Notepad Blues

First project up is the notepads for the games at the baby shower.  I dug through my all my scrapbook paper stacks/slabs, ribbons, buttons, brads,  stickers and crafting supplies looking for baby boy themed embellishments and prints.  I was very surprised how many little things I accumulated over the years in blues, greens and yellows.  I still had to do some shopping because I did not have everything I needed for all my projects, but it was a good start.  I grabbed some empty photo boxes and gathered it all together in one place for easy use and transported it downstairs to my huge granite island where I like to work on my projects when my cutting/project island, in my studio, is busy with fabric projects, which it is at the moment.

Work began on the notepads we will give out to each guest so they can participate in some quick and easy games. I am not always neat when I am in the creative process but I do clean up once I know what direction my creativity is going.

Everything is cut and ready to assemble using some rectangle sheets of scrapbook paper, printed tags, ribbon, a small round punch and several shades of blue colored copy paper.

Here are some of the notepads all finished and ready for our guests, aren’t they adorable!

Thanks for letting me share my Notepad Blues with you, right behind it are some darling flower pens, look for those in my next post.

See you soon.

Laurette

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Where I Sew

Recently on the Pink Chalk Studio Blog, by Kathy Mack, she began a month long virtual studio tour sharing a peek at the sewing studios of some of her favorite designers and sewing enthusiasts, real spaces where real people sew. We, her readers, were also invited to share our studios on her blog mosaic, what a fantastic idea.  I jumped on board with the help of my graphic designer, from A Jeweled Design, who figured out how to link the photo directly to the blog page, the photo originated from, to the Pink Chalk Studio blog. She then added the Pink Chalk “Where I Sew” icon to my blog post pages, in the side bar right below the sites I follow, so you can click on the icon and go directly to Kathy’s virtual tour page and see my studio photo, click on that and you get my blog page for that post. I highly recommend you also click on all the studio photos and enjoy some really wonderful creative spaces.  Since the photo from my studio only featured one area, I decided to do a virtual tour of my own showing you where I create, a couple of the photos are a bit dark because of the three windows, which pour in sunlight and make it tough to photograph, while other areas are a bit tricky to get a decent shot, hang in there with me, you will get the overall idea.  Here we go.

This is the photo submitted to the Pink Chalk Studio Blog which happens to be the one of my fabric storage walls, let’s start the tour here.

We move along to the adjoining corner of the room featuring my cutting table.

Down the window walls is where I keep my paper crafting and jewelry making supplies, it also houses my stereo, iPod, DVD player and flat screen TV.

This is my sewing counter wall which sits directly across from the fabric cubbie wall.  It has 8’ of counter space allowing for two sewing machines or one machine and a crafting area, which is usually the case, unless I am giving sewing lessons and need to put out another sewing machine, I have four of them. There are two small design boards over each area along with some of my dress form collection and couture dress photos.  Above the work stations there is another set of cubes which hold fabrics, notions and more of my couture dress forms.

My fitting corner has 3 mirrors at several heights allowing me to see a garment from several angles, a real must when fitting a garment alone.

Last but not least are the huge white closet doors opposite the windows, these are my inspiration walls with couture photos, a mirror and lots of creative mood boards. I left one of the three doors white to use as a design wall and to photograph projects on. (Not shown here)

Thanks for letting me share the virtual tour of Where I Sew with you, I hope you enjoyed it and it inspires your to find a creative space of your own, no matter what size space you have to work with.  If you already have a place you enjoy sewing or crafting in I would love to see it and share it with my readers, just e-mail me a photo and what kind of things you create in there and I will post it on my blog. It does not have to be a large room like mine, it can be your dinning room table or a closet, I can’t wait to see it, send it on over.

See you soon

Laurette

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Happy 4th Of July

I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful and spectacular 4^Th of July!!

(Photo compliments of Jolene Burt of A Jewel'd Design)

I know I am a bit behind, things are really ramping up with so many projects and house prep for the baby shower in less then two weeks.  I have been out shopping for pieces for my projects, which I started a few days ago, not to mention the deep cleaning and all the sewing of the baby gifts for my new grand baby.  You are going to be seeing quite a few of the fun projects as I finish them, check daily.  For those of you attending the baby shower just act surprised and fuss over them like you have never seen them before. (Giggles!)  Anyway… I am off and running but wanted to share a cute patriotic centerpiece for the dinner table, you can put it into your creative file for next year’s decorations.

This centerpiece starts out using a plastic hat with a wide brim wrapped in a red band with some patriotic stickers placed in the middle of the band.  I glued in a Styrofoam block and then covered it with red crinkle paper shred. Next I punched in some flag pinwheels and two mini American Flags. It really brightened up the table when I added a red table cloth and some red, white and blue fabric as a runner, all set and ready to party.

Thanks for letting me share my patriotic centerpiece with you; this is double post Monday so look for a second post right behind this one with more to follow all week long.

See you soon.

Laurette

Rock'n Garden

I had no idea I was going to be away from my blog for so long, this spring and summer have been full of events, projects and entertaining almost non-stop, keeping me pretty tied up and unable to write about all the fun we are having. I can’t remember when we have been so busy at this time of the year. Because I was gone so long I thought I should start sharing some of the projects we have been working on. 

This weekend’s project was in the backyard re-working some of the existing landscaping.  The yard was once a real showcase with lots of expensive designer landscaping all around the whole yard, because it was empty for over a year just about every area suffered neglect. Space by space we have been re-working and re-using as many of the existing plants and landscaping materials as possible.  There were a ton of river rocks all over, which had once been artfully placed to show off each specific area, little by little we dug up the rocks and repositioned them so they could be seen instead of being buried in mud and debris.  After two years of backbreaking labor we just had one area left to complete.  It was the area hit hardest with flooding whenever it rained and the gutter ran too fast, the water backed up into the lawn and the garage.  The soil in the rock beds had built up with sediment and leaves over time, creating a back up not allowing the water to drain, which meant it was a big project, it went to the bottom of the list until we had the time to fix it properly.  It was time to complete the landscape and eliminate the flooding; we are having the baby shower in two weeks and we want to have the party outside on the patio, weather permitting.

