Back on Board

I just had a lovely 15 day visit from my parents, during which my mom singlehandedly cared for my girls, entertained them, fed them, and kept the house clean.

What did I do during that time?  Well, mostly this:

No, I'm not the one playing with the toddler in the pool, I'm the one a little further back, laid full out on the raft soaking up the sun, being completely carefree.

But I did get some sewing done as well.  The final count is:

- 2 UFOs completed
- 7 little girl dresses
- 1 big girl dress
- 3 little tops
- 1 throw pillow

Oh, and while I'm talking about my mom, this is what I gave her for Mother's Day:

My first (but not last) Buttercup Bag!  I altered it to have piping, a zipper closure, and a cell phone pocket, using this tutorial.  The tutorial helped a lot, but at the end I had Ikea Syndrome - you know, when you're left with 2 seemingly useless pieces?  I went through the tute a few times and still couldn't figure out where they were supposed to go.  Oh well, the bag looks cute and finished, so I guess they were just extras.

Edit:  I want to clarify that the tutorial I used for the alterations was separate and was not from Rae.  Her instructions were excellent, with no miscellaneous leftover pieces!  This bag is very simple to put together (it was actually the first bag I've ever made) and I highly recommend it!  

And I made a dahlia pin to spruce it up a bit.

So, now I'm trying to get used to answering to my kids' every whim again and sewing at a pace that produces about 1 dress a week instead of 7.

Happy Memorial Day to you!

More Skirt Week Info

Oh dear, what were we thinking?!  There's only a handful of skirts posted in the flickr accounts, but we would already have a hard time picking a favorite.  I guess the good news is that all of us will have a ton of gorgeous skirt inspiration when this is over!

• If you'll kindly move your gaze to the right, you'll see we've added a link to each skirt category's flickr pool in our sidebar so you can easily access them.

• When you post a skirt, remember to include a bit of info about the design/pattern/fabric/inspiration, and also a link to your blog if you'd like.  This will help us be able to copy you better in the future :)  
• Susan's edit: Adrianna isn't really kidding about the last point. The smiley face is just a distraction

• If you're participating, or would just like to spread the word, please feel free to grab a Skirt Week button for your blog from our sidebar, or you can use the picture at the top of this post.

• And be forewarned: between now and Skirt Week, we'll be grabbing some skirts at random from the flickr pools to post here.  No indication of our favorites, just some eye candy for you lovely folks.

• Prizes to be announced soon, but you'll be glad we waited, because now there are MORE!

Announcing Skirt Week with Crafterhours!

To make a long story short, we haven't had enough selfish sewing yet. Rae got us in the mood to do more, and now we need some skirts to go with our spring tops. Hey, you too?

Well, here's what we've got in mind:  Skirt Week 2010!  June 21 - 25.

You make a skirt that fits one of our categories (more info in a sec) and put it into a designated Flickr pool.  And here's the part where we are super awesome and those of you dealing with end-of-school-year/summer-vacay/moving-across-the-atlantic chaos will thank us:  You can enter any skirt you've ever made in your entire life ever.  EVER.  Aren't we SO nice?  But, you can only enter a maximum of 4.  So, yeah, maybe we're just pleasant.  Deadline for entering skirts is midnight EST, June 18, then we choose winners based on what's in the pool at that time.  And yes, we'll be awake, thanks to a pretty handy time difference.

As this is our first Skirt Week, we want to keep things nice and simple.  If it's a hit, maybe we'll do it again next year with more fanfare and regulations.  For now, we just wanna see those skirts, ladies! (or, you know, gents.  We're flexible.)

The categories are:

• Children's Skirts (use your discretion, but we're thinking pre-teen here)
• Straight (mini, pencil, long)
• Full (gathered, pleated, tiered, circle)
• A-line (um, you know, shaped like an "A".)

We figure you guys can handle your own classifications, but if we find one that is grossly mislabeled, we might help you out.  Like if you put a gypsy skirt into the "straight" category.  Oh, the horror.

