Crafting 101

So remember when I bought the batting and the back of my quilt? Well, when I went to line it all up, she didn’t give me enough fabric for the back! Ugh! She measured it and all and I think she just thought of a number. So I had to rework it a little bit, but I got the quilt pinned and ready to tie and sew the border. I am not sure if I’m going to put it in the machine or hand sew it, but we will see. I plan on starting the tying tonight after I finish writing this. Hopefully I’ll get a lot done. The kids are watching a movie so maybe I’ll get some done.

So I’ve been trying to find grommets for my purse. The ones my friend had were too small for my straps so I went to a couple of places today and the only colors they have were gold, silver and bronze. I think the bronze are good and will work, but man, I’d really like some color! So I’m going to check and see if I can find any online that are colorful. So I don’t know if I’ll have it done by my birthday (which is tomorrow!) But at least it’s done, well almost.

So I hope that January has gone well for you! I feel like I’ve gotten lots done, not as much as I’ve wanted, but a lot. Remember, February is all about hearts and love and gifts so I hope you’ll enjoy it!

I’m super excited! I have finally lined my purse and the next thing I have to do is put the grommets in and it’s done! I’m also going to make me a makeup bag to go inside, I need to get a zipper for it. But it is lined, so I’m happy!

Anyways, the lining is this neat green fabric I found in the scrap pile at Wal-Mart for like 50 cents and I think it looks great! I’m excited that it’s fixing to be done.

I want to work on my quilt tomorrow, but not sure if I’ll get to it. I’m going to be scrapbooking on Saturday so I’m getting that stuff ready to. I think I’ll work just on Jonathan’s album and see if I can get his Christmas stuff done. I’ll be happy if I do!

BTW, I hit 1,000 visitors this month! Thanks so much! I’m actually over 1,100 visitors which is the first time since the blog has been up so thanks a million! I guess next month I’ll short for 2,000!

About February, all the crafts will have something to do with Valentine’s Day and things you’d do for your sweethearts anyways. I will be making some stuff since I have sweethearts and there will be things that I will show you that can be made depending on if you have the materials or not. So I hope you’ll join us for a month of love!

Today the kids had the day off from school so my oldest went to spend the night at a friend’s house and her friend’s sister came over to spend the night with my second oldest so we had a different day for sure! So I needed to work on something pretty simple. Well, I was cleaning up some stuff and found my daughter’s Girl Scout patches that needed to be sewn on. So I grabbed some thread and a needle and got those patches all sewn on! That was something brainless that I could do while they played. While that wasn’t one of the things I listed, it was something that was needing to be finished!

On another note, I stated rereading my novel from November. I was mainly just going through and noticed some typos and a few wrong details and then I added some in. I was looking at Casablanca Authors (which I found by following Toni Andrews over on Twitter) and they mentioned how they were looking for people to submit novels or portions of their novel and they wanted it to be at least 90,000 words. So looking back at mine, I’m under 80,000 words. So if I want to submit it in the future, I think I’ve got more I need to add!

But in looking at my other novel, one I wrote years ago and not only did I find a huge section of it was gone, but it barely had 13,000 words! I was thinking it was a lot longer, but I guess not! I’m not sure what happened to the section that was gone, but I will probably be rewriting it anyways since it’s not near long enough. I guess it’s a good short story, but I want to really work on it and make it much better.

So that’s my update for today. I hope to get my purse measured and get the fabric cut for it so I can line it. I plan on finishing my quilt, I need to do that in between laundry too. The month is almost gone, can you believe it? How much have you gotten done?

Here they are! All finished plus I made a bag to put them in. I finished late Friday night, but hooray for me - I found my Knight! It was in the laundry hamper! So I didn’t have to make another one.

Again, here’s the link for the puppets. I want to say, it really took roughly an hour or so per puppet, maybe a tad longer for the princess, she had a lot more to put on her.

For the purse/bag,  I found this pattern on Ravelry, but it’s called Red, White and Black Drawstring bag. Well, I didn’t exactly follow the pattern. For one, everything I made, I used scraps. My basket was full of them, I needed to use them. The pattern is all single crochet, which I’m not a fan of for really big projects and I was in a time crunch so I made the bottom all single crochet, but when I started the sides, I switched to double crochet. Then I realized that I didn’t quite have enough purple to finish the bag so I used white and made some decorative holes, did one more row of purple and one more row of white. That was all I had of those colors. Then I used a thinner white and started some rows of fringe. Well, I ended up running out of those so I used this  red/orange one and then ended with purple. The handles are braided with lots of strands of the thinner white.

I think they turned out great. They were a hit at the party, which I’m super happy they were. Well, at least with the mom’s. LOL! The girl receiving them liked them a lot so that’s all that matters.

Tomorrow I an going to get to work on finishing the quilt. Now that the birthday parties are over with, I need to finish my works in progress. TTFN!

