Under Construction

The thing I've been far too obsessed with this month

The doll bed I was working on here. With the quilt seen here. I finished the mattress and pillow today.

The bed also fits a doll (it's 18x9" interior dimensions)

The bed itself is pine, scraps from Mr. H's project. It's finished with a thin coat of milk paint and a bit of green acrylic for accent.

The mattress and pillow are made from a thrifted pillowcase and stuffed with leftover batting from the sleeping bag my dad made. I told you he's the one who taught me to sew, right? He's picked it up again as a retirement hobby.

The doll bed is part of my set of "cozy" items for Handmade Parade. I am also working on other little doll quilts including this wool one.

It's made from felted sweaters and isn't especially pretty colors but I really like the rustic look and the scratchy/soft feel of it. I hand sewed the squares together with green embroidery floss. I imagine it's the kind of blanket they would have had in Little House on the Prarie to tuck in their dolls.

I also worked on Biscuit's new coat today (I should mention I took a half day at work so I had lots of sewing time). It's done except the buttons but when I asked her to try it on she SCREAMED. 

NO COAT. NOOOOOOO

See if I sew for her again! ;) You may see a 3T coat with wood buttons for sale on Etsy soon!

Links and a recipe

Links:

• Doll quilts that I really like (Flickr favorites)
• A video of Biscuit "reading" her new favorite book. Thanks, mom.
• A really good (craft related) segment of This American Life. Listen to the third act; I can relate to that guy.
• And speaking of Martha Stewart, have you listened to this Craftsanity podcast? One of my favs.

Recipe:
For the mushroom soup that looked oh so appetizing in this post:

Hungarian Mushroom Soup (from the Coffee House Cookbook)
3 cups nonfat milk (I use lowfat, it's what we have)
2 small onions, diced
1 tbsp plus 1/4 cup butter
1 tsp salt
2 pounds mushrooms, sliced (cremini are good, button are fine)
4 1/2 tsp dill
2 tbsp plus 1 tsp paprika (yes, that's a boatload of paprika)
2 3/4 cups water or vegetable stock (I use stock when I can)
1/2 cup flour
2 1/4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 cups lowfat sour cream

1. Begin warming milk in a saucepan on low heat (I totally skip this step, too lazy to wash all those pots!). In a soup pot, saute onions in 1 tbsp of butter and the salt. When soft, add mushrooms, dill, paprika and 1 cup water/stock. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.
2 In a separate saucepan, melt remaining 1/4 cup butter. Whisk in flour forming a roux. Slowly add milk (warm or not) whisking out any lumps. Add roux and milk mixture to the soup pot. Add remaining stock/water and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Just before serving, add soy sauce, lemon juice and sour cream, whisking thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Yield: 10 cups

This is one of our favorite soups and perfect for fall. And, really, when the heck did it get to be fall? I'm stuck way back in July waiting for my summer vacation!

Happy linking and cooking!

Oh, wait. Can't go without a photo!

Mary had a lamb that followed her to school one day. Biscuit has a blow up dinosaur :)

Ode to my favorite appliance

Dishwasher, my love
You clean so well I can blog
Not hand wash outside

You make light work of
Pots, pans, Gladware, cups and plates
I miss you so much

You look so ready
Alas, you have no water
Until October

Back up, outdoor sink
I wish you had hot water
My hands are wrinkly

Dishwasher thy name
Often Melissa, not Rob.
Unfortunately.

Obviously I had some time to think about this topic tonight.

Haiku's were inspired by this t-shirt. Dishes were inspired by this mess:

Wood buttons

It pays to have a hubby who's a woodworker

When you've got a hankering to make wood buttons, a saw, sander and drill press are sure to be close at hand.

The darker ones are from the cherry tree (source of the blocks). The lighter ones are from a branch of unknown heritage that I found in the yard. Maybe the katalpa? I have a few more sticks saved up in the shop. I want to make Biscuit a(nother) coat. This time with wood buttons.