And while we may be keeping things simple, we do have some pretty rad prizes!  You guys are gonna want to get in on this.  We have a prize package for each skirt category, so there will be 4 winners.  We'll give more details about the loot in a later post so you have time to prepare yourself for the awesomeness.

For this go-around, Susan and Adrianna will be the judges and just pick our favorite from each category.  Hopefully we'll still be speaking afterwards.  We tend to have slightly different opinions and enjoy expressing them vehemently.  Again, if you guys are into Skirt Week, we'll do it bigger and badder next year with some "real" judges.

Sound cool?  Are you guys on board?  Remember, any skirt you've ever made ever!  Really, this is more of a great big skirt inspiration round-up (with prizes) than a competition, so let's see what you've got!

So, to sum it up:  

Skirt Week!  June 21 - 25, 2010.

Enter up to 4 skirts.

Categories: kids, straight, full, A-line.

Deadline for entry June 18.

Adrianna & Susan pick a winner from each category.

Prizes!

And keep checking back here for further info, a round up of some handy skirt tutorials, and a run down on those fabulous prizes!

Another Spring Top!

Oh, spring tops.  Like M&Ms, potato chips, Mint Milano cookies, ok, really any junk food, I can't have just one!  Or two, as the case may be.

So, though the "week" is over, spring top fever continues.  Here is my latest.  I saw these pretty cascading petals on this shirt, but decided I needed to apply them to something cuter than a crew neck.

I used slub knit and a basic raglan sleeve shirt pattern (minus the sleeves), but cut it extra wide to allow for a cinched waistband.

Then I cut a bunch of those little blossom/four leaf clover/butterfly-ish shapes and sewed 'em on.  Some I interfaced, some I left floaty.  On the interfaced petals, I sewed a little gather in the center to give them some movement, as they were very stiff.

And now I have something cool and breezy to wear during the 300˚ days we'll soon experience!

Oh, and that drawstring?  That's a trick Susan taught me.  In case you've never heard of it either, I'll pass it on to you.  You cut a long strip of knit about an inch wide.  Then fold it in half lengthwise (so you have a long half inch strip) and serge the raw ends together, forming a tube.  The tube flips right side out fairly easily with the use of a safety pin, and then you have a perfect, thin drawstring!  It's no different from making a fabric tube on a sewing machine, but the serging stitches help give it the feeling of a cord, instead of a flat tube.

The Guests Who (We Wish) Would Never Leave

Things have been a little quieter in our bloggyworld this week. But we're alive and well.

Adrianna has her parents visiting. So while they've been doing some family vacationing and the grandparents are soaking up all the grandkid action they can, Adrianna has been sewing for a potential eventual actual factual store.  (Adrianna would like to emphasize the "potential".)

Susan has friends visiting. One of them is a preschool teacher and the other is a Speech Pathologist, and both are uh-mazing with kids AND with entertaining Susan. And the Susan camp has enlisted the help of the Adrianna camp in creating a Coffee Date Dress for one of the friends. (Uh.... thank you, Camp Adrianna!) Susan also roped the friends into making their own half-square triangle quilt, the first quilt the two have ever even thought about making. So there's been lots of cutting and sewing and positioning and sewing and laughing when the blocks don't come out quite right.

Susan has less than four weeks left here before returning to the states. People have asked us "Will you keep blogging together after Susan moves?" Um... not only does that question make us want to cry, it also makes us laugh, because at this point neither of us can imagine NOT blogging together. We've practiced having blog and design conferences on Skype, and while it's not nearly as awesome as seeing each other in person, it'll get us through.  

So, blogging is bound to have it's slow spots for the next few months, when life is anything but. 

