Bins for sewing projects

Now that my new sewing machines are in I've been inspired to organize my sewing supplies and make room for the extra machine. When we moved in to this house I just plopped my sewing stuff into a corner in approximately the same configuration I'd had it all in our last house but that wasn't really working here. One of the things I need is child-proof storage for projects I'm working on currently. I sew in our family room but store my fabric downstairs, so there has been some needless schlepping and pile-making without a good system in place for dealing with this. I'm hoping these buckets do the trick. I covered the labels on some old kitty litter totes with scrapbook paper and fabric swatches I've printed off the internet. I laminated and attached them with Xyron adhesive, but glue and clear contact paper would work too. I love these buckets and have used them for many purposes (and blogged about it once before) and I think this should help keep me operating smoothly and with reasonable tidiness.

I also made similar labels for some empty plastic pretzel jars. The jars are just the right size for holding trim, and they look kind of pretty with their new labels.

More t-shirt embellishment

You'll only like this one if you, like me, are a fan of Mo Willems.  (It's for personal use, so I'm not trying to do anything evil here with copyright.) I cut out, ironed-on and stitched down a pigeon figure inspired by the book, then printed the word "drive" three times on printable fabric and ironed those on around him.  Dorothy likes this one too.

I had a hard time photographing this shirt.  It is another long sleeve tee like the ones in the last post.  I used different colored thread and the decorative stitches on my sewing machine to create a border around the neckline and waist.  The effect turned out pretty well and I think it makes this shirt look sort of mail order catalog-y, in a good way.  This was a really rewarding project because it was so quick and simple and made such a difference in the shirt.  I wouldn't try this with a dull needle--decorative stitches on knit need a sharp, fresh needle designed for knits.

I recently ordered this book on crochet motifs, mostly because I was a little short of the free shipping threshold when I was ordering something more urgent (how much money does Amazon.com make that way?  so brilliant!) and I really like it.  The little shapes can be the building blocks for any larger project one can imagine, but they are also fun little quick projects on their own.  I was feeling frustrated with our cheap, stupid (yes, I have a 4-year-old and I know "stupid" is a bad word) tea kettle because the stupid product designers made the handle out of some material that heats up so much when water is boiled in the kettle that unsuspecting, innocent tea drinkers get their hands burned every time they fail to remember that this stupid kettle isn't like every other kettle they've ever owned, and that they can't touch the stupid handle to pour the water out when the stupid thing whistles.  Tired of reaching for a potholder just to pour water (or failing to), I decided to crochet something decorative and insulating to stay on the stupid thing to avoid this problem in the future. I made one of the hexagons in the book and tied it right onto the handle at the points. The red and white wool matches my kitchen, so now the stupid kettle looks prettier too.  If anyone thinks that a person who repeatedly burns their hands making tea is a little bit stupid herself...well, no one asked you.

The kids and I are off on an adventure tomorrow.  The car is packed, the MP3 player loaded, and a basket is well-stocked with snacks.  We're headed to Chicago to visit my college roommate.  I used to travel quite often with just Dorothy before Worth was born but our preschool schedule and being outnumbered by my kids has kept me home more this past year.  I'm hoping that all goes well so we can make travel a regular part of our homeschooling experience next year. On this trip we're hoping to take in a St. Patrick's Day festival at the Irish Heritage Center and the children's museum.  I have used my mother's trick of wrapping small gifts in old newspaper to hand out to the kids at regular intervals to keep them happy in the car.  Some art supplies, a tiny backhoe that makes noise, books...I think they will be well received.

