Settling In

A PCS (military move) is such a long process. Especially when you are moving from one side of the world to the other and buy a house. We left England April 22nd and moved into our house June 15th, it was another week before we got our household goods. We are getting settled in, most of our main floor has gone from drab like this

to warm and cozy like this.  This photo is an in progress as we still has a storage shipment that had not been delivered so be looking out for more updated photos.
It's nice to have color on our walls again after 4 years of renting.

My studio is set back up as much as it can be.  It's in our unfinished basement.  We hope to be able to finish it over the next couple of years.  Until then I'm working with what I have. 

I decided a few months ago to finally go with my heart and do clothing.  These next few dresses are the start of that.

I also have theses feather hair clips with flowers and button bling.  The dresses and hair clips are going with me to a craft fair tomorrow, the first one I have done stateside.  Hoping for some good weather and maybe a little lower temps as the heat we have had here in the Midwest has been very hard for us to acclimate too.

Excuse the Lack of Blogging

Family life has been busy the last few months and gotten in the way of creativity. As most military families do we moved. We said "Cheers!" to England for the second time and came just about as close to home we can get moving back to Illinois. Moving is a long process for us, first there is the wait to find out where we are going, then the wait to actually start going there. Now we are at our new base but we have another wait to be able to move into our new home. We decided to buy a house, if we were going to live on base or rent the wait would not be so long. On the upside we don't mind the wait since all our earthly possessions aside from 8 suitcases are still somewhere between Europe and us. Sleeping on the floor is not on our list of favorite things to do.

I got the camera out the other day and did some playing while the kids played outside.  Between rain/storms and not being used to heat and humidity we have been pretty cooped up the last few weeks.

Right before we left England I did take some time to be creative.  I did a little bit of scrap busting making some cuffs and headbands.

These will be going up for sale on the Military Wives Creations congo on Hyena Cart on May 21st.

There are small items listed in the ETSY shop and I'm looking into putting a storefront on the Facebook page.  I'm looking forward to getting re-established and getting to use some services like paying for postage online and having the mail man pick up my packages.  Shipping times will be much faster for you guys as well.

Simple Yoga Waist Skirt Tutorial

Sometimes when I'm randomly surfing the web I see stuff I would really like to make.  Sometimes I read the tutorial fully, file it away on Pinterest or bookmark it.  Sometimes I glance quickly say oh that looks pretty simple and go on to the next page.  This is one of the later so I have no idea where the original tutorial that inspired me is at.

What you will need:

• Knit fabric with a decent amount of stretch (how much will depend on what size and style of skirt you are making)

• a yard stick

• a tape measure
• cutting tools
• a cutting mat if you plan to use a rotary cutter
• tailors chalk or a marker
• serger or sewing machine with a ball point needle and stretch or zig zag stitch.

Gather your materials.  You will need to take two measurements.  The first is your waist the second is how long you want your skirt.  Cut two lengths of fabric the desired length of your skirt plus any hem allowance you wish to leave.  Lay these two pieces of fabric folded in half length wise on your cutting surface. 

Now for some math.  You will need to take your waist measurement and divide it by 4, so if you have a 32 inch waist your number will be 8 inches.  On your fabric mark 8 inches from the folded edge of the fabric.

Then using your yard stick mark a line down the length of the fabric.  You can make this straight or flare it out as I did here.

Using a rotary cutter or scissors cut down the line you just drew.

Now cut out your waist band.  I used a contrasting fabric for this skirt.  I cut two pieces that were half of my waist measurement by 6 inches.

Sew the side seams on your skirt right sides together.

Sew the side of your waist band together the same way.  Then fold the waist band in half line up the side seams with the main skirt body and sew right sides together.

The last step is to put in your hem.  There are a number of techniques you can use from a simple shirt tail hem to cover stitched hems.  I choose to finish mine with a lettuce edge that is simply a tightly serged edge with the knit fabric pulled tight as I ran it through my serger to give it a ruffled look.

This skirt took about 30 minutes to complete start to finish.  It can easily be made from toddler through adult.

Keeping it Real

I've been MIA for a while, fall keeps me pretty busy.

First there was preparing for the big Bazaars the base here has every year. I needed to fill a 10x12 and 10x10 booth at each one. September was filled with sewing for the first Bazaar that ran the first weekend of October. That one went well and I sold out of a couple of bigger items so October and the fist part of November were spent sewing for the next bazaar in the middle of November. Add to that my husband had to go out of town for 6 weeks and I was a busy mamma.

Here are some pictures of my booth from the November bazaar.

And now the keeping it real part.  This is what happens to my sewing room when I spend the better part of 4 months being productive with my sewing machine.  This is actually after I had spent some time cleaning.

Great Bag

 I have made a couple of these bags from this tutorial on Sew4home.com.  I Love this bag, nice and roomy, lots of pockets for keeping items in order, and the best part, a key hook to keep your keys in easy reach.  I know I'm not the only one who has dumped their bag out multiple times looking for the keys on the bottom of the bag.

Pub Bench

When we moved into this house we bought a great OLD table and 8 chairs to go with it. We are still a small family but we love to have people over so a big kitchen/dinning table and lots of chairs are a must.

The chairs were old, some of them have started falling apart, one broke when I sat down on. Gorilla Glue has been one of our best friends but when you have glued the same joint 10 times in a month you start to think about getting something a bit more sturdy. We have only lost two of the chairs but we were still finding ourselves short on chairs. My solution was to find a church pew or pub bench to put along one side of our table.

I searched and searched, do you know how much antique church pews sell for??? Lets just say a little more than I had to spend. Then one day I was stalking browsing a site for local second hand sales and there it was a pub bench for about the price I was willing to pay. Justin was out of town at the time and so I had to send him e-mails asking him what he though.

Side note, I like to rearrange things in my house, my husband likes things to stay where they are/where. A purchase of a major piece of furniture means I need to explain to him what I want, why I want it, and how I'm going to fit it in our house. The last because well we are running out of room in this house and have no storage space. When he is gone, even for a day of work I usually send him a photo of what I have done so he isn't surprised when he gets home.

Back to the bench. This piece is great, at 7 feet long it will seat a lot of people for gatherings. Someday it will go in a pub themed man cave but for now it works in our kitchen.

This is the before, the fabirc is very pub like, not very child friendly this needs to change a little.

Fun cooking themed cotton and a vinyl table cloth will help that.

Looking forward to lots of gatherings around our table with plenty of seating.

We still plan to fix up the wood on it.  It will probably wait until we have a home with a garage though, or if we just happen to find a weekend with no rain and no plans to be out.

Homemade Nutirgrain Type Ceral Bars

A few months ago while searching for a good granola recipe I stumbled upon a recipe for homemade cereal bars.  I tucked the recipe away and have been meaning to make it, this morning was the day, I had everything I needed and the kids were occupied with playing so I snuck into the kitchen and got to work.

Here is how I made these, I changed up the original just a bit.

You will need

1 cup of butter (soft)
1 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup white flour
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tsp almond extract
20 oz of fruit preserves

In a mixer, mix the butter and sugar until it is creamed.  Add all the rest of the ingredients and mix until a nice even crumbly consistency.  Put half of the mixture into a greased 9x13 pan and press it down firm.  Next put the preserves over the bottom layer ( I used blue berry jam and apple butter two make two different flavors of bars).  Then put the rest of the the crumbs and spread them over the top of the preserves.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

These turned out so good and are so very easy to make, I think this may become my go to recipe for breakfast and brunch pot lucks.