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  • Passing it on

    I used to get together with my little sister, Emilie, once a week – until I had Tuesday. It was too hard for me to get to Emilie's school on time and pick her up with a not so fond of the car baby in the backseat. Plus I never knew what Tuesday would be doing at any one time of the day (hmm I still don't!), so I couldn't plan things. Well I figured it was about time to remedy that and invited her to hang out with Tuesday and I for the day today. Did I mention she got her license so she drove over here? Makes it a lot easier. I'm always doing projects with Emilie, usually of the scrapbooking variety, but I decided the girl has got to learn to sew, and the lady who sold me my machine said it was easy to teach with because it can be set to so very very slow (She was so right, it worked great for this. Plus who doesn't love that scissors button?). 

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    I had Emilie do everything: pick any fabric she wanted, iron it, square it up and cut the pieces with a rotary cutter, pin and sew. She did so great! She even had to do a little algebra to figure out how big each back piece should be if we wanted a 12 inch overlap (which I've since learned is a bit too much). X + X + 12 = 24.5 FUN FUN FUN! What? I had to throw a little extra learning in there 🙂 She figured out how much yardage she needed. She was so careful and steady. She chose to do a really big 24 x 24 pillow cover and she kept the speed pretty slow and never really let herself wonder, very straight seams. I was so proud. 
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    My first sewing project was not quite so classy. I always wanted to get ahead of myself, and tried to sew barbie clothes, among other things. Children should not sew Barbie clothes, they are tough! Check out the hemming:
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    Ah I think I've just made a new little sewing friend, yes! 
    11 comments on Passing it on

  • Why did this take me so long to figure out?

    I finally have the skill to make a pillow case that fits over a pillow form. People, sewing doesn't get easier than this. But for some reason I could never make a snug one. I'm going to blame it on my old machine. Because following this easy tutorial I whipped up these:

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    Pillow cases with envelope backs:
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    The added bonus is using up some of the cutter quilt that I scored a LONG time ago (so long ago I can't find a post about it, yikes). That sure clears out fabric storage space (I know what you're thinking Bj, don't worry no packages are coming to fill that space, I really am trying to work down the stash!). 
    4 comments on Why did this take me so long to figure out?

  • All new sleep methods

    Bj and I have been having fun putting Tuesday to sleep lately. You read that correctly, FUN. We’ve instituted family quiet time up in her room before bed and she loves it. I love it. Bj loves it. We play with little bells, a xylophone, and other favorite toys. We also read her at least one story. We added a fun new feature called “not nursing her to sleep.” It doesn’t always go as planned:

    Oh man we were laughing so hard. She just starts trying to suck my face off, my shirt, arm, or anything else she can get her mouth on. 

    Last night I tried a completely different approach:
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    Popcorn, Diet Dr. Pepper and a movie! Well, not so much with the tasty treats, but the good friends and movie part. I took Tuesday for a girl’s night at the drive in. I love our local drive in, and when Sciarrino invited me to go I figured “what’s the worse that could happen?” I also had the thought that I might not otherwise get to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for a very very long time. So we loaded her up, lots of toys and other baby goodies and headed to Dallas. She fell asleep before the movie even really started. I wore my nursing pillow and sat in the back of the CRV. After I nursed her (and nursed her and nursed her). I just kept her on my lap where she slept. The only time she got upset was on the way home, she did not like being in her carseat after a nice mama lap siesta. As an added bonus to a late night at the drive in we slept in until 9:45, um, SCORE! 
    7 comments on All new sleep methods

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