A Dinosaur for Atlas

I made this sweet, sweet t-rex for my coworker who was pregnant. Yep, was pregnant, as in, I made this for her baby shower gift, and then baby Atlas decided to come a month early!  We cancelled the baby shower, and just had her come pick up her gifts with baby in tow.  So, on the plus side, little baby at work :)  But on the minus side, no baby shower cake :( I know, priorities, right?

Here's the Ravelry page for Timothy the T-rex from Bluephone studios.  Oh my gosh, I am like drooling over all the patterns from Bluephone.  Everything is freaking adorable.  I just loved this pattern, it's a great design, and easy enough to make again and again without getting tired of it.

I know I made the colorway from the pattern photo, but I thought this was the cutest for a baby boy without being ubiquitous blue.  Plus, red was the color family of yarn that I actually had a good matching stripe color.

When making this up, I tried to avoid weaving in ends in the body stripes by carrying the color through the rest of the stitches until I reached the next stripe.  I really wanted all my loose ends to be secure since this is probably destined for a rough toddler.  I am usually really lazy about knotting my loose ends inside the piece since most of my things are bought by college age students.

I'm kind of mad about the eyes since I tried to put them in straight, but they somehow ended up a little crooked, so they're not perfectly straight with the indentation in the head.  I try not to look at it too hard.



Don't his little useless arms just kill you?

Scribbled - My First Dress!

You guys, I made my very first dress! Like I cut out a paper pattern and everything!


(Boo, I forgot to bring my camera home to take pictures, so I had to make do with a little powershot point and shoot.  Sorry for the low quality.)

I bought a handful of patterns from an estate sale for 10 cents a piece, so I figured it was pretty low stakes to start cutting into one of them.  I still haven't cut into some of the basic Butterick patterns that I bought from JoAnn's for a $1 each because I'm still too scared to mess them up.



This is McCall's 2604, View E, cut in a size 8, except that I hacked off the paneled skirt at the natural waist.  So it's basically a princess seamed bodice with a gathered skirt.  Also, I'm also going to call this a "softly pleated" skirt instead of gathered because I gathered the skirt by hand and didn't exactly distribute evenly around the waist.

I made this out of 1.5 yards of a Lisette fabric from JoAnn's, some kind of cotton twill, I think, so it's pretty stiff.  It was really tough to squeeze the dress out of so little fabric, which is why I ended up cutting off the pattern skirt since the pieces wouldn't fit on the fabric.  The only fabric left from cutting this out is the little U left from the neckline!  I actually cut the facings out of muslin because I couldn't squeeze it onto the main fabric.



I actually made this to wear to someone's wedding, and I really wish I had gotten pictures of it while I was there because the venue was gorgeous! It was at the Redwood Gardens in Sebastopol, CA.  Seriously fairy tale-like grounds.  Looking back though, it's a tad bright and over-the-top for a wedding.  Probably should have stuck with something monotone, but this was the fabric that I had in my stash.



Woohoo for laziness! This is an extremely ugly zipper color that doesn't match anything since I got it at an estate sale, but it was the only one in my stash that was long enough, and as a bonus, it already had the hook part of the eye tacked onto the top of the zipper tape! And because I don't know what happened to the eye that should have gone with this hook, I just sewed on a jewelry split ring :)

And would you look at those catch-stiched facings? I actually did that after I wore the dress for the first time because I couldn't stop fiddling with those damn things.  It looks so much nicer now, even though it still looks pretty horrific on the inside.



My beautiful hand-picked zipper! And almost-matched pattern! This tutorial from Sewaholic literally held my hand as I did this for the first time, and it looks great!

Can I let you in on a little secret? Most of the reason I did a hand-picked zipper was not actually because I wanted it to be invisible.  Even though I admit it looks really nice now that I've done it. It's because (A) I don't actually know how to sew in a zipper and (B) I'm not sure I even own a damned zipper foot.



More beautiful catch-stitching.  And another wonderfully instructive tutorial from Sewaholic on how to catch-stitch.

