I have a ton of things to finish making before my friend’s baby shower on Sunday, so what am I doing? I am building and installing two new computers for my husband and myself. Seems the lure of the sewing machine and the lure of the new hardware are equally strong. So far the computer is winning, probably because I’m sitting closer to it than to the sewing machine…

I’m not typically very sentimental on Valentine’s Day, unless I’m out of chocolate (and then I expect to get some…) But my daughter Niki is all about sentiments such as love and happiness and joy, and so I couldn’t resist whipping this little felt pillow up last night.

I found this neat tip on how to make a
felt wall by Amy at angry chicken via Hillary at wee wonderfuls. (Does that sentence make sense?) It sounds like a great way to play around with fabric scraps when designing something. Now if only I had a spare piece of blank wall in my crafting area…

While browsing fabric stores in town looking for fabric for my new diaperbag, I ran across this remnant and snapped it up. I don’t know what it is about polka dots; I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing them, but I think they’re insanely cute on anything else. I think the only thing that can logically go with it is black, or maybe baby pink…

Finally managed to kick the death plague. Nasty respiratory infections! Hates them…

I’ve got a Project planned to make a nifty diaper bag for a good friend of mine here in another week or two. But I decided to be smart this time, and make one for myself so all my mistakes will get worked out on my project, not hers. I’ve been toting around this nice Land’s End mini diaper bag for, well, years now (two kids’ worth, anyway), and while I like it, it’s still a bit too much for what I need now. Off I went to the fabric store…

Sorry for the unfocused picture. I found the stripey fabric first, then the floral was literally the only match! I always forget to go looking for solids, but I also had a vague idea for something heavier than quilting cotton in a solid color. Luckily for me, I had hanging in the closet a bunch of mint green linen fabric. Not a completely perfect match, but pretty darned close!

Here’s the finished product! It’s my first attempt at a messenger-style bag, with absolutely no pattern. You can’t see the bottom, but it’s also the green linen; having it and the sides and the straps in that fabric I think tones the stripes down, which is good. They’re pretty bright. I interfaced the crap out of the outside of the bag, and lightly interfaced the lining. I opted to not interface the straps (okay, I forgot), but being linen they’re all nice and soft and a bit springy too. I think next time I make linen straps I’ll deliberately leave out the interfacing.

There’s two outside pockets, each with a welt (woo! Thank you, master sewing book), and the inside has several pockets and a keyfob thingy. Oh, and the flap closes with a magnetic snap. I went all out! Unfortunately, the flap’s stripes don’t QUITE match up with the strips on the back of the bag, but eh… that’s about the biggest oops I made. More pictures of the inside and such are on my flickr account.

All my plans for Doing Things this week were totally trashed by the baby. Of course. Asha, poor thing, picked up a cold (I think RSV) and started running a fever Tuesday night. All day Wednesday she was miserable, so I kept her company sitting in the rocking chair while she stared around the room and drooled between coughs.

Thursday morning, I woke up with that “hmm, here comes a cold” feeling in my lungs, while Asha was bright-eyed and cheery. By lunchtime, it was me running a fever. I somehow managed to feed her lunch and get her in bed before collasping into bed myself. I’m not quite sure how I managed to get up and drive to school to pick up Niki without passing out. The rest of the afternoon I spent on the couch trying to keep the children from killing each other, but luckily they were fairly cooperative. My fever didn’t stop until 11:37pm that night. I looked at the clock.

This morning, I feel great! Well, not great-great, ’cause I can still feel gook in my lungs that I’ll probably be coughing up for another few days, and my voice is all icky, but no fever and no aches and pains and such. Yay!

Now hopefully my husband won’t get it, since it always takes him longer to recover from stuff…

This was my first stab at making cute totebag purses, in this case for my kids. While not the first bags I’ve ever made, they’re probably the cutest! I used some fairly heavy interfacing on both the outer shell and the lining, so they practically stand up by themselves.

Asha’s is the pink and black polka dot one, with the turquoise interior — for her I made short handles, as she has a tendancy to put things around her neck like a goofball. She’s not quite 2 years old yet, so go figure. Niki’s is the black one (”black, mom, black!”) with the wacky lining print. She suggested putting a heart on it, and I think it came out a lot better than I expected. The interfacing made the flap waaay too stiff, and I made it waaay too short to stay down properly, so I added a snap. Next time I make one with a flap I’ll use much lighter interfacing, make it a lot longer, and plan on a fastening in advance. Unless I forget.

Niki’s does have a shoulder strap, and an interior pocket. I had to remove a few hundred kleenexes and scraps of paper in order to take a picture of the inside… Both bags were more or less based off of this fantastic tutorial I found on craftster.org, my new favorite website. It’s horribly addictive!

Woo, first post on a new blog! Always a scary one, huh? Some of this I’m sure I’ll re-write and put on my ‘about’ page, but here’s a first draft.

I’ve been on the ‘net since college, back in the late 1980s. Before that, I was active on the local BBS scene. Sometime between then and now, I’ve become more of a lurker than an active participant, but maybe that’ll change. Or maybe not; I think now that I’ve carved out my own quiet corner over here that I’ll feel comfortable enough to ramble regularly into the open air.

I made this site partly because of needing the aforementioned corner, but also because I’ve been feeling this upsurge of “craftyness”. I used to be all crafty, mostly cross-stitch, back in high school, but then I got all busy with college and then career, but now that I’m doing the fulltime mom thing it’s all coming back. But now I have more skills, more experience, and certainly a much better sewing machine! Of course I have tons more to learn, but I’ve reached the point where I’d like to show off a bit now and then. And hey, if I can raise enough money to pay for my crafty habit, all the better!

Primarily right now I’ve got the sewing bug, but I’ve been known to do all kinds of stuff with fiber. Except spinning — I’m absolutely fabulous at making hunks of felt out of wool instead of nice smooth thread, so no spinning for me! I’ve done needle tatting, cross-stitch, blackwork, general embroidery, metal thread/bullion embroidery, inkle weaving, tablet weaving, applique, quilting (ha ha! this I mostly stink at so far), and general sewing both by hand and by machine. Most of my stuff either gets given away or used to pieces, so I don’t have many pictures to date. If I can only remember to USE the digital camera, that might change…

I do have a livejournal account, although that might change. We’ll see. In the meantime, feel free to take a gander at it.