I absolutely did not get any sewing done this weekend. I’m pretty sure I slept most of the day Saturday, though I don’t remember it. I did a tiny bit of embroidery and made a ton of yoyos (of course, making fabric yoyos is apparently my new hobby). We did a bit of yard-work (read: I got Aaron to do yardwork). Other than that, nothing!

I even put Sullivan to work because I was too lazy to do much.

Yes, he’s in the front yard, watering plants without any pants on. I’m an awesome parent.

I’ve got three weeks of being pregnant left and I am so totally over it all. People keep asking me how I’m feeling and saying really obnoxious things like, “WOW are you having TWINS?!?!” and for the most part I’m pretty miserable and hateful and cranky. I’m in good health, but the baby is sitting on a vein that cuts off circulation when I lie down on my back (and then I pass out). I’m definitely moving slower and having some pretty painful Braxton Hicks contractions. I’m just hungry and tired and too tired to eat all the time, so hearing about how big my belly is from perfect strangers just gets annoying after awhile.

I started reading Twilight today. I know I’m waaay late on this (I’m pretty slow to catch on trends), but I have to admit, I’m more captivated than I hoped to be and the book totally sucked several hours of my day away today before I even realized it.

The only upside of the weekend — and the fact that we have a backyard full of incredibly invasive mint I planted to feed my julep addiction (I also enjoy a nice mojito now and then) before I got knocked up — was that we made these lemon mint granitas.

It’s pretty much as close to heaven as a miserably pregnant woman can get, midsummer in Indiana. The recipe is from smitten kitchen and it’s totally 100% worth trying. In fact, I melted the leftovers today and drank it like lemonade. And I can tell I’m going to be making minted lemonade for the next few weeks rather religiously.

The other good news is that I registered for classes for the fall and I’ll totally be able to graduate in the spring! Yay! A full ten years after I started college I’ll have that muchly coveted ENGLISH DEGREE! WOW! And then, with my English degree in hand, I’ll be totally unstoppable as a stay-at-home-mom-crafter-cloth-menstrual-pad-sewer… Okay. I’m done with the sarcasm.

Don’t tell any of my English profs that I’m totally enjoying Twilight though, okay?

In honor of Sew, Mama, Sew! Sewing Machine month, here is my sewing machine self-interview meme:

What brand and model do you have?

I have a Janome Sewist 625E.

How long have you had it?

I’m pretty sure I got it about a year and a half ago? Right around 18 months I think.

How much does that machine cost (approximately)?

I can’t remember exactly but I think I paid about $400 at the local dealer.

What types of things do you sew (i.e. quilting, clothing, handbags, home dec projects, etc.)?

Well I sew clothing, bags, home-dec projects and cloth menstrual pads, of course! I’m just starting to get into quilting a little bit, but I much prefer to sew small things and clothes.

How much do you sew? How much wear and tear does the machine get?

I probably use it every-other day. My serger actually gets more use — but that may change as I become more and more enamored with sewing hats and quilts!

Do you like/love/hate your machine? Are you ambivalent? Passionate? Does she have a name?

I suppose I think my machine does exactly what I need it to do. I’m not passionate about it, nor am I ambivalent.My machine is very sturdy and solid — which is why I bought it over some cheaper models with more fancy stitches! I love that it doesn’t wobble around when I’m sewing.

What features does your machine have that work well for you?

The features I most love are:

• ease of use (simplicity)
• up-down needle button
• drop-in bobbin
• adjustable foot pressure
• free arm
• one-step buttonhole
• automatic needle threader

If my needle threader broke or the up/down needle button stopped working, I’d have to get a new machine! That’s how much I love those features!

Is there anything that drives you nuts about your machine?

I honestly haven’t had any problems with this machine since I’ve had it! It has a nice hardcover case too and it’s small enough to fit in one of those rolling bags if I want to take it somewhere. The only thing that drives me nuts is getting to the dealer before she closes when I need to buy bobbins! I do kind of wish I could use generic bobbins, but only because I’m lazy.

Would you recommend the machine to others? Why?

