Busy Bees

Life around here has been hectic but good. My health is back on track, blood sugars normal, blood pressure is slowly going down, and baby boy is growing as he should. My only must do is drink plenty of water since my fluid levels are still on the low end but dont seem to be the concern they were earlier on (whew!)

The upcoming holiday craft show is fast approaching, Dec. 6 is D-Day for me so I have been working my tush off. And as you can see above I have a great little helper. She "irons" while I am cutting, piecing together, and sewing. While I normally enjoying sewing by myself she has been a great source of company these last few weeks! This weekend everything has been cut out so it is just me working on becoming a one woman sewing factory and cranking out (hopefully) 30+ bags.

What are your plans this weekend?

More giveaways

Since I have no pictures of my own to share here are some great quilt giveaways going on around the blog world.

First up is Old Red Barn Co. This is her second giveaway this year for amazing quilts and this time around she is not giving away one but THREE (yes you read that right) three different beautiful quilts. Head over there fast sign-up ends today!

Second up is the amazing blogger who creates Thimble Blossoms quilt patterns. She will take your favorite pattern of hers and create a quilt just for you! I love her patterns.

Now scoot and go enter!

Baby steps

I have a confession to make. One that I havent been able to say out loud so this will be as good as it gets. I havent made a thing for baby boy since all of our "speed bumps" came up. Mostly because I am afraid that anything I make or buy before he comes may become a reminder if something goes terribly wrong. My heart is saying one thing and my head says another. Today though I told myself to get over it and enjoy this pregnancy for all that it is and to just keep my mantra, happy and healthy, going strong in my mind.

Today as I had to stay at my doctors office for three hours for another glucose test I cast on what will become baby boys first blanket. And today I took a giant leap of faith, happy and healthy he will be.

Scattered

Geez. A week since my last post! Things are ok. Baby’s fluids are still low, I now have semi-high (just below the cut off of normal readings) blood pressure, and yesterday I got the call that I may also have a high sugar count and possibly have gestational diabetes.

I still feel alright so while I whine about ALL of the health speed bumps it could be A LOT worse so I am staying as optimistic as possible as well as cutting out salt in my diet *ugh*

Leila is also breaking in her two year old molars so we have been having good and bad days which take up most of my time.

I am less then 30 days away from the craft show and I really don’t have much to show yet. Right now I need to sew 5-10 bags a weekend up until the night of the show which is doable but it means most of my time will be spent away from the internet.

I will hopefully have updates to show in the next few days but with the sun basically gone by the time I get home at work the pictures will be less then stellar for awhile.

Thanks for all of your support and stopping by I miss you all!

In a heart beat...

I would stand in line for 40 minutes so I can honor my right to be voter 1300 in my ward. (Thank god it wasnt a typical Wisconsin November day! Otherwise I would be a frozen voter.)

If you havent already, no matter who your candidate may be, get out there and rock the vote!

There is a process

I have a process to creating a new bag. I am sure every crafter has a process for anything they create. Today I would like to show how inspiration turns into prototypes which turns into an actual usable pattern.

So here we go:


First I find inspiration, this is normally done for me by going on to Flickr and streaming through the numerous handbag groups I am a member of. There is an infanite source of inspiration on Flickr, you just have to go out and look for it. I also like looking and seeing what people are selling on Etsy, I am bummed that you can no longer look at which items have been looked at the most, this always gave me idea at least which items where grabbing peoples attention. So I found this image on Flickr a few days ago:

Photo found here.

I loved the shape of the purse but the selling point for me was that the handle came up from the body of the purse with no seam line, something I hadnt done before but this bag gave me the drive to try.

So I went about drafting a pattern (sorry no pictures of this) I basically drafted the pattern using concepts I have learned from doing tutorials online and purse patterns that I have bought. If anyone is interested I will show you the silly way I draft my patterns, trust me it isnt very technical in ANY way.

I created two prototypes from this first pattern. I didnt take a photo of the first because it was a disaster, the bag shape was fine, it was the sewing that left me stumped, I searched online everywhere to try and find a tutorial for what I was trying to accomplish to no sucess. For some reason I was having a hard time wrapping around how I was suppose to turn out the bag. So I took out my hand dandy Japanesse craft books. I have a large collection of these thanks to trips I have taken to see Ken's family (San Diego & Hawaii) so I knew there had to be SOMETHING in there that could help me out and lucky for me there was. So prototype 2 was born (prototype #1 had been seam ripped so many times it was a lost cause to finish, poor prototype).

The bag turned out alright, but on a person it was way to skinny in the body. So I went back to the draft board (read my living room floor) and got to work drawing a new pattern. Make the body taller and a little less wide. Which led me to prototype 3 (drum roll please)


Ta-Da! It is a medium/large bag with the shape that I wanted. Plus thanks to the trials I have got a new skill done. Now I just need to crank out 20 or so of these bags in various vintage fabrics. (wish me luck!)


No post of course around here couldnt be without Leila so she volunteered to model while sharing in my joys of sucess.

And what better way to celebrate then an inpromptu picnic on the bedroom floor.

Happy Tuesday everyone, hopefully you made it to the end of this LONG post!!!