Quiet book

A few years ago I made several quiet book pages, but I never got around to putting them together as a book, which meant it all got scattered all over the house. It got so bad I seriously considered just throwing it all away. In January I finally got around to getting all the pieces in one place and making it into a book, so here is the final product.

Velcro numbers (I had to reattach almost all the velcro):

This is a felt face with various face parts you can use to make faces. The face is glued to the page and the rest of the pieces go in the beige colored bag. This is one of the kids' favorite pages. This was one of the few busy bags I saved from the busy bag swap several years ago (big mess and I would not do it again). I used to have a magnet that could be used to move the paper clips around, but that disappeared and I haven't found an adequate substitute yet. There's also a zipper for zipping practice.

Touch and feel page with several different swatches of fabric.

Left side is a guy eating spaghetti (red yarn) out of a bowl. You pull the button on the image above to make the spaghetti go into his mouth. The downside to the string is that Kevin thought it made a great leash/kite/thing to drag the book around, but now he doesn't do that as much, so it's worked out. Right side is various buckles/things to adjust.

Left side has button flowers (still haven't found one of them), right side is for counting or just playing with the beads.

This was a lot of work and to be honest if I could go back in time I would tell my past self not to bother. Until recently Kevin and Heidi didn't have a lot of interest in it, although Ann Marie does play with it more. It's fun (but a little messy) for sacrament meeting.

A few years ago I found a pattern for an adorable dress on Pinterest. I printed it off and started sewing it, but before I finished I realized that even though it was supposed to be size 18 months, it wasn't going to fit Heidi for a few years. I also got discouraged with some mistakes I had made and some issues with the pattern, so at some point I stopped working on it and it sat in a drawer until this summer.

Then one day I pulled it out and tried it on Heidi and realized it fit her, so I decided to finish it up. I think the final result is very pretty, and Heidi loves it. This is one of my favorite pieces of fabric that I got from my grandma, and I think I still have enough to make another small dress.

The dress has a square neck and the front has a panel with three buttons on each side. It wasn't the best designed pattern I've ever made (it would probably work a lot better if it had a zipper in back), but I actually really like the way it turned out. It kind of reminds me of a Jane Austen movie.

how a sewing machine works

Check out this video that shows how a sewing machine works. I have wondered about this for most of my life. I could not figure out how the needle thread and the bobbin thread got twisted around each other before the needle came back up. Now it makes sense. The book The New Way Things Work calls the sewing machine a mechanical wonder.

http://youtu.be/ML8CMNzW6Tg

birthday dress

I have been in a rut when it comes to sewing lately. I have a lot of fabric that my grandma sent home with me last summer when we visited, but I've been having a hard time getting started on anything. I have grand plans for what I want the clothes to look like when I sew them, but I'm scared to death that when I'm done they won't look as good as I imagined, which would be pretty depressing after spending all that time sewing. My other problem is that I bought some patterns a long time ago, and now the measurements are too small for the skirts I wanted to make for myself. Finally it occurred to me that I should just do some of the things I wanted to make for Heidi, because pretty much everything looks cute on her. So Heidi got a sweet new jumper.

Sorry the pictures don't have a glamorous background, but she was holding still, so I took the opportunity.

The pattern I used was Butterick B4718. It is a great pattern. There were a couple of parts of the instructions that weren't clear, but I was able to figure them out. I put a lot of effort into making this a good quality garment, and the work paid off. Often when I just follow a tutorial online I end up with something that looks pretty good, but I still feel dissatisfied because I know about the hidden flaws. I don't feel that way about this dress. I did all the extra steps that aren't necessary but make the garment look more polished, like the understitching, and it made a difference. I was so proud of myself for figuring out how to sew the zipper in. I remember having to have a lot of help from my grandma sewing zippers in when I was in 4-H, so I was nervous, but in the end the zipper looked really nice. Rather than cutting on the size lines, I folded the pattern at the size I was using so that I can unfold it and use it again for more dresses as Heidi gets older.

