Changing Pad Cover

Here is a picture of the pad cover I mentioned last time. Not too exciting. But it does match nicely. I plan to make two more also. Just to have clean ones when needed. And I think I'll be embroidering some designs on the sides. This purple one was my test/pattern maker. Now I am ready to embellish. :)

I also have the quilt almost done. I just needs some type of quilted design in the middle of the 4" squares. Not totally sure what to do there.

Another Lack of Pictures

I really need to take more pictures. Dave and Rhonda were here this weekend, and I took not a single picture! Dave came and nothing to document it! But I can document my plants. I planted the seeds Monday the 5th and my Thursday, we had seedlings.

This is the basil and dill on Saturday. Below it is the tarragon. We planted basil, dill, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, and cilantro.


Dave and Rhonda arrived Friday and when we got home, they were milling around outside because we never gave Rhonda the key we thought we gave her. That evening we gave Dave a tour of the house (as he's never been before) and then we headed over to Nelson Mazda to check out the Mazda5.
After a test drive and some chatting with the salesman, we headed to Red Lobster for dinner and chatting. We ordered a lot of crab legs, 3.5 pounds I believe. We ate almost all of them too.

Saturday, Shannon's birthday, we hung around a little, starting drying some bananas in the food dehydrator and then eventually headed over to First Watch for brunch. Oh, but before that we stopped by the post office so I could mail 3 statistical distribution burp cloths off to Texas. Sweet!

Now, back to the Mazda dealer. We spent a lot of time there on Saturday, and it did end in us buying a new car. We will get it this week (they are driving it in from somewhere in the color we wanted, blue). It's a 2010 Mazda5. I'm pretty excited. :) No pictures yet, but they'll come later.

Sunday Dave and Rhonda left for GC. Shannon and I chilled around the house. I sewed some and Shannon played Civ IV some. Overall it was a nice lazy day. One of the things I sewed was this newborn dress using fabric I had lying around (from Nikki's 1st birthday dress) and a free internet pattern. I did make a few changes, but overall, it's basically the dress she made.

The Weekly Weekend Report

It's Monday, back to work and the dull-drums of money-making life. *sigh*

This past weekend was for sewing. I stitched up a lot of things. Shannon has been working a lot on making embroidery patterns for me. :) He's so sweet. I don't even ask him to do it. I think he kind of enjoys it. It's like graphic design, but for me to make things with. A lot of what we did was try something out, decided how to change it and go from there. The good things eventually make it to my Etsy shop, the Nausicaa Distribution. Such as this pi cozy, this Euler cozy, and these sold out pencil pouches. I'll keep putting new things up too. It's fun.

I also started on our quilt, finally! We decided on the "Quilt for Reba" from mamanance.


I just really liked the way the quilt looked. She did an awesome job on colors and fabrics. Ours is more tan and less white, and there is less variety to the fabrics used, but so far I like the way it looks. This picture is hers, not ours. I finished sewing together half of the blocks and cut out the pieces for the other half last night. But I didn't take a picture, so I can't show you. Maybe tomorrow.

In other baby news, she is moving a lot still. Lots of pushing, not just random jabs. :) Last night was the first night in a long time (months) since I've been awoken not by a horrible leg cramp (which I've always gotten, now they are just much worse and more frequent), but by having to pee or because she was moving a lot. Usually I just sleep through them both (not wetting the bed, but just holding it till morning). But last night, I woke up and felt her moving and then was like, "huh, I have to pee." So, that.

But all seems well so far. The nursery paint and molding has been touched up. Our Necromunda campaign is finished, after 160 battles, a 3600+ rating gang, a 400+ experience leader, and over 1 year of work. (It was worth it!) And I made biscotti yesterday.

Sweet!! I've got an embroidery machine!!

You may recall that for Christmas, Mom and Shannon combined forces to get me an embroidery machine. We did some browsing/learning and made a decision a month later (last Saturday).

Welcome to my table Brother PE-750D!


How cool is this! I have 3 machines!! You can't see the serger very well, but it's back there!


Of course I had to make something.


And what better something than Snotiva.

Dude, I'm gonna have so much fun with this bad boy. I'm probably going to get Embird so we can make whatever files we want for embroidery. :) Sweet!

Fruit Snacks

Mmm... how I love them!