Oh, and P and M have been rearranging Susan's stash. We've asked them to work on a tutorial, but they may be too busy to get around to it:

Kids' Cutlery Tray: A Tutorial

When Anna suggested spicing up our kitchens, this project immediately came to mind. Inspired by this, I had made one for myself a while back and hadn't gotten around to blogging about it. After months of use, I can say it's a hit at our house. The jumble of spoons, forks and knives gave me a headache every time I opened the drawer, and now K can help put her cutlery away and knows exactly where to go to find what she needs. Now that everything is organized, she seems to feel less compelled to dump everything out of the drawer once or twice a day-- I'm appreciating that, too. Because then I have to decide exactly how dirty I think the kitchen floor is at that moment and whether I feel the need to wash alllll of it again. Or just throw it all back in the drawer and call it an exercise in immunity-building.

Other things to love about this:

- the fabrics can be as plain or as exciting as you like.

- you can pull the whole thing out when you have kids over and take it to the table

- it costs very little to make

- you can choose the size that best fits your drawer

If you'd like to make one, all you need are:

- two clean, uncrumpled cereal/snack boxes 

- two coordinating fabrics, roughly twice the width and length of your boxes

- scissors

- tape

- white poster board or card stock
- glue stick
- clear contact paper

You'll want to choose one cereal box that will be the main tray, and a smaller box that fits inside of it to section it.

Make sure the larger box fits in the drawer you want to use and is also large enough for the cutlery to fit inside with some wiggle room. I cut my insert piece like so.

Cut away one face of the larger box and use tape to reinforce the edges. Trim the edges of the cut-away face so that you can use it to line the box later on. Cut a similar liner for the insert.

The next step is to cover the oustide of your trays and it serves two purposes. It provides a white background to go underneath your fabric so that you won't see packaging through it, and it adds sturdiness to the trays. I used white bristol board; you can also use card stock or poster board. Tape around all of the edges. If you feel like your cardboard is already plenty sturdy, you could use a light coat of white spray paint. 

Lay your tray onto a piece of fabric and mark the corners.

Trim the excess fabric from the corners, leaving enough of an edge to tape and/or fold.

Press the edges to create creases in the fabric at the corners. Tape one side of the corner to the tray, the other will fold over...

Like so.  Trim and tape to the bottom of the box. Repeat all the way around.

And do the same thing for the smaller tray. By placing the tray on the fabric and ironing the lines to follow, it's not hard to line it up nicely. Pinky swear.

At this point the boxes are wrapped in fabric, so we move to the liners. I took a photo of a set of K's cutlery on a light background so that I could print them at about actual size. Alternately you could go low-tech and trace around a knife, fork and spoon on cute scrap paper. Or freehand it. Endless wild and crazy possibilities.

Trim bristol board to match the size of the liners.

Cut the printed cutlery out and apply with a dab of glue stick. Laminate with clear contact paper. I used the insert tray for knives, since we don't have or use as many, and that leaves the fork and spoon areas flexible. We have more spoons than anything else.

Drop the liners in, and the insert tray in, too. Ta-da! Serious cuteness every time you open that drawer. A pop of color. (Get it? Pop Garden fabric?)

Then let your 3 3/4 year-old and a bestie try it out.

A fun sorting game.

Works just as will with two.

All done. Well, these are the pieces that were clean and coordinated. We must coordinate. At least for blogging.

Thanks, Anna, for helping me get this off my to-do list! And since I had one for myself, I happen to have a co-blogger who was not-so-subtly hinting that she needed one. May be appearing in a drawer near her soon...

Voile-ah!

Our friend Kim (the fabulous mother of Eve) approached us recently about reproducing one of her favorite tops.  Now, in case you don't remember, Kim has the most fantastic wardrobe of anybody we know, so we were immediately excited.  Somehow she can take ordinary items from H&M and Zara and make them extraordinary.  Or maybe that's just her 5'9" size 2 body.  Whatev.

