Little Runner

Yesterday our squadron had a mile run. Well if the soldier brought his family he only had to run one mile if not he had to run ten. Needless to say, I was there with my soldier. So I had to get up 6 am to go run a mile. Number one I haven't been up at 6 am since I don't know when number two I don't run. EVER! I've been know to do a little Pilate's or yoga here and there but run...not in my blood. However, it wasn't half as bad as I expected it to be. I ran/walked a mile in 12 minutes. In high school I walked one in about 19 so that's pretty good :D Oh and my little runner is all dressed up in his Adidas jogging suit even though he was in a stroller. Haha. He's cute though.

On another note...I'm going back to the US of A to visit my grandmother, leaving Tuesday. I'll be back the 20th. I'm not sure how much blogging I'll get done but I'm hoping to get lots of quilting done. And shopping of course. Going back to America is like a big shopping spree for me, being stuck over here in Germany where I can only order things online is tough. Especially when it comes to fabric. Its awful. Just take my word for it. Until we meet again, have a wonderful June.

Pictures and Giveaways

I just finished editing some pics. I recently realized my son, bless him, has been sleeping all through the night for several nights. He's 17 months old so imagine my excitement. He hasn't always woken up but since he was about 11 months old he has, yes its been a joy. Anyway with all that sleeping throughout the night I'm up at 1 am photo editing, and entering blog giveaways. These pictures really show how genuinely happy my son is, awesome moments...




As for the giveaway, its not my giveaway but there's about a billion at Sew mama, Sew! go enter them all!!!

Another awesome giveaway...A Vintage style hat box, its adorable by the way. Find it here.

Actual Sewing

I guess beings my blog is 'supposed' to be about sewing and quilting I better do a post on that subject :D I've been researching hair accessories because this is my newest interest. I found a super cute reversible one here, super easy and very cute. Little girls and adults. Here's my two I made today








Next up is an adorable blog I found in the process of looking for hair stuff. I cant get over how cute her stuff is. She is from Australia. You can find her blog here, she has tutorials on some of her stuff and several places sell her patterns. The pillow is def. on my to do list. Its just too cute.

Donate!

Cancer is something that runs all through out my family in many forms. So its something I'm very serious about helping out with. Here is a story of a mom who's son was just diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and she needs every ones help so if you can please visit her page here and help out. If not maybe just leave her some positive wishes. Thank you. Happy Memorial Day.

Pool Party

We had so much fun outside yesterday. We woke up, hurried to get ready so we could run downstairs and play. I had to find a bubble recipe first though and something to use for a wand. Who knew, dish soap, corn syrup and water makes bubbles. So we spent all day outside, except for lunch we had to come back upstairs. It was truly so relaxing and wonderful though. We rarely have Daddy home to do things like that. I'm so glad though because I got some great shots. No silhouette shots for next weeks I ♥ Faces challenge :( I just cant seem to get a good one. So far today its looking beautiful too. So I'm sure we'll be outside most of the day. In a way this nice weather is bad because I CAN NOT sew inside when its so nice outside. I take my hand sewing outside but I have so much backed up I need to get done. And I leave for the states in 9 days. Anyway here's my best shots from yesterday, this is out of 500 photos. Enjoy. I hope everyone is having as nice weather as us here in Germany.

Remember

I'd like to dedicate this post to all of our serving men and women. And those that cant be with us anymore. This is a picture of my husband while he was serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom 07-08.

I praise god that he came back to us but others were not so fortunate. I'd like for everyone to just take a moment to give those men and women a thought. I've heard countless times recently that our soldiers do not feel like fighting a war is what it used to be, where when they came home everyone was grateful and people actually showed it. It disheartens me. These boys give up so much to fight for a country they don't feel supports them. So I ask you, if you come across a soldier, airman, marine or any of our enlisted, just acknowledge them. You don't even have to say anything, if you look them in the eyes and smile, they will know. And of course remember those who couldn't come back from war. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Sunny Weather

I call my son my sunny weather or baby sunshine he always repeats sunshine :) He makes me very giddy. He so adorable. Anyway blogging about pictures today. Yesterday was so beautiful we went out and got some good shots. None without drool running down his face ha ha. I had to upgrade my flickr account because I wanted to use their cool stuff to edit my photos. I'm currently waiting on my photoshop CS3 to arrive, even though most times I still love using Flickr or Picasa. I also did some self portraits. I see photographers all the time with their avatar like this so I wanted to see what I could do. Its an interesting perspective. I had fun editing them though. I just with I had that photoshop for some things.





Last night my keep me awake dilemma was my husband snoring :(

Yesterday my son was getting into something he wasn't supposed to and I told him no don't do that. Then he preceded to do it again I said "Landon what did mommy say" he says "roooar". Lol. He does that because we ask him what all the animals say snake, bear, lion, etc. I just didn't expect him so say that's what mommy says. He a hoot. He says funny things already. He's going to be one of those kids that say hilarious things all the time.