I would definitely recommend my sewing machine to others. Especially new sewers. When I started sewing a few years back, I had a cheapo machine from a department store and within a few months I started to feel very frustrated with the quality of the machine and all the problems I had with it. If sewing is going to be a serious hobby, a good entry level machine is important — otherwise you’ll end up just hating your machine as soon as you realize all it’s limitations. I think that the Janome Sewist 625E has just enough features for basic garment/home dec/quilting projects that anyone could use it with satisfactory results. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles on this machine, but like I said, it’s sturdy, solid and super easy to use! (I totally sound like a commercial)!

What factors do you think are important to consider when looking for a new machine?

Knowing what you want to do is important. When I started sewing I had no idea what kinds of things I wanted to make — so having an all-purpose machine was important. I also think it’s pretty impossible to buy a sewing machine blind off the internet. If you’re going to invest the kind of money in a hobby that can be as expensive as sewing, it’s important to form a good relationship with a dealer that can help you when you have problems. I think it’s handy to go to a dealer that can do small repairs on-site too.

There is a Janome dealer and a Husqvarna/Viking dealer in the town I live in. I happened to get a Janome machine because on the day I went looking, I got better customer service from the Janome dealer — but I’ve since formed a great relationship with the Husqvarna/Viking shop too — and that’s where I ended up buying my serger. If I were going to upgrade my machine, I’m honestly not sure who I’d go through! I bought a Janome Serger to start out with too and it was sort of crappy compared to my new Huskylock. I’m not sure how the higher-end machines stack up. I just took a beginners quilt class at the Husqvarna/Viking shop and I go in there more often because they have better fabric. It would be a tough choice because I do love my Janome sewing machine.

Do you have a dream machine?

I don’t know if I have a dream machine. I did some sewing on the computerized Husqvarna quilting machines at the class on Saturday and I liked the thread intake thing and the bobbin winder a lot. I think it would be nice to have some more stitches (my machine has 24) — but I have no idea what I’d use them for! If I got a new machine I’d want it to be sturdy and hard-working and I would need it to specialize in garment construction or quilting. I’m not big into embroidery, so nothing like those crazy embroidery machines.

Maybe one of those adorable vintage/retro machines would be nice. Or a Hello Kitty sewing machine. Yeah. I’d like that!

Well my husband did some magic with the comment database and the winners of my blog giveaway are:

For the pincushion package — Tanya! She wrote that her favorite/dream colors are “true reds and brick/deep reds.” It’s harder to find these colors because true batiks are all hand-dyed and then laid out to dry in the sun. Really intense colors like red are harder to get without fading/bleeding. Tanya has a cute blog where she posts her sewing projects and she has some great cloth napkin sets on her etsy shop too! Of course, I’m a big fan of cloth replacing disposable/paper products myself.

For the cloth pad set, the winner is Tawny! Tawny wrote that she was interested in cloth pads because she hadn’t heard of them, though she’d heard of cloth diapers. She commented, “There are lots of cloth diaper campaigns, but I’ve never heard of a cloth panty liner campaign (not that men would be able to handle it anyway hehehe).  It’s a great way to go green!” I agree that it’s a good way to be greener. And of course, since I have been making and using cloth pads for years — and I guess it’s a small-ish community of people who do this — I feel like there are campaigns out there — but I suppose that they’re largely invisible to the world at large. I think part of the reason that people think that men might not be able to handle information about cloth pads is that a lot of people still somehow think that menstruation is shameful or disgusting. This is just one more way our society tells us that our bodies are something to hide away. Menstruation is pretty much the most natural thing in the world! It just might be the one thing the majority of women in the world have in common!

Anyway, this is a rant for another post! I hope you like the pads, Tawny. And if you have any other questions come up as you’re trying them out, let me know! Tawny has a family blog that she posts on and some really cute crafts and accessories up on her etsy shop as well.

Finally, the winner of the vintage notions package is Whimsical Road. She has lots of really awesome sewing stuff up on her blog too and an etsy shop full of goodness as well. She wrote, “my luckiest vintage find was a set of vintage Pyrex bowls and a McCalls sling bag pattern from the ’60s that I had been SEARCHING for all year.. both at one yard sale and all for under $4. I would go thrifting every day if I could.” If I could go thrifting every day I would too! My bank account won’t allow it!

Thanks to everyone who entered! I was totally blown away by all the comments and I’m slowly getting through them. My dad is in the hospital right now so I don’t know if I’ll be posting for the next few days, but I’ve got another great tutorial in the works and some new WIPs to share as soon as I have the time to sit down and write up blogs!

