Thursday, June 30, 2011

About That Crib Bumper

Not all that long ago Adrianna, Stacey and I blogged about the things we made for our friend Kyra's new baby girl. Collectively we made the nursery bedding. When Adrianna, Kyra and I were able to get together last week it was also the first time that Adrianna had been able to see everything in place. Before I left the get-together I ran back to the room to make sure the quilt Adrianna made was still there. I was expecting it'd walk as soon as she got her chance. Surprisingly, the quilt was unmoved.

My portion of the deal was the crib bumper. At the time I couldn't find a tutorial that made sense to me on line so I made up what worked for me. Here's an image from the original post:

Since that tutorial there have been questions about those little end loops and how they work. I grabbed a quick photo of it in place. If you squint and turn your head sideways a bit, you can see it here. The two ends of the very long bumper meet here, and instead of four ties all hanging out in one corner where the ends meet, and a gap in-between, the two pairs of ties each go through their respective loops in one place. No gaps. Helps keeps pacis and loveys and arms and legs and whatever else you put in there... in there.

Further, since that post, a number of folks have actually followed my long-winded, photo-deficient tutorial and have pronounced it somewhat useful. Like Sarah, who blogged about it here. Her photos are better AND her description more eloquent. Thanks, Sarah, for sharing.

Sue also added her bumper photos to our Flickr pool. She blogged about hers here. On the list of things that excite bloggers, finding things that others have done that are in some way inspired by your work might be #1. Pretty darn exciting. Thanks for that thrill, Sue! (If there are others out there who have work they'd like to share and/or see featured here... you've gotta add them to the pool!) I love that neither Sarah nor Sue bothered with the patchwork layer cake business, and the bumpers are still super cute.

I will add that I know, of course, that not everyone enjoys crib bumpers. As with a whole lot of other baby stuff, they're certainly not necessary and there are debates about them in other more appropriate venues for such discussion. Moms've gotta do their research and make their own decisions, right?

I'm working with a Mom friend now on a nursery for her little boy. There'll be more about that, and inevitably a crib bumper too, coming soooooon. Patchwork or no patchwork? That is the question.
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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Silhouette Day

It's drawing day. We've had a whole whole whole lot of entries for the Sihouette giveaway... and all I can say is that I'm glad I'm drawing a winner and not actually choosing one. People have given some compelling reasons why they should win.

If Adrianna and I could rig the drawing, we'd probably choose Kyra. Just 'cause we could. But since we're not so much the rigging types (we're more the rat the cheater out to the teacher types) we'll just share ours with her. Today Kyra and her girls were over for a visit and some crafting. Since they're about to take a trip  "home" to Canada for Canada Day, some shirts were at the top of the crafting queue.

She's promised to get some photos of these once they're actually on said little girls. But now that she's finally been exposed to the awesome possibilities of Silhouette + freezer paper, she's hooked.

So who else will soon have a Silhouette of their very own to use as they like? Let's see...

Ummm, well. The first winner.... is dq'd. She doesn't have a profile that's enabled for us to contact her and she didn't leave an e-mail address. How am I supposed to work with that? I can say "you've got a week to get back to me..." but how do I know that the first person that says she's the one is really the one? C'mon. It's a Silhouette. People hire hit men for less significant loot.

So, the (second) winner is...  

#198. Lindsay Conner. Now that I've looked up her profile I can see that she blogs here and is working on what will be an awesome rainbow block quilt. Congratulations, Lindsay! E-mail me your contact info so that we can get your Silhouette onto the very next mail truck!

So, for the approximately 400 people that were not the winners of this particular giveaway, you still have one more day to take advantage of the bundle offer (Silhouette SD and 2 packages of Temporary Tattoo paper for $199, normally $319) and/or 25% off of all purchases in the Silhouette store. Just use the code "CRAFTER" at checkout. The special ends tomorrow.





P.S. If you've gone to see Cars 2, you might've seen the preview for Brave. In my mind, that's already Kyra. And it's looking like it'll totally be a challenge as far as princess dresses in knit. But whatev. We'll figure it out.
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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Ummm... a few more things

Yeah, more skirt stuff. I thought you might like to see that several of Skirt Week's winners have tutorials or patterns available. Like...

Jessica's Shirred Pocket Skirt

and Mandy's Snowball Skirt

and Susan's Bookworm Skirt

Janica's skirt was inspired by this tutorial:

Kim's Skirt followed a pattern found in Sew Serendipity.

Ok, I think that's it. I think I'm done with skirts now. For a while anyway.

P.S. You've already entered here, right? We choose a winner at random on Tuesday!

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Friday, June 24, 2011

Skirt Week: All Zipped Up

For some reason I feel the need to summarize all of the awesomeness of Skirt Week, even though that makes for one ridiculously long post. A little look back at the week(s) with some sappy melodramatic music playing the the background. Except without the music. There's a whole lot of linking here so you can jump around and see it all.


