{heart}

On the average day I am not much of a heart fan but yesterday I came across something that was too cute, even if it was a heart, I couldn't not make it.


A little heart-button pin.

Blast if I can find it again! I'll keep looking, and when I find it I'll come back and link to it.

**UPDATE**
FOUND IT! The tutorial can be found here.

Christmas Devotional

I was asked to make up a simple invitation for a rebroadcast of a Christmas Devotional.

Taking a couple hours I was able to come up with this:

I like how it turned out. I drew everything myself except the words devotional and the written information at the bottom. I love doing things like this on the computer, I just wish I had more time on my hands to play around with things and learn more.

9 Years

Yesterday was nine years since my husband and I got hitched.
He's the best thing that has happened to me.

Case and point, my anniversary gift.

We hadn't talked about it but with recently moving, doing the basement, and heaps of other things I figured we'd sort of lay low this year. Next year is a given that we're going all out, but nine, low key isn't a bad thing. So I did nothing for my husband. Before anyone gets all freaky about this, he really is alright with this, you'd have to know him to understand.

But, instead of laying low he went all out. Spoiled me. His words actually, and I won't say he's wrong. He really did spoil me.

First off, he got me two books I have wanted for a bit.

Those alone would have been beyond what I could have asked for and I was thrilled with them, but still, there's was more. It's wasn't sparkly. It wasn't a romantic night out. It was perfect.

My husband went out and got me my own domain name! www.sweetlimes.com is now all mine. This man is beyond wonderful. How long has he known I've wanted my own web page? Years. At first it was just to play with but more recently I have wanted one for very specific things. He has listened to me talk and dream and he took it all to heart and got me a well thought out gift. Besides this it shows me that he believes in me, that he wants me to go for my dreams, and that he's beside me through it all. Now that alone is the best gift I could ask for, his belief in me and my dreams. So, we are going to work on it a bit over the holidays. My goal is to have the blog portion of it up and running for January 1, 2010! When it is up and running I will be making an announcement here so those of you who are interested can follow me over there. That will be my home from here on in.

In time more will be happening there, but that you will have to wait to find out about.

Oh, and for those of you who are interested in seeing my sewing room, see, I can take a hint when you drop them in comments ;). I'm not leaving you in the dark to torture you. We are out one light in there, and though I can make it work when I am sewing, it does not work at all when it comes to taking pictures. A light will be put in while my husband is off work, so pictures will be coming, I promise!

Rag Stocking ~ Tutorial

Last year it just so happened I posted my first ever tutorial. It happened to be a stocking I made, one for each of my kids. Of course that was on my other blog, which now does not exist. One of the rare people who followed me over here asked about it the other day. Just so happens that I haven't deleted my other blog yet, so I decided I'd bring over the two tutorials I did over there so they can still be used by anyone who is interested.

I was looking for a great way to get in the Christmas spirit and this is it. My Christmas gift from me to you. My very first tutorial (and who knows, maybe my only). You're laughing aren't you? Because really, what it it that I can teach you? How about a sweet little stocking?

While I was making this basic rag quilt for my little man's Christmas present I had a little flash of an idea. It was only the best stocking ever! I'm not even kidding when I say I thought this bad boy up all on my own. I may not be the first or only person in the world to think this up, but I promise I didn't see this anywhere else before I made it up.

So as I made it I took some pictures in hopes that if and when it turned out I'd be able to show you how to make some for your own family. What? No time? What are you talking about? Santa comes in 17 days and that's plenty of time to whip up one or two of these. I've made two, now I just have to make one for my angel baby and we're set. Besides, if you are anything like me you've got TONS of scraps sitting around just begging to be made into something adorable. This is it.

What you'll need:
-fabric that frays easily. For this I used scrap denim and flannel I had laying about.
-matching thread (matched to the outside fabric - in my case the denim)
-sewing machine
-scissors
-fabric pen or pencil

First, make a template of your stocking and lay it out. I just cut mine out of newspaper.

