Tidying Up

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm always at my most creative when everything is neat and tidy. I just love for everything to have a home, especially if that home is arranged by color, hehe. During the frenzy of making Christmas orders and Christmas gifts, often my leftover scraps and bits get thrown in a pile once I'm done so I can start on the next project ASAP. I really hate doing that, and when I'm not in such a hurry I usually clean up in between projects, but I just didn't have time. So I was eager to get started on cleaning up my crafting room after the flurry of activity.

You've seen my fabric shelf before, I've done well keeping it nice and tidy. My next project, I decided, was going to be my crafting closet. I keep all my crafting supplies in here, but they had grown and it just looked like a mess. Here are some before pics:




So I went to Ikea and got some nice new drawers!


I separated everything by category and moved things around a bit, and here is my newly organized closet:





I love it! It makes me smile, AND seeing my room all neat and clean and my supplies all organized gives me that itch to create something. Can't wait to share whatever that ends up being with you. :-)

It's a New Year!

Hello all, wow December flew by without a single post, ha! I was SOOOO busy filling orders, and then of course making gifts right up to the very last minute. (I'm not kidding, Christmas morning I was still finishing a couple things up before heading over to see the family!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, I'll be taking down my tree tomorrow, always a little bittersweet. (We keep ours up through Epiphany, after all that work I'm going to celebrate all 12 days of Christmas, thank you very much!) So any favorite gifts this year, whether handmade or not? I was so excited to finally get a Kitchenaid stand mixer this year! With a combination of points from our credit card, a great sale on cyber Monday (thanks Amazon!) and rebates, out of pocket I paid $35 for my new pro Kitchenaid, how cool is that? Here's my awesome setup for it!


I also got a great surprise gift from the hubs, a Kindle touch! I already had an older kindle version and LOVE it, but I love this one even more. Plus, I got a great hot pink cover for it, woohoo! :-)

As for gifts I made, for the nephews and nieces I went a little pillow crazy, ha. I was at Ikea and ended up getting 10 of those 99 cent pillows! I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to be doing with them, then I found some great ideas. I'd seen a pin on pinterest for a kind of pillow mattress for kids to lay on, and thought that was great. Then I found this tutorial, and ended up using it to make this:

Another pillow idea I'd seen was a travel pillow, which I thought would be perfect for my nieces who have an hour's drive to school and back with my sis every day! I used this tutorial as a jumping off point, but just made an envelope style pillowcase instead and made these for 2 of my nieces and one of my nephews. I added an initial on each one, and stuck a few goodies in the pockets, of course. :-)



Finally, for one of my sisters and my aunt, I made some of these fun ruffly scarves using this tutorial. I wanted a little bit of color contrast in mine, and I love how they turned out.


As for yummy goodies, DH and I had fun making some Peppermint cake pops and oreo pops, good stuff!


I've enjoyed a nice bit of time off from sewing, but I think I'm about ready to jump back in. I am usually at my most creative when everything is nice and tidy, so I bet you can guess what I've been up to in the interim, ha! I'll be posting about that soon, as well as an idea I have for a series this year.

I'll bid one last Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for this year, here's to 2012.

Organized Fabric Makes Me Happy!!

I've been working on cleaning up my sewing room for the past week or two, that was my "big project" for this month. I'm pleased to report that I have folded nearly every piece of fabric I own (that wasn't small enough to fit in my scrap collection) into a 10"x 7" rectangle so that it would fit on my fabric shelf, AND allow me to actually close the door fully! It is also, of course, sorted by color...I LOVE seeing that rainbow of fabrics, it puts a huge smile on my face!

I have a few before shots, but I didn't think about taking them until I'd already started so they're not quite as bad looking as it really was to begin with.

Top Shelf BEFORE


Top Shelf AFTER


Middle BEFORE


Middle AFTER


Bottom BEFORE


Bottom AFTER


The door is CLOSED! :-D


Aaahhhhh, sweet organization! I love it! And now, it's time to go on a fabric diet so that I curb my fabric collection before I run out of room. ;-) I'm not going to buy new fabric (unless it's for a specific custom request) at least until Easter - it can be part of my Lenten penance, lol. I am looking forward to using up some of the gorgeous fabrics that I rediscovered while organizing, I think I have plenty to last me!

It's Been Too Long!

Well it has certainly been much too long since my last post, but a lot has happened since then. My husband and I became homeowners and, of course, I couldn't wait to decorate. My favorite room of all is my sewing room, here are some pics!












With my lovely new room to inspire me, I've finally had the chance to make some new aprons for spring. Maybe it's my walls, but I'm especially in love with springy greens right now!


Spring Vines Retro Full Apron


Red Scroll/Damask Regency Inspired Apron


Spring Green Regency Inspired Apron


Spring in Bloom Ruffly Half Apron

I hope to be adding even more in the very near future. :-)

May Flowers

For Mother's Day I decided to make some flowers for my mom that would last longer than a few days, so I looked around for some ideas to make fabric flowers. I found this tutorial and then went crazy making flower pins! They are so easy and fun to make, here are just a few examples of some I made.