Sewing Report

Yes, you have been wondering if I have been a good girl with my sewing, hugh? Well, yes, mostly I have been very good. We decided to move the home school room to the basement about two weeks ago since it was too much chaos in the dining room. I originally did not want to be in the basement and did not want to share my sewing room space. (Nice, she's 33 and has not learned to share!) But it has turned out to be a wonderful decision for many reasons. We do have two windows down there which lets in quite a bit of light during the day. We can turn the gas fireplace on which warms it up really quickly and makes for a very cozy school room. (Just like the olden days... one room school house with a fire!) It is much easier for certain students and teachers to concentrate down in the basement away from all of the other distractions (like sinks full of dirty dishes!). And the best reason for moving school to the basement... I am getting to sew! Wah-hoo!

What happens is when Emelia has a worksheet or something that requires her to work on her own, I leap over to my sewing desk and put the peddle to the metal! It may even be only a few seams I get done, but a stitch here and there and look at what I have completed: (okay, so some of this has been done in evenings when the chillins are in bed)

Finished two half done flannel bags

Finished an adorable mini diaper bag (girly colors)

Sewed 8 pouches for a certain birthday gift for a certain Father-in-law (hopefully he doesn't see this before his birthday!)

Sewed a mini quilt for Hannah's preschool play area (she has since retired from preschool, but that's another story and I have to keep my promise that I'd make the quilt!)

Sewed a mini pillow to match the quilt (just needs stuffing and its done!)

Almost finished with a tiered skirt I have had cut out for 2 years or so for myself

Started a baby boy quilt for a friends baby who will be born next week!

Finished sewing a small tablecloth for the play table in the girls room

Sewed a really fun flannel quilt for my biological father, who I just met last weekend for the first time in my life (another long story!)

So, are you proud? And the only fabric I have purchased is for the baby boy quilt for my friend, which I promise you was a need! How is it going with your new years goals?

In case you are curious about this quit I made for my bio father, you cut two 9 inch squares from flannel (cotton works too) and then a 7 inch square of batting. Place the batting in between the two pieces of flannel and sew an X across the four corners. Make a bunch of these and then sew them together in rows, making a 1 in seam with the raw edges facing up. Sew the rows together and then start clipping all the seams. (Don't forget to sew a one inch seam all the way around the outer edges too) Then wash the blanket (yes, wash it!) and be careful to make sure you watch when the water is draining (the pieces coming off the fabric from "fraying it" totally filled up my drain sock!). Then dry it on hot and check the lint trap often as well. It will turn into a chenille look on all the seams. Click on the pics to see better details of before and after.

The final product! Very fun, he loved it and now I want one for our three season porch or for a picnic blanket. But I'm out of flannel and better get some more projects on my list done first!

Redeemed... sort of...

OK, so just a few mornings later I awoke and could hear the girls talking in their bedroom. Emelia was teaching Hannah to memorize the words of John 3:16. How sweet! For about 5-10 minutes I could hear Emelia saying, "Hannah, say, For God.... so loved... the world...." and Hannah would repeat, "For God... so loved... the world..." My firstborn was hiding the word of the Lord in my second born's heart... how precious! Just making sure her little sister knows the way to heaven... what a tender loving sister.

Oh, thank you Jesus. My sweet big girl has redeemed herself... Sort of!

A few days after hearing such sweet words to my ears we went to the local ice skating rink for some gym time. The girls had a blast and we had the rink all to ourselves. But then on the way out we were walking down a long hallway to the exit. All of a sudden a door opened up and all of these huge (stinky) hockey players started pouring out of the doors, one after another, after another. And what did my sweet daughter say? "Oh MOM, LOOK - HOCKEY PLAYERS!" That's it, she's gonna be locked up for the next 20 years minimum!

Lord, Help Me!

Yeah, so we were driving home from dance lessons tonight and the girls were happily conversing (mostly) while I was tuning them out listening to music or just thinking....

And then all of a sudden what came out of my eldest daughter's mouth perked up my ears really fast. I heard her say, "...Look, it's teenage boys..." and she starts knocking on our windows!

