Christmas was fun!

Christmas was a blast this year! The weekender bags were a HIT!

So was the Lego bag! In fact - that may have been the biggest hit of the little man's entire haul! Yea!!

As for me - as we opened presents, I was wildly spoiled with clothes, and shoes... check out these beauties...

I feel a new blog header coming on... :)

I also got (myself) this book:

I am so excited to get into it and learn some new techniques and things! Yea!

But, as the present opening wound down, the one thing that I had asked for - a Dress Form - remained absent. I was so bummed. But, I didn't want to whine on Christmas - especially when I had received such beautiful heels, so I didn't say anything and just started plotting when I could buy myself one. Afterward, as we were getting ready to pile in the car to go look at Christmas lights, (we open family gifts on Christmas Eve - to keep them separate from the Santa mayhem) I opened my car door to find:

My Dress Form!!

It was sitting in my seat!!!! hahaha! My hubby laughed and said, "Well, I had to surprise you somehow!"

Isn't she lovely? Her name is Trisha. I can't wait to put her to good use!!! :)

On Christmas morning, after the Santa mayhem, we went to church!

(He's a little monkey, isn't he?) Doesn't the Princess look pretty? I was right, though - we left a huge pile of glitter in the pew at church. I felt bad... but at least she looked good!

It was a wonderful holiday! We took a getaway to Zion National Park on Christmas day for a few nights, and the Weekender Bags were used and were a huge success!! I am so happy I made those!

Hope everyone had a great holiday too!!

WIP Wednesday - sigh of relief edition

That's it. I'm done. I made all the bags I am going to make, all of the ornaments that I am going to make. My Christmas sewing list has all been checked off. Some crossed off for sanity's sake, but all the projects that needed to be done are done!

What a glorious feeling! And now just for fun... a recap of all the crazy holiday stitching...

Weekender Bags - all three of them!

Dopp Kits + a tutorial - to go with the weekenders

Lego bag

Skirt

Stocking

The Dress

The Dress that didn't work

Bags and ornaments - I didn't end up with pictures of all of them... but you get the point!

So what's on tap for 2012?

I have E's King size Zig Zag as my only currently in progress project. Wow. Only one. Weird.

I am still working on Skill Builders Sampler! I still need to make block 20, but that's going to have to wait until next week.

I have joined in a Quilting Bee for 2012! We are called the Beejeebers, and it is hosted by Melissa at Happy Quilting! I am totally excited!! Funny story - Melissa asked for name suggestions, and I recommended Beejeebers as a joke. I was telling her that this is my first Bee, and it scared the beejeebers out of me. So the next question was about a name, so I put down that. haha! Everyone liked it. I think that is just plain awesome! :)


Other than that - I plan on being a little more reasonable next year. My unlimited sewing budget was, once again - summarily rejected. So, no more than one quilt per month, and I want to do a lot more "other" stuff - like cloths, bags, and things. Should be a great year!!

Hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday season, and a wonderful New Year!!

The Dress

So, sorry about my freak out yesterday. I was feeling stressed! :) BUT! I am happy to say that yesterday proved to be a very productive day! For sewing. But don't look at the state of the rest of my house... yikes.

Anyway - I finished the princess's Christmas dress today!! YEA!!! And it really turned out beautiful. Probably my favorite dress that I have made to date! :) So here it is in all it's glory:

The Princess stayed home from school sick today, but I drug her outside for pictures anyway. Please overlook the lack of hair doing! :)

She picked gold and red so that she could have Griffindor colors. We are currently reading book 7 of the Harry Potter series, and at present, that world has overtaken our lives! :) At least they are Christmas colors too!

She picked out the trim on the over skirt. I wasn't sure about it, but I really like the way it looks! So pretty! The flower was purchased at Joann's. Lovely finishing touch!

Now that this is done, everything else just seems easy! I may even have time to read a book or two! :)

Crunch Time

I got Z-E-R-O sewing done over the weekend. We were babysitting our niece and nephews, and therefore N-O-T-H-I-N-G got done. Except a lot of stress eating. But that's another story... hahaha!