…floating around my house and no one will fess up to being the one who took it! Yes, I finished the knight finger puppet last night and placed it on my nightstand and I woke up this morning and it was missing!! So if I can’t find it by tomorrow night, I have to make another one! They aren’t hard, but I was almost done with them all. Hopefully it’ll show up! I just wanted to vent a little bit before heading to bed. I’m super tired for whatever reason I have no clue. But all the kids are asleep so I’m headed off to dreamland too.

Drop me a line telling me how things are going with your WIP’s. After this party on Saturday I plan on finishing my quilt so that will be done. I also have to clean up my craft area so I hope to get some of that done tomorrow after I finish these puppets. I wanted to stay up tonight, but I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open right now! TTFN!

Here’s Jonathan holding one of them that is halfway finished. The others are downstairs. He wanted to hold it so I let him. Again, here’s the pattern for them. It has been working up really quick and easily. It’s also a great way to get rid of scrap yarn sitting around. I have a small basket that has all my leftover yarn and half used skeins of yarn so I’m using that. They are super duper cute for sure! My kids are wanting to steal them so I think I’ll be making a few more sets of them!

So are there things that you do while crocheting or knitting? I tend to watch movies sometimes when I crochet or knit so I’m getting two things accomplished at once. I just wanted to comment that I watched P.S. I Love You today and oh, it’s a very good movie! It’s a chick flick for sure and a good crying movie. I know I had tears in my eyes! Just wanted to share that! It seems to make the project go faster too if you’re watching a movie or TV. At least you know how much you can do in two hours!

I’m sure I’m not the only one who watched Obama being sworn in as our 44th President of the United States. I had to snap a quick photo of the crowd of people that were there in the very cold weather.

Now that it’s all done, we can get on with our lives. I think that was the only thing on the television today, we can now see what will happen now that he officially has the power to do whatever he wants.

Back to crafting! I actually spent the day cleaning out some of the kids clothes and we were fixing things around the house so I didn’t get to do anything related to crafts except print out the instructions to make the finger puppets that are for this Saturday. My plan is to do those all day tomorrow so that they are done and finished. I’ll make a bag for them too. I hope she’ll like them!

Thanks so much for the comments, I will be replying to several of them over the next few days. Everyone will be back at school or work tomorrow so I can spend time taking care of them! Hope everyone has a good night!

We spent the day at home, not doing much, well, we didn’t do anything exciting. I have been going through the kids rooms and their clothes and been just going through stuff so we spent today getting all that stuff downstairs and I went through it all and posted it online for people to either get off of freecycle or to buy from me. We have lots to get rid of! I also cleaned off a bookshelf of odds and ends and we got our movies organized.

Not much happened with crafting today.  I started to try and scrapboo, but then the young ones wanted to look at it and before I knew it, it was time for bed! I was going to pin my quilt and could find my pins! Not a good day today!

So did you get anything done? I hope that you did. I have to clean off the kitchen table with this and that tomorrow so I hope to get started on the puppets I need to make for the birthday party this weekend. I have lots to do, just can’t seem to get them done! Of course, that’s what happens when the kids are home from school and the hubby is home from work! TTYL!

That’s so true! I didn’t do anything productive at all today! I decided to watch the Eagles get beat by the Cardinals instead of working on my quilt or my scrapbooking or working on my socks or anything else. But I did tell my friend to bring her grommit tool for me so hopefully I’ll get it Wednesday and finish the bag by the weekend.

So tomorrow and Tuesday the hubby is home from work and the kids are off Monday so I’m not sure what I’ll get done, but hopefully I’ll get something done. I have to do laundry Monday and Tuesday I have to get some things on Craigslist and Freecycle and such. We cleaned out Megan and Kathryn’s room so time to get those things out of the house!

So what have you been up to? I hope that you’re getting some projects done. My kids are asking who the quilt will be for, I’m not sure yet, but I’m thinking Kathryn. The older two have quilts already ready, one used to be mine and one if from their dad. Jonathan has a quilt that I made for him so Kathryn deserves it. Plus she won’t care that I messed up on some of it!

I hope everyone has a great week! I’ll have more to post tomorrow (I hope!)

I know it doesn’t look like much, but I purchased the quilting batting for my quilt and I picked out some flannel to put on the back of the quilt. I decided to go with a neutral color. I couldn’t find something that I was happy with in another color. I wish I had some extra money because JoAnn’s had all their quilting squares on sale so I could pick up a bunch of them. But I vowed not to buy anything extra right now. Anyways, the good thing was JoAnn’s was having a huge sale. I got the flannel that I needed for $8! Normally it’d be $16, so half off is good!

I wasn’t able to get to it today, I got two dressers off freecycle last week and my hubby helped us get them up to the girl’s room and we totally cleaned out Megan and Kathryn’s room. Their old dresser practically collapsed so having these new/old ones works a lot better! I hope to get to it in between church services tomorrow. My plan is to sew it on around the outside, but to tie the square corners.  My grandmother has done this before so I’m doing it with this one. Mainly because not all the squares are perfectly square (it’s my first one, you know) so I’m hoping this will help some. I will post a photo when I get finished!