Sweet potato mess

Solid food has arrived in Worth's life! I was planning to wait until his six month birthday, next week, but after two days of listening to him emit annoyed pterodactyl noises and pound his chubby fists against the metal table as a soundtrack to every bite we ate I decided to introduce a few days early. He can sit unassisted, has more than doubled his birth weight, and whoa--he was eager. I've been letting him gnaw on a spoon while sitting in his high chair for a few weeks, and he's pretty much got the spoon-to-mouth thing down. (We do baby self-feeding.) So now the experiments truly begin! He actually seemed to hate last night's experience with mushy sweet potato--I don't know if he didn't like the feeling of it on his hands or what. But we gave him another chance today at lunch and it was much better. He may have just been tired last night. So the bibs I made months ago came out, and we're on to a whole new phase of baby life.Speaking of messes, the advent of baby meals in my house again has made me remember just how glad I am that we don't use paper towels. We made a switch away from them about three years ago, and it makes me wonder how they ever caught on in the first place--they are horrifyingly expensive and they simply don't wipe up messes as well. I keep a little stack of clean rags in the same spot we used to keep paper towels and we just reach for a clean one any time we need one. I keep a little re-purposed trash can next to our real trash can to hold the dirty laundry. If I get a rag totally wet (like rinsing off chunks of sweet potato and then wiping up the floor) I hang it over the edge of the laundry can to dry so we don't get mildew in between washings. Since we're already washing cloth diapers every couple days I just throw our rags in with them, but when we weren't washing dipes I put rags in with towels or just ran a separate load as needed--it never seems burdensome. We have several dozen rags, which are actually inexpensive white washcloths, so we can grab a fresh one as often as wish, and I have only white so I can use bleach on them occasionally. It seemed a little wasteful in the beginning to buy so many washcloths, since I could have found things to cut up into rags, but for me to actually sit them out in the open in the kitchen (key to actually using them), they needed to look nice too. Seems like a fair trade-off given how many paper towels we would have used in the last three years!

A jar cozy

This isn't a new project, but just one I was using and enjoying. Last summer I crocheted cozies for the repurposed glass juice jars we use for water. I put little handles on them and they are very cute and portable, and they both insulate the jar and keep it from getting broken if I want to grab one on the go. It felt like a nice way to use up (gifted) scratchy acrylic yarn I wouldn't want to wear or put on my babies. I just crocheted a little mat the size of the bottom of the bottles, then did double crochets in a round all the way up the side. I used several stands of yarn together so it would be extra bulky.

In other news, we're really enjoying our hiatus from house-selling. Our goal is to have it back on the market in two weeks, but in the meantime it's nice to not have the constant threat of a showing hanging over our heads. In a funny turn of events, however, the house is actually pretty clean right now because I just bought a steam mop and Dorothy and I are both so charmed by it that we keep using it. I love the idea of being able to keep the floor clean and chemical-free as our little wee one becomes more mobile and has the floor as his new realm. We'll just hope the charm of using the mop doesn't wear off in a couple months. (Ha!)

An experiment in reusable snack bags

I was at a local store this past week that sells "green" products and fell in love with these cute snack bags. The concept is so great, but the price is a bit high. I'd run across a similar product before (on Etsy, maybe?) and had read about people making them out of PUL and oilcloth, but it seems those fabrics are not necessarily food-safe, so I hadn't tried making them myself. But after I saw the product in my hand and got to thinking about how easy they would be to make, I did some brainstorming about possible food-safe lining materials and I may have come up with one. I used heavy-duty Ziploc freezer bags. I'm sure they have BPA, but I'm not going to put hot liquid in them, plus we already use (and wash and re-use) Ziploc bags, so I'm at least not changing our household status quo. The benefit of these over disposable snack bags is that the little bags are not usually made out of the same sturdy material as the freezer bags, and thus aren't reusable in the same way. Plus the little ones always seem to split in the corners, and they definitely aren't cute. I'm excited to give these a try. We'll probably be using them for mostly pretzels and crackers, nothing wetter than carrot sticks, so they shouldn't need much more than a wipe-out after we use them, but they seem sturdy enough that we could immerse and wash them in the sink with our dishes if necessary. If they work I'll make some more in some kid-approved prints.

Upcycled jeans and a shirt

Change of seasons means some re-purposing of clothing. These jeans fit everywhere but length, where they were just too long. Long jeans used to be nice when I'd wear tall shoes or boots, but these days tall shoes or boots just seem like a good way to drop a little person from higher up, so I'm mostly sticking with flats. (Someone needs to do an "evolution" chart showing how women go from cute shoes to mom shoes over the course of the decade from, say, 22 to 32 or so.) So I cut off the bottoms of the jeans and turned them into cropped pants, then added some fun fabric and ribbon to embellish them. With the legs of my jeans looking so cute, who will notice my sensible shoes? (Unless I forget again and wear the pink Crocs.)

And this shirt (minus the fleur de lis) was calling my name at Target for $5, so I bought it and took it home and made it my own. Suitable for showing civic pride in Louisville, New Orleans, or any of those other cities that claim this classic logo as their own.

