Tote bags

Quite a gloomy day outside this morning! I've been carousing through Pinterest looking for easy sewing ideas because I am trying to build an inventory for Fondue Fest. My goal is to create quality products that are relatively inexpensive yet desirable to young parents/young adults. I'm hoping to have a few completed baby/toddler sized quilts as well as baby items such as booties, dresses, and onesies. In addition to all of that, I've also started working on these tote bags. They are SO easy and end up with a nice, finished product. My goal is to make more with better lining on the inside with loops, pockets and flaps.

This past weekend, I almost completed two quilt tops. This seems like a crazy amount of work considering that I also finished these bags, but one of them was already in blocks and the other was all cut out. One quilt top still needs a border and the other just needs to be sandwiched, stitched, and bound.

Normally, I would try to get a lot of sewing done today since my husband switched days to be off because I am walking at graduation tonight. Mom said, "I won't speak to you if you don't walk at commencement," and Hub - in a very ultimatum type fashion, "you're walking." It just feels strange because I finished this associate degree in December, and I don't feel much like celebrating after my terrible first semester at "the big school". All that matters is that I accomplished something - got my two year degree! Yay! I deserve to celebrate with my loved ones and so I will  try to enjoy myself. That being said, I am sure I'll have a lot more fun than my hubby and parents sitting in the audience with Linc (1) and Chase (3), neither of whom wants to sit still for more than 30 seconds. I won't feel to bad about that either, I'll just tell them, "you people wanted me up here!"

Meadow Hello Kitty Lilies

It all began with a drawing. Ok, I didn’t design this quilt but I am awful at visualizing what my final product will look like. It helps for me to draw things out and imagine my fabric in the pattern, sometimes even using colored pencils to shade it in. I’m pretty sure that eventually I will master the color palette and be able to visualize my quilt without this step, but for now this happens.












Sewing time usually gets squeezed in when my husband is home from work in the morning or in the evenings when the boys are in bed. I like to say I'm going to sew in the afternoon during nap time but it never happens. Netflix happens. When do I clean? Hahaha...clean... That being said, I do sometimes get the urge to sew when the boys are awake. It requires snacks, tv, and also singing and dancing but, hey. It's pretty easy to dance when you're happy sewing!

This quilt is from a Thimbleberries book, and the pattern is "Meadow Lilies". My niece, Giana, loves Hello Kitty and I like to make kid-size things because I am fond of instant gratification. I'm working on this weakness. The pattern is composed of Meadow Lily blocks offset by nine patches with borders. The nine patch blocks frame the lily blocks and makes a fairly easy pattern look très fancy and complicated. I can't wait to try this pattern again. A lily block is composed of 4 lilies and 4 leaves. Obviously my colors aren't true to the pattern as the leaves should be green, but that's the story of the pattern.

I didn't get a good photo of a finished nine patch block. Here's one in the quilting process. I love the diagonal line quilted through the nine patches. It's funny how I do kid-sized projects for quicker gratification and yet, I prefer to quilt by hand than by machine. I prefer this for a couple reasons. One, I like the way it looks - homemade with love and "stitched in the ditch". Two, I don't have a walking foot yet and I will need a lot of practice as I have trouble sewing a straight line with machine.

I finished her off with a cozy flannel in hot pink Hello Kitty fabric and a satin blanket binding. This was also my first time using binding - in the past, I've wrapped the border around to the front by hand. This was a very handmade feel and took a lot longer than I like. When I get to the binding, I usually am so excited to see the finished product so I loved the fastness of machine binding. I used a zigzag stitch on the top of the binding and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. Lesson learned though, if you've never done something before, best to not use slippery satin to experiment on your first try! Or use pins? Maybe that would have helped!

Chase Conquers le Potty Monster

I am happy to say that Chase is finally potty trained. Finally! I don’t mean to sound like we were rushing him, because we let him go at his own pace. We didn’t actually expect him to be potty trained this soon, he’s only just turned 3, so it came a huge surprise when he decided that he wanted to ditch the pull-ups. So when I use the word finally I mean that it’s way expensive to buy diapers for two little guys. Now we only have to buy for Lincoln. And hey, if we get him potty trained by 14 months (which I believe to be an urban legend, personally) we will be done with diapers completely. Yay!

So, how did we do it? Well, if you would like to know, read on.

First we introduced him to the potty when he was 2 by (creepy, I know) bringing him in with us and letting him watch us use the potty. He never liked the potty chair so we got him a seat for him to use on our toilets. He wasn’t understanding the concept of holding it and then going potty, so we decided to put him in pull-ups until he was more ready. We would let him wear underwear every once in a while to let him slowly adjust. Then, seemingly overnight, he was ready. 38 months old, he went an entire day without wetting his underwear and we decided for fun to see what happened overnight. I’m not going to lie, I was skeptical. I was positive that he was going to wet the bed that night. Now it’s a week later and he hasn’t wet the bed once and has had underwear on every night.

In other news, he started seeing a speech therapist to work on certain syllables that are difficult for him to say. He’s there with another little boy his age and same speaking level and I couldn’t be happier with the results. People had told us about using speech therapists since he was 2 and not saying mama or dada. We waited it out and now I wish we hadn’t because he has done SO much better since we started. He says full sentences that we don’t need to instruct him on. He has actual conversations on the phone with his grandparents. I’m proud of his progress in the past few months. It’s hard to believe how far we have actually come. 

Spring Projects

     I started working on a couple of projects in January. Yeah, my New Year’s res was to only work on one project on a time so that didn’t last long. I decided it was OK since they are different mediums. This concept of actually finishing projects is new to me. Oh hell, working project to the halfway point is still new to me! I’m getting used to it, though. I keep adding things to my list of what I want to get done and it is HARD to keep myself from starting tout les nouvelles projets. That’s Paige French for ALL OF THE THINGS. You’d think only working two projects at a time would give me enough time to get my house cleaned. NOPE. I’m usually lucky if we get the toys put away at the end of the day, but spring semester is drawing to a close so that’s just not happening.