Posted by SewPixie on April 13th, 2008 in Baking, Daily Life, Sewing, Sewing Room
So the house is a mess…again. You would think after thirty *mumble* years I would be able to keep a house picked up. This weekend I managed to get the kitchen and the dining room cleaned up. The living room isn’t terrible so I will get to that this week.
The sewing room however….was terrible. I couldn’t work anymore in there without a cleanup. Now I have to admit, normally that is stuffing things into boxes ‘to go through later’. But no, today I did a real cleaning. Which meant folding up a truckload of fabric.
I really have a problem! Sheesh I have a lot of fabric. I did pick up some new baskets to hold some of it so I hope that helps with tidiness. Of course I could always stop buying more fabric at a faster rate than I use it. Naw…that would make sense.
I also manged to get some more bags into the shop. I am happy to report that they all sold! The domestic items I will ship out tomorrow and I will send the International either on Saturday or during the week if I can get to the post. Also on the finished pile is a custom doll bag that I made for the Blythe Rescue Mission. It is a collaborative piece that will be belong to a custom Blythe doll. I’m psyched!
As you can see, Napoleon was no help with any of of crafting or cleaning activities. KoKo and Pixel generally spent the weekend lounging around also. Must be nice to not have to lift a paw yet get fed and have a nice place to sleep.
To wind up the weekend I baked some strawberry cupcakes for work. I was going to do a cake but saw some regular size muffin cups at the store today that you don’t have to use a pan for. The only pan I have is for mini cupcakes and I didn’t want to ice a billion little cupcakes. This of course reminds me that I have to go to work tomorrow. Yuck. It isn’t so much that I hate work and fear it is stealing my soul, it is just that I hate how busy I am. I have a ton of things I need to do and problems that need fixed. That just gets me all flustered as I don’t have time to do them all and wind up in a funk where I barely get anything done at all. What needs to be done is I need to get back into the habit of using 7-habits type planning and get those big rocks the hell outta the way.
Posted by SewPixie on March 3rd, 2008 in Daily Life, Sewing
Okay I need to sit a spell and update about my awesome trip to Atlanta! But first, just wanted to let the sewing peeps know that I finally finished up putting my Zipper Pocket tutorial in the tutorial section here (just look up at the top at the tab called ‘Tutorial’…how is that for user-friendly).
Posted by SewPixie on January 21st, 2008 in Blythe, Daily Life, Sewing, Sewing Room
I have today off of work. Horray! So far this has been a pretty busy weekend.
Saturday Candace and I had a mini-meet with Sylvia over at her house. Her little girls are just so cute and full of energy. And Sylvia’s work is just wonderful as are her lovely dolls. It was a fun time. After that we hit up Zoe’s Trunk for what else…more fabric. I picked up some prints for Valentines and St. Patrick’s Day dresses.
I’ve also been hard at work on more dolly body bags. I received a large order that I am super excited about so I need to get planning on those and choosing which prints to submit for it. I am just about out of the little tags I made so I ordered some custom printed ribbon instead. I am thinking if I do a loop for the tag then people could use that loop and the one at the top that hook on a strap as suggest by Eddo.
Oh yes! And on Friday we hit up Ikea at lunch so I could look at some shelves in person to help me decide on a bookcase for the ‘doll house’. Well, as I mentioned in my comments, they had a Bonde bookcase on clearance that was the perfect width and depth. We went ahead and picked that up and Candace helped me out by toting me home. I put that together Friday night and used two shelves for the dolls and the rest for me. I plan on decorating it after the miniatures show in February. Mr. B and I were always going to do a train track layout and I looked forward to the miniatures so now I have a shot at it.
So today is going to be filled with cleaning, laundry, sewing, and cutting out bags. Whew! Then on Friday is my and Candace’s yearly trek to the Sewing & Quilt Festival. Yay! And I almost forgot…a big thank you to Candace and Tina for coming across some cool quilted fabric prints on their trip to the JoAnn’s in SanTan yesterday!
Posted by SewPixie on January 1st, 2008 in Blythe, Crafting 365, Daily Life, Quilting, Sewing
This year I will be participating in two 365 groups on Flicker. What you do is take a photo each day for the pool. The two I am doing are Blythe (Gracie will be the subject) and Crafting. I actually started Crafting a while back but got out of practice so I am starting over.
Though I plan to do a lot of crafting today since I don’t have to go to work, my photo for the day is of the ‘kitty quilt’ I am working on. This quilt will be a combination of rail fence and other blocks. I’m not very happy with the first block but this one is looking better. I’ve switched over to pressing the seams open to see how that goes. There seems to be conflicting opinions on if you should press to the side or open. As a lot of things in quilting I bet it can be a heated argument but I am more from the school of ‘everyone do what they want’.