Comments are now closed on my giveaway post while I figure out the logistics of printing out everyone’s entries and pulling the winners from a hat! I’ll post later tonight with the winner!

First off, WOW! I’m totally overwhelmed by the great comments and questions on my giveaway post! I’m going to compile everyone’s questions into a new massive FAQ and it’s seriously been very helpful! So thanks! There’s still time to enter too. I’ll close comments and pick a winner around lunchtime on Sunday (noon EST).

I thought I’d write up a tutorial on how to make a lacy flower pin, since I haven’t seen one posted yet. I can’t take credit for this idea though. I saw it used on fabric in a craft magazine (though I can’t recall which magazine it was in). All I did was apply the technique to lace! You can use this to make fabric flowers too — but you should use thinner fabric if you do.

The first step is to go to your local thrift shop and find a huge gallon ziplock bag of lace and trim for $1.

Got it? Good. You’ll also need thread and a needle (hand-sewing thread works the best). You’ll probably want to use thread that actually matches the lace you’re using. And you’ll need a pinback or safety pin and a bit of felt (I’m using some heavy sew-in interfacing here because I had a few scraps left from a bag project). If you want to embellish it with buttons or beads or whatever, you’ll need that too of course!

The first thing is to cut your lace so that you can visually divide it by five. Most lace that I’ve used for this has a “bumpy” side and a flat side. I count ten “bumps” and leave half a “bump” on each side to sew them together (does this make sense?). If you want to just mark your lace with a little fabric pen or something, that would work too. Just make sure you can easily divide it by five (or however many petals you want).

Start at the top of the lace (the bumpy side) and make a long running stitch down. You’ll be stitching U shapes. When you get to the top of the U, bring the needle around to the other side of the lace so it can pull the lace (see the picture because I obviously can’t explain this).

Keep going till you have made five U shapes and then start pulling the thread to gather the lace.

Eventually you’ll have something like this:

Use your needle and thread in the back of the flower to shape it nicely. You just have to play with it, adding a stitch here and there and seeing how the front is shaping up. You’ll want to push and pull on the petals with your fingers to get it nicely shaped too.

Sew your button on (if you want a button in the center).

Now is the time to embellish it with other lace, trims, ribbons, whatever. Just use your imagination and stitch them on the back of the pin.

Finally, sew a pinback onto a bit of felt and attach it to the back. Or just stab it with a safety pin. Honestly, I’ve done both!

Okay, so now that you’ve made one, you can just start gathering the lace while you’re sewing the U’s. The wider you make your U’s the bigger the petals will be:

Sit back and marvel at your creations. I put these on my hats and I’ve used them to dress up bags. They would make super cute headbands. I’m not really a broach kind of girl, but I’m sure you can make beautiful broaches with them too!

Please let me know if something wasn’t clear! And if you make any, leave a link to a photo for me to see!

Except I’m not giving away my blog! I’m giving away lots of fun stuff though!

Today is the SewMamaSew blog giveaway day and since I love getting free crap, I thought I’d offer lots of free crap to you instead (cause I have never won anything, seriously, except the husband-lottery. Maybe the baby lottery. Maybe).

There are three prizes in my giveaway today and you can enter for just one or all three! How sweet am I? Though if you by some random chance win all three, you will have to endure the wrath of all the other participants!

The first prize is my “handmade” gift that is not about cloth menstrual pads (haha!). I wanted to give something away that would have larger appeal, so I’m offering this hand-stitched cathedral window pincushion I made. I have been really drawn to these batik colors lately, so I went with this color scheme for the whole theme of my give-away. This prize also includes some yoyo hairpins with tiny silver moons and two very random fabric sheep 1.5″ pinback buttons (what can I say, I’m getting little random craft things ready for the farmers markets!).

This is giveaway #1!

My second gift is a set of cloth pantyliners. If you’re interested in making the switch from disposable menstrual products to cloth, check out the links in my sidebar for more information! This is a set of four — two 6″ liners and two 8″ liners. One set is organic cotton and raw silk and the other is organic cotton and organic bamboo velour! I hand-dyed the cotton myself. Raw silk is a fiber that helps reduce irritation and it just feels really cool on hot summer days. Bamboo velour is almost buttery soft. These are perfect for light days, spotting, discharge (OMG I just said discharge on the internet!) and are great if you already use a cup or sponge and want some additional leak protection. I’m happy to answer any/all questions about my products and believe me, I’ve been at this for years  — nothing is TMI!