I did make one alteration. The skirt wasn't lined in the pattern, but I wanted it to be lined so that I won't necessarily have to worry about a slip, so I added a lining. After I had sewed in the zipper, I sewed the skirt lining in at the seam where the skirt and bodice were stitched together, stopping about an inch away from the zipper on both sides. Then I hand-stitched the skirt lining to the zipper on the inside. An added bonus that I hadn't thought about is that Heidi won't have the itchy end of the zipper poking her.

The one thing I'm a little sad about is that the bodice is a little bit too wide. I'm not surprised because Heidi's measurements were about an inch smaller than the smallest pattern size, so I expected it to be a little big. I might add a couple of little pleats in the front to make it fit better, but I do think it looks fine as it is.

This is the first time I've made anything with a purchased pattern since high school. Most of my sewing projects have been based on tutorials I find online because they're free (whereas patterns can be expensive), but I think I'm going to use patterns more often. As I was making this dress, I found that it was much more enjoyable to make it because everything fit together so well.

Want to know the total cost? The fabric was free, the zipper was $1.19 after my 40% off coupon, and the pattern was $1 (watch for pattern sales!). I don't remember what I paid for the thread, but it's probably negligible. So the total cost for me was about $2.20.

ruts, projects, and water samples

Wow, I haven't blogged since the 8th. Occasionally I think about it, but I didn't really have anything to say. I do have cute things about Kevin/Heidi posts that I update occasionally, but I haven't been ready to post them yet. Oh, and Ryan's parents came and visited, but I haven't gotten around to uploading the pictures yet.

I have been in a rut when it comes to reading books. I'm not really sure how many books I have started without finishing in the past couple of months. Wives and Daughters, Silent Spring, Out of the Silent Planet, The Dark Is Rising, probably several more. I've tried rereading favorites, starting ones I've always wanted to read, reading books that others recommended, and most books just haven't done it for me. The only one I actually finished was Flowers for Algernon. I read it several years ago and liked it pretty well, but this time I couldn't put it down. I started it in the evening, read until 2 a.m. and couldn't sleep even then, and finished it the next day. It has a lot more meaning now than it did when I was younger because I've had more life experiences (relationships, marriage, children, college, etc.). In the end I cried. But after that I still haven't been able to get out of the rut. I've started Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and it seems promising, so we'll see. I think a lot of my problem is that I have a lot of other things that need to get done and I feel bad reading when I really ought to be finishing homework or a project.

It looks like we're going to have a rather handmade Christmas. I keep thinking about what I could get the kids for Christmas and I just don't want any more toys. But I do have a lot of fabric and scraps, and a few pounds of brown rice that (let's face it) we will never eat. So I'm going to use them to make some quiet book pages and little bean bags.

I also made some more bias tape for another project. I have several baskets that we got when we bought peaches at the farmer's market, and I've decided I'm going to put ruffles around them and put them on top of my cupboards to hold food so that my food storage won't look ugly up there anymore. The bias tape is to make the top edge of the ruffle look finished. Ryan and watched Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy while I was working on the bias tape. I'm intrigued and hoping that the library also has the next movie in the series.

Yesterday I spent the entire day getting my water samples ready to go in the mass spectrometer. It's quite a process. You use these tiny funnels called columns that have a very narrow neck with a little sponge in it. First you put resin and water in the column, and you have to let all the water drain out so that there is just resin in the column. Then you put more water and also nitric acid in the column and have to let it drain out, and you do that several times. Finally, you put the sample through the column. I'm studying the strontium, and the strontium sticks to the resin in the column while everything else goes through. After I put the sample through, I had to put 12 drops of nitric acid in and let it drain out--and then do it again six times. Then I put the column over a new beaker and put water in it, which had to drain out, and then more water, which also had to drain out. The water gets the strontium out of the resin and into the beaker. Altogether it took twelve hours, because it takes a while for the liquid to drain through the resin every time, probably at least half an hour. Usually it takes around eight hours, but for some reason the columns were draining really slowly yesterday. So it was a matter of putting liquid in, waiting, checking to see if it had drained, waiting some more, adding more liquid, waiting, checking, on and on. I knew there would be a lot of waiting, so I came prepared with homework. I ended up getting two pages of a paper done and making some headway on a final lab project. Oh, and the building was really cold, and the lab was even colder. There are a couple more steps and then the sample will go into a mass spectrometer.