So now, I am feeling the crunch. I don't have a ton left, but I do have some major holiday deadlines. I have one more bag to make, one more ornament to make, Princess's dress to finish, Rudolf cupcakes to make, and a whole lot of delicious fudge to make and take to neighbors. And only 5 days to do it.

Today, I have tried to get some progress made - and I have, a little - but it seems like when you need to get things done - everything that can go wrong does! As I was working on the dress today - my thread kept breaking. This normally isn't a huge issue, but it was for gathering the skirt, and that really does need to be one long thread. Then, I ran out of bobbin thread. Grrr... And to top everything else off - every inch of my sewing room is covered in red glitter. Why? Because I allowed the princess to pick out this fabric for her over skirt:

Why do they even make glitter fabric? Oh, yeah - because it LOOKS good. But it is a MESS!!! :)

Wish me luck over the next few days! I am feeling pretty good about things, but we shall see!

WIP Wednesday - hang in there edition

Last week, my brain decided to take a vacation. Seriously. I forgot to take my son to preschool one day!!! Well, almost - I would have forgotten, but the other car-pool mom called me and asked where the heck I was (in a much nicer way), so they were only about 20 minutes late. Seriously, who does that?

I also forgot to do a WIP post. It threw me off. I didn't realize how much this weekly post helps me keep things together! So - here goes my list of WIPS!

Finishes:

One teacher gift, a fabric ornament

Tutorial found HERE at V and Co. I love how it came out, but I really hate hot glue!!

A Few drawstring bags for friends

Tutorial found HERE. This is a great tutorial! It is quick, and really cute!! Love them (want to keep them!!)

Stocking!

Read about this one HERE.

Progress:

SBS Block #19

SO cute!!! SO CUTE!! I love this block!

Princess's dress - all cut out and in the "next up" position! Yea!

E's King size - all cut out and starting to prep for piecing!

On hold - my dress. We'll see if I can squeeze that one in before Christmas. Probably not.

So there we go! Lots of fun and I feel like I'm really making progress on the list! Only a week and a half til Christmas!!! Wowza! December has really flown...

Can you make...?

One of my very favorite questions to be asked is "Can you make {whatever is on their mind}?" Usually it is something I haven't done before, but I almost always want to give it a try.

Yesterday one of my best friends asked me if I could duplicate a stocking for her baby. The rest of the family had stockings that looked like this:

Unfortunately, this style wasn't being sold anymore, and - naturally - they didn't want their baby boy to have one that didn't match. So, I set off, found the supplies and recreated it as best as I could. Here's what I came up with:

What do you all think? Close enough? The cream's are a little different, but I think it's probably close enough. I hope she is happy with it! :)

Quick Skirt, and Sad News about the Dress

First up - we took family pictures today. I had tried to do some via tripod, but they were an epic fail. So I asked my sister in law to take a few for us. As I was planning the wardrobe, I realized the sever lack of nice skirts for the princess. So, I made this one. It took less than 1 hour, start to finish!!!! I am definitely going to do a tutorial on this skirt soon!

I used suiting for the first time ever! (Hello, TNT!)

I must say - I have now fallen in Looooooove with suiting! It is so soft and the perfect weight! And the lining fabric was so silky too... I love finding a good fabric! It does fray a bit, but not any worse than organza or satins.

Check out my hem-less hem! It was so easy and I'm glad it worked as well as it did! Again, stay tuned for the tutorial!

So, in other news, I managed another epic fail on my pretty blue dress. Everything went pretty well, but once the zipper was in I found a major problem with the fit that cannot be easily fixed. I would have to redo the entire bodice (and that's the hardest part of the dress!) Grrr...

I am sad about it, but - never to be kept down - I know what needs to change, and I am planning on redoing the dress - in suiting. **Delighted Sigh** I think I will like this much better than satin prom-dress material anyway! :)



Linking up to TNT at Happy Quilting!! Cheers!