Cut your fabric into squares. I chose 5x5 for mine, but you can do which ever size you want. Match up the squares WRONG sides together, I put one denim and one flannel together. Take these squares and lay them out so your stocking pattern is well covered.


Next, choose one of those lovely squares you've made. This one we will be putting an initial on. Keep in mind we will want it far enough from the sides that when the sock is trimmed it won't be cut.

On the computer print a large letter that will be 1inch x 1inch smaller than your squares. Mine was 4x4 since my squares were 5x5. Cut your letter out. If you so dare (read: if your handwriting or artistic skills are better than mine) you could free hand this step.


Now take this square and separate it from it's backing square. Leaving the backing square on the table with the rest of the stocking squares choose a scrap of fabric that you want to show through your letter when it is cut out. With these two layers of fabric ONLY sew around the letter with a basic stitch so it looks like this.

Now ever so carefully cut a little snip through the TOP LAYER only. Continue to cut out the basic shape of the letter, leaving a small bit left. Don't worry about how perfect, or imperfect it looks.


Now flip it over and trim the back fabric to remove some of the bulk.


Put this square back with the lonely partner it left behind at the table.

You will now start sewing your squares together. I did mine in small groups of squares that looked like they fit together and worked from there. Try to do it in strips or blocks to make your life a little easier and to avoid ripping out seams.

And when you are doing this you don't have to worry too much about back stitching as things sort of just secure themselves together as we work along.


You will want your squares to look like this on the back when they are sewn:


And like this on the front:


I used the edge of my pressure foot as a marker for the seam, which is about 1/4 inch. We want the raw edges to be on the front of the stocking. I promise.


When it is all together the front of our stocking should look like this:


Now just follow the same steps (minus the letter) for the back portion of your stocking, keeping in mind that you'll want the toe to point the opposite way so the two sides can be sew together later with the inside pieces facing together.


Now that we have a front and a back we'll want to bring out our trusty tracing pencil again. Using the original shape you used as a pattern to lay the squares on, trace around it straight on the fabric and cut them out.


Do a straight stitch across the tops of both the stocking pieces (about a 1/4 inch once again). You'll want to back stitch this time.


When done pin the two halves of the stocking together and sew 1/4 inch from one side of the stocking to the other, leaving the top open where you stitched in the previous step.


This is what your basic stocking will look like. Hideous isn't it? It get's better, I promise.


Now sit down with your favorite movie or TV show and start to snip one all the seams you just created keeping a close eye on the stitch because you don't want to actually cut through the stitches.

When you are done toss it in the washer and dryer (sometimes it needs it more than once), this will cause the raw edges you created on the outside of the stocking to fray. You now have the most adorable stocking out there for you or your little ones.


And don't forget to wipe down the sides of your washing machine after. Linties everywhere!

Hope someone gets a little use out of this now that I've reposted it.

Details Details

Sorry for the delay on announcing the winner of the giveaway. It seems there are about a trillion people who have kids my age out there wanting a sweet shirt for their girl. Awesome. Only one can win though, and now that I am back from the dentist and not smiling because my mouth feels insanely strange I will share with you that BRENDA of "I don't have a blog" is the winner here folks. I'll be emailing her and sending it out promptly. The rest of you can hope she doesn't respond so I'll have to pick a runner up.

But since the announcement of a winner doesn't really tickle MY fancy I thought I'd share something else with you.

The first Christmas present to exit the NEW SEWING ROOM.

I'm so excited to show you because I think I nailed it!

My favorite BIL is going to find this under the tree for him. Remember me telling you about how I wanted to make this for him here? Yah, well, it turned out better than I had even hoped!


It's a 18"x18" pillow for resting his sleepy noggin on, or tossing at the big screen if the players are stinking, or whatever it is bachelors do with pillows. I say that because I've never been in a house owned by a single man that HAD throw pillows. Maybe I'll need to tell him what it is. Hmmm.

One thing that I love about this pillow is the cording on this bad boy. It's all about details (that will most likely escape the beloved BIL). At first I wasn't going to put it on, but I just wanted to try it out, so I did. I made the bias, which sounds mentally exhausting, but isn't quite as hard as I thought it would be, and made the cording so it would match perfectly. I'm glad I did as I think it takes it from looking homemade to looking FANTASTIC!


