Métiers d'Angela.

So... finally a post dedicated to all the craftiness of the fellow craft night cohort. I am so very excited about this one. There's so much damn good stuff you're gonna see here. ;-)

I mean, this chica really did it up for the holidays. She crafted like a mad-woman and made really awesome things - and she went the extra mile whenever possible (you'll see what I mean a little further in..). Some of these photos are from projects that were completed quite a while ago, so this will be some major fun catching up with Angelina.

A while back, we started adding some crocheted edging to our dishcloths, so the first pic is showing a couple dishcloths she made to go with some yummy soap for her sister's birthday. She always packages things up very prettily and this post will be especially good because she takes much better pictures than I. :D

The hat and scarf very handsomely modeled by Sir Tim was her very first knitting project - can you believe it? It turned out really great. Nice colors ta boot.

The hat was really special craftwise, since it was her very first pattern and first time in the round, first time on double-points, first time with ribbing,... lots o' firsts. I tried to help design the number of stitches for the pattern and think I inadvertently helped make it a little big, but I'm sure we can all agree that this is better than too small, and hey, no hat head for this guy - just better hang on in the wind. hahaha.

The hat was kind of a surprise for his birthday. The scarf was no surprise since he had to try it on several times before it was decided that the length was good and it was finito.

His outfit is so complete with the short-sleeves because his birthday is in August- whew, hot. Though, just in time for fall?!? :)

The lovely blueish/purpleish (I think it's more of a true purple in person) is modeled by Ang's lovely mother. It was her birthday gift this year. It was so dang soft. I tried it on a couple times and it was hard to pry from my neck each time. hehe. kidding (sort of).

It looks from the picture like her mom was relatively happy with it. ;) Great color on her, too!

Oh! Next are the clutches. She made four of them for Christmas!

Outstanding. The fabrics are all amazing. The one on the left is the one that I talked about in the previous post - she seriously surprised me with it at the beach. :D Hooray for surprises - I love it!!! Now we gotta get one going for her. Every girl needs a clutch, right?

This tote is living with Becky now. I can't remember if I know who Becky is, but that makes no difference of course. She adjusted the simple tote pattern from that Bend the Rules book to make it a bit bigger - more like a traditional tote size. The outer handles match the lining and vice versa. She also added a pocket on the inside - a little of that extra mile thing I was talking about. ;)

The apron is truly one of my favorite things she's made so far.

It turned out incredibly gorgeous and really shows off the extra mile factor with the embroidery she added to the pocket fabric. Great touch. Gorgeous main fabric that just pleads to be an apron. I'm pretty sure most of the fabrics are Anna Maria Horner - some aren't, I'll bet, but I know the apron fabric is for sure.

So now to show off some more of her embroidery from this past year. She really loved it and completely took off with every embroidery project. Each one had new and different stitches with neat design elements she came up with on the fly. This dishtowel on the right is the very first embroidery project. I really loved what she did with the margarita glasses - you can't see the stitching too well in the photo, but she improved on a basic satin stitch to bring margaritaness flowing through the glass. Very cool.

Oh, and each of her dishtowels is edged with handmade binding - the neat binding fabrics really make the the gifts one more level of special and unique! We used the continuous strip method described in an earlier post for all of her binding and mine, too.

The last towel is for Ang's little sis, Adrienne, and her husband, Tyler, for Christmas.

Most, if not all, of the pattern is from the Sublime Stitching "Rock-n-Roll" iron-on. It's perfect for them since they're in a band (a great band) - she plays guitar and sings, he plays drums. They live in cheese country and beer country and sausage country...

Anyhoo, I digress - back to the crafts. I was really blown away with this one - the lettering looks awesome and there was some rockin' details on the instruments. She ends up creating her own stitches a lot - gotta love that!

Well, let's hope it isn't quite so long before we see things from Angela again - I'll try to keep up better with her finished projects along the way with mine. We are both in the middle of several things, so there should be another post relatively soon - ya know, maybe before summer. ;)

Court turns 26, and crafty gifting from the holidays.

