Oh, Craft!

Well after a week in the Bahamas and no crafting I am home. I bought this awesome bag of Bahamian material scraps for 20$! Super pumped about it, going to make some bags, AW wants a reversible tote like I have. I will have to wait to put a picture of the lovely find later, I can not seam to find the camera cord from vacation. So since my trip I have updated my current projects to things that were requested of me to make. I found out my little cousin AA is going to school in Georgia for fashion design. I am excited for her!

Anyway, here are a few pictures of T and I in the Bahamas

Yesterday I finished a few projects. The first is a copy. Not really. My mom liked her address book but....she found her old one and liked that one better and since the addresses were already in it...she wanted a cover for that one. So after craft club last Saturday we went to JoAnn where she picked out her felt and thread. She chose ORANGE -shocker- yellow for the contrast and a pretty blue for the thread.

My mom drives an ORANGE beetle so I thought I would put a little beetle on the front of it. I actually remembered my tag on this one! I glued it to a small piece of yellow and then sewed around the yellow.

**bad photo alert**

I again sewed on a pen holder and the pocket for her notes.


And she loves it.

I also finished my first quilt. I am pretty excited about it as it is my first one. If you remember I chose brown chenille, lime "jelly bean" cotton, pink and blue baby check cotton, a floral cotton, and a stripe flannel. As I started to sew the small squares together I quickly realized that the chenille was going to be a pain.

It kinda does it's own thing and slightly distorts the square a little. But I kept on keeping on. After I sewed all my 4 blocks into one block and pressed the seams I sewed strips of alternating 4block and "jelly bean" block.

The next step was to sew my strips of alternating blocks to long strips of stripe flannel. The first one I did i sewed on backwards. Sometimes I really have mental lapses.

Anyway after I ripped out that seam and re sewed it I alternated the stripe and the the multi-strips. this is generally what it looked like when all together.

I sandwiched the front, batting and a large sheet of the flannel together and started to "quilt." Now like I said. I have never done this before and wanted to keep it as easy as possible. So I chose to make 2 long "s" down the stripes and "x" going down the multi-strips. You can kind of see what I am talking about here.

The "s" are kind of crooked but I kind of like it that way. You can really tell that it is hand made.

I sewed on the binding. Tucking my tag in the bottom right corner of the binding. (but i accidentally zig zag sewed over it...you can still see the tag but it has been sewed over.)

Here is the finished project.

I rolled her up and tied some pretty ribbon around it. It is really cute. I am really proud of myself and it only took about 2.5 hours cutting and all!


Only 2 days and we leave for the BAHAMAS! I am super pumped. Although the weather here is going to be the exact same as it is going to be there (which is really odd to me) but oh well it is a vacation!

~j

Saturday I went to craft club with my mother. It was really fun actually! There was just me, mom and Y. It was so nice to spread out. I craft in the tiniest of all tiny spaces. OUR DINING ROOM TABLE. Many of you may say that it is not so bad, that maybe even you might do that. However our DR table is tiny. about 3 feet by 2 feet. I swear. It is the JOKKMOKK from Ikea. We spent a whopping 125 on it, the 4 chairs, and the chair pads. It works perfect for dinner for the three of us, and since J was 4 when we got it we wanted something that if he colored on it or spilled oatmeal (that we don't find till after we get home form milk and it has now seeped into the wood and permanently stained it white) on, it wont mater. HOWEVER it sucks for crafting.

I have to keep my Mobile Sewing room next to me on the floor.

The other problem I have is that I have to stay organized but I have to move everything 14 times in one day. So I started to use giant shopping bags, and Ziploc bags to keep all of my "current" projects in.

It works pretty good. I am still praying like no one has ever prayed before that we get this house we are trying to buy....not only is it 12 times bigger than the house we live in now...but I get a CRAFT ROOM! Holey Guacamole! T has decided to give up his idea of a sports room to allow me to have a craft room. I think he is just sick of seeing my sewing machine next to him when he is eating his dinner. But heck! I will take it!

So any way I went to craft club. It is a monthly stitch and bitch that I have not been able to go to yet because I always worked on Saturday's. And since I am now unemployed I can go! It takes place at her and Y's work. Apparently most of the other women that usually go work there too, but since my mom works there I am invited. We craft in their training room which has these lovely long tables that you can spread out all over.

I was the last to show up and we were not there for very long before we heard it....
**beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep**
Some how I set off the security alarm.
Oops.
The cops came.

He thought it was kind of funny that there were 3 chicks in the training room all sewing away!
He gave my mom some sheet of paper and let us do our thing.

Apparently most weeks, there is not so much drama...I must bring it.

So, at craft club I decided to start on a quilt. Why? I am not sure. I have never made one. My mom is really into it and I had some scraps. So here are my materials I picked out.

The brown is a chenille (bear costume material) and the stripes are a flannel cozy material that I made some pants out of a long time ago. The other 4 are just cottons that I had made some aprons out of. I got all of the pieces cut. I was going to use some pale pink Cotton thread but my mom took me to JoAnns and I got this really pretty Fuchsia to Pale Pin Variegated thread that I am really excited about.

**I am so happy that (while you have not made yourself known yet) other people get excited about new thread, and that I am not the only one in the world who does this**

I also got one of the diaper covers done...well except for the elastic...for baby A.

We had a really busy weekend full of graduation parties and 5th birthdays! J took some time out to paint a soccer ball.