For the Blythe 365 pool you use one Blythe for the subject. I chose my first Blythe Gracie of course. Her first photo is with the little calendar I bought at the Sanrio store when Candace and I went there last weekend. I hope that I can keep up with both pools all year long. What a fun challenge.
So here is to looking forward to the new year with hope in our hearts.
Posted by SewPixie on December 26th, 2007 in Daily Life, Quilting, Sewing
Well my long weekend is sadly over. Boooo. I managed to fully complete 13 carry bags (there were 14 but one is too small after having a mishap with the serger. 
(anyone have a doll smaller than a Blythe that wants a bag?) I have a load more that have zippers done and are almost done. I ran out of zippers so I have to order some more before I can finish all I cut out. I was going to list everything in the shop in one big go but that will take FOREVER to photograph so I think I will list in batches. I will probably list these on Saturday.
I also finished up the top for my Coin Quilt. It wound up too wide for the flannel I had so I ordered some wide flannel off Fabric.com. They take PayPal….I am in so much trouble now. Heehee
Other than that I went on walks/runs with Kitaro, watch two CSI DVDs, washed the ferret (yeah Napoleon loved that…hehe) and did whatever the cats wanted me to do.
Posted by SewPixie on December 16th, 2007 in Daily Life, Sewing
Ok well I ordered a custom art doll from Original Youth based on my favorite little Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot arrived this week and he is just darling!
This weekend has mostly been spend sleeping in very late, cleaning a tad and cutting out tons of Dolly Body Bags for the shop. I am going to be a busy girl over the upcoming 4-day weekend!
Posted by SewPixie on September 29th, 2007 in Blythe, Crafting 365, Daily Life, Sewing
For Crafting 365 today I submitted one of the wrap dresses I made. I made another Friday night but then finished this one up this afternoon. I’ve had to adjust there the ties are in relation to the opening so the front flaps don’t turn out so wonky.
Also today I went and got my hair cut and highlighted as well a a brow wax. The guy parted my hair on the opposite side of what I usually do but I think I like it so I might try to switch to that.
Amie was busy with mid-terms so we didn’t run today but it is just as well since I need to work on cleaning the house.
Posted by SewPixie on September 19th, 2007 in Blythe, Sewing
Gracie’s fall outfit from Le Petit arrived the other day. There is a skirt as well that we need to photograph. Pretty eh?
Check out the shop to clothe your girls. 
Speaking of clothing…I made a new wrap dress for the girls. I’m tossing the idea in my head of making more and selling them at TIB or Etsy. I’ve haven’t sold any of my crafts since I had a little friendship bracelet business in junior high (lol I have order forms and everything). Would anyone buy the dresses I wonder…hmm.
Posted by SewPixie on September 2nd, 2007 in Quilting, Sewing
I’ve been working on a lap quilt based on ‘All Squared Up’ by Patty Murphy (in the summer issue of Quilt Sampler). The fabric I bought in a bundle at the quilt show in January that C and I always go to. If I remember right it was at the booth that C later left her phone at and I had to run back in to get it just as the show was closing for the day.
I call it the sister quilt because I plan on sending it to my sister when I am done. I also have some little things I bought for my nieces ages ago and never sent. I’ll need to think of something to send for my nephew too. I am horrible at keeping in touch so I am hoping this will show that despite that I really care a lot about her and appreciate all she’s done for me over the years.
So far I have most of the quilting done. I’m using my new walking foot and it is going pretty good, even though my ’straight’ stitching isn’t all that straight. I’ll just call that ‘charm’. I also used basting spray for the first time. It works well but it was a pain for me to get everything laid out smoothly.
As usual, I am using flannel for the back. I bought it online and the color of brown is a little darker than I expected but I think it still goes nicely. Perhaps I can finish it up sometime next week.
Now for what to make my nephew…his sister have little bags I made them so maybe a little pouch he can put treasures in.
Posted by SewPixie on August 19th, 2007 in Daily Life, Sewing
So it was not in my plans to make a potholder this weekend. But I found an In Stitches Sew Along group and I do have the book and a few of the people seem to also be in Arizona. I made this last night with the sushi fabric for the kttchen and some green from the stash. Not the greatest binding job but meh I think it will work. A couple more pics on my flickr. The patchwork is supposed to be wonky but I’m not certain I like it. Someone else mentioned it too, it doesn’t look like a neat design detail but instead like I cut the thing drunk.
This weekend I also got my hair cut, took Kitaro on a walk, worked on a wallet for a swap partner, gave Napoleon his melatonin (and got him to take ferratone today woo! he never used to like it), and have been slowly working on cleaning. Ugh I have to get some laundry done today too so I have something to wear tomorrow.. Oh yeah and I found a high-shank walking foot on All Brands so I ordered that. I hope it works on my Kenmore. C’s quilt that she used her quilting foot on turned out really nice.