Wow. It's been a while, but not for a lack of crafting. Some of the holiday gift pics had to be held until after the season passed, so now that these have been received, I can finally show them off. :) Oh, I couldn't resist putting a pic of the kitties even though it's a fuzzy one - they were helping me finish wrapping up gifts before shipping the box off to Oregon and were quite mesmerized by the candle.

This clutch went to my sister, Courtney, for Christmas. The pattern is once again from the Bend the Rules Sewing book by Amy Karol. It was actually relatively quick easy to make - in hindsight, I guess. The whole process always takes longer than you think from choosing the fabrics, doing all the marking and cutting, then finally getting to the fun part - the sewing. :)

It was really fun to figure out the fabrics to use with this project - for the inside and out. I ended up going with a more 'evening' look and dressed it up some with the satin and suede on the outside, then some pretty Joel Dewberry fabric (Aviary collection) for the lining. I had a lot of super cool buttons to choose from thanks to Danielle's button donation last year (thanks, Dan!).

Angela made several of these clutches for girls in her family, and she surprised me with one at Christmas! It's gorgeous and come to find out, I helped pick out the fabric for my own present - ha! Apparently, she just chose the fabric I had uber-gushed over when we were helping each other match up outer and lining fabrics from the stash. I'll post a pic of it soon - hopefully along with more of Angela's holiday gifts.

We did have a tad bit of trouble (again) with the turning / flipping aspect, but maybe practice makes perfect because I really think we have it now. It took some time looking at the discussion threads of the BTR flickr group and reading some of the other BTR patterns in the book to get it. I'll report with our interpretation of the instructions in the next post with Angela's clutches to explain where our confusion was and hopefully explain it in a different way that people like us can understand. ;-)

This scarf also went to Court - for her 26th birthday. I felt so ahead of the game working on it for quite some time before her birthday, but somehow ended up blocking it at my uncle's house in Wisconsin over Thanksgiving and mailing it from there, since her birthday is very early in December. I really liked the way it turned out - it's the most complicated pattern I've attempted thus far and the bobbles were wacky fun.

The free pattern is from the Jimmy Beans Wool site and I used the same brand of yarn, Lorna Laces Shepherd Worsted, that comes in incredibly rad color combos. I love their solid colors, but especially covet all of the multicolored colorways. One skein is enough for most of the free 'scarf of the month' patterns on Jimmy Beans.

I probably shouldn't point out mistakes, but in this case a mistake was designed in thanks to Angela's suggestion after I realized several pattern repeats into the scarf that somehow the first pattern instance was reversed - right side stitch on the wrong side, etc. Since it was the first section, I just left it that way and made sure to make the last section reversed to match. Gotta love the merging of mistakes with a pattern to make it even better! :D

This hat was finished several months ago. I found the yarn and knew I would make something for my mom with it - it's really the most gorgeous yarn I've ever owned - it's a Berroco Jasper yarn. Originally, I guess I was thinking scarf because I bought two skeins and balled both of them. The hat only used one skein, so I still have one to use for something else one day - maybe a little neck wrap for mom - we shall see.

So, the pattern is just a standard hat pattern, but with a bit of a different band at the bottom - a wider band with the seed stitch. I've been lovin' on the seed stitch lately - it really adds nice texture. It feels a bit feminine to me, but that could just be me. You can't even really see the seed stitch in this pic, but trust me, it's cool. ha.

While the actual hat was finished months ago, I ended up adding a little to it, since the original plan for my mom's gift was to have more with it - but I'm holding off with that project for her birthday. So.. I decided to just amp up the hat with some fleece lining around the ears. A friend has a hat with fleece lining and she has always raved about it, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. It was really easy - just cut out a strip of fleece (first I measure all the way around the inside bottom of the hat), sew the strip together to make a band (by hand or machine), then handstitch the band into the hat. This stitch is a rolled stitch that I learned from this tutorial on the purl bee site. Just grab stitches that show on the inside of the hat and use any color thread, since it won't show with this stitch. You could also use a blind stitch or any other stitch that won't show - or you could use a contrasting thread and purposely show it, for that matter - go wild! ;-)

A girly tote and new hat pattern.