Meanwhile, Ryan got to take the kids to Kindermusik and spend the entire day with them. Here's a google chat we exchanged late at night when I was still watching water drip:

Earlier today I was thinking about making mini quiches (which I have never done before), but I didn't really feel up to making pie crust. Dinner time came and it still hadn't happened. I told Ryan I was having a hard time figuring out what to make for dinner because there wasn't time to do the quiches. So he opened up the Tanner family cookbook to a random page and pointed at a recipe: Chicken Pot Pie. "I don't feel like making pie crust," I repeated. He tried again: Beef Pot Pie. I think he might have done it again and landed on Beef Pot Pie a second time. "Okay, apparently I'm supposed to make pie crusts tonight," I decided. But we had macaroni and cheese for dinner and I mixed the pie crust to use later. So I guess tomorrow is quiche and then I have two more pie crusts left for pie. And it just so happens that we're eating pie on Thursday with Jared and Kristi and family, so I guess I did some work ahead of time. We are very excited to get to have Thanksgiving with family.

sewing fun

I had a fun time doing some sewing today. You would think I would have more time to do things since I'm not taking classes right now, but for some reason the days end and I feel like I didn't get to read or sew or even fold the clothes. Anyway, I've been itching to sew something for several days and things have just kept conspiring against me so that I didn't have time. Naptimes didn't overlap much and then by bedtime I was tired. Today the kids went down for naps and I was determined to sew something that I've been working on in my head for a while.

This is going to be a little jumper for Heidi's birthday when I am done with it. I still need to figure out what I am going to do for straps. There are a lot of options. I could make some wide straps using the same fabric I used for the jumper, I could use some more eyelet (shown on the left of the picture), or I could use some of the green ribbon on the right. So I am interested in people's opinions. Which of those options do you like the best, or do you have a different idea? The pattern on the fabric is little yellow rosebuds. This is some of the fabric my Grandma sent home with me. I also have some similar fabric that is pink with pink rosebuds. Grandma really likes these rosebud patterns. This was a fun and interesting project because I basically drafted it by myself. Instead of using a pattern I just cut out two rectangles, with the dimensions based on a jumper that already fits Heidi well. For the top part I used elastic thread to do several rows of shirring. I tried this a month or so ago on knit fabric and it was incredibly frustrating, but this time I had learned a few things and I was also using cotton instead of knit, so it went quite smoothly. For the bottom I attached some eyelet ruffling. I had to put a lot of thought into how I would do that so it would look nice.

The fabric was from my Grandma, and the eyelet was from my mom, so the only cost for me was a spool of elastic thread and my time.

Oh, and while I'm talking about sewing, I have another question about sewing in general. I don't have a serger, so generally I need to finish my edges with a zigzag stitch. It seems like when I was learning to sew I was always told to press the seams open and then zigzag each side, but when I do that on my old sewing machine the fabric keeps getting distorted. So is it evil to just do the regular seam, zigzag the two edges to each other, and then press it all to one side? I tried this on the jumper and it seemed to work fine, but I'm just curious if it will hold up over time if I do it that way.

Utah trip 2012 part 5

On Friday the house got really full. Aunt Sue and Uncle Spence, and then Aunt Colleen and Aubrey, arrived and we spent the day hanging out at my parents' house. It was pretty packed but it was so fun to see everyone.

I got to spend some time helping Melissa work on her puff quilts (this should give you an idea of what those are). She pinned and stuffed squares and I sewed. I also got into my mom's ribbons and made some cute bows for one of Ellen's friends who had invited her to a birthday party (sorry, no pictures, but they really were darling). And I brought quite a bit of ribbon home with me too. Ribbon bows aren't quite as fun to make as hair flowers, by the way. Ribbon is too slippery and finicky.