This is giveaway #2!

Finally I have a kit of vintage notions and sewing stuff. This has a cute pajama pattern, a bit of vintage fabric, some lace and trim and a few zips. Enough to keep you busy for awhile. I used to have these kits in my etsy shop, but have discontinued them (look for them in a new incarnation soon though)! You’ll love this. Seriously, it’s so much fun!

This is giveaway #3!

To enter, pick which one(s) you want to win and answer the corresponding questions in my comments:

For #1: I really got lost in these batik colors! And I love dying fabric too. What is your dream fabric color combo? If you could find hand-dyed or hand-batiked fabric in any color combo, what would it be?

For #2: Help me improve my ever-evolving cloth-pad FAQ. What info would be most helpful to you? To your friend you’re trying to convert?

For #3: What’s been your luckiest or favorite vintage find? I go thrifting once a week. How often do you go?

If you want more than one prize, you’ll have to answer more than one question! For extra points, post about my giveaway on your blog or in a message board and then comment the link! I’ll enter your name twice!

My giveaway will close on May 31st at Noon EST. The winner of each prize will be picked randomly. International folks are welcome to play along! Hopefully this all made sense! Let me know if you have any questions!
Good luck!

OKay, here’s the deal. I’m 35 weeks pregnant now and feel like I could just explode any minute now!

I’m going to continue to take custom orders through June 12, but I want everyone to know that if something happens (you know, like birth) and I disappear for a few days, I’m going to ship your orders as soon as I can!

I don’t know how long I’ll need to recover afterward. I’d like to take the first two weeks off in July and then slowly get back into the swing of things. I anticipate I’ll be able to take custom orders again by August.

I’ve got some great new products I want to roll out, but I’ve been so busy with customs I haven’t had time to debut anything!

The past three months have been the most awesome for me since I opened my etsy shop two years ago and I am super appreciative of all my wonderful loyal customers! You all have made my job really fun and I just want to say THANK YOU for all your support.

Don’t forget to check back on May 27th because I’m going to have an AWESOME GIVEAWAY with THREE prizes. Oh yes, it’s so awesome, I had to put it in caps. Okay, that’s all for now! I’ll blog again very soon with pictures and such! XOXO!

When my husband and I bought the house we live in, we were just two crazy single kids in love. We had been living in an apartment downtown over the city’s Republican headquarters (we weren’t spying, I swear!) and were shopping for a house because it was in the middle of that housing market thing where everyone and their dog was getting mortgages. We saw this house and thought it was just perfect for the two of us — two bedrooms, just enough space to be cozy but not cramped, tiny backyard we could put a garden in, monthly payments lower than our rent.

I remember the day we went to sign the papers. I had a gig that night at a local bar (in my past life I was a singer/songwriter with the guitar) and I dedicated my performance to Aaron because he “bought me a house” (I remember saying that in the mic to the bar and being really proud of him). After we got home though I didn’t feel so hot and got this weird sinking feeling. We stopped off at CVS and I picked up a pregnancy test. Surprise!!

Anyway, we’ve lived here for three years and we’ve made TONS of progress on the house, but it’s really tiny for our soon-to-be family of four. I find that I spend almost 90% of my home-time in one of two places and I thought I’d write a little about them both: my creative space/sewing area and my garden.

I share a sewing studio with my husband who uses the room as an office and all of this actually happens in our dining room. We’re in the process of finishing the attic for a studio but I honestly don’t know if it’ll happen. In the meanwhile, I make do with one bookshelf and have to keep most of my fabric and all of my bolts up in closets and wrapped up in storage.

I got my sewing desk at a thrift shop for $2, changed the hardware and painted it blue. It’s *just* big enough to fit my sewing machine and serger, but nothing else. Next to it, I have a shelf where I keep fabrics larger than half a yard that have been pre-washed.

The bookshelf opposite holds my inkpads, tape, the wraps that I use when I package orders, buttons and notions for yoyos. The second shelf is fat quarters and scraps and the third shelf has unwashed yardage and embroidery notions. In my dream world, this shelf is replaced by an Expedit shelf from Ikea (maybe this weekend cause they’re going to be on sale). The unfortunate thing about the dining room is that there isn’t a lot of wall space to put shelves.I’d love to have some place I can keep all my fabric and notions readily available, but that will not be my dining room for sure! One of the nice features of my dining room though is that our table has two extra leafs that pull out and it makes a nice cutting table (I just have to keep the rotary cutter off the tabletop).

