4 shirts to 4 dresses in 4 hours...

I gave myself a little challenge a few days ago, to make 4 dresses for Lilly (D's girlfriend) from 4 of her mom's old Trader Joes tshirts, in 4 hours...

this one's my favorite, maybe. LOVE the colors, love the logo placement, love the flutter sleeves...

thisone's just a regular peasant-dress, but it's still pretty cute!

it's actually a pretty green, not this weird grey, but I wanted to show the gathered ruffle I put on the hemline....

this one's a pretty simple summer dress, in classic little girl pink.
the 4th has been stolen by my little one, but once it's been laundered, it'll go over to D's Valentine...

fluttery and pink and covered in berry juice.

this was a Nike shirt from my friend Angel, and it had a huge swoosh across the front...

so this is a shirt, not a dress, but MAN, does the Bean ever LOVE this.

she insisted on wearing it as soon as she saw it, (though she put it on backwards, hence the seam in the "front" neckline)...
the sleeves are from the scraps of one of C's paint-stained shirts, so the salvageable fabric there was also scant...

I love all of her expressions and poses....

especially this one. I asked her to turn around so I could see the back. she hip-thrusted all by herself.

my crafty husband....

....made these for me:

I pruned the grapes, and he sat and wove these for me! Aren't they FAB! (we learned last year that he is MUCH MUCH MUCH better at wreath-making than I am. not sure why, he swears it's just a natural talent that he discovered last year, but I think secretly he MUST have attended wreath-making summer camps or something all through his childhood to be THIS good at them.
Lest you be unimpressed, thinking these are small little doodads, check this out:

see that big one? it's like 2.5 feet high! and sturdy! I can't WAIT to decorate it!

the little ones are over a foot high, and the middle one is probably 2 feet. LOVE my dude!

also, I made this teeny quilt block for one of my Bee's. it's for a tiny town quilt, and I decided every quilter needs a little quilting barn.

Garage girl...

It's probably no surprise, but our little princess has her father WRAPPED around her little finger.

It was only fitting that I make up some girly little dresses from his old t-shirts...

this combo, (a brown striped polo, and a light blue Pedro shirt), just reminded me SO much of C, that I HAD to take the pics with the garage OPEN. I also HAD to show off the car washing in the background.

C is constantly struggling with all the kids stuff in the garage (we are saving the baby stuff in case we decide to enlarge our family at some point), and we have so many wheeled toys that need to be easily accessed...

isn't this perfect for playing with Papa?

Time management

Um, I need help.
My crafty to-do list today is:
1) Make paper bag roses (the pic is of the paper bags we painted already, but I need to figure out how to import my templates so my silhouette can cut all the petals and leaves)
2) embroider the designs from weeks 3&4 for the stitchalong
3) iron fabric for my secret quilt
4) make some dresses for the Bean
5) make more snack bags for the kiddos
6) make another newspaper wreath
7) make valentine barrettes
8) finish quilting the Bean's doll quilt
9) blog all about everything I've accomplished
This list, of course, is only startable after I put the kidlets to bed. And I'm sick. And I'm tired. And I'm cranky.
I need crafty time to feel better.
But the Bean pooped on the potty, and I got 3 loads of laundry done, and I swept, so ... Life's actually ok.

my daughter, the HAM

I made another peasant top, this time long sleeved...

it's to be a top for an older child, but my daughter assumes that she gets EVERYTHING I make (seriously, if I've got anything in my hands, she walks up and says, in the cutest possible way, with a head tilt and smile "what you making for me, mama?" so she gets almost everything I make)

so the sleeves are a little long, but the cuffs are shirred, so it's fine.

she's SO silly in front of the camera!

she just LOVES posing and making faces, and C loves taking pics of her, obvi. these three were my favorite of the 20 or so he took of this one top.

bits of a weekend...

I finally took down our Xmas/evergreen wreath, and the door was very bare, so I took the sunday LA Times, and made this wreath. it's a biggun, like, over a foot wide... LOTS of roses from strips of newspaper, print, comics, ads, etc.

I really really REALLY love it. It makes me SO happy!
I'm not sure if I saw one once that inspired me or not, but I just sat down and did this... if anyone wants a tute, let me know, and I'll whip one out. it was really really fun to make.