At one point during the day Kevin went out the front door without anyone realizing it. It was pretty scary. I already wrote about it in my journal, so I'll just copy and paste that here:

Today we lost Kevin for a little while. It was a scary experience. My parents have a fenced yard and we locked the gates using karabiners, so we’ve been able to just let Kevin go play in the backyard without having to follow him everywhere like we do at home. As long as he’s downstairs or in the backyard I don’t really have to worry too hard about him. Well, this afternoon he was playing in the backyard, and then he came inside and I thought he had gone downstairs where Ryan was to watch a movie. So I was doing other things and assuming that he was just fine, whatever he was doing. But then I decided to check on him and that was when I found out he wasn’t with Ryan and he wasn’t in the backyard. I looked in the front yard and he wasn’t there either. I didn’t quite feel panicked yet, but at the same time I was really nervous because I didn’t even know where to start looking. I had no idea how long he had been gone or which direction he had gone. I was afraid that we had lost him forever, and I knew that life without Kevin would be empty. I was in the front yard and couldn't see him, so I said a quick prayer that we would be able to find him, and I looked once more inside the house and then went back out the front door. And there he was, running back towards the house along the sidewalk carrying Ian’s toy drill, barefoot. I was so relieved and grateful. He hurried to me, and as I looked at his face I could tell that he had been frightened and that he was near tears. I picked him up and hugged him. We will probably never know where he had been or how far he got, but I am so grateful and I know that it was an answer to my prayer from my loving Heavenly Father who watches over every one of his children. I am grateful that he was in the neighborhood and that he hadn’t run into a busy road and gotten hurt.

Heidi's red skirt and matching flower clip

I did a little photo session last night to try to get some good pictures of the red skirt I made her. I'm not much of a photographer, and a messy house isn't much of a background, but I did have an adorable [wiggly] subject.

I used this tutorial for the skirt, and this tutorial for the flower. Don't be scared by the flower--it's actually not very difficult to make. I sewed and hot-glued the button on and then I hot-glued a hair clip on the back, so I can put the flower on a headband or clip it on her shirt for a little embellishment. If I make another skirt (and I wouldn't be surprised if I did), I will probably change the proportions so it's not quite so poofy, but other than that I feel pretty good about it!

Here are the pictures:

hot glue strings

I've had a little bit of spare time to try some of the sewing/craft projects that I've pinned on Pinterest. (Click the links to see the tutorials I used.)

A month or two ago I used some scraps leftover from the changing pads to make a grocery bag holder. It's been nice to have all those grocery bags in a smaller space and more accessible. It also gives me an idea of when I need to stop collecting grocery bags. I usually use reusable bags, but I do like to have some around--they're useful as little trash bags, for putting stinky disposable diapers in before I throw them away, or for holding cloth diapers I changed away from home. I think this would be a very good project for someone who is learning to sew, because it's lots of straight lines and then elastic (in a casing) at the top and bottom.

Felt flower. (Still cute, but not my favorite. I'm going to try it again with something other than felt so it's not so bulky.) I also made another one using this tutorial. I haven't decided what to do with it. I might use it to pin to my own shirts

Baby shoes. (Way too small for Heidi--I'm going to have to try to mess with the pattern so I can make some that fit her. But they were a cute present for a friend who's having a baby soon!)

Silk flower. I was so pleased with how this one turned out!

All of these projects were very cheap because they didn't require very much fabric. I bought a huge package of assorted buttons too. Many thanks to my mom for the hot glue gun, which made most of these projects possible!

Christmas sewing projects

Last summer while I was in Utah I bought a shirt on clearance at Shopko. Bad, bad idea. Do not buy shirts on clearance at Shopko, especially if they have embellishments on them! So I wore this shirt twice before it fell apart and shrunk up but not in, if you know what I mean. The embellishments were attached to each other with glue that was more like silly putty and the whole thing was very poorly sewn to the shirt. Most of the embellishments were ruined with the glue that melted all over them. So I thought that I could probably cut the shirt up and make a headband out of it as a present for Heidi. Attempt one was based on this tutorial. It looked pretty cool, but it was kind of thick and looked weird on Heidi's little lightly-haired head. So I tried making the headband by braiding it, but that was pretty thick too. So I went back to plan A, which was to cut a long strip of fabric about 1 1/2 inches wide, fold it hot dog style, stitch it, turn it inside out, and sew the ends together. Once that was done I sewed one of the embellishments onto it. Success! It turned out to be very cute!

