The Weekender Bag, In a Weekend

This weekend I decided to bite the bullet and make the Amy Butler Weekender Bag for the We The People Swap 4.

This pattern called for all three of my sewing nemesis': piping, bias cuts and heavy stabilizer oh, and who could forget the 30" heavy duty zipper, making it four. After countless hours I have about 20 pinprick scabs and achy hands but I ended up with a beautiful bag that I am going to stare at for a few day before I mail it off to my partner!

I used fabrics from Anna Maria Horner's Drawing Room, which is my all time favorite home decor line, and I love the bold print and contrasting colors. This pattern is exhausting and calls for a lot of patience but it is very well done and the end result is a high quality bag!

Valentine Treats -Marshmellow Lollipops

Chase and I whipped up these marshmallow lollipops for his Primary Class. They are so easy yet so cute!

Materials:

Large Marshmellows
Candy Melts
Sprinkles
Lollipop sticks
Lollipop bags
Gift Tags
Bakers twine or ribbon

Place your marshmallows on the sticks, melt candy melts as per manufacturers instructions, dip marshmallows in candymelt, add sprinkles. Place on wax lined baking sheet, place in refrigerator long enough for chocolate to harden, place in bags, tie with string add tags and you are done!

Thursday thought to Ponder

I know, it's not Thursday but better late then never!

"Give me songs to sing and emerald dreams to dream and I will give you love unfolding"

-Jim Morrison

Mermaid Ruffle Dress

Today I just finished up this custom order dress for one of my customers on Etsy. Every time I make one of these dresses I fall in love with it and dream about having a little girl so I can dress her up! It's hard to tell on this mannequin, since it is smaller then the dress size, but it is such a "poofy" and fun dress. It takes a lot of gathering but the end result is well worth it (at least I think so). And here is my little picture ham who can not let me take photos without getting some of him!

What a GOOF!

Personal Updates

Okay, I have been neglecting my family and friends who check in here for personal updates. Here is status on da boys!

JONAS

This is where you will find Jonas every week day. He is now doing Independent Study program from home in order for me to monitor his work, help him get organized and bring his grades up. Being a mother of a child with ADHD who is a smart GATE student now getting D's and F's is challenging. The school system just seems to want to ignore the problem but I just can't.

CHASE

Meet Chase's "cool shirt". It dictates what he takes to school for lunch (it can only be cool stuff that isn't messy) although it doesn't have powers to fix his morning bed head.

COOPER

Climbed (or should I say crashed) out of his crib the other day so now he is in a "big boy" bed. When he first saw it, he just stood there smiling. Strangely (but thankfully) he hasn't figured out that he can crawl in and out of it yet.

CHRISTOPHER & BABY RAY

Christopher is with us again for the 4th time since right before Christmas but hopefully it will be more long term this time so he can go home to more stability. Baby Ray is also still here and we hope he will get to go home with his mom soon which is definitely the best thing for him! Having 5 boys right now (3 of them under 2) is quite challenging to say the least. My sanity is quickly starting to chip away!!

Domestic Goddess Apron

Domestic Goddess Apron
Originally uploaded by cberrybaby

When I first saw Amy Butler's Domestic Goddess pattern, I thought it looked like the Emmeline Apron but not as cute.

So the other day I was at a quilt shop and they had a sample on display and I fell in love! I added an extra contrasting fabric and the trim to liven it up and I am so happy with the way it turned out!

I made a long version because, well, how often do you find a long apron and this feels more like a dress when you put it on, I love the construction! There is a lot of pleating and no bias cuts (which I was thankful for) I wish I had taken a close up of the pleating details, it is truly beautiful.

There were a few huh??? moments for me with this pattern, especially the last step but I survived and will have to make another one just like it since this went out to my Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice swap partner today!

I'm Lovin' It Monday

There are so many things I could put on this list right now but I will try to keep it to one project!

First word.....ZUTTER. Next words..... Bind it All 2.0. More words.........fabulous. fun. addicting.

I can't seem to get enough, my creative springboard is on overload! Just imagine all the possibilities, sizes, materials...the sky is the limit. Besides fun journals and scrapbooks they are great for school projects, calendars, picture frames, gated albums, oh my! See what I mean?

Here is what I have started with:

Next are some of my favorite materials I used for this project. I was having a hard time with the consistency of my Mod Podge lately and the bubbling and drying time. So last week Donna told me about Golden Gel Mediums which also can be used to adhere fabric and paper to your crafts. Because it is a gel it hasn't bubbled for me (yet) and it dries VERY fast. It is a much smoother finish and a little goes a long way. I will never go back!

Another love of mine are Hambly Studio Overlays which I added in as some of the pages in my book. I just can't get enough of them!