Also, I wish I had more time to sew! I keep getting ideas and I have to wait to do them...by the time I'm home I'm tired/grouchy/hungry/out-of-time. Well, in about 4 months I will either have time to try or will have different excuses for not trying.

Also also, I had a dream about having an embroidery machine. I was going to do it but I needed a USB cord. While Shannon was getting it for me, I woke up. :( No dream-embroidery for me. But I am very excited to get me a machine in about 2 weeks! Woo hoo! (Mom I do plan on buying one next time I'm in Wichita).

Colors and Quilts

When my niece Nikki was born 3.4 years ago, I made my sister a quilt for the baby. Now, I am not an avid quilt maker, but I do know how it's done. I mean, I took a whole 3 hour class on quilt making back at the Garden City Community College in 2000 or 2001. :)

Now that it's time for my sister-in-law to her her first baby, I plan to make her a quilt. I know exactly what I'm going to do for it, the size, pattern, all of it except the colors and fabric. I have been pestering Jenette and Chris for about 1.5 months. I think I'm getting close. The deal is, JoAnn is having a 1$ off each yard of quilting fabric sale that ends Saturday. I'd like to take advantage of that sale. So, I may be pestering them again today. Or just picking colors myself like I did for Nikki and Jayme in 2006.

But for my own baby, things are opposite what they are for new niece. I know the colors and fabric, but don't have a design and size planned. I have some general ideas (concerning dinosaurs), but I still have a lot of planning to do. We plan to use tan, sage, and lavender in the baby's room. We bought fabric last week (you can see it here).

Either way, I'm excited to make new baby quilts for my niece and my daughter!

Keeping My Busy

I've got the sew-bug again. I don't know what causes it. But there are just times when all I want to do is stitch something up. (This part is now irrelevant...There are pictures to go with this post, but they are currently trapped in my camera. So, I'll free them later.)



This weekend I remembered that I received a book from Newgen and Andrea for Christmas last year, The Tudor Tailor. So I decided I'd make something from it and see how it went. Well, I made the top to a fitted Elizabethan gown with paned sleeves. It was a lot of work, but looks awesome. The size of the patterns as-is is a tad bit small on me, but pretty darn close. I didn't make the skirt, because originally I was just playing around. But it came our really good and now I want to make the bottom skirt part for it. However, I don't have enough of the fabric, so I'll need to use something else. That something else won't be free.

I also found a pattern that could work really well for Rhonda's dress. So, I'll have to try that out and see what she thinks.

Plus I finished my stained glass piece for when work releases the new version of our software. Kind of a gift to our company, I suppose.


Oh, and I finished painting my Halfling BloodBowl team, 12 little guys and a treeman. Sweet. However, during the paint-scapades I spilt a good amount of red paint on our carpet. OMG, that sucked! Shannon and I spent a good 30 minutes scrubbing it out. Now you really can't tell, and it was bad! The secret, Spray 'n Wash Dual Power. Just be sure to get it all out of the carpet. Also, we recently purchased our first bottle of carpet cleaner.

Later Than Usual

Yesterday I sold 6 more plushies on Etsy! Now I don't have enough left so I have to make more! This is really fun.

With the money I made yesterday, I bought a new table! We went to Furniture Row to look at the wonderful jigsaw couch to see if it was on sale in their clearance sale (which it sadly wasn't). What we did find was a table for 48$. It's damaged, but it is still sturdy and can be fixed one day. It's like Mom's counter-height table, but with a dark stain. It's got the top I've been using placed on top of it and no chairs, but it looks fancy. And it was cheap!

If the couch was included in the clearance, which was about 30% off, then we probably would have bought it.

The Going Ons

Yesterday I made my first sale on Etsy! Woot!

I also stitched up some pillow covers for pillows for our futon. A while back we got some ugly pillows from Hobby Lobby for 3$ each. For some darn reason Blogger keeps rotating the picture!


Then last weekend we bought some fabric. The amount of it that I actually used only cost about 9$. But, we bought a bit more than we needed (it was a remnant that was an additional half off).

My New Purse

I bought my old purse for 5$ from the K-State Union. It was quite a find and lasted me a good 3 years, I believe.


But it has seen better days. The denim is wearing away and there is a rather large whole in its side exposing the padding for the back.


