Runaway October

I have a really bad habit of doing noth­ing dur­ing the sum­mer. You might have noticed that the heat is a cen­tral part of my last cou­ple posts.

It’s really a cen­tral part of our lives from May­ish to Augustish. Even in the house it’s just too easy to veg out and keep cool.

BUT! I have done some stuff lately. I swear. I have proof!

I made this clock for my brother a while back, for his birthday.

It’s pretty hard to pho­to­graph this, but oh well. I got lucky enough that a local BMX shop gave me the chain­ring, after I offered to buy one. Funny enough they had a sim­i­lar clock dis­played in their front window.

The tuto­r­ial is here. Mine is not nearly as cool, but hey I was work­ing with what I had.

I also made a cover for my sewing machine. I fig­ured that plas­tic one it came with wasn’t good enough for the new craft room. (More on that soon.) Also, the melted hole in it from the iron didn’t help any.

I just used the dimen­sions from the old cover, plus seam allowances, and threw together a rec­tan­gle with ties on it. I backed it with flan­nel, because it seemed like the thing to do. Isn’t that fab­ric gor­geous? I got it on a whim at a local mill end store. Kick­ing myself for not buy­ing more.

Sewing Machine Cover tutorials:

• Sparkle Power! — This is pretty much exactly what I did.
• Sew Inspired
• Chez Lars­son

Last, but not least, a new iron­ing board cover. I love mak­ing these things. It makes me actu­ally want to iron. Yuck.

This is also more fab­ric I picked up on a whim. This time from IKEA. Their uphol­stery fab­ric is the per­fect length from reg­u­lar iron­ing boards.

I always leave the old cov­ers on, for padding. Some­times I’ll throw a layer of fleece in between too if I have big enough scraps.

Here are a cou­ple iron­ing board cover tutorials:

• Stop Star­ing and Start Sewing
• Clear­ly­tan­gled
• Com­muning with Fabric

That’s it for now. I hope to have more soon. I ordered some good­ies.

What are you work­ing on lately, or do you have any inter­est­ing tuto­ri­als to share?

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These lit­tle guys were will­ing to brave the Ari­zona rain to get at the pinecone bird feed­ers the boys and I made the other day. The first batch sat for a week or two before the birds found them, but now it’s like Tem­ple­ton at the Fair.

And this lit­tle boy was will­ing to brave the rain too!

Good thing Fable was keep­ing this spot warm for him.

Fin­ished this scarf today. Can’t decide if I like it nor not? It’s at least 8 foot long, and I’m not even going to men­tion what my brother said about it. Well, maybe. He com­pared it to parts of the female anatomy. What a butthead.

Made my first batch of Sour­dough Bread ever today. It’s so yummy. One of the least finnicky breads I’ve worked with, surprisingly.

I went to check my email and one of the loaves was hoovered down in sec­onds flat. Mostly by afore­men­tioned brother. Butthead.

There is NO Typo. :/

And last, but not least, I finally got around to pack­ag­ing up a Valentine’s Day Sur­prise for a cer­tain spe­cial some­one. Do you know who you are?

And this con­cludes our semi-rainy Wednes­day  stuck at home. Tell me about yours!

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Please don’t for­get to vote for me daily, if you would be so kind. Thank you!

I’ve been feel­ing quilty lately. Baby show­ers seem to be the best inspi­raion for me. I gives me a dead­line and an excuse to give a gift that will last instead of some­thing that will be used for a month or two and then donated.

I have few baby gifts that we still use now that my youngest is a year. One of them is a small sam­pler quilt that my mom picked up at at a truck stop some­where out­side of Payson, Az.

Here’s the ver­sion I cre­ated. I think it turned out really well. I had a cou­ple dif­fer­ent quils in mind when I des­gined this. Purl­Bee lists a great tuto­r­ial. Crazy Mom Quilts had a beau­ti­ful ver­sion. Don’t for­get this sassy one too.

I used 6or 7 dif­fer­ent greens that I picked up at JoAnns. The brown is a super soft linen blend. The back­ing is Alex­ader Henry’s Giraffe Cross­ing.

When I asked the mama-to-be what her nurs­ery theme was she said giraffes and out­doorsy col­ors. I hope it fits in okay. If not I know quite a few boys here that would be happy to keep it!

(That’s my 6’2″ brother for size reference!)