past. Oh yeah, and my money even fits in it!!