As promised, shown is a photo of my grandmother's name embroidered (by her) in the quilt shown in a previous post. Ima Jean understandably went by plain ole Jean. ha. The embroidery seriously amplifies my love for the quilt many times - such a special reminder that the entire thing was handmade by my grandma.

It would be so very fun to make a quilt one day - pretty sure I would act selfishly and make it for myself (and Mr. Casey, of course). ;) Sara Leah and I had big plans for some quilting last winter / spring. Her grandmother had even volunteered to hold some quilting sessions and show us the ropes. We shamefully never took advantage and now Sara is living in Cincinnati, which will just make it a tad more challenging to craft together. I still have high hopes that we will manage to find some time to quilt one day - maybe cutting and piecing the top piece on our own and meeting up for a weekend to do the actual quilting. We shall see.


On another note, this is a little tote bag I made back in September for a coworker's birthday. The pattern is once again from Amy Karol's, Bend-the-Rules Sewing book. I slightly changed the dimensions of the pattern, but kept it the general size, which is really the size of a smallish purse. The fabrics are 100% Kelly - bright and funky - so I knew it would be a hit with her.

It's hard to see in the picture 'cause I'm certainly no photographer, but there are three different fabrics - one for the outside, one for the inside and one side of the straps, then the last one makes the other side of the straps and a pocket in the inside. I took another photo of the bag hanging, but can't seem to locate that one.

The lining is cotton flannel - a light color, so it doesn't show through. Amy suggests in her book to use cotton flannel in place of the various interfacings called for in most patterns, and so far I love it. It's a natural fiber, gives good structure and brillianty handles heavy washing and drying. For even more structure, I've also heard people talk of using a heavier weight fabric, like a cotton fleece, but haven't tried that yet myself.

Once again, I had much frustration at the very end of this project with the turning and flipping of the inside / outside pieces to be right-side out, lining-in. It wouldn't have been quite so bad, but this time I had handles to really throw me off. When everything is turned wrong-side, you insert the handles and sew around the top, then turn/flip through a small hole you leave. Well, the first attempt was really amusing - the handles somehow ended up on the inside of the bag. Good grief! It was so sad I had to laugh. This all naturally occurred around midnight on the day of her birthday, so I was pressed to finish and get it to her the next day at work. Of course, it wouldn't have been the end of the world if this didn't happen, but I was SO close, so had to give it another try.

After much thinking, the second try produced handles in the right location, but flipped the wrong way - the fabric I meant to be on the outside/top on the shoulder was facing into the shoulder. Ugh. My brain just doesn't turn and flip. I feel that it should, but it just doesn't. Now closer to 1am, I decide that while I'm not exceedingly happy with this result, Kelly won't know what my original intentions were, so I decide to just go with it. The truly sad thing is that I tried to write some notes to myself for next time, but I feel pretty sure that I could make the same mistakes all over again - it never really clicked, since like i said, no brain flipping and hardly any turning. Oh well.

For me, knitting is quite the confidence booster when compared with sewing. I guess there are just fewer foundational things to learn. With knitting, you learn the knit stitch and the purl stitch and everything else is just putting those together in different combinations to make some sort of pattern. Of course, I've never tried anything as challenging as say, a sweater, that has to be fitted is so many ways - the length, the neck, the torso, the sleeves. Gives me hives thinking about it, actually. Taylor is great at taking these leaps without so much as a blink - check out this sweater she recently finished for Marley (so cute!). Not sure if she's added the wooden buttons yet that Marley picked out in a NYC button shop - one is an etched Minnie Mouse, of course. :D

This hat was knitted for my stepdad's birthday and is so handsomely modeled by Senor Casey. Sometimes I forget to get a pic of things before wrapping and shipping them off, so was proud of myself for snapping this before it headed out west. Since my mom and Peter live in Oregon and have frigid winters, I doubled the yarn to make the hat extra thick and bulky and warm. It was also my first cable pattern, so finally used the cable needles purchased way back when. The pattern is from a book Angela picked up at the library - pretty sure it's this one. There are several fun cable patterns in this book, and I'm finally getting to the point that I can kinda make my own hat patterns - just doing a little math can translate any pattern to something you can use. I hate to even say this, but the key really is checking your gauge with a swatch, especially when you double your yarn or use a different weight yarn as I always seem to do.