PS Over the weekend, Please remember our soldiers. Its why we have this holiday. So just keep that in mind at the BBQ's.

I ♥ Faces Week 19 Photo Contest

I found a website for entering photos into a photo contest called I ♥ Faces, They do a different contest every week, you can enter Monday and Tuesday. I've always considered myself some what good at taking pictures so here it is...he looks like he's just laying on his ball being cute but he was resting. When he first started crawling and rolling over he'd just get tired and need a break. Luckily he looked adorable doing it.

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb book photo contest. If chosen, I grant I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

PT Obsessed.

My current obsession. Pregnancy Tests. My son is 17 months old and my husband and I decided to start trying again...hoping for a girl. Well we've been trying for three months now and every month its the same thing. Pregnancy test after pregnancy test. I start them 5 days early and cant stop. I just keep hoping and praying that we're pregnant. And I just keep getting disappointed. Its not that its been sooo long its that we only have a certain amount of time and then we stop trying. Which this was our last month. My husband being in the military we don't want to have me giving birth while he's deployed again. We want to save that special time for when he can be there. But we're about 10 or 11 months from that point so now we must quit trying. The next time we can start is R&R in over a year :( Its not all bad that we have to wait. I just get this feeling that its not going to happen again. That was my 'keep me awake' worry last night (I have a different one every night). So sad to admit we have to stop now. I'm still a week away from testing time but my body seems to be getting my hopes up, nausea at times, headaches, tiredness, constant eating. No sore breasts though which is my main indicator that I just keep waiting for. Every month its the same. I just wanted Landon to have a baby brother or sister (preferably the latter) to grow up with and play with. Ah oh well I guess, at least we're smart about it and I'm not going to try to do it alone again. He missed so much the first time, gone for 10 months of Landon's first year. So needless to say we're not doing that again. My gripe for the day.

Completely Out of the Loop

I have come to realize I am out of the loop that is the world. I was reading another Lady's site and she was talking about saving and how in the year ___ that all the money would be gone. WHAT? I have no idea whats going on! I had no idea what she was talking about. When people talk about math, LOST completely. My spelling has gone totally down hill, I make sure to spell check everything and then I still get things wrong. I blame it on living here in Germany where I have ten channels on TV. I do not watch the news or really anything for that matter. I spend my life in my kitchen and sewing room. Ask me about quilting, hair, makeup etc and I can tell you about anything you need to know. Ask me about world problems or situations and I have nothing intelligent to lend to the conversation. And even if I hear something my brain does not soak anything up. I don't get it. I want to be smart too :( And I'm not. I can accept that. Perhaps the reason I have not attended college accept partial beauty school, that I was unable to complete due to...getting married and moving out of country. Well I guess maybe with some books and magazines I could know whats going on in the world. Nope too busy reading the twilight series. I would ace a quiz on that ;) That's me though, completely air headed.

My son is getting big :) He's about 34 inches tall and 29 or 30 pounds I would guess.

Recent projects.

Some recent stuff I started working on is Grandmothers flower garden which is hand pieced using a method called English paper piecing. I told my husband I was making it for our future daughter providing we ever have one so I have quite some time...considering I'm not even pregnant haha. And the next is called New York Beauty which could go together better in my opinion but it isn't. It paper pieced and has curves! Aren't I adventurous. I have like my quilting list of things I'd like to try and those are two of them. I'm going to the states in a few weeks and I'm going to take my hand piecing stuff so I can work on it. Its very portable. It fits in a small Tupperware container. You can find the paper piecing tutorial I used here, you can print out the hexagons pin them to your fabric and off you go. You can find the New York Beauty pattern here. Happy Quilting.

My son is a talker more than ever. He'll be 17 months in a few days. He talks and talks all day long problem is he's not speaking English. He just rattles on about god knows what, its pretty hilarious though. His favorite thing to say is HUH? All day, I hate it. Not a very intelligent word but he must have learned it somewhere haha. And he called his daddy Tyler. He yells at the top of his lungs TYLER!! I tell him no that's daddy. Wonder where he learned that :D Anyway not much else just thought I'd post an update.

