I must admit I haven't done much sewing this week. Things just keep getting in the way. I embroidered a name on a towel for a girl to take to kindergarten next week. I did can salsa today and make tomato sauce to freeze. Tomorrow and over the weekend I have to work on sewing I have a long list!

Sew Long for Now!

I finished hemming the third pair of pants for a man. I didn't get a lot of other sewing done this weekend. I was feeling bad Saturday so I took it easy. Sunday we had our church's annual picnic in the afternoon. We went after the General came home from work. We did do art for our school this weekend. I had received an idea from a friend and the children were keen on doing it as their art for this week.


We bought several of these sewn memo books.













Then we traced 3 times around the cover onto cardstock. We cut out the cardstock. We stamped one of the cardstock with our favorite stamps. We used some of that tape with the red backing, it's very sticky two sided tape, to attach the stamped piece of cardstock to the front of the memo book. We attached both pieces of the cardstock to the back giving it support. We are now going to give these as presents to people.

I was thinking about a way to incorporate fabric into this project. It was a simple project, yet very enjoyable and it makes a nice gift if you personalize the colors or stamped image to the recipient.

Sew Long for Now!

We have added almost all of school back into the days. It seems to be going well. I chose a lot of curriculum that is self explanitory.

This afternoon I hemmed another pair of pants. I also cut out a pattern for a shirt for myself, and cut out the material for a skirt for Captain Kitty.

This is some older material that was in my stash. Captain Kitty has decided she likes blue. I cut this out to make a simple skirt with elastic. I am going to look for a plain t-shirt to match it and then frill it up. I was thinking of using some of the material to make ruffles on the sleeves and hem or maybe to put an applique on it.

Sew Long for Now!

This is a card I made two days ago. I tried fusing material to the card stock. Next I stamped my image on another piece of card stock and taped it to the card covered with material. Not as cute as Linda's, but, I am working on it. Linda over at craft apple has a tutorial showing how she makes her great fabric cards.

Yesterday I didn't do much sewing. I embroidered a name on a towel. I finally embroidered my first lesson from the Quarterly Software Society. It needs some tweaking.

Today I hemmed a pair of pants. I guess for two weeks post-op after a major surgery I am doing pretty good. I would like to do more, but time will solve that.

Sew Long for Now!

This is what I have recently done to the vinyl bags.
This is as close to what I want them to look like that I could get. If you look at the red one you will see the stitches looking not so good. No matter what I tried I could not get it to feed well to get a good stitch. These are better than the last several tries though!

I made two cards to send to people tonight. I am totally exhausted. I haven't been sleeping well, I am not taking pain medicine any more. I would love a good nights sleep. A girl can dream!

Sew Long for Now!

I said yesterday that I would post a picture of what Lisa made and brought me in the hospital. This is a beaded book marker, with green beads of course! Since we all know green is my favorite color.

I have actually been sewing a little over the past several days. I hemmed the sleeves of a jacket on one day. The next day I hemmed the bottom, the jacket was lined so that took a bit of manipulation. I have been working on the clear bags the lady wanted. I am so not happy with them. I have tried everything. I tried taking a store bought cosmetic bag and replacing the zipper (she wants a certain color that you can't buy them in). That was not possible. The bags you buy at the store are made on some type of special machine and do not have a seam in the bottom. I couldn't get the zipper in. I tried cutting the bottom off the bag and redoing both the top and bottom and I couldn't get it back together to look right. I tried buying some clear vinyl and making them from scratch. To me they just look bad. I am wits end. If any one has any idea how to make clear plastic cosmetic bags in 2 1/2 inch by 4 inch dimensions with a zipper please please help me!

Sew Long for Now!

Over the years since we acquired our first computer I have been a member of several e-mail loops and now I love blogging and the blogging community. I have been blessed with meeting and getting to know women I otherwise would never have known. I often feel unworthy of the love they have shown me. Yesterday was one of those days I felt unworthy. I received a package from a dear dear blogging lady who I have come to think of as a close friend. I have never met her, but she went out of her way to send me a package. Not just any package, but one she filled with things she chose with me in mind. How wonderful is that. It really lifted my spirit. Thank you Linda. If you want to get to know her and see for your self how wonderful she is you can visit her blog here.

While I was in the hospital I got a visit from another lady and her step-daughter. A lady who I had never met in real life, whom I only knew from this blogging community. How special is that to find someone who lives in your own city and find your have so much in common through blogging. Then for that person to take time out of their life and come and see you just when you needed a lift of spirit. She also made me something keeping in mind what she knew of me from my blog and brought it to me. I will post a picture of it tomorrow. Thank you so much Lisa and Emily for coming to see me. If you want to get to know Lisa and see what a great person she is you can visit her here.

There is another groups of ladies whom I have been blessed to get to know over the years. We have been on the same e-mail loop for five or six years. We came together with an interest in similar teaching styles for our children and have blossomed into a community of sisters. We have welcomed new children into each others families. We have watched over each other in times of trouble and rejoiced with each other in times of happiness. Words will never express what I feel towards this group of ladies I have never met in real life, but with whom I have shared so much of my life. Thank you Ann, Linda B, Heather, Pattie, Jamie, Linda, Denise, and Laura.

Sew Long for Now!

Well, let's just say I know now why I have been working on the other afghan 3 years! I am still sewing the blocks together with yarn. It's just Granny Squares and not to many of those, but this thing is very time consuming. It is in shades of pink, white, and brown. I feel a craving for ice cream working on it (LOL).

Speaking of ice cream Monday was Captain Chaos' birthday.