I also made these little bags/backpacks today, probably for the auction, but D really wants the crab one, and the bean wants the other one, so we'll see if these make it to the auction or not...
now I'm off to sew... we stopped into Momen + as a family on saturday, and C pointed out a dress sample that would be really cute on the Bean, so I'm gonna try to whip it out today or tomorrow and surprise them...

sweet little mermaids...

I made these three little mermaidens based on one in Wee Wonderfuls.... I didn't really follow the directions, but since I DID use the patterns, the finished result is pretty similar...

here's a close up of each one...


(the Bean has chosen this red Navy one as her own)

the other two, (crabby and strawberry) are for the Beach School auction....

today....

I finally (a week late, so I'll cut myself some slack) finished this little dude...

the linen looks blotchy, cause I couldn't wait for the water to dry after I erased the pen...
He's motif #1 from the Doodle Stitch-A-Long...

I also made mittens for some of D's schoolmates... I now consider myself an expert preschool-mitten-maker. I've made almost 15 in less than 2 weeks, so ... my technique is improving...

I didn't put names on the ones I made for my own kids, because I sorta made them to be throw-aways, after our snow weekend last weekend, but since these kiddos will only have 3 hours of snow tomorrow (if it lasts that long in the sun on the sand, it was 80 degrees today!), I only made 1 pair each... pink for the girls, blue for the boy. My American Studies-self cringes at the gender-stereotyping I'm thrusting at these little people, but I didn't have time to ask for color preferences, and they're only going to be wearing them for 3 hours (if that), so I'm just gonna stick with what's safe and breathe through the discomfort.

speaking of discomfort, I dunno WHAT is wrong with this one, but she is just a MESS. so there's not actually much crafting going on here right now. she asks me to hold her, then hits/kicks/yells at me till I HAVE to leave her so she will hopefully learn not to treat people (ESPECIALLY me) so badly, but as soon as I'm gone, she's a crying, melting, DISASTER, BEGGING me to come back. she fell asleep on the floor, leaning on my legs, next to where I was sitting in the hallway tonight. (I was honoring MLK day with a non-violent sit-in outside her door).
hopefully we will all survive this rough time. I almost bought myself these shoes tonight to make myself feel better, but then I decided that purchasing them (since they're COMPLETELY unnecesary and impractical) would merely punish my husband (who has to pay for my treats/shoe therapy), so I refrained.
So now I'm off to bed, feeling like I'm an exceptionally good wife, awesome preschool parent, and decent mother of an almost completely potty-trained little one.

here's week 2!

...of the doodle stich along with Aimee Ray

I changed the colorings of the children, just to match mine. When the Bean saw the sketch, all in blue washable ink, she told me it was a picture of her and Darren, so I decided the boy should be blonde like him, and the girl brunette like her...
still dunno what I'll do with the finished motifs, but they sure are fun to stitch up!

crabby apron

here're some detail shots of the crabby apron I made yesterday...

it's now hidden away at the top of the closet until I need to pull it out for the auction.

bright green ruffles, neck strings, and waistband,

long enough to fit a 2-5 year old,

and the sweetest little crab print ever!

SILK socks!

it's a silk wool blend, actually.

I've had to restart this sock 4 times, but I'm finally pretty happy with my design.

the bottom is just knit plain, but the top has an asymetrical pattern knit into it, which I TOTALLY love.
I keep having to remind myself to write down the pattern and the changes I make to it, since I need to make a PAIR of socks, not just htis one, and therefore I need to know what I did!

I love Beach School..... THIS much

here's the other item I'm making for D's preschool fundraiser...

a pinwheel quilt! I had a "batik strip set" (or something like that) that I bought over a year ago
from the Urban Craft Center, so I pulled it out, sewed pairs of strips, and then decided on this pinwheel hexagon layout

it's actually turning out bigger than I had thought, which is awesome....
it'll be a large-ish lap quilt/throw, I think.... we'll see what happens when I sew it all together...


I pulled out my stickies (from my very short time in law school) and labeled all my stacks of rows, so hopefully I will be able to sew this up reasonably easily... (snort/guffaw/sigh)

look at all those triangles. I must REALLY love PBNS.