After seeing some AMH voile at Susan's house, she became as hooked as we are (insert evil laugh here) and decided to make her new top with it.  Susan got to cracking making a pattern and then we all gathered at Adrianna's for sewing time!  Along with our 5 kids.  More on that later.

Here is Kim at the controls, constructing her very first garment ever!

And the finished product?  Well, we all love it.  Susan and I want one.  Kim's reaction: "Voile-ah!"

She chose "coloring garden in citrus" for the main fabric, "pastry line in magenta" for the inset, and "pastry line in saffron" for the elastic waistband casing and sleeve bias trim.  We love that pop of color on the bodice!

Oh, and how did those 5 girls entertain themselves without much parental supervision?  Like this:

Oy.

Nicey Jane & Daily Spice Apron Giveaway Winner!

Wow, 298 entries!  It seems you guys like Heather Bailey as much as we do!  And the winner is....

And #229 is:

Congratulations Juliette!  We'd love to see what you make with your gorgeous new fabric & pattern!

It Was My Idea. But It Wasn't.

Recently I was hungry. Does that ever happen to you? That bizarre feeling in your belly and the persistent thought... I.... must... eat... something. (No, seriously, I've spent way too much time thinking about how much easier life would be if I just didn't have to eat. I mean, I'm not trying to skate into a conversation about eating disorders or anything, I'm just saying I hate interrupting what I'm working on to prepare food.)

So I was thinking about a grilled cheese sandwich, because I love the crunchy, buttery grilled bread... but I didn't want the cheese so much. I wanted something sweet. And then the best idea of my WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE came to me. GRILLED PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY.

Except I was SO not the first person to think of it. As usual.

But I was soothed by the fact that it sure was yummy.

And that's the end of my story. Back to crafting.

Spring Top Week Conclusion

Ok, I just had a moment.  Like, that moment in Love Actually when Laura Linney is so excited that her biggest crush just kissed her that she has to excuse herself for a moment, walk around the corner, and silently jump up and down and wave her fists in the air.  It would've been more of a Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch, shouting his excitement for all to hear moment, but the kids are napping.

I guess Susan got here first and told you guys that I won for reader's choice best top for Spring Top Week! And she predicted I would say something to the effect of "I NEVER thought this could happen!"  Well, she's wrong. I totally expected it. 

Ok, no seriously, I DID NOT expect this at all!  Truly a wonderful surprise.  Even going to bed last night I was fairly sure I would see Flossie Teacake's gorgeous top surpassing mine by miles. 

Can I just share a little story of how that top even made it in to Spring Top Week?  Susan came over and pretty much ordered me to go put it on so she could take some pictures.  I was planning on blogging about it eventually, but I really did not feel motivated to enter it.  I just thought it was kind of simple and with the dark solid color, not really "springy".  Plus, I had been through the flickr pool and thought there was no point.  So, I go back to my bedroom to comply and I guess she wondered what was taking me so long so she came back and found me bent into the hamper, throwing item after dirty item over my head in an attempt to locate it.  Turns out, my lovely husband had washed it and it was laying flat to dry in the laundry room.  So, no worries, you didn't vote for the dirty hamper shirt.

But that shows you how close I came to not entering it.  Can you imagine?  Does this give you any motivation for future endeavors?  I hope so, because it definitely gave me a little boost to not be so critical of my creations and to say "what the heck" more often.  And Susan probably got the best deal of all of us, because now she gets to say "I TOLD YOU SO" like a broken record.

And I am super excited about the prizes as well, I mean, who wouldn't be?!  Especially when I saw I got the voile.  I GOT THE VOILE!!  (there, a little Tom-esque shouting for you)  But can I tell you what I am most excited about?  Being a judge next year!!  I really hope Rae continues that tradition, because how much fun would that be?!

A million thanks, Rae.  Both for holding this fun competition and giving us all a reason to do some selfish sewing.  From seeing all the entries in the flickr group, I can tell that everybody left this competition with a prize! 