Stage 1: Work in progress

After:

For some strange reason the rocks had been originally placed up by the plants with a huge open area of dirt between the bender board and the green plants. We thought maybe there had once been rocks there but had no way of knowing so we did some digging and found quite a bit of rock under the mud.  We dug them out and washed each of them off then re-positioned them next to the bender board forming a nice little river rock boundary for the water to run over during the rains.  Once we had the rock in place we finished up by adding Scott’s Nature Scape in Sierra Red, very pretty creating a nice contrast with the red up against the rocks and all the greenery.

This was the area which created the build up of soil, leaves and eventually excess water when it rained.  We had to do a lot of digging to find the rocks under the sediment which we removed by digging out the extra soil and rocks then putting each stone back one by one.

Everything is back in place, all the rocks were cleaned up as well as the planting beds which got more of the Sierra Red bark to add contrast and cut down on weeds.  This project took seven hours of tedious, backbreaking work over a two day stretch to complete.  My husband and I were thrilled to be done and very happy with the final results, I don’t think we will be doing anymore bending over or digging in the next few weeks or until our backs recover. Our landscaping projects are complete, at least for this year; next up is my patio makeover which I hope to get finished by the baby shower, fingers crossed.

Thanks for letting me share our Rock’n Garden with you; I hope you enjoyed the last of the landscaping projects for this year, next spring we hope to be refinishing the patio pergola and moving onto some larger backyard projects.  I am not sure what else I will be sharing with you since the baby shower is coming up in a couple of weeks, I hope to have time to show you some of the projects we are working on for that, including some yummy snacks for the ladies.

See you soon,

Laurette

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Sweatshirt To Jeweled Jacket - Tutorial

One of the creative things I like to do is take old or unused clothing and re-purpose them into beautiful new garments or decorative items.  The most recent upcycling project was an olive green sweatshirt which I loved the color of but not the fit, it was brand new and never worn; I kept moving it from house to house thinking I would do something with it someday. After much debate I finally settled on transforming the ordinary sweatshirt into a stunning short jacket for fall.  For those of you who sew, this is a great project you can do with just about any sweater or shirt with just a few tweaks, follow along with my tutorial and you will be all set to make one of your own.

Pictured is the sweatshirt, I am going to makeover, in its original form. The first thing I did was to take my dressmakers chalk and draw a line down the middle of the shirt, measuring from each side to the center until I got it even. Once the line was drawn I cut a nice straight line down the middle to create the jacket opening, all set and ready to stitch up once I finished cutting off all the unnecessary parts.

I really did not like the cuffs on the sleeves due to the fact they were very wide and tight, they were totally uncomfortable. Once I had them measured for the new sleeve length, I cut off the cuffs and began pinning up a new hem.

I moved onto the bottom of the shirt measuring and very carefully cutting off the bottom band of the sweatshirt.  It was a really well made knit band with a fine tight weave which I set aside to use later in an unusual, surprising way.

Note:  I like to do all my cutting and pinning at once, then go to my sewing machine instead of popping up and down every five minutes, it saves a lot of time and moves the project along quickly.

The first thing I did was to start stitching the hem of my new jacket, I decided on three layers of stitching to make it decorative instead of just a simple ¼” seam.  Because the fabric is knit the edges did not need to be folded under or any kind of finishing stitches on the raw edges.  I sewed each set of stitches ¼” apart for a nice uniform look, I chose a double row of stitches for the cuff finish.  Once the bottom hem was completed I moved onto stitching up a small placket down the front of the jacket, just a single row of stitches since I had other plans for the opening.

It was finally time for the neck opening, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it, and I had a lot of ideas which took me forever to settle on one design. As soon as I cut off the band from the bottom of the shirt I knew right away I was going to use it on the neck to change the lines.  I draped it across one shoulder which I liked, then I considered evenly sewing it around the neck and using the long ends to make a self tie or bow, my final choice was to lay it on collar style which felt more like the jacket I originally had in mind.

This was the tricky part, getting the band around the neck without causing a lot of stretching and ruining the shape of the jacket.  I chose to leave the original collar intact in case I wanted to alter it again in the future.  When I removed the banding from the bottom of the shirt I cut about two inches away from the original hem seam so I would have extra fabric to work with, it turned out to be a good choice.  I was able to place the neck edge up against the existing band hem seam and pin it just below the old collar hem, I used a good number of pins to make sure everything stayed in place while I stitched it up. Stitching along the original collar line would allow for the new collar to lay down over the old one concealing it and giving the whole area more stability and no sagging or stretching.  I could have added some stitching in the ditch or other stabilizing stitches but I wanted to be able to remove the collar at some point in time without a lot of fuss.

Before:

After:

My olive green fall jacket it complete with one photo showing it without the jewels running down the front and the second photo showing the gems, I hand sewed into place, sparkling in the light giving the illusion of the crystal jewels being larger then they are and slightly uneven.  I can assure you they are evenly spaced with hook and eye closures just behind the stones.  Plain sweatshirt turned custom trendy jeweled jacket without a trip to the designer showrooms. How much fun is that!

Thanks for letting me share my jeweled jacket makeover, I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and you are inspired to make one of your own.  Did I mention the sweatshirt was part of a set, can you guess what I am going to make out of the poorly fitting sweatpants?  I guess you will have to watch for that makeover to appear in a future post, it is already in progress.

See you soon.

Laurette

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