So I made me a new purse. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. I got the fabric 50% off because its a remnant. And the lining is left over fabric from making Michelle's cape, I think...


I put some padding in the back and quilted it with my Snotiva flag. It's pretty fun.


Next time I make one, it will be a little larger, made of thicker fabric, have a 1.5" thick strap (not 1"), and have more pockets for my things. I did use magnetic snaps to hold it shut, and those work really well.

=STDEVP() ?

I don't just sew pretty, cute, and piratey things. I also sew ugly and fabulous things.


Go Snotknockers.

Distribution Plushies

I've been doing some stitchery lately, and I don't just mean my curtains. I've also been making cute little statistical plushies. It was Shannon's idea and he is giving me feedback as I go. So far I've made 3 little fellas.

The standard normal (z) was the first one I made. The fabric is quite thin so you can see the dark threads through him. Also, his top isn't very smooth or symmetric and his mouth is too low. But he is still a little cutie.


Next I made Student's t. I used the same fabric, so same issue there, but he has multiple degrees of freedom. So I embroidered a curve for 2,5, and 200 (I think, I don't remember for sure). However, his bottom isn't very straight.


Then last night I made Chi-squared. I used a different fabric, obviously. This time you can't see through it, but I should have used darker floss for his different curves (at 5, 10, and 20 degrees of freedom). I also should have used lighter floss for his eyes. You can't even see the little buggers. Due to the curves, deciding where to put his face took some time, it's okay, but I'm open to suggestions. Also, instead of stitching his bottom, I placed it on the fold. That not only seems to make more sense, but it looks a bit smoother too.

I gots one!

I enjoy sewing. I've made quite a few things for myself and for others over the years. One of the main drawbacks is having to try things on. For me, its just a pain. I make a change, then have to put the piece on. Then take it off, make a change, and so on and so on.

For others, its even more of a pain because they aren't me, they don't live in my house, let alone my town most of the time, and they aren't always there at the times I want them to try things on.

Solution: Dress form. However they aren't free. Unless you get one for Christmas!


Rhonda gave it to me for Christmas! It's purple even! The dress form used to be Grandma Fullers and Rhonda's sister Marsha had it and I guess wasn't using it. Well, they are letting me use it! Sweet!

So now when I make Rhonda's dress I can use the dress form to help! Sweet!

Up Next

I'm gonna make me this dress. :)

Opah!

This past weekend we saw a lot of our friends and family. We ate dinner with Andy, Rusty, Mom, Jayme, Charles, and Nikki at Firkin Bull on Friday evening. Then we drove through to Manhattan. There we saw Rhonda, Michelle, Jenette, and Chris. Shannon and Chris got to go to the K-State game Saturday night with Michelle while Jenette and I stayed behind. We sewed and Rhonda made us a good steak dinner!


Then Sunday Shannon, Rhonda, Michelle, Chris, Jenette and I dressed up and got in Rhonda's new van, drove to Bonner Springs and spent the day in the 16th century.





We met up with Newgen and Andrea. Mom, Jayme, Charles, Maria, and Nikki came a little after that. It was great fun. We went to the tea again. The gypsy son's danced on the table for us. That was fabulous, in an awkward way.

Shannon went as a pirate, as did Maria. She wore Jenette's costume. Rhonda, Jenette, Jayme, and I went as girls in dresses....or ladies of the court. Michelle and Mom were gypsies. Chris was a steam mechanic. Charles wore Shannon's alchemist costume, and Nikki was a fairy. Jayme made her cute costume.

After, we got out of our costumes and ate a satisfying meal at Johnny Carino's with all 13 of us.

I must say these pics are not taken by Shann and I. Our camera died. These are all from Rhonda and Jenette. Thanks!

Missed.

So, I didn't make my goal. I kind of took 2nd place. Wednesday I got as far as getting the underskirt hemmed, making a chemise and finishing the edges of my under sleeves (or whatever they are called).

Thursday night, the last night I had to work with my machines due to travel, I met my goal. I hemmed the overskirt and added a few more snaps and stitches.

