Runaway October

The theme for the Back Tack 4 Swap that is. I know my part­ner has received her good­ies, so here’s an almost full reveal of what I sent.

Gold {some­thing that sparkles}:

A sim­ple neck­lace made with hemp and fair trade glass beads. I bought enough to make one for myself too. I also included an altered jour­nal which had a lit­tle bit of shim­mer to it.

Frank­in­cense {some­thing that smells or tastes good}:

These are home­made soaps and an assort­ment of itty bitty choco­late bars. The soap was fun, easy and such a blast to make, even Declan helped. We will be mak­ing more soon.

Myrrh {a lit­tle some­thing for you}:

Another beau­ti­ful Emme­line apron, com­plete wth pock­ets (with extra good­ies inside) and dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing. This is the 5^th one I’ve made, still not one for myself yet. I need to learn a bet­ter way to pho­to­graph an apron. Not pic­tured are 4 lit­tle Otedamas that are just adorably addic­tive, both to make and play with.

That’s all for now. We’re off to the Tamale Fes­ti­val today, and maybe a lit­tle craft fair that I heard some buzz about. I’ll let you know.

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.

(As always, click for big­ger pictures.)

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I used a pat­tern from Hip Hand­bags and love the way it turned out. I’ll def­i­nitely be using the pat­tern over again, as both my mom and myself really liked the size and shape.

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Only prob­lem is that it’s more of a medium purse than a mar­ket tote.

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I went ahead and put a reg­u­lar dou­ble welt pocket in it any­way, using match­ing pip­ing from the out­side. The lin­ing is the Sage Kleo from Alexan­der Henry’s Fash­ion­ista line that I am totally in love with.

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I totally love the way it came out, but I real­ized I could really use one of those itty bitty mini irons. I just could not get the wrin­kles out of the bot­tom cor­ners. It got pretty man­gled try­ing to sew the bot­tom on. Appar­ently my machine does not like tight cor­ners when using buck­ram and heavy inter­fac­ing. Who knew?

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I hope you enjoy Eliz­a­beth. I’ll get it in the mail as soon as I have some­one to watch the kids!

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On another note, here’s the iron­ing board cover I did recently. Cute, no?

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I really need to work on tak­ing pic­tures indoors. Sum­mer sun is just too harsh to take stills outside.

“Phew!” with a dra­matic swipe across his forehead.

I’ve actu­ally been pretty busy of late. Remem­ber those 17 loads of laun­dry stuffed on the couch that I men­tioned? ALL folded, hung, sorted, orga­nized and put away!! After 3 weeks it was hard to come up with excuses for why it was still there. But I’ve also com­pleted 2 more aprons — one for Grandma Betty’s birth­day, along with match­ing place­mats and one for Nicky’s birth­day. I finally got a new iron­ing board cover made. It’s super sim­ple but took a day because of the nooblets… I mean the kidlets. (Does any­one remem­ber Sixlets? Those were awe­some!) I started a third apron for Ann today. Next up is my bag for the Mar­ket Tote Swap. I have the idea all worked out in my head, I just hope I can trans­fer it to real­ity easily.

So after all that’s done I’m going to start work­ing on some smock­ing and shirring and post­ing items to my Etsy shop. I promise. No more swaps or birth­days and what­not. I’ve found some gor­geous designer prints mixed in with the cheapy cot­tons at JoAnns and have totally scored bolts of them with 50% off coupons. I’m afraid to cut some of them up.

I’ve also been comtem­plat­ing get­ting a cot­tage license to sell the aprons that I’ve been mak­ing. The thing is it’s $100 for a year but I’m not sure if I could cover the cost with any profit I make, ya know? The license gives me the right to make and sell any­thing by Sew Lib­er­ated, for­mally Montes­sori by Hand, where as now I can only make and give such as all that I’ve made so far. It takes me about a week of fid­dling to make an apron because of… interup­tions. The hard­est part is choos­ing the fab­rics — I always worry that some­one will get their apron and go “WTH was she think­ing? This isn’t me at all!” I’m debat­ing on just going it alone, or using some­one else’s pat­terns. Any thoughts?

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Here’s Grandma’s Apron. The reverse is a very pretty white Poppy print.

• Hip­pos! Yay! My Grandma sent me this adorable fam­ily of hip­pos as a Mother’s Day present. Aren’t they cute? Now I just need to find a home for the rest of my hippos.

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• My abil­ity to suc­cess­fully com­plete a dou­ble welt pocket, as demon­strated here:

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• I received my Spoon­flower Beta invi­ta­tion! I am so excited to try and get some­thing of my own printed. I am think­ing I’d like to do some logos and what not to stitch onto my com­pleted projects. Heaven for­bid some­one come across one of my aprons when I’m dead and gone and not know who made it. That would be a shame. Plus, I’m really get­ting to the point where I’d like to start get­ting some stuff done for my Etsy shop. I really like to have things tagged and labeled. It seems to up the pro­fes­sion­al­ity, ya know?  My biggest con­cern with pre­mak­ing things to put in a shop is what if it doesn’t sell and it just sits there? Espe­cially if it’s girl clothes — I have no use for those unfortunately.
• I also got my Rav­elry invite, but it’ll be awhile before I actu­ally get any­thing going in there.
• I’m excited to get started on the Mar­ket Tote Swap. No last min­utes for me this time. I’m get­ting it done and out of here. I need to make some stuff for myself for a change.
• I thought I had more than that but I guess not. I’ve got a big post in the works on sewing FAQS and another on ‘Pretty vs Func­tional’. Maybe you guys can weigh in with me and con­vince Matt that I need to have free dec­o­rat­ing reign on the ENTIRE house.

Stay tuned my won­der­ful read­ers. Same blog time, Same blog channel.