Ok, so more on all that later. Maybe I'll do a pattern converting post for a hat one day to demonstrate. I could actually use a hat for myself - not that it really gets cold enough here to wear one, but you know, for traveling to cold places and such. ;)

Next, I'll post some pics to update on Ang's crafting. She has finished a couple of scarves - at least one that has already been gifted, so pics can post, and she just started a kickass embroidery project that I can't wait to post - might have to wait until after the holidays for that one - I have no idea if her sis knows about this blog.

Coolio.

The Kitchen Post, Chapter 1 - with special craft room guest, Around the World Quilt a la Ima Jean.

So, first off, thought I'd post a pic of the finished kitchen towel - dubbed, the alien towel. It has the bias tape applied - 'the making of' detailed in the previous bloglet. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the finishing is done with a zigzag stitch in yellow thread for a fun, easy accent.

I have some other (comletely borrowed) ideas for more embroidered kitchen towels in the future, but these aren't even on my list o' craft projects, so we'll just hope I remember them years from now when the list is up for parole and happens to make it out on good behavior.

'The Kitchen Post' will document efforts to create a greener kitchen. This undertaking was begun many months ago and basically involved ridding the kitchen of paper products, most notably paper towels and paper napkins. Somewhere between 5 & 10 dishcloths have been finished one by one - usuallly an afternoon break from a larger knitting project. These were just finished during a long drive to and fro Oklahoma to visit my dad, grandparents and great-aunt. The unique and nifty thing about them is the knitting / crochet combo - first time for that (for me). I bought a crochet needle a while pack from Purl Soho with plans to learn some edging / finishing techniques, and I love the look of the dishcloth edged with a contrasting color - so fun!

The edging stitch shown on the dishcloths is a simple single crochet stitch. Examples, tutorials, etc are all over the web and I'm feeling too lazy to locate and post one right now (sorry!) - the one I used was printed out a while ago - pretty sure it also came from purlsoho.com - there are great tutorials and free patterns on that site.

Also, you probably can't help but notice the beautimous quilt in the background.? The dishcloths were purposely staged on the quilt to draw attention to my newly most prized item --- a blanket, hand-quilted by my grandmother, Ima Jean Gray (maiden name Kyle). I had to lay on some daughterly guilt to persuade my dad to go ahead and pass it one more generation down the line. I'm so glad he gave it up to finally be used instead of just sitting in protective plastic - it's so gorgeous! It's already living in the spare bedroom at our house - I love it so much!!

One of the best things about it is the hand embroidered name and date she put inside, on the lining. It was finished in '81 - she's 88 years old this year. She doesn't remember putting her name in it, so that was an even more special surprise - I think I actually shrieked with joy when I saw her name inside. :-)

I'd like to show her embroidered name for sentimental as well as historical value, ;) but I seem to be having photography difficulty, so won't bother with it just now - will very soon do a follow-up post with this quilted-embroidery treasure, an update on the to-be-felted tote bag, and a photo of Angela's major knitting accomplishments as of late - she finished the scarf and matching hat for Tim, so look out for this new fall fashion when the weather turns a little cooler.

On another note, it was a bit alarming today to hang a complete and lengthy list of craft projects either started or planned for the near future. Two realizations have already come from this - one, I'm going to have to refrain from adding any more projects until a few are knocked out - ideally starting on xmas gifts by the end of the month; two, it's actually inspiring to see these project ideas, even if only a show of momentary motivation. It's a bit like wishful thinking to believe that all of these would ever be completed, but it's a great record on which to reflect later (in the least).