Before we really got rolling we checked out the sponsors and the generous prizes they contributed for each of the 8 winners, like:









The tutorial of choice from Birdsongs and Bows




2 ebooks of choice from Whimsy Couture







The two newest patterns from Sew Liberated -- the Aurelia Cardigan and the Mariposa Tee




$20 to spend at Hawthorne Threads

A pattern of choice from Fishsticks Designs 



The four Judge's Choice winners will get a $20 gift certificate for Little Lizard King Patterns

 

 





The four Reader's Choice winners will receive $25 from Above All Fabric




The four Judge's Choice winners will receive the pattern of their choice from Rae

Each of the children's category winners will also receive three patterns from Patterns By Figgy's.




A while after the prizes were announced, Skirt Week began with an article and a handful of how-to's, like:
Florence of Flossie Teacakes with her thoughts on skirt detail.


Natasha, aka Little Pink Monster, with a fantastic circle skirt tutorial

Corinnea with a bias skirt that isn't nearly as intimidating to make as one might think

Anna, aka Noodlehead, with the how-to for a vintage inspired skirt

And Bonnie of Fishsticks Designs with the Upcycled Hemless Tee-Skirt

The 8 finalists for each of the 4 categories were chosen by our aaaaahmazing judges. Who are these aaaaaahmazing judges? Glad you asked. They include:

Sabra from Sew A Straight Line

Rae of made by rae

Meg of Elsie Marley

Natasha of Little Pink Monster


Jessica of Happy Together

Florence of Flossie Teacakes

Once the voting began, readers were able to make their choices known! The four Reader's Choice Award winners, one for each of the four categories, are:

Skirt from Sew Serendipity by Kim    Shirred Skirt with Deep Pockets by Jessica 

gold curtain skirt by michael ann     emmaenmona by tweelingmama 


And as the Reader's Choice Winners for each category were announced, the Judge's Choice Winners were revealed:
  The Snowball Skirt by Mandy    Bookworm Skirt by Susan

We have a lot of people to thank. First, those of you that entered skirts. The four pools, Full SkirtsA-line SkirtsStraight Skirts and Children's Skirts started filling with awesomeness the day they were announced. In total there were over 300 skirt entries! There is no skirt week without people making skirts. We had SUCH fun looking at what everyone made. Seriously, that might be the funnest part, talking to each other and our crafty friends about which ones we like most. 

The sponsors jumped right in as soon as we asked, and we are so grateful for that. It's always weird, asking someone you don't know to give you (okay, a third person) something. THANK YOU for all those yeses.

The judges. The judges not only did the job that we wanted to avoid because it's HADES-LIKE PRESSURE, but they did it cheerfully and promptly. And made our lives so much easier.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Aaand the readers. Thank you for voting, commenting, offering your feedback. We love to hear when you're inspired, motivated, creatively nudged. That's what makes blogging fun-- we do a heckuva lot of talking, but we like to listen, too. And converse. Or else we'd just be writing notes to ourselves on paper all the time! Thank you for participating.

And now... a little nap.

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And the Children's Skirt Winners Are...

I was talking to a friend, Katie, last night. She said "what are we voting on tomorrow?!?" and I had to say "Oooooh, sorry. Voting is all done." Bummer, right? It's been fun to see what readers have chosen. In yesterday's round of voting, they/you chose...


emmaenmona by tweelingmama 
The fabric, the trim, the underlayer peeking out, the seemingly captured moment of play, all make this image AND this skirt stand out. It's yummy.

The judges, on the other hand, were pretty pleased with...
Bookworm Skirt by Susan 
The judges reported that they "Love this skirt, so creative and original too! The scrap books are amazing and the selvages as book titles is just brilliant" and "I think it is super creative! I haven't seen one done like that. I really like how it uses scraps as well".

Congratulations, final finalist winners! Throw your relevant info over so that we can lavish you with gifts. And we don't even smack you with tax forms for them. We're cool like that.

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Thursday, June 23, 2011

VOTE! Your Choice for Best Children's Skirt!

Ladies and gentlemen: it's time for dessert. If you haven't taken a moment to look through the entire Children's Skirt pool, I recommend that you do. I recommend with enthusiasm. Because wherever adult skirt wearers might have felt... constrained... by concerns of wearability and practicality, there's little of that in the children's pool. Ruffles, tulle, ribbon, ric rac, hand stitching, patchwork, mermaid tails, bustles,  animal prints... it's all there. And this might have been the hardest category to narrow down to just 8. Although it's hard to say that because the other categories weren't exactly easy, I'm told. But here we have them, the 8 finalists!

  
     Swiss Peep by Kristianna                 Scalloped Skirt by immackulate

                 Bustle Skirt by liz              pastel rainbow can can skirt by Leisel


emmaenmona by tweelingmama      rainbow sprinkles skirt by supergail

 upcycled button down skirt by Kimberly            Bookworm Skirt by Susan       

Alllrighty then. It's your last chance to vote in Skirt Week 2011. Off you go!




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