My second sanctuary in this house is the garden, which I’ve blogged about before. In the last few weeks we’ve gotten a lot of progress done in the garden. We’ve installed rain barrels to collect the run-off water from our roof and that’s been AWESOME for watering our plots. Here’s our garden as of today:

We do square foot gardening and I’ve got three boxes. Two are veggies and one is just a wild herb bed. We also have a pepper patch, a strawberry patch, rhubarb (you can’t have strawberries without rhubarb!), some random eggplants and cabbage planted throughout our yard, and a big plot for garlic. This week we’re going to dig three trenches to try trench gardening some zucchini, squash and melons.

I think our garlic plot is my favorite so far this year because we did all the hard work for it last fall and it’s grown as if by magic (I’ve totally forgotten all the work we put in to it). I also like it because it’s along the side of our house next to the alley and I wonder what people think of it when they walk by! The elephant garlic plants are near the end and they are HUGE already! They probably stand nearly three feet tall at this point. We need to mulch it down again before it gets too hot, but I’m pretty stoked about all the garlic that is going to come up from this.

I probably spend as much time outside gardening this time of year as I do sewing. It helps that Sullivan is totally happy to be outside as much as possible (me sewing doesn’t seem to entertain him as much). It seems that we’re going to be living here for the next several years anyway and we’re both of the opinion that we need to make the most of it.

What is your creative space like? Do you have a sanctuary in your home? Blog about it and let me know the link!

With caffeine, all things are possible. That’s been Aaron’s mantra the past sixteen weeks and his efforts finally paid off on Friday when he finally got his BA. His family flew in Friday morning for the weekend and my mother came over and we all got to see him in his glorious robes and hat walking in commencement.

Saturday we had a little open house gathering (which Aaron decorated the above cake for). His parents played with Sullivan pretty much nonstop all weekend and we ate lots of chips and hummus and fruit salad and it was just really nice.

I had bad dreams last night though and got up at 6 a.m. this morning. Not much else to do, I made my second hat with the Clover patterns. I still haven’t gotten any pictures that do the hat justice to how cute it actually is!

Here are some more pictures of my weekend:

Am so, so tired! I either need some caffeine or I need to go to bed.

I did a bit of blog maintenance — light maintenance, that is, because the web department is all busy graduating today (harumph!). Now I have a sidebar with LINKS! Links to blogs that I read in my Google Reader! I was so thrilled when I found a wordpress plugin that could just import links from my reader, I gotta say. Some of the blogs I read are about food, some are about craft stuff and some are just people I know and love from the intertube!

I’ve been looking for a way to respond to comments that puts the response on my blog (as well as in your inbox), but no luck so far. If you know of such a plugin, please let me know!

In other blog-related news, the Sew, Mama, Sew! Blog is once again sponsoring a giveaway. Some of you might have done this in December. Basically, crafty blogs from all over the world are going to have giveaways on May 27. There will be a list of all the participating blogs on the SMS blog.

Well I’m going to be having a giveaway for this! YAY! Actually, I’m going to be giving away three different prizes that day! One will be cloth-pad related, one will be something handmade that is not cloth-pad related and one will be a yummy package of vintage craft supplies. You will have to come back to find out how to enter (you’ll need to leave a comment on a post, duh!). I just wanted to give you a heads up.

I finished a charm pack of yoyos and I calculated that I will only need 3560 more yoyos to finish my quilt top . Yes!! Other than that, I haven’t done much sewing this week because my in-laws are coming into town (they’ll be here in a few hours) and we’re having a graduation party for Aaron tomorrow.

I got an A- on my thesis project (the minus because I never bothered to write up an annotated bibliography) and an A on my poetry portfolio. I’m pretty happy with that! Oh and I got an A in my biology course which is a miracle! I think my poetry portfolio might be the beginnings of a chapbook too. This whole semester I had been thinking I wasn’t doing great work, but after looking at what I’ve produced, I’m pleased as punch.

Today I have a ton of stuff to get done and it’s going to be a crazy weekend! Until I blog again…