Finish Line for Sewing Machine Cover, plus Bias Tape Reborn.

I don't really think it's quite sunk in yet. Feels almost a bit miraculous. This project has been dang close to finished for SO many months. Extreme silliness. This was my very first sewing project - had several lessons from a wonderfully experienced sewing guru in the neighborhood and this is what I chose to learn with - she showed me how to read the patterns, mark and cut the fabric, gather the corners, sew on the bias tape, and so, so much more. It was great! Then, somehow with projects of all sorts popping up all over the place, it fell to the wayside. Now, everytime I've been in the craft room for the past several months, the mostly finished machine cover would get a pained glance followed by feelings of regret and determination to one day finish - and always with a sooner than later plan, especially on the days where the machine actually seemed most unfortunately and quite avoidably dusty.

So, now it's complete... ahhh. It only needs a quick final pressing just to finish it off and make it hang better. I really, really love it and had to take a pic asap to proudly show it off. Funny thing - I go in to take a photo and the battery is dead; camera shuts off; so, I go swap the battery pack and turn it back on; that battery is also dead - damn! so, I eject the battery, try turning it back on and quickly switch off the display to the screen and manage to eek out one last picture before the camera again shuts off with a message insisting that I replace the battery with one having charge. I count this eek out as a victory and load the photos with plans to do the posting on my lunch break tomorrow, but I'm still so excited to be finished with this project that I couldn't resist starting the post right away. ha! so not like me, really. Anyway, I will finish tomorrow with talk of the new bias tape making method that is super cool and much faster than the way I did it before.

Ok, so this method is actually from one of the packets Ms. Peggy Sue brought for me on a sewing lesson day. It explains how to make a continuous piece of bias tape, which I've read before, but just didn't really get it until this past Saturday.

First of all, the way I did it one other time was to cut sections of fabric wide enough for a double fold, but then ending up with a stack of bias tape segments needing to be joined. VERY long process. ugh! Plus, last time I did not actually make "bias tape" - it is simply "binding" unless you cut it on the bias, which means that is is diagonal to the selvage edge. Cutting something on the bias gives it some strength and stretch and allows it to move and hang better - it is most always used when making clothing or edging anything with a curve. I read that it's not really necessary to cut on the bias when edging something flat with straight 90 degree corners such as a kitchen towel - it annoys some people that you will tend to waste some fabric since you're marking on a diagonal and start with the first full strip between selvages for a continuous strip, thus discarding the excess on the ends. (Note: That last sentence to may not make much sense until the end of this little walk-through.)

Ok, so the first thing you do is mark the strips on the diagonal to the selvage. The easiest way to do this is to fold the fabric from one corner at the end of the selvage over to the other selvage side. This creates a 45 degree angle to guide the marking. I wanted 1/2" double-fold bias tape, so marked strips in 2" segments. Before marking, measure the edges of the kitchen towel that will be bound with the bias tape to figure out how long the continuous strip will need to be. After measuring the length of one strip, I figured that I would need a total of four long bias strips to make up the entire continuous length.

Now, for the fun part. So, you mark the strips, then cut off the excess (triangles on either side of the angled strips), then also cut 1/4" off each selvage edge (short strip ends) just to tidy up. This gets you to the photo above.

Next, you match up the short ends of the strips with right sides facing (or markings on the outside). Arrange them so one strip overlaps at each end - so they're offset by one strip width - and pin. The photo doesn't show it too well, so if it's not clear yet, hopefully it will be after the next step.

So, the whole point of the overlapping strips is to create a spiral of sorts. Once happy with the way the short strip edges are lined up, sew a 1/4" seam on this edge and press the seam open. Now, if you start at either end and cut following the line markings, you will cut in a spiral pattern creating one very long piece of 2" bias strip. When cutting over the seam, just focus on getting from the end of one mark cross-wise to the beginning of the next mark - it's a little awkward that it doesn't seem straight across the seam after sewing and pressing open, but I promise it turns out perfectly fine once you cut the long piece and press in the foldings.

