Welcome to Sunday Lately Week 161 with the Blogger Tribe. This week’s blog tour is hosted by Wild and Wanderful and co hosted by Colleen is Creative.
The themes for this week are: Hiding, Quoting, Telling.
Hiding: Anyone doing the 52 Week Sewing Challenge? You can find the Facebook Group here. This week is “sew something for a boy.” Little Dude is my #1 fan of my sewing. He has some sensory/texture issues, so he loves when I make him clothes. He likes to pick out soft fabric and he loves that they do not have any tags. Its has been super cold here and getting him to wear long sleeves has been difficult. You know those cool shirts that looks like a t shirt, but has long sleeves attached to the shirt. Yep he hates them :(. I woke up super early this morning (3:30 am) with my sinuses bothering me because of this inconsistent weather we have been having. It was -17 with windchill and 60 in the same week…. Since, I couldn’t sleep, I decided to make him a shirt.
So what does this have to with hiding? Well, I am not going to hide the fact that this shirt took much longer than it should. When sewing in the middle of the night, I tend to make more mistakes. As I was clipping the sides of the shirt, I was thinking “Yay, I am almost done.” Then I started thinking, “I do not remember the sleeves looking so wide before”. I have made the Jolly Roger by Patterns for Pirates (it is on sale right too, find the coupon code here) many many times. In my drowsiness, I ignored the extremely wide sleeves. I even finished serging the sides of the shirt. Then, I went to turn up the hems and that is when I realized I had sewn the wrong sides together. Little dude, I am pretty sure does not have ginormous arms and a really teeny body. LOL! I had sewn sleeves together, as if they were the body. Oops! (
At that moment, I had to make a decision. Do I just toss this shirt to the side and cut a new one or do I bring out the seam ripper? I really loved this French Terry I received in a Sincerly Rylee Mystery Box and I wanted to have more to make my husband a matching shirt. I was also nearing the end of the audible book Sing, Unburied Sing. While I sew, I truly enjoy listening to audible books. I have been listening to the book this month as part of the PBS and New York Times Book Club my Mother in Law suggested I join, Now Red This. (Btw, its is a great book, I highly recommend it). So I brought out the seam ripper.
After ripping out the seams, I double checked my work before I was done sewing. Little Dude was not super excited about the shirt, mostly because it has long sleeves. However, after wearing the shirt he really likes it. It will come in handy as the temperatures are about to drop. He was more excited about the Hulk Shirt I made him afterwards.
Little Dude’s face lit up when he saw his new (short sleeve) shirt. In fact, he asked me if I could make him matching purple pants. Purple pants will now be added to my long list of things to make. I bought the hulk svg from Hawk Legion on Etsy and the green foil from this iron on foil vinyl sampler pack.
Quoting: Remember those plain wooden boxes I purchased from the thrift store? Well, I did paint them the marzipan milk paint last week! I meant to post them last Sunday, however we had a funeral/all day memorial on Friday, so our weekend was a little emotional. Recently, I purchased a few svg files form Thread and Grain, including this “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History” quote. Originally, I planned on having two separate quotes on each box. However, I learned a couple of things:
1. I still have a lot to learn about vinyl
2. Working with permanent vinyl and htv vinyl are two separate creatures.
For my first vinyl, the teal, I was pulling too quickly on the vinyl around the edges, then my hand accidentally fell on top of the vinyl with the extra vinyl in my hand. The permanent vinyl wanted to stick to the vinyl I had not pulled up yet. Like, really want to stick to the vinyl. I salvaged as much as I could, but I lost a lot. It still turned out usable. If you had not seen the original file, I believe no one would know something was wrong.
I do not like to give up. I see failure, as learning. Maybe I am a glutton for punishment, so I tried again. This time, I peeled the vinyl slowly and trimmed down the extra vinyl as I went. This time went much better! I love both of them. They hold my vinyl nicely. 🙂 For both of these, I used oracle 651 permanent vinyl from a 24 piece vinyl sampler pack!
Telling: Since telling you I was going to finish the boxes worked. I am going to tell you something else I would like to get done. For the week of “sew something pink” for the 52 week challenge, I have something special planned. I know planning and doing are not the same, so maybe if I tell you, it will happen!!
Do not forget to check out all the great deals on the Sewing Deals Calendar!
adorable