(ok, was that cheesy?  Yeah, that was kinda cheesy.  But seriously, they were all beautiful tops, and I really do think that warrants a little "everyone is a winner" cheesiness.  Just nod your head and smile.)

ps: Still time to enter our giveaway for some beautiful Heather Bailey fabric!  We'll pick a winner this Friday!

I Got Here First

I expect Adrianna will be coming by momentarily to say something to the effect of I-really-did-not-think-I-could-possibly-ever-win because seriously she did not think it was possible, but I got to the blog first to say: "Hoooooooooooray, Adrianna! Congratulations!"  Sorry, K's got me on an I-got-there-first kick. We both need to stop that.

Have We Got a Giveaway For You! {Giveaway Now Closed}

Oh gracious, we're so jealous of our readers.  I hope you're sitting down and have used the bathroom recently.

Above All Fabric is my favorite online fabric shop.  It's always my first go-to place when I have something particular in mind.  Why, you ask?  Let me tell you.

First, the prices are great no matter what.  BUT if you become a fan on facebook or subscribe to the blog, you'll frequently become the happy recipient of a discount code or coupon.  And on top of that, there are always sales going on for one thing or another (like the time she put ALL her VOILE on sale just to lure me in like the temptress she is, but that's a story for another time).

On top of all those price breaks, there are discount breaks for buying in bulk, and you don't have to do anything to get them!  Starting at 3 yards and up, you will automatically receive a discount at checkout.  How cool is that?

AND IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, can I tell you about the rewards points?  Those get me every time.  For each purchase you make, you get 5% of your order back to spend on a future purchase!  And last time I ordered, she had bumped it up to 10%, just for the heck of it!  WHAT?!  You have to create an account to get award points, and it is totally worth it.  I got $5 off my last order.  That's like a free yard of fabric...

...if you buy one from her clearance section!  She has a very expansive section of clearance fabrics, and you can search by percentage off too.  In fact, the entire site is very user-friendly, offering multiple ways to browse and search.

Oh, and $5 flat rate shipping.  Enough said.

So, here's the exciting part (as if all that wasn't exciting enough!) Melanie of Above All Fabric is giving our very lucky readers the opportunity to win THIS:

That's a stack of Heather Bailey Nicey Jane fat quarters PLUS a Daily Spice Halter Apron Pattern!  Ooooh, lucky you! (the notions are just for decoration)

We're going to make this giveaway easy.  Just go to Above All Fabric and leave a comment here telling us your favorite Nicey Jane print and you're entered!  One comment per person, please!

edit: This giveaway IS open internationally!  Please leave an email address in your comment so we know how to contact you!

Good luck!

Mother's Day Techie Craft: By Susan's Husband

Hi there. It's Susan. But I'm only saying "Hi" and introducing you to my husband because for Mother's Day this year he's giving me the day off. From blogging. We haven't negotiated the day off from kids/kitchen/cleaning yet. But this sounds like a nice start to me! Warning: The below gets a little tech-y, but the end result has been so so so helpful (read: a few quiet moments to collect my thoughts) that I think it's worth posting about. Have a tech-y friend? Today is a GREAT day to ask for a favor! (Happy Mother's Day!)

Latee-dah, latee-dee...Let's see here, 'Man's kilt into Girl's skort'? No... 'Boy's torte into Mom's skort'? Nah...'Pocket Socket'? Probably a no-go.

Oh, hello there! S and A are out right now and I am minding the Crafterhours Operations and Command Center. A month or so ago, I offered to watch the store so these tireless mothers could get some much needed time off.  But now that I am here...not really all that sure what to fill all this white space with.  Not all that crafty me own-self and not sure that sarcasm has the widespread visual appeal that I think it should. Oh, what to do, what to do?