Oh, mercy me, my heart almost stopped! I looked to my left and there beside me was a car with (sure enough) two teenage boys sitting in it! UFF DAH! UFF DAH MAYA! Ummm, is my daughter 8 1/2 or 16 1/2? I immediately said, EMELIA! STOP THAT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Hello, I thought I was homeschooling and that my children were going to be nice sheltered kids... And we go to a baptist church for heaven's sake! Somebody help me, please! Honestly, I am not ready for that phase of my life. And she is 8, as in EIGHT, as in sweet, innocent...

OK, yes, I am starting to hyperventilate and I can hear you all telling me to breathe. That's right, breathe in and out, slowly. And while I am breathing Ted, lock that girl in the closet. O.K. dad, now I know what you mean about "You can't date until you are married". I like the sounds of that. Or, "You can't date until you are 30!"

Oh, what is this world a comin' to? Come soon, sweet Jesus, come soon! And to my dear sweet hubby, maybe we should get that girl a horse as soon as possible! (Some lady told us in a tack store once that havin' a horse for a girl helps keep her mind off the boys...)

I have a disease...

I am not really sure what it is called, but maybe Fabric-itis. Or maybe a more accurate (humbling) diagnosis would be to say I have an addiction... to fabric. Thankfully its a legal addiction as far as I am aware. (Emelia did inform me this morning that it is illegal in Kentucky to have an ice cream cone in your pocket...) I love to walk into a fabric store and dream up the possibilities of what a particular set of prints could become. My beloved husband was the one who helped me to see this love sometime last year when he pointed out that I "like" to take pictures (a lot), but that it does stress me out when I do it as a "business", but that I love to sew and it does not stress me out. Wow, what an observation! Yes, it does not stress me out, except when I want to buy more than I should...

So, as I was reflecting on last year and looking forward to this new year I had to come to a point of confession. I have a lot of fabric and I am really not getting much sewed these days with all the homeschooling and just life. So, I decided I should make a master list of all the projects that I have fabric for and maybe make some sort of rule like, I can't buy more fabric unless I get x number of items completed. Well, with the length of my list, I probably should not buy fabric for several years... but I tell you it's my disease...

Part of me does not want to tell you how many items are on my list, but the other part wants to just so I can have some accountability out there. Maybe a support group, you know, like AA? Fabrics Anonymous, here we come! Yep, I have 73 items on my list and a list of 15 more chunks of various fabrics that don't have a specific project assigned to them. And what makes it worse is that many of the "projects" are not single items... it's it like, "sew Felicity costumes for Emelia and Hannah or sew bed skirts for their beds... I could not separate them out, that was just too depressing.

On the positive side, you will be happy to know that the fabric is all organized and stacked neatly in a nice shelving unit with doors. And now I have a master list, which I will prioritize and post in a prominent place. And another lady and I have started a monthly craft night at church and you can guess what I will be bringing each month. It works out great that there is a fabric night this Friday... hallelujah!

Here's a couple of things I finished for Christmas gifts recently. This is a quilt for Emelia's BFF who lives in Iowa. She loved it and Emelia did help with cutting and sewing a few squares. I still need to make matching pillow cases to send her, but these could be next years gift or for her birthday!
And my "little buddy" nephew got this cowboy quilt for his cowboy room. It is hard to see the prints, but the cowboy print was sooo adorable and the red fabric had little horse shoes all over it. I tried to do the quilting in a lasso design, which I think turned out pretty well.
I can't tell you what the agenda is for Friday's sewing, because some of you will be the recipients of Christmas gifts next year. I will try to post some pics of items as I complete them. Well, now it's on to the next item, sorting through the paper stack that grew huge over the lat two weeks of celebrating Christmas. So, now its your turn - what is your disease?

My New Purse

Mr. Ted went hunting for a week in the woods of Northern MN with the "Men" and left us girlies home on our own back in November. I usually go a bit crazy and do things like painting rooms, chopping down trees, etc when I am up late at night not able to sleep because he is gone.

