Past sewing projects

I've been sewing since I was a little girl, first making outfits for my Barbies, eventually getting into the 'hippie' clothing scene in highschool, making patchwork pants and funky cotton dresses and apron shirts. I learned to sew on an antique Singer sewing machine that used to belong to my grandma. It was beautiful, classic avocado green, and it dropped into a wooden sewing desk. It only went straight backwards and forwards (no embroidery stitches), but it did the trick! Then in my senior year of highschool, I upgraded to a new Singer with embroidery stiches (and my favorite feature, an automatic buttonhole maker!).

At my highschool, every senior did a Senior Project in the spring for a month, and for my project, I designed and sewed (sewwed?) clothes. I made my graduation outfit, a satin tank with a matching satin and tulle skirt, a pair of funky patchwork pants that zipped into shorts,

and my favorite peice, a skirt made entirely out of neck ties! I believe there are 44 ties in all, most of which I found at thrift stores, though quite a few were donated by my dad!

My hippie sewing style long gone, I then moved on to more traditional designs. I've made a few dresses and skirts, even tried my hand at lingerie (it's so much harder to get it to fit right. I'll leave that to Victoria's Secret).

A few falls ago I started my first quilt, a pretty easy pattern for 20 fat quarters, I think it was called "turning 20", it's a twin size quilt. It took me a couple years to finish, partially because quilting takes up a lot of space for a lot of time. Here's the finished quilt. It gets plenty of use on cozy nights in the livingroom!

Most recently, I made my Halloween costume, I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I made this entirely from a pattern (one of the few times I've ever used a pattern for clothing, usually I use part of a pattern or none at all), and it's exactly as Dorothy's dress was in the movie (it's a lisenced pattern). And I glittered the shoes myself. (Wyatt was a flying monkey, I didn't make his costume but I did make his wings.)

Welcome, me!

Well I've finally bit the dust and started an actual blog. I've had a livejournal for years, but have been seriously neglecting it as of late. Not to mention it's been an everythingandnothing sort of blog for me, much more like a diary than anything else, and is probably only interesting to me. I've wanted to start a 'real' blog for a while, I've admired many friends' blogs and wished I had one that at least had a theme or some sort of direction, but never really thought of anything that might be interesting to anyone else- until now that is! (wow, that does sound a bit conceited, but then again, I think all blogging is at least somewhat conceited...) So I've decided to make this blog (at least mostly) about my various crafting projects and general homemade activityness. I've always been into throwback crafting, things like knitting and sewing and more recently quilting, crafts that generally have an old lady stigma, but in reality have quite a strong following of younger people (and not just women). In recent years I've also delved into the worlds of food preserving, gardening, papermaking, bookmaking, candlemaking, all sorts of good stuff that is a ton of fun but also helps to lead me into a more sustainable lifestyle. Red (hubby) and I have dreams of homesteading, and though the age of claiming your land by simply building on it and fencing it are long gone (sadly...), the theories and activities of homesteading are still going strong, if not infact experiencing newfound interest, due to many factors (namingly the economy). For example, just about everyone we know did something homemade or handmade for Christmas gifts this year, and not just the standard tin of cookies. So all that being said, I figured a blog about handicrafts would be apropos of not only my life and lifestyle and interests, but might actually be something other people would find if not helpful, than perhaps interesting... Plus I just really like to write, and this gives me good direction.

There's also an underlying motive for this blog, and that is that I've been toying with the idea for a couple years now of opening a craft supply store and studio, so not just retail space but also offering classes and workshops, and workspace for projects, and all sorts of good stuff. In the past I haven't been the best boss of myself, and so partially this blog is hopefully going to help me stay motivated with my projects and act as a tool to measure just how dedicated to crafting I can be. Also, I'm hoping it can help me find even more direction for the shop, so I can figure out just what I want to do and offer with it. It would be a huge undertaking, starting a business -a REAL business- from scratch, but then again, any craft project is just that- creating something from nothing, and making it beautiful.

So for now, I'm going to share some past projects that I've done, and as I catch up on those, I'll share stuff I'm working on currently as well, and hopefully she'll grow from there. I'm not sure if this all will include how-to stuff or what, I guess that might be decided by what interest people have in my blog (if any). So if you do happen upon this blog, whether you're a fellow crafter or not, I'd love any feedback, on either projects or the blog itself or whatever else you'd like to see here. I want this blog to be for other people, not just for me (if you know what I mean). So in the meantime, while I try to catch up on taking photos of old projects and all that jazz, you can also find me on facebook, or on ravelry.com (I do still have a myspace but it has fallen to the wayside as of late).