Hope your weekend was spectacular.

Tutorial: Interfacing applique technique

Does everyone already know how to do applique using fusible interfacing? I can't recall when I learned this great technique, it's certainly not my original idea, but I thought I'd share a quick tutorial.  Disclaimer: all photos taken with the flash leading to poor quality and weird reflections but I think you can handle it!

I'm working on a mini quilt, applique on chenille, as one of my cozy items for Handmade Parade.   Without further ado, on with the tutorial:

Draw the designs you want to applique on the back (non bumpy) side of a lightweight fusible interfacing:

Pin designs to the fabric you want to applique with the bumpy (fusible) side of the interfacing toward the good side of the fabric:

Now sew on your drawn lines (or just inside since you don't want the pen marks to show like they do on my project).  Stitch all the way around your shape without leaving a gap:

Then cut out your image pretty darn close to the stitch line. Clip corners as needed to reduce bulk and make curves smooth.

Now cut a slit in the interfacing through which you will turn your applique piece right side out (thereby tucking in the raw edges:

Carefully turn your piece right side out taking care not to tear the interfacing (too much).  Poke out the corners as needed:

Arrange your applique pieces on the fabric you are appliquing them to and iron to lightly fuse them in place:

We interrupt this tutorial programming for me to comment on how much I love my dorky little hand sewing kit. I made this little pouch and added a needle, a spool of thread, a leather thimble, a few pins and embroidery scissors and it's a perfectly portable kit for a perfectly portable craft (hand sewing or hand quilting). I have another one for embroidery. I love this simple kit so much I'm going to make a few to sell at Handmade Parade. I think they would be a cool gift for someone who enjoys sewing or wants to learn.  The ones I'm making will come with a needle case and without a wine stain (oops).

So, hand sewing, you need to hand (or machine) sew around the edges of your applique pieces. If you hand sew, use a coordinating thread and a blind stitch as you would use to sew binding.

And that's it. Good looking applique quick and easy with no needle turning required.

I hope this is helpful--let me know if anything is unclear.

have a great day!

 

Crafting ADD

I'm starting to really panic about getting everything ready for Handmade Parade (only a few weeks away). On top of that I've got a few non-HP crafting ideas I'm working on. All this has led to a serious case of crafting ADD.  This weekend I jumped around between countless projects and completed almost nothing.

A series of newborn hats I'm working on for patterns (all too tall from brim to top--clearly the pattern needs some work):

A (chenille) coat with unfinished sleeves:

Birthday gifts for some very special boys.

More work on the scarves (somewhat accurately described by my sister as "scary" but I'm working on it!)

And a bunch of puttering about my craft room mess and thinking up more projects and generally not accomplishing much.  Doesn't make for scintillating blogging but there you go.

I really enjoy using the word scintillating. But I'm usually describing things as not very scintillating.

This weekend I also dealt with a series of uncooperative models

And I spent a beautiful afternoon in San Francisco with my sister and Biscuit (everyone assumed my sister was the mama since they are both redheads). 

Going to all the cute shop on Hayes Street was NO HELP on the crafting ADD front! Hopefully I'll be back soon with some successful, finished projects!

Collaborating

Tonight Mr. H and I spent the evening together working in the shop.  He's finishing building someone else's kitchen cabinets (ours are basically done). And I was working on another "cozy" project. One that I'm very excited about.

I must say I've become a bit of a weanie in the shop ever since I tried to remove my own fingers. But I got up my bravery and used all the tools except the offending miter saw. Cutting pine with the band saw took me right back to seventh grade shop class. I love the smell of fresh sawn pine boards.

::

In other news, the postcards I created arrived today. Biscuit (sans clothes) promptly absconded with two of them (thus the picture).

In getting these printed, I have sort of forced myself into working on another big project (I mention the project on the back of the cards.) More about that tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you want a postcard with 5 super quick ideas for baby (gifts or your own baby), send your address to mdhaworth at gmail dot com and I'll put one in the mail to you. If nothing else it'll be fun to get mail!  If you want to send a friend's address I'll send them a postcard too (and I swear I won't sign anyone up for weird mailing lists!!)

