Stuff I Made

So, I have been crafty lately. It's something I look forward to during the day and it motivates me to get all my work done. So I wanted to share a few of the things I made. I'm also working on photographing my projects, so please excuse the amateur pictures.

I really needed a place to organize my time, family events and random papers. I was drooling over these awesome bulletin boards. So I wanted to make some of my own. I got a regular frame to be the dry-erase part of the Wall Of Organization.

I put fabric under the glass and just use a regular dry erase marker to make my daily to-do lists. I found a frame with no glass in the clearance section at Michael's. It was perfect for the next section of the Wall Of Organization: the magnet board. This part turned out to be a little more complicated than I anticipated. I went to Home Depot and got a metal sheet. I covered that with the same fabric. 

John had some super-strong magnets and he said I could use them. So I glued some pretty glass on them and had some lovely magnets. 

It took a little more work and cost a little more than I thought, but it turned out really well. And the best part is it's really working to help me stay organized. 

The next thing is an idea a good friend of mine had. Someone made her daughter a really cute pillowcase dress and she thought we could use it as a pattern for a dress for Aubrey. I has some fabric that I had bought intending to use in Aubrey's room, but those decorating plans kind of changed. So the fabric was available for a new project!

It's pretty cute and Aubrey wore it to church. Sadly, the binding fell off while we were there. And it's kind of too short for her. So I'll still have to practice my dress-making skills. 

Merry Christmas!

I have been very crafty this season, in spite of the nausea.  Our Relief Society had a craft night for the quarterly activity.  It was really fun and I made two things.

The first is a Christmas tree.  John helped do all the sanding before the activity and I did the painting and putting together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second craft was a Christmas Countdown.  Again, John helped with the sanding and I did the painting and putting together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You turn the blocks each day so it shows the number of days until Christmas.

Today we got out all of our decorations and put up our tree.  Here's a picture of the lovely tree.  John put the tree together and did all the lights (the hard part!) and we put the decorations on together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

My First Quilt

Last summer was a rather lonely, projectless summer for me.  So in order to avoid that this summer, John surprised me with a most welcome gift: a sewing machine.  My first project was a quilt made with squares of the T-shirts of my past.

First I laid out the shirts.



I ironed fusible interfacing onto the squares of the shirts to help stabilize the jersey.  It kind of worked.  I also changed the layout from this original one and left out the smaller row.  My mom also helped me rearrange the squares a little.



The blue fabric in the corner is a pair of crazy pajama pants I got in Korea.  I was so happy with the red, white and blue fabric I got for the sashing.  It ended up looking better than I hoped!



All in all, it turned out really well.



The backing is fleece.

It's a great quilt.  I already snuggled with it this morning!