I like it when the kid crafts. It makes me feel like I am rubbing off on him a little. I hope that every one had a great weekend.
~j

Super quick post. Possibly followed by a longer one later. Depends on how much I get done :)

I made some pants for J with the scraps (I just noticed the word crap is is scrap.) from T's robe. I did not have a pattern, rather I just traced a pair of his pants that fit him well. Not the best little pants in the world...but they work for the purpose of pj's.

Over the weekend my mother decided she needed a new address book. I swear she goes through address books quicker than any one I know! I had this idea for a felt covered journal for K and new baby A. I went to the dollar store and found these two, cute but obnoxious books. One is an address book (the one that says addresses :) ) and the stripy one is a journal.

Not to shabby for $2.16!

My mom's I was going to make with Orange felt as this is her favorite color, and although not shown I chose a really dark brown for K's.

The first problem I had was that one sheet of felt did not cover either books...so I would have to sew two sheets together to make one long sheet of felt. This is where I put my label. You will see it on K's as I TOTALLY forgot to put it on Mom's (this has been a pain trying to remember to put them on. So far on the 3 things I have made with them on it...I have yet to remember in the beginning of the project and end up having to "just put them somewhere." Hopefully this is a habit that I will grow out of very quickly.)

Anyway! The second problem I had was the journal had this magnetic flap on it. But I figured that the felt would cover the edges so I just cut it off.


ON TO THE SEWING!

So I thought I would take the shortcut and machine sew the book cover together. (the first one was my moms since I didn't know what I wanted to put on K's yet.) I chose Turquois thread to contrast the orange.

You can see the center seam where I connected the 2 sheets of felt.
I went around the edges again for a little contrast and then I noticed problem 3. I did not make the pattern big enough for machine sewing. DUH! So the sleeve of the cover was really tight. Fortunately FELT is really pliable and I just streatched it over the book. **shaking head still not believing that I actually did that**

Because the pattern was too small for the book it did not want to close properly. Then I noticed a solution to problem 3. As you can see from the first picture below (I think you can double click on them and they will get bigger if you can't) the address-book has a wire binding that is surrounded by a cardboard cover. Well there was obvious space in between the wire and the cover. So I again...cut the cover, and folded the edges over it' self. This gave the book more room in the felt cover I had made.


After throwing a little embroidered star and a pocket for a pen or pencil I was almost done.

Mom keeps the passwords to certain websites she frequents often in her address book. She wanted a pocket on the inside so that if she is at work, craft club golf what ever and gets a new password or website she should check out she could put it on a scrap of paper and then tuck it into the pocket. So I made her a pocket.

Sorry it is sideways...I don't know how to change that yet. (Again something I will have to learn.) SO all in all, I decided that with K's I will just have to hand sew. Then I looked down at my table. My mother had given me one of those tiny irons used for quilting but I wanted to try for my stuff. I thought it would be perfect because it is small and will not take up allot of space. To be honest I have used an old hair flattener for a long time. ANYWAY I looked down and....

**GASP**

Turns out you can not leave those little suckers on felt as it melts onto the iron. Now I have this lovely orange layer on my iron. The layer is the consistancy of enamal. I really do not know what to do to get it off. I think I am going to try and heat it up again and scrape it off with a knife or something. If any one has an idea PLEASE let me know.

SO I started on K's. This time like I said I hand sewed all the way around and acctually remembered the lable. I decided to write Letters to A... on the front of the book. I wanted to make a journal that K or her Husband, or grammas and friends can write letters to A as she grows up.

The pages of the journal are lined with fuchia (my favorite color lately.) So I chose that color for the contrasting stitching.

Sorry about my foot in the picture. I put a pen pocket and a small pocket on the inside as well. I don't know if that will get used but I thought it was cute.


Lessons learned from this craft:
1. Felt is not very long. BUY MORE.
2. Do not leave the mini iron plugged in and turned on while sitting on felt. Felt=MELT
3. If you cut a pattern to hand sew....hand sew it. Otherwise cut the pattern bigger for machine sewing.
4. buy more embroidery thread than you think you will need. You use more than you think you will use. Especially when you use 6 strands.

Have a great day!

~j

So, one of my faves 1/4 of an Inch is having a really cute discussion on her blog about names. Mine is relatively new but has a cute meaning I guess. I have 2.5 meaning for my name. I say 2.5 because one of the reasons is actually 2....

One. Sometimes I have potty mouth. Ok, allot of the times I have potty mouth. Especially when I am crafting. Crap is a word that you hear quite often coming out of my mouth. So a little play on words went from "Oh, Crap!" to "Oh, Craft!"

Two. When I say this word/phrase I have 2 ways that I say it. You can say that my blog has split personalities, because I like to think of my blog and my crafting as two distinct people..
a)I live in the united states. Minnesota to be exact. People here talk very similar to in the movie FARGO. With a thick northern accent Oh, Craft! is woman wearing a festive sweater vest saying the name like OOH Cray-ft. Serving Kool-aid and hot dish and cupcakes for dessert.

b)However, my mother is a Southern Belle so to speak. She really has a pretty thick accent still. When I was a little girl I desperatly wanted to grow up and be one of the girls at Cypress gardens to be a real southern belle.

With the giant dress, bustle and a glass of mint julep saying the name like HOH Cra-IFT. Think Scarlet O'hara or Blanche Devereaux.


"I done know nothin bout bloggin Miss Scarlette!"

Mostly though. I think it is my potty mouth.

I think it is interesting why people choose names for things, businesses, children, books, what ever and I wanted to take part.

You should head on over and join the conversation if you like.


Got some crafting done yesterday. I will be back later with some photos.

~j.