Maxi Dress Tutorial - Love This One!

Today is my first day of --
     1.  No school.  I graduate in 10 days!
     2.  No traveling.  I spent the previous 10 days with my two sets kids, who are 3 hours and 10 hours away.  Now I'm back home with the youngest and my Hunk O Man.
     3.  No deadlines!
     4.  No phone calls to make!
     5.  No worries!

So I'm catching up on all my YouTube subscriptions.  I found this adorable maxi-dress and thought I'd share it.  Let me know if you try it.  I think I might.  I also have another tutorial coming for a sheet --

Trudy Does It Again

I love Trudy from HotPatterns.  They have some great stuff, a nice selection of patterns and often a free one you can download from Fabric.com.

Here's her latest tutorial, and I think it's invaluable.  She has some refinements on lengthening a t-shirt pattern into a dress, and also some tips on going from sleeves to sleeveless.

Also, check out the very cool dress she's wearing.  I told her I think it would also look fabulous chopped up even more, maybe twice more down the front.  And you know, Trudy is all about fabulous.

Enjoy -- hope you learn as much as I did!

Handy Little Thingy

I happened to click on one of the ads that run along the side of my facebook page, and found this!  Incredibly helpful resource that you can just print off and keep handy:

Thanks, Fabrics-Store.com!  

Progress!

We cleaned out the garage yesterday, and I sat down and made a plan.  I find it's really useful to do this when you're space planning.

Use graph paper, assign a value to a foot (like one square of the grid), and then draw the room.  Then, draw the rough shapes of your furniture the same way.  Cut out the furniture pieces, and then arrange them in the room.

This works so well when you aren't sure if something will fit or look good in a spot.  For example, initially I thought my fabric cubbies would be the base for my table.  But it turns out that I liked them much better on the walls.

I couldn't readily find my graph paper, so I just used my architect's scale and drew it out.  I cut the furniture out of the little green pieces of card stock I have for labeling boxes, and then put double-stick tape (another find from my design supplies) on the back.  Then I arranged them:

This is so easy -- and you think it's going to take a lot of time, but it doesn't.  And it's way easier than moving all the furniture around.

Here's the room so far.  Lots of work to go, but it is starting to come together!

Hopefully I'll be in there sewing soon!

Novel Idea

Here's someone I recently found on YouTube -- with the cutest project!  The channel is Stitchless TV.  This lady is so inventive!  Enjoy --

New Pattern Shop

I'm re-blogging this from Quality Time -- it's a pattern shop on Etsy called Salme.  There are some really cute things, like these:

The shop is in England.  They have some very cute designs -- do visit them and have a look.http://www.etsy.com/shop/Salmepatterns

And This One's About Crafting

Such great ideas!  I love Pepperminty Milk.  This would be great with thrift store jewelry:



Let me know if you give this a try!