The last part takes some practice and some patience, but basically you have your iron set on the hottest setting for the fabric you're using and pull the strip(s) slowly while pressing on the folded end as it comes through. You can either use a bias tape making tool or I've just been marking the right width and setting up a makeshift tool with a long, straight pin on the ironing board. This first fold has each side tucked inward to meet in the center.

From time to time, the folds start to get off (uneven) and you just have to set down the iron, pull it backward a bit, straighten the fold with your fingers, then start pulling through and pressing the fold again. Once the entire strip length is pressed once, press the last fold by just halving once more. See last pic of finished product wrapped around another package of the store-bought stuff.

Now, it's ready to apply. I won't post those general bias tape instructions here, since I don't have pics to go with, but the Posie Gets Cozy blog has this tutorial I learned from and she even gives clear instructions for mitering the corners.

Maybe the bound and finished kitchen towel will make it into a future post - I'll try and remember to do that.

Buttons galore, and Felted tote - Part I

There are two things I've wanted to do for quite a while now - one, somehow straighten the photo diplay on the shelves in our den and two, craft with buttons. So, decided to kill 2 birds, as they say... ;) Danielle so generously shared her button supply with me earlier in the year - she gave me this entire enormous jar of assorted buttons - so awesome!!! I love buttons and this jar o' buttons was especially fun since it contains every size and shape you could possibly imagine.

Several months ago, I started wondering more about button crafts - searched around online some to see what people have done with them before and found a post (have no idea where anymore) where someone made a sort of bulletin board decorated with buttons. I thought it was interesting, but had no use for a bulletin board really.

Then, it hit me a while later while looking at the hodge podge of picture frames jumbled and crammed all together on the little built-in bookcase of our den. I felt like I had to get the pics out of the frames and displayed another way - there were just too many frames all stuck together that it was starting to hurt my brain to pass by that area. (Ok, so I'm feeling a tad dramatic about it at this point...) Anyway, I loved that the photos were in the den - it makes me happy to have all the photos out in our main hang-out area, but it was just too dang messy, the frame clutter distracting from the photos themselves.

So, back to where it hit me... well, once I realized that I wanted the pics out of the frames, I remembered the buttony bulletin boards and started gathering supplies. I bought the el-cheapo set of cookie sheets (3 different sizes in one pack for like $3.99), some cement glue from the craft section and some magnets also in the craft section - oh, plus a roll of contact paper and some spray paint (everything in one trip to walmart).

I actually bought one can of primer spray paint and one of color, since the paint was going on metal cookie sheets. I wasn't very happy with the color selection in the spray paint section or the choice in contact paper, but all these things were really just the supporting actors to the pretty buttons, so I tried not to care as much.

The actual assembly was easy peasy. After the spray paint is dry, just mark and cut a piece of contact paper to go in the cookie sheet center, then glue buttons all around the edge of the sheet, .. and presto, on to the really fun part - arranging the pics! Then, just made sure to have enough magnets topped with buttons to hold the photo collage securely in place, cleaned off the shelf and set up shop.

I really love having all my favorite photos arranged this way! It's obviously still very busy, but now I feel like it draws your attention into the photos and makes it more fun to look at them. There's still one more sheet to go, but that means I also have to clean off the most messy, cluttery shelf of them all, plus print off some more recent photos to display, so that could be a little further down the road - we'll see.

Some things I did differently for the second sheet after learning from the mistakes of the first - put the tinest buttons on the bottom edge so that the buttons don't get in the way of the display sitting on the shelf. The sheet on the top shelf is actually propped up a bit on a couple decks of cards right now, since I overlooked this potential problem. Also, the buttons adhere best with a dab of cement glue on both surfaces; i.e., on the back of the button and on the edge of the sheet where the button will be placed.