About hemming... OMG... it sucked. Having Shannon help was good and all, but it is a lot of fabric. And I'm not very good at giving advice on how to mark the hem. So Shannon tried his best and after many hours and pinning and repinning, I finally got it done. That was underskirt. It is made of flat fabric. The overskirt, with the pinched taffeta... not as easy. I spent about 6 hours last night and all I did besides sew on 6 buttons and 1 snap was hem the overskirt. It took so long. It was so hard to get it even. The pinched fabric bunches here but not there and then lays flat here, but not there. I don't know how good it is, but it is done and it should be fine.

Thanks so much to Shannon for his pinning and picturing (which helped a lot, I need a full lenght mirror). He poked himselft a few times, but no blood as far a I know. Now to make it look pretty I have a car ride and tomorrow.

Ah Yes.

I've broken a needle and bend the snot out of a pin. It's officially sewing season. In related news, my goal is to get my dress completely wearable tonight. That way tomorrow night I can spend making it look even prettier.

Sewed, Peeled, Mowed

I did what I aimed to do. I sewed, I peeled, and I mowed. I don't have a picture of the lawn for you. But I'll assume you know what fresh cut grass looks like.

Shannon helped me peel border this time. It went SO much faster. Instead of the wall taking me about 4 hours or so, it was done in less than 1 and a half hours. Thanks Shannon. Here is what it looks like so far. The wall to the left is all but 2' done. The wall to the right and behind still aren't touched. But the kitchen looks much bigger and better without the border.


I also sewed. It was fun to special order the fabric, it came in these long boxes, they are about as tall as me, a little shorter.


Here is the purple taffeta in all it's glory. The embroidered one will be the top and the pinched one will be the skirt part. It's very K-State-y. It's the same kind of fabric that I made Shannon's alchemist cloak out of last year. The dress isn't very done yet, but what is done looks pretty cool so far. This has been by guide/inspiration.


And as a bonus, I put together this black night table from Target to be a printer stand for us. We are going to move the computery things to the bedroom so Shannon has space in his office to do artsy things. Right now the whole desk is taken up by a monitor a disabled laptop, 2 external hard drives, our printer, and lots of cords.

Sew, Peel, Mow

I've been sewing quite a bit lately. A week from today we are going to the KC Ren Fest and I plan to wear a fancy new dress. Shannon and I special ordered the fabric on July 31st and I picked it up last week. It's exciting to watch it all come together.

I've also been working on removing that Thomas Kincade wall paper border from our kitchen. The walls are textured and it takes forever to remove the border. It wasn't much of a challenge to take the down paper in the bathroom, but this kitchen... It's a job. So far I've gotten about 1 wall of four walls done. It's taking me about 3 hours to remove border from a 6 foot span. Geepers. Maybe by Christmas I'll be able to prime the walls...

Also, I need to mow the lawn. Not very exciting and you can probably guess anything I'd have to say about it.

Costumes Part II

My costume was for a medieval seamstress. The sleeves for the under-dress were very tight. So I cut them off and made them removable. They kept falling off, the I will have to change the way they attach if I wear it again, but it was fine. I made the pattern for the overdress (not really all that complicated of a design). I also made my belt, you may remember. It turned out fine.


While there I bought some yarn so I can felt me another bag for the costume. The one leather pouch wasn't really enough.

Michelle started out as vampirate. But after some discussion as to why a vampirate would be in the same traveling group as a vampire hunter (Chris), we decided she should change titles. So, she became a dhampress (the female version of a dhampir).


I made the bodice based on the pattern that Jenette and Rhonda used. I just made it longer and lace up in the front only. Michelle and I planned and made her cape. It came out pretty good and matched her hair really well. The last thing I made for her was that hat. She had looked in some thrift stores and a costume store, but found nothing good for a good price. So, I remembered that I bought a pattern for 1$ and had fabric from Shannon's pirate coat. So, I made the hat. It turned out ok. The feather she bought really helped.

Shannon's costume turned out pretty good too. He went as an alchemist. He did a lot of research on alchemy and wrote just about all of it in those books he's got attached to his costume. In the bottles on the right are some things a real alchemist may have carried around.

I made the robe first for his costume. He found some really neat fabric and helped to design where the different colors would go. I then sewed it up. We slowly added the doublet, then the shirt, then the pants. It came out pretty good. Although, he said it was kind of uncomfortable because the books were very heavy to carry around. If there's a next time, we'll attach them differently.