Pesto from scratch, part 1

A few weeks ago I started some basil seeds in a little windowsill terrarium I have. I'm not really gardening this year--not even tomatoes--because I still hold out hope we'll move this summer, so I've decided just to do a few short-term and portable container projects instead. The little basil plants were outgrowing the terrarium and their pots, so Dorothy and I fixed them up with a new home on the front porch. We repurposed some half-gallon yogurt containers as pots by poking some drainage holes in the bottom. We brushed all-purpose glue on sections, then stuck on colorful squares of tissue. The pots are cute and Dorothy enjoyed the project. Today we transplanted the little plants to our pots and gave them a new home on the front porch. I used soil pellets (expensive but unmessy) that Dorothy loved watching expand in my mop bucket, and Dorothy declared that basil is stinky. Now I hope the little plants enjoy life on the front porch for a few weeks, and then I'll enlist my small one's help again to make some pesto.

T-shirt rehab

I tried on a shirt at Target last week (bad neckline, so I didn't buy it) that had these cool flowers on it that seemed to be no more than torn strips of fabric sewn on in a spiral and finished with hand-drawn leaves. I decided to give it a try at home on a plain shirt that needed some embellishment. The flowers turned out nicely, although the cool batik pattern of the strips is pretty much obliterated. The hand-drawn (fabric marker) leaves look a little goofy because I'm a terrible drawer, but really the ones on the shirt at Target didn't look that great either, so we'll say it's part of the look. This shirt was a bit big on me to start out with, which can't be helped, but at least I like it better now than I did. I think I'll try to put more flowers on something soon, maybe something for Dorothy.

Thrift store rehabs

The warmer weather and impending Major Life Change have given me a little spring fever, so Dorothy and I have been hitting the thrift store circuit these last few days. I've gotten a few cute new shirts that I hope to be able to wear post-partum--nice roomy, soft ones that should be easy to nurse in and were cheap enough that I (in theory) won't care about all the spit-up. These two I made into projects today, and altered them a bit to personalize them. The pattern on the front of the blue is Dover clip art from their free samples mail list, which I've printed on printable fabric, fused, and sewn on. The brown I just free-formed some simple flowers out of pretty fabric scraps and added homemade bias tape to the arms. I'm not sure if I like the tape on the arms or not--it makes them a little stiff, like wings or something. I think I'll launder it and then see how they look, and I may snip off the sleeve embellishment.

My due date is one week from today...

Dishwand "refills"

AKA: Not signing over the family budget to 3M.

Rob and I, sadly, have never owned a dishwasher in our 7 years of marriage. We both had dishwashers before we were married, but for some reason have only owned homes together that will not accommodate this particular boon of American middle-class existence. Although there are many other things that fall into this category we do not hanker after (appliance garages, are you serious?), we do aspire to one day own a home with a dishwasher. We can dream, right? In the meantime, we have had plenty of meals at home to perfect our low-tech family dish washing system. We prefer these soap-filled dish wands that ooze out just the right amount of soap while we're washing. For several years, we replaced the sponge tips at regular intervals. They are actually pretty expensive--more than a dollar per sponge--and can't be reused because the sponge separates from the plastic if you try to launder it. (Or overuse it.) But about a year ago I figured out a way to stop paying The Man for sponges every week--I just make our own. I crochet these little sponge covers out of washable acrylic yarn, and we tuck little washable, reusable sponges inside (the kind you can buy in multi packs for $1, cut in half, and still wash and re-use!). The whole thing fits nicely over the plastic framework from the original sponge refill (so if you're going to try this at home, don't throw that part away--just peel off the old sponge and leave the plastic framework in place).

We've been using these now for about a year, and today I decided some of our little crocheted sponge covers needed to be purged and replaced, which seems reasonable for the use they've gotten. They've been used and washed many times. The new ones only take a few minutes to make, too, and only a tiny amount of scrap acrylic yarn. If you crochet, this is how to make them: Using an H hook and worsted weight yarn, chain 5. Turn and single crochet a row of 4 stitches, repeat. (For two rows of 4.) Next row make an increase on each end, for a row of 6 single crochet stitches. Make 5 more rows of 6 stitches (for a total of 6). Single crochet evenly around the whole periphery, then repeat for 3 more rows. The sponge should look a little like a bootie. Slip stitch or use a yarn-threaded needle to sew together the top (narrow) half of the sponge, then slip a little cut-up sponge inside and tug the whole thing over the end of the dish wand.

Plaid like Dad

Rob recently decided to finally retire an old pair of frayed, holey, well-loved pajama pants and I gave them a second life as an outfit for the new baby. The soft, worn fabric made a great pair of baby pants for next fall, and I used double-sided fusible interfacing to attach a coordinating pig to a onesie, then zig-zagged around it. I can't wait until this baby is actually here to dress in these new little things!