But since we have school every day, I could not do anything too crazy. My whylie hair did get the best of me one day and I stopped at my favorite quilting store (with the girls, who ran around the store like wild Indians... I can say that because I am Indian, you know...). I picked out this awesome pattern by Amy Butler, called the Frenchy Bag and picked out these fun funky fabrics. I told myself that if I did not stay up and get it all done in one night, it would sit there for at least a year along with all of my other half done projects.

So, I sewed like a crazy lady until 2:30 in the morning and here is my result. I totally love my new purse and I just know you are going to try to steal it from me... Maybe if I can get another one done I will have a contest and you can win it... But don't hold your breath, we're still behind in Math, and there are presents to wrap, Christmas Cards to assemble, you know, you've got a list too!

The pattern has two sizes, this is the larger size. I like the smaller size too, it's just right for carrying a book or if you are a smaller purse lover. There are two large pockets inside, which I decided to sew down the middle of those and make into four pockets, which is perfect for cell phones, pens, etc! I may look like a grungy momma at the grocery store, but I have a totally hip Frenchy Bag now - watch out ladies!

Busy Beavers - Part 2

More pioneer food sampling... (Oops, I put them in backwards again! I'm too tired to fix it though...) These are Johnny Cakes, kind of like Hasty Pudding, but slightly different ingredients and then you fry them like pancakes. We ate them with Apple Butter and Molasses (both traditional pioneer toppings). We all liked them alot!

We went to one of the apple orchards in Southern MN and picked a whole bunch of apples to make apple sauce. Here is Emelia slicing...

And Hannah doing the stirring...
Hannah decided to make Mickey Mouse ears one day, and as you can see, she is quite proud of her new "do".

Busy Beavers!

I know it has been awhile... we've been very busy. The past two weeks we've been sick. Miss Hannah came down with H1N1, and then pneumonia on top of it! Thank you to those of you who have prayed for her. She has now had pneumonia 3 times in her life of 4 years, so we are learning now that we must be very careful with her when she comes down with anything. Thanks to Mr. Nebby (Nebulizer), things are looking up! And amazingly none of us got the H1N1, but I (Angela) have had a bad cold/sinus issues this week. It's really hard to get anything done when we are feeling so crummy... but here are some things we've been doing prior to being sick.The girls had a blast picking out things at the dollar store for the shoe boxes for kids less fortunate. Although there were a few moans about wanting to keep particular items for themselves :)
One day we made our own homemade ink with berries and wrote with feather pens, pretending we were pioneers.
Yummmy! Or is it Yucky? Remember Yankee Doodle? Well, the assignment on this day was to make "hasty pudding". And indeed, it was hasty, easy to make and according to Hannah delicious! (I have to say it was quite good with butter and maple syrup on it). Emelia was not such a fan of it, but was a good sport anyways. Another name for Hasty Pudding is mush, and the other day when I asked Hannah what she wanted for lunch, she said "MUSH!"
Oops, these pics got in the wrong order, but here is the final product - homemade bread!
Emelia and Hannah had a great time mashing and kneading it. We were suppose to share it with a neighbor, but I feared making someone sick, so we did the taste testing ourselves. It was great and we didn't get sick either (what a bonus!)
Making homemade play dough...
And in case you missed the great butter dance video, here's another shot of Millie doing the shaka-shaka-shaka!
Canoe's while studying the Native Americans. Did you all know that I am part Indian? I told the girls I am really Pocahontas. I think they believe me... Really, I am... but it is a really long story...
Science experiments, which Daddy loves to help out with. One bottle has yeast and sugar and one has yeast and salt. Guess which one releases the gas and blows up the balloon? You'll have to come to homeschool at our house to find out!
And now you are probably thinking what an amazing teacher I am. Not really, I'm just following directions in my lesson plans, and No, we do not have this much fun every day. This week I've been kind of a drill sargent since we didn't get much done last week. Hopefully we can dig out of all of this snow soon and get up to the cities for some fun with family and playtime with cousins!