Now, the last photo deserves some chatter. First of all, you won't be able to help noticing my rockin' new knitting bag. How cool is that? Sara Leah made it for my birthday and I love it very much - it housed this latest knitting project over our recent trip to the left coast, so is already rather well-traveled. It's really the perfect knitting bag with plenty of room for tons of yarn and plenty of pockets for misc other supplies. I actually used it as my carry-all bag for the trip, complete with yarn, wallet, maps and a pullover.

Also, in the pic is the beginning of what will eventually be a felted tote bag - yippee! The bottom and a smidge of the sides were done on the plane to and fro SF. I'm about halfway finished at this point and can't wait to try my hand at felting - wahoo!!! I will of course be devastated if it doesn't go well after all the knitting with all the gorgeous yarn, but surely that won't happen. ;-) This yarn was purchased last summer in a really cool shop in Atlanta called Knitch. Once through last year's holiday crafting season, it took me this long to clear out some other projects and get set up for this one. So, I'll keep posting the progress for this one - would love to be ready to felt in another month or so - here's hoping. :)

Dueling Machines, and The Spawning of the Robots.

Yay, Robots!!!!!

Angela and I worked on a set of gifts for Jim and Sara Leah off and on for several months - finally gifting the entire crafty accomplishment the night of Jim's birthday party.

The whole set is for their new kitchen and includes two decoupaged bottles for olive oil and soap (or whatever they want to use them for), four placemats and four napkins. We had so very much fun making everything and learned some kick-ass sewing techniques along the way.

We've done the bottle decoupage once before and have both wanted to give it another whirl. Once the robot ribbon was discovered, it sealed the deal that this craft would be part of the wedding gift extravaganza.

So, the bottles shown first are after the fabric decoupage, but before the "glazing" process - basically, a bazillion coats of polyurethane. We didn't look into it too much before-hand, but now know there are better options out there for sealing and glazing the bottles - would get more serious about that next time for sure. It was a little scary at first to see the dramatic robot ribbon fade into the background after the poly. started soaking in, but you can definitely still see the little guys and we thought the bottles turned out great overall. :-)

Of course, the most fun part of the process is cutting out the fabric pieces, then piecing together the colors and patterns on the bottles. It's simple enough to be a kid-friendly craft, I think - the fabric pieces being pre-cut for the littler ones.

As for the placemats and napkins - the core tips, techniques and patterns came (once again) from Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol. We mostly followed her instructions for the placemats, but naturally, the patterns were modified some to fit our needs - with most of the creative juices going into the napkin-making.

To me, the best part of the whole affair was the dueling sewing machines. Mine is portable, so I brought it over to Ang's and we set up in their dining room where her super rockin' Singer lives in a beautiful antique machine table. I love her machine - it's so simple and solid and no-frills, yet has every single feature you really need... and it's quirky - that's likely what I like about it the most.

So, several times, we brought the machines together, pulled the ironing board out of the laundry room and set up a mini sweat shop. Fun stuff. It was so dang cool to see the little oddities introduced to the project by our unique sewing styles. ..and it was freaking hilarious to see our different ways of handling mistakes - and oh, there were a plenty.

We really wanted the napkins to feel like napkins - not too thick - but wanted the robot fabric top pieces backed in order to hide the seams. So.. we decided to sew a top piece with red fabric framing blue robot sections and use another thin bottom piece for backing. Then, really going wild, decided to go with bias tape on the seams and some random-ish zigzag stitches across the top of the entire napkin in a few lines.

This random topstitch method has the dual-purpose of a fun, decorative detail with the bright yellow accenting zigzags, and most importantly, it's intended to keep the napkins from bunching up through the washing / drying process. These items are for the kitchen and above all things must be functional. We've all had those things you love, but you never want to use - always dreading the time when a washing is in order, and even (eek!) a pressing to make it look good again.

In the end, all of the pieces were tied together with red, since that's the main color they picked for the kitchen, AND robots, of course. Sara Leah LOVES robots!! (and we trust Jim loves them, too.) ;D