Of course I had to nail the flaming C on it too. Mediocre just won't do when I know he has heaps of friends around all the time. If it was ugly it would be embarrassing for me because he's the type to tell everyone I made it (out of sheer pride on his part, he thinks I'm pretty awesome). I showed it to a girlfriend today who thought I cut it from a Flames t-shirt to make it, so I take it as a compliment that it looks that good. I did make the C though, it was probably the most difficult part of the entire pillow, and even that wasn't too bad.


Interesting though. While I was in the fabric store getting the material for this a woman in line asked me what I was making. Turns out she wanted to do something for a son or someone like that similar to what I was doing but because she couldn't not find material with his favorite hockey team logo on it she decided not to. What's with my head? Never in a millisecond did it cross my mind to even look for material with this logo on it.

Either way, I've got one present down, and I do think he'll love it. My husband was raving about it when he saw it so I think that is a sign of things to come.

On a totally different note I have to say I got a past issue of Burda which I ordered a little while ago. In Swedish. I don't know about you, but I know that I don't speak a SINGLE word in Swedish. This means a phone call is needing to take place because it's just not going to happen (me sewing from Swedish instructions). I'm so bummed. I was looking forward to the magazine soooo much and was thinking of locking myself in my sewing room with it this weekend. Obviously that isn't going to happen. Divine intervention perhaps?

Meant to Be

Here for the Giveaway?
You'll want to click over here.

Dragging a girlfriend out to THE local Christmas craft market around here was absolute heaven. Not sure that she and her wallet are on talking terms because of how much she picked up. Me, I hmmm'ed and haaa'ed over some little trees for the longest time and ended up talking myself out of them.

If there is a hidden talent I do have it's taking myself out of buying just about anything. Most of the time it's a grand talent to behold. I don't know about you, but I sure don't own anything I don't really want. BUT, once in a very blue moon I regret having it.

For the upcoming week I thought and thought and thought of those lovely trees I had left behind. I even kicked myself in the rear for not picking them up. It was a sad, sad week. How I wanted those little trees.

The following weekend we went out for more crafty goodness (to the market where I sold my poppy) and guess what I saw there?


My sweet little trees!
There they were.
They were waiting for me.

I bought them. It was meant to be. Now they sit on my mantel where I can gaze upon their greatness at any time during the day. I'm so glad I was given a second chance to snag these beauties.

Up For Grabs

I thought long and hard about this.
A giveaway.
What should it be?

I'm in the middle of moving into a new sewing room, and Christmas sewing, and the list goes on and on (as it does with the rest of you I'm sure), so it had to be simple. But I didn't want simple to mean boring or dull.

So I made up a little top.

And wrangled up a extremely cooperative model. I am telling you, this girl can strike a pose!

This shirt is made with 100% cotton.
I'd say it's about a size 3 or 4.

Soft buttery yellow background with red flowers, salmon coloured centers, and brown stemming.

Measures roughly 11.5 inches from armpit to armpit.
Just over 14 inches in length.
Because of the elastic gathering across the chest and shoulders it has TONS of give and it meant to be worn loose.

To show how this shirt would look great on any rug-rat in your life I found model number two to do a little demonstration as well. Considering this fellow usually wears a neck tie, I'd say he gets dolled up pretty good. No?

That being said, I am not encouraging you in any way to throw this on your son and send him off to the park to play.

I have learned a very important lesson. Models of the non-moving variety are more cooperative than those that run by themselves.

Leave a comment about which rug-rat in your life you'd like to see wearing this and which part of the globe you come from, I will ship internationally. I'll be choosing a winner at the end of the week.
**sorry, stuffed animal not included, my kids would kill me if I shipped these guys off.**

And for those of you who hang around these parts frequently, I will be posting pictures of my sewing room soon. It will be a work in progress for a little while, but I'll be in there sewing TONIGHT for the first time. I'm beyond thrilled.