Name Change

You may have noticed the name of my blog changing. Well that's because I couldn't decide what to name it. So I landed on Sew Disastrous. I hope I didn't steal any ones :( I did a google search and it didn't bring anything up so I think I'm good. Some things I sew turn out to be a disaster so that's how I came up with it. And the So Sew ya know? Lol. Anyway I think I'm done changing blog headers :)

Apron Tutorial

Apron Tutorial

I think I have all my steps in order here and I hope this is easy enough for most of you. It was super easy for me. This is a barista style apron its short, hits me mid thigh but I don't like the long ones that stretch past my knees. Its reversable. I have brown on my opposite side. Materials you're going to need are

• two coordinating fabrics (shown below) approx 22" square. I have a long torso so you may want to make yours longer or even shorter. Just measure how long you want it on yourself with a soft measuring tape.
• two approx 6" square pieces of fabric for pockets
• 2 approx 5" x 44" wide strips for waist ties
• 1 4" strip for neck strap
• I used a rotary cutter but its not necessary.
• Some double sided fusible two appox. 6" square pieces
• sewing machine
• coordinating thread
  
  
  

My coordinating fabric

For this step you will need to measure across your chest, how much you want the bib part to cover in my case I needed about 11 inches across and 7 inches down. So you have your fabric layed out folded in half. From the fold you're going to measure half of your chest size number. I needed 11" so I measured 5 1/2 inches in. And marked there with a pen (i used a washable pen, it doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't bleed through) And then I marked 7" down from the upper right hand corner.
You're going to draw a half circle shape to connect these two places. There could be an easier more accurate way but this worked perfect for me. You may be able to use a bowl I just drew mine free hand.

After you draw that line you're going to cut it out, so that you have this shape, make sure you're not cutting your fold. I had my fold facing toward me. Then I layed my back fabric under it and cut out the shape again.


So now I have two exact pieces. They should be shaped like an apron ;)

Next I'm going to cut my pockets. I cut mine about 6x6" and I did two you might be able to fit three on there.

Now with my pockets cut out I'm going to iron all sides under just very little. Maybe 1/8 of an inch.

Now measure across the back, this is where your backing fabric is going to go so you have lined pockets. You're going to need to cut backing fabric so that it doesn't show on the other side and a sheet of double sided fusible to fuse the two together, making sure that all your turned under edges are fused under that backing fabric.

Now you're going to pin your pockets on making sure they are far enough away from the edges, You can put them wherever you like just make sure they are 1/2 inch away from any edge. You're going to pin them on the right side of the fabric.

You can also pin pockets on the other piece of fabric because its reversible. If you'd like to do any embroidery like names or anything you should do that on this step.

Now you're going to sew the pocket on the two sides and bottom, don't sew the top ;) It wouldn't be a pocket then. You wanna sew just 1/4 inch in or even less if you can. Make sure you back stitch so the pockets don't come off.

Now I'm going to take my two straps which are 5" wide and about 44" long (width of fabric) I want to sew them wrong sides together on the cut sides. Not the fold. sew all the way down making sure to back stitch because when you turn them inside out they will unravel if not back stitched. And you'll need to sew up one end, I just turned mine a little under and sewed it up.So here it is turned inside out and pressed. I made two for my side straps and a brown one for my neck strap. The neck strap you will have to decide how long you need it. Pin it on your apron and then adjust it to fit. Neck strap

So now we have to pin our straps on. Neck strap is pinned so that it lays on top of the apron. I didn't think to get a close up of this so I hope you figure it out lol. You want it facing opposite of how it should go. and the side straps are going to be pined the same way on the inside so that everything will be inside when you sew it up. In this picture I just showed where to pin then not how so pin them opposite of the picture shows. If you're confused on this step let me know I'll take more pictures. You just don't want anything hanging outside.

Pin neck strap about 1/2 inch away from the sides and side straps 1/2 inch from that top corner.

This is where its all pinned together notice there is nothing hanging outside everything is inside. You're going to pin these right sides together. Sew all the way around leaving an opening big enough to turn this right side out.

Here's the hold to turn it right side out about 4 or 5 inches. Then just sew that up and you should have the apron all straps hanging right. My straps will wrap all the way around or just tie in the back. And you're done. Hopefully that turned out right and nothing confused you. I've never done a tutorial before so tell me how I did and lets see those aprons!

My Apron

So I did that apron after all. I was inspired by a few different aprons one by Jcarolinecreative and another was a pillowcase apron and the one I used to wear when I was a barista at a coffee shop in Washington :) I love how it turned out, its reversible has two pockets and the ties you can either tie in the back or bring them around to the front. I made mine extra long. If I get enough comments I'll post the tutorial, I took pictures along the way. This one hits about mid thigh, I wanted it shorter than most. I used Deb Strain for Moda Bistro Coffee Fabric. I love the coffee theme. It turned out so much better than I expected. Thanks for looking :)

Pictures of the Little Guy

I have some pictures I took a few weeks back, well could be months who knows, that I really liked and wanted to share. I love using the macro lens the pictures are just stunning, you'll see what I mean. And ther's nothing like shooting outdoors. None of these pictures were edited except some cropping. Enjoy.