Here is my baby. He is now 9. I thank God everyday for these little people He has lent to us to help raise. CC is such a sweet boy. He is so kind hearted. He wanted an aquarium and sharks for his birthday. So we got him a 20 gallon tank with some sort of shark type fish, a dragon fish, and a dinosaur fish. All these "boy" type fish...whoda known. We always let our children pick a restaraunt to go out to for their birthday meal. We don't eat out often. He of course wanted to go out to a seafood restaraunt and have shark, squid, and octopus for dinner. Most of the restaraunts in our area that specialize in seafood are closed on Mondays. The General got the great idea of going to Kabuki, a Japanese seafood and steakhouse where they make your meal in front of you. Since his sister is away at camp and his brother had soccer it was just the three of us. He loved it. He got to be the center of attention, being the last child he doesn't always get that especially with two siblings of very forcible character. He also loved watching the chef make the meal. The chef was so nice to our little birthday boy! I am being very good about following my restricted eating and movement since the surgery. I am doing pretty good. I ask the General today what he thought of me doing a little sewing tomorrow. He told me he thought I could do it, if I promised to only do it in short spurts and lay down in between. Of course I agreed. Yea, so if I ever get to sleep (slight problem still with insomnia) when I wake up I am going to sew.

Sew Long for Now!

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got my flour sack dishtowels out and drew designs on four or five of them that I want to embroidery. I cleaned out my basket of yarns. I got out an afghan that was closest to completion and finished it.

This is a vertical striped afghan that I made from scraps. Some I had leftover from projects and some my Momma had given me. A few years ago my Momma brought me all her crochet supplies. Her arthritis has been getting to her and she found she just couldn't crochet any more. I started putting together another crocheted afghan made from her scraps this morning. I am not getting as much done today because I feel a bit more pain and very very tired today. Since my other afghan is blocks that just need to be sewn together hopefully I can get that done today.

Sew Long for Now!

Just a little note to let my friends know I am home. The surgery went well. I am on a lot of restrictions because of my history and what the surgeon had to do this time. I can't sit up for long periods of time so no sewing machine sewing for now. I did tell the General this will drive me crazy so he suggested I knit or crochet something. I have several WIPs going that I might can work on. I also have some dishtowels I have had stored for over a year with the idea to hand embroidery them. Now seems a good time.

I can't thank y'all enough for praying for me. I could feel the prayer surrounding me on Tuesday and it really helped me get through this.

Sew Long for Now!

I will be taking a break from blogging due to surgery tomorrow.

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Phil 4:6-7

Sew Long for Now!

Since blogger will not let me type but so much in one post let's do two today.



My finished wallet.








The inside view.









There are couple of things I need to do better the next time I make this pattern. One is I need to hand sew the binding to the inside, it would look better. The other is find a way to do the binding on the end of the inside pocket to make it look neater. Besides that this was a very easy pattern to do. It only took me a couple of hours to make. I really like it. The pattern can be found at www.sewinggarden.com.


Sew Long for Now!!

Yesterday I actually did shop till I dropped. I took the children in the morning and we went to two stores. Did you know an 8 year old boy can take almost 1 hour to try on tennis shoes and make up his mind? It took him longer to pick one pair of shoes then it took Captain Kitty and I to pick all the clothes we tried on and bought. After the General got off work he and I went shopping alone at four stores. Did you know I hate to shop?

At 1:30 a.m. Captain Cool called for me to come pick him up. He was finally home. His week in Santo Domingo went great. He and I stayed up until after 3 a.m. talking. Sometimes he and I have our moments, but I missed him and it was nice to have him home.

Today I refused to leave the house. I finished up some sewing. I finished the four pieces I have been working on. I embroidered a jacket. I thought this was an interesting tip that may help some one. A woman called the other day, she had gotten my name and number from my favorite sewing shop. She had scorched a very nice suit jacket with an iron. They suggested she ask me to embroidery over the place. The jacket already had tone on tone embroidery aroudn the cuffs. I took a similar design and changed it to match the shape of the embroidery already on the jacket, took thread that matched the color of the jacket and did an embroidery on the back to mimick the sleeves and cover the spot.

Scorched spot on jacket back.










Fixed with embroidery.

Sew Long for Now!

I couldn't sleep last night. Nerves. I got up and cut out some things. One of the things I finally got around to cutting out was my new billfold/wallet.

I am using this pattern from the company Favorite Things. I love this green material with small roses. I have enough left that I may use it in making a new purse for autumn. I have never made this pattern before so it will be a learning experience for me.







I went to the surgeon today. My surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday. I have so much to do ahead of time. I did the finishing work on the green dress and black skirt for the lady who came for her fitting last night. They are ready to go. I have to finish up the linen shirt and skirt. I want to get them done by Friday. I need to make another pair of pj pants for Captain Kitty. I need to finish hemming a jacket and making those clear bags for a lady. I have a jacket to embroidery for some one. Some one brought me three pair of pants to hem, but they are cordourey so I think I can wait on those. I hope to finish my wallet. I need to go shopping this weekend for shoes and clothes for the children. I need a new nightgown or two.

The good thing is that the busier I stay the less time I have to dwell on the surgery. I guess if you have never had surgery it isn't so bad because you don't know what to expect. Since I am about to have my tenth surgery and my 5th in the last four years I know what I am facing and I don't look forward to it. I would much rather be happily oblivious.

Sew Long for Now!

I have been working on four pieces for a lady. Yesterday I put together the last. It is a green sundress.

I forgot to take a picture of the back. The back criscrosses. It is not thin straps, but a full back that has two pieces and they cross each other. There is a side zipper.

This evening she is coming over to try on all the pieces for button and hook placement and hemming.

Last night I had my last serger class for my new machine. I love my sewing shop. They are always so good about helping me.

I seem to be having problems keeping up with things these days. There just seems to be so much to do. Oh well, I will get it all done eventually.

Tomorrow, I go to the surgeon to schedule my surgery. If you remember me please pray.

Sew Long for Now!