What might be more interesting than watching me shove needles into my fingers and wrapping a project in duct tape and hot glue (maybe I should say Twill Tape and Mod Podge here) is a small techie craft project I have collected from the hard work of a few others and a lot of time on the internet. I started on this hunt after seeing S's iPhone crash onto a table a few too many times in the hands of our otherwise wonderful toddler. I had to find a way to entertain this young Mythbuster while extending the life of the pricey smartphone. Conveniently enough, the solution also overlapped with another project- protect and extend the life of our kids' DVD collection from K, who thinks DVDs are frisbees. I'll offer one solution that has many potential variations and you're free to create and branch out on your own, of course.

What you'll need is one Sandisk Sansa Fuze Mp3 player; your existing DVD collection, and two free software programs that you can download. Ok, why the Fuze? Because it is cheap cheap and a great poor-man's alternative to the iPod. I love iPod and this isn't a post about it in any way (I am sparing you all from a great pro/con debate on this subject with only the highest level of applied self-discipline). The Fuze does audio, video (bingo!), FM, voice recording, and a few other things. Don't bother buying the full price, brand new version. There are a ton of places that you can get one refurbished. It comes in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB versions as well as several colors. It works with Mac, PC, and Linux, (although I can only speak to this conversion process for PC right now). It also takes a micro-SD card, so you can bump up the capacity on the cheap too. A refurb 4GB will run you around $30-40 from a site like Newegg.com.  So, you can set up an 8GB Fuze with an 8GB micro-SD card for 16GB total memory for a total cost of around $50 (Take that iPod!  Sorry, I slipped).  We have purchased several of them and all the ones we have received are like new. So, get one and update the firmware when it arrives in your hot little hands. If you order a refurbished one like ours, here's how it arrives:

And here's what's in the box (the Mp3 player, USB cable, headphones):

And here's something you can put on it. It's a still from the movie about how Susan makes dresses. Yes, the birds help her. That's her secret.

But back to the point of this post. While you are waiting for your Fuze to arrive, download DVDShrink (my suggestion, although there are many others like DVD-Decrypter, Handbrake, and more). These programs are designed to allow you to make a legal copy of a DVD that you have purchased for your own personal use (no mass copying or distribution of copied DVD is encouraged or legal!!) DVDShrink is an older program and you may run into issues with some newer DVDs, but I continue to have good success ripping DVDs that I own using this program.  Dvdshrink has information about the program, but you cannot actually download it from there (go figure... so, try Filehippo).

The next program you need is called Video4Fuze (Get it here).  This is a program that some Fuze-maniacs developed to make the whole video conversion process easy-peasy for this player, as the Sansa media converter program is really not all that user-friendly. Once you have your DVDShrinked copy of your DVD, use Video4Fuze to convert the digital copy to a Fuze-ready format. Video4Fuze takes a few hours to convert the file and you don't have a whole lot of options with it, but it is a fairly straightforward process. Expect that it will take an hour or more to convert, but you can set it to run through several videos and let it run overnight.

Once your files have been ripped and converted, you are good to go, simply drag and drop your converted file onto your Fuze. Once you disconnect the Fuze from your computer, it will refresh the media and you should see your videos appear in your media list. So, there you go. All that's left for you to do at this point is to find a decent set of headphones that your little one can live with. The ones that come with the Fuze are decent, but not so great for little ears.  Another good link to know about is the Sansa forums which has a ton of useful official and community-provided information to help you on your way with the Fuze.

Mission Accomplished! You should now have low-cost, high gain handheld music and video player for your little one. You've also solved that “Which movie are we going to watch?” dilema if you have two or more kids quarreling over the DVD player in the car or airplane...and if you are like me, maybe you have one for yourself too. I mean, Susan Cinderella looked so good on it, I knew Braveheart had to be pretty cool too, right? Besides, I need to protect my iPod from myself sometimes too. Ok, I am a geek. At this point, I'm probably not saying anything you haven't already figured out. So I'll leave you with this self-portrait. Happy Mother's Day!

P.S. Susan would like me to add that if black, red, blue or silver aren't your colors, you could always go this route.