Tomorrow is Friday--hooray!

Working in series

When I was getting ready for my first craft show I discovered that I work best 1. under pressure 2. within boundaries and 3. with a theme.

For the spring show I chose the theme "Garden Party" and tried to make all the pieces (aprons, totes, notecards and more) fit within the theme. I also tried to make several of each piece aiming for quantity rather than perfection. I found this approach worked really well for me. I created 4 half aprons and liked each one I made more than the previous as I refined my ideas as I worked with the fabric.

For Handmade Parade (only a few weeks away!!) I'm working with the theme "Cozy."  It's a concept that's been rattling around in my head since I bought all that wool in Chicago. My recent tv cozy craze fits in as well.

For spring I made aprons, for autumn/winter I'm making scarves. I'm really trying to do something different with each piece and finish everything I start regardless of how much I hate it part way through.  I have one scarf complete and two in process. I hope to make at least 5 but I've been doing a lot of hand sewing so we'll see. 

It's also relevant to note that I never wear scarves of any variety and have no real sense of how they should be. I welcome any feedback on this. Long? Short? Wide? Skinny? Heavy? Light? Colorful? Neutral? How 'bout some of each?

Above I have a short pink scarf, woven wool on one side, knit wool on the other and bound with cotton. I made the oversized wood button from a block.  (please ignore the fact that I'm in my pajamas in this photo).

I am also working on a brown scarf seen above in progress that is ruched (sp?) and backed with fabric from a sari I bought in India several years ago and finally cut up. 

The gray one is a wool suiting and I'm working on some embroidery ideas based on the conversation I had with Biscuit this morning about who is related to who. Baby E's mommy is Aunt Michelle and Woolis (Uncle Luis) is Baby E's daddy. Aunt Michelle is daddy's sister and so on. Trying to explain the family tree got me thinking about drawing one in the style of a biology class pedigree chart. So the scarf is both sides of Biscuit's family tree (abbreviated to immediate family).  Not sure how it will look in embroidery but I'm going to go climb in bed with some cheap wine and a tivo'd episode of the Daily Show and get embroidering. We'll see.

What I do for a living (when I'm not cooking dinner)

So thank you all for playing along.  Nobody was right this time around. Well, except Krista who is smart and googled me and emailed me my exact job title. Google. Duh!

For those of you who didn't google me, I'm a development officer for a university. (that's code for fundraiser). I work with a lot of food and agriculture projects so the USDA guess wasn't far off and since I work for a public university the government guesses were on target.  It was sort of fun to see what folks guessed. 

My boss read the list and said she got a laugh. She also agreed I'd had a really random two weeks with far more excitement than would typically be expected.

So there you go. Fundraiser. Not exactly what you think you will be when you're in sixth grade and your teacher asks what you want to be when you grow up (I said neurosurgeon but turns out I am way too queasy for that. Oh, and I didn't go to med school)

Ramble. Ramble. Ramble.

Look, here's what I made for dinner: Pork with Figs, rice pilaf and spinach. Wowsa does that photo make it look disgusting. It was yummy in real life. 

I was unexpectedly inspired by cooking. Now I am very tired.  To think some people cook a whole meal every night of the week. Not me.

I'll try to be back tomorrow with something interesting to say--just didn't want to leave the game hanging.

Happy Monday!

Naptime transformation

1:30 p.m.--before nap

3:45 p.m.--after nap

Another one to file under "it looked cuter in my head". Maybe once she grows into it (it's way too big) it'll be better.  Maybe not. The fabrics are way too stiff so maybe after a few washings... Hopefully the dress that is cut out above will come out better. As a note, I bought the pattern because Amy recommended it. She's right, the shirt is too short as the pattern is drawn.

Ok, off to do the laundry and other stuff that didn't get done during yesterday's nap because I was sewing!