Yup, she's nesting

4 weeks and some change til my due date and I can't seem to help but nest.

My latest project: these throw pillows.

When we first got married our bedding set was rust colored and we had a few throw pillows. When the comforter fell apart at the seams, we kept the pillows, which I always intended to cover.

Now with a baby coming, who will not sit on a couch by himself for years and will never notice that I have beautiful throw pillows, I decided that the pillows MUST be covered now.

The first pattern I made up myself and it resembles and envelope on the back... one I had to hand stitch so that the pillow inside is preserved.

For the second pillowcase though, I looked online (mostly pinterest) and found a better design. I had to modify the sizes based on my pillow and the pieces of scraps I had, but the basic design is here:
http://cleverbetty.blogspot.com/2013/03/beginner-sewing-tutorial-simple-pillow.html

Like last time, I'm relearning the importance of ironing and pinning. And also, my messy first pillow and awesome second pillow look exactly the same from the front.

If the Internet has taught me anything, its that I can do anything!

Perhaps I should be more specific.  It was pinterest that convinced me, and I'm pretty sure it's not just me.

Ladies of the world, what are we doing to ourselves?  At every party I've been to recently, at least one person brought a (ridiculously amazing) recipe they found on pinterest.  A friend once said that the biggest compliment she'd recieved was when someone walked in and said, "Your house looks like my pinterst boards!"

Don't misunderstand, I am not mocking. I was completely jealous when she told me that.  I too have shared my pinterest recipes and homemade laundry detergent tricks. What began as a craft box is now a room with piles of fabric and half started crafts.  And for some reason, I thought making a slipcover, as a beginner seamstress, without a pattern, would be easy.

I'm about 6 hours into this slipcover project, and the most important lesson I've learned is to stop and put it away when I start to get frustrated.  This, I'm sure, has saved me from throwing fabric and/or scissors out a window... If I can ever finish it, I'm going to feel like the Domestic Queen.  But for now, I'm going to carefully put this fabric away and back away from the sewing machine.

Curtains!

I used to have this beautiful makeshift slipcover which I made with the help of the ever creative Amanda.

Slipcover:













Amanda:










but then I got a jack russell terrier named Jazz and she puked on it and the ripped it up. :(

Jazz not noticing how sad she made me:










So I am attempting to make a new slipcover, but in the mean time, I salvaged what I could of the fabric, plus the scraps I had leftover initially and I made curtains! (and maybe pillows!)

Here are the finished curtains:









The curtains were really easy. I had the clips, so I just sewed one very large rectangle. (I actually wish I had just a tiny bit more fabric so I could have made them more bunchy, but you gotta live with what you've got.)

Christmas Gifts Part 2: Aprons

The other craft I attempted to do for Christmas this year was this "One Hour Apron".

One hour my foot.

I have attempted to sew in the past. My mom has taught me enough that i could sew a button back on by hand... and I made a dress in High School...

Here are the things I learned

1. Patterns written by people who know how to sew, are usually written FOR people who know how to sew. Not being one of these people proved to be a problem.

2. Pinning is your friend. Pin EVERYTHING. Thoroughly. I pulled apart these aprons dozens of times, because fabric slipped, bunched, or otherwise moved while sewing.

3. Sewing is the smallest part of sewing. Most of it is cutting, ironing, pinning, scratching your head, ironing again, re-pinning... all for a glorious 15 seconds of pushing the pedal on the sewing machine. Then you're back to the squinting, scratching, pinning and ironing again.

4. Don't be fooled by the above fact. Go slow for all that is good and right in this world and do all the ironing and pinning and squinting, and even basting before you stitch. Or else, you too can pull everything out over and over and over and over again.

In the end, I learned a lot, and I still have to finish one stinking stitch on my sister's apron. (Mom has had me pull that single stitch out at least 10 times.) But I ended up with 3 nice looking aprons and I might even attempt to sew something again in the future. Well... maybe.