Scottie Dog Pajama Shorts

I love this cute little print!  This is actually the first (big) sewing project I've tackled since 8th grade, I think.

My college had this fun club that was just starting out, called Sew Awesome, and this was one of the projects they planned, so it was completely free to me!  I immediately zoomed over to this whimsical flannel print when I saw it.  They provided a basic shorts pattern (here's a similar free one).  Fit is not too essential since it is an elasticated waist, and they are supposed to be a little loose and comfy for lounging.

I actually added in-seam pockets (using this Burdastyle tutorial), but I didn't make my pockets big enough because I used a scrap of contrasting flannel.  Big enough for a lens cap, I guess?

I also unfortunately made my shorts too tight, so they're not actually all that great for sitting around in. A little tight in the crotch and the leg openings. 

And, finally, I added a little pink bow to the front since the front and back looked basically the same to me! I guess I could have stitched a fake fly front, but I was done fiddling with these by that point.

(Also, remember my fun hair tie from here? Proof that I actually wear what I DIY.)

Shaped Dumplings

These were the product of a happy accident.

I didn't add quite enough water to my dumpling dough (even though I've made it many times before), so it ended up being a little drier than usual and pretty tough to roll into neat balls that would stick together.

I made like 3 balls before I gave up and started to make little cubes instead.  N joined in and made pyramids since he decided cubes and spheres were too hard to make.  Plus, I added a little heart out of the last of the dough for a little fun :)



All of the shapes cooked up fine, I usually let them float around on the surface for a minute or two before fishing them out of the water.

Give shaped dumplings a try, they make your soup cute!

Calf Pants

[I'm back! I wasn't really gone, though. I'm going to let the cat out of the bag here and say that I had planned to move to North Carolina (!) for a job but ended up backing out.  That's why I was planning to give myself a month or two to pack up and settle my affairs here in San Diego.  Instead, I'm looking for a job locally instead.  Any San Diego biochemists in the house? Shoot me an email!]

Calf pants ... get it? A whale calf made out of pants? Heh, just me? Ok.

Isn't he a cutie? Even with all his crooked stitching and lumpiness.

The talented lady who thought of this idea kindly translated her instructions into English here!  I think this is the best use of old jeans that I've ever seen :)  I kind of want to take some old gray jeans and turn them into a shark!

I had a pair of jeans that I wore to pieces (specifically, I had an embarrassing hole in the crotch area), but I hated to get rid of them, and I was pretty sure they were even beyond what Goodwill would accept.

I love that this idea very cleverly uses the right and wrong sides of the denim to create color contrast.

Isn't he cute? Now, who do I give him to?

Life Lately

Big things are happening over here! I'm making some major life changes, so it'll be a little quiet around the blog here.  I'll probably still pop in with a few posts here and there as I finish up random projects (and believe me, I have a ton of crochet projects on the docket).  Things probably won't be back to normal until at least October, so please stick around?  I promise this is not a permanent hiatus!

Our late spring/early summer garden

Warning, this post is very picture heavy!

We are having pretty decent success with our container garden this year.  We have quite a variety of things: cherry and heirloom Mr. Stripey tomatoes, snow peas, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, parsley (or is it cilantro?), bell peppers, Japanese eggplants, cucumbers, Serrano peppers, Anaheim peppers, sweet peas, and beets.




These are Scented Streamer sweet peas that we bought a packet of seeds of at the Flower Fields in Carlsbad last year.  They smell amazing!  They were definitely late bloomers, these are the first flowers since they were planted in like February in our big trough.  All of the seeds sprouted but only one or two of them actually grew :(  I'm hoping things are looking up now!






I think these Japanese eggplants are so neat! They have spikes in the middle of the leaves, how weird is that? Plus, these things are pretty much a miracle since we tried to grow black beauty eggplants last year and those always blossomed but never fruited. 


And these are our awesome handmade wooden troughs! Sweet peas in the left and beets on the right.  Each trough is made out of one long board that was cut into four pieces, it's about 4 feet long so it holds a ton of dirt.  We just screwed the boards onto the sides using long wood screws and at the same time learned the importance of drilling pilot holes :)