Project #2 was to make personalized Christmas stockings. I was sort of looking for stockings in stores, but I kept feeling like they weren't our stockings, and finally I realized that what I wanted was to have stockings that were truly our family's stockings and that had a story behind them. So we went to Joann's and picked up a couple of yards of felt (about three times as much as we needed, as it turns out) and some iron-on appliques. I used my old stocking, the one I used growing up, as a pattern for the stocking parts and made the cuff part myself. I really like how they turned out, and I had a good time making them. We asked Santa to come to our house last because I didn't start making them until Christmas Eve after the kids were in bed.

Look what I made last night.

Before K was born I started making some washable changing pads (which I also posted about here). I had one more left to do, but Kevin was born and I never got around to finishing it. Ten months later, I finally did it. It was a lot easier to make it without having to maneuver around a large belly. I think it turned out to be pretty cute.

I have also been intending to make a wet bag for our diapers. We have been using an old pillowcase, but it doesn't quite fit around the top of the diaper trash can, so we were hooking it around three of the corners, which was getting a little annoying because it would fall sometimes. This is much better.

"Are you one of those crafty people?"

I've been asked this several times, and my answer is no, definitely not. But then people find out that I can sew, and they say, "I think you really are one of those crafty people."

So this is what I consider to be "crafty":

• homemade cards made with ribbons and cute flowers and cute brads and cute cardstock
• cute scrapbook pages with things like nice cardstock and pretty/cute translucent paper and fun borders
• buckets or baskets of goodies with decorations like nice ribbon, cute notes written with glitter pens, and tissue paper
• cute invitations, like the ones that were made for our next Relief Society birthday dinner--the girl who made them cut out flower petal shapes, attached about six together with cute brads, and wrote a snippet of information about the dinner on each petal
• homemade headbands and flower clips
• homemade bracelets and necklaces
• anything that involves painting or stencils, especially plaques with nice sayings and fancy lettering
  

I don't do any of these. They don't interest me. I'm not really the sort of person that enjoys making cute stuff like this, or thinks to make them, and I hate the idea of spending any money on the supplies that are needed for it because I'm cheap. (This is why our wedding album [when I finally get time to make it] is going to be pictures glued to white cardstock and nothing else--because I'm tired of stressing about making it look fancy and buying the supplies I need to do so.) When I make things, it's usually because I need it or think it would be useful. The most recent things that I sewed were some washable changing pads and some cloth baby wipes. I thought they would be useful and didn't want to pay someone else to do it when I could make them myself for less, and in the dimensions I wanted. I admit I did put a little effort into making the changing pads cute. The cloth baby wipes are two layers of brown flannel with zig-zag stitching around the edges to prevent fraying--no craft there. Other than the changing pads and wipes, most of the things I've sewn were clothes for 4-H. I was in 4-H from second grade until the end of high school, and every year my grandma or my mom helped me with a sewing project. If people are impressed that I can sew in a straight line, they should know that I spent a good portion of my summers at a sewing machine, especially the years when I decided to make a suit and a formal (with Grandma's close guidance--I couldn't have figured out where to put the pieces without her). I wanted a nice black suit with a long coat, and I wanted a nice formal, plus I had watched all the older girls in my 4-H club make suits and formals and assumed that someday it would be my turn. I do enjoy sewing, and I do think I have some talent with it. I wish I wasn't so busy with school so I could sew more. And I hope we have a little girl someday so I can make her some cute jumpers. But I consider sewing to be under the category of sewing, not under the category of crafts, so that's why I don't answer yes when people ask if I'm one of those crafty people.

I don't mean to say that the crafts I listed aren't useful. We need people who can make nice invitations and cards, cute headbands, wall plaques, and such. Those are great talents, and I admire people who have good taste in those things and can do them. They're just not the talents I'm interested in developing right now. We should all be working to develop and use the talents that we have to bless others and make life enjoyable. Creative cards lift my spirit, and so do beautiful houses, gardens, and computer models.