The glo­ri­ous final weeks of sum­mer hol­i­day! Worked on a pile of projects :D 

Was vis­it­ing Kath­leen’s blog the oth­er day and found tons of cool stuff to make! Includ­ing this star-shaped blan­ket (fol­low­ing a pat­tern called Beth’s Lit­tle Star — I just had to make it!)… Â 

I called it the rain­bow road blan­ket, because the colours remind­ed me of the rain­bow road lev­el in Mario Kart. It’s for for my young niece (who is very cute and ami­able and reminds me a lot of Ponyo as she’s start­ing to talk and walk) and her soon-to-be-born sib­ling :D

Also inspired by Kath­leen’s blog is this book­worm book­mark! Her yarn­bomb­ing with book­worms is inge­nious and TOTALLY AWESOME! I would love to do that one day. So far I’ve made one for a book-lov­ing friend :D

I used an orange yarn because I kind of want­ed it to look like Slimey from the Muppets. 

This granny shrug has been on my to-cro­chet list for a long time. I made it with a light fuzzy yarn the colour of Prince Edward Island’s red soil. Not a style I usu­al­ly wear, and can’t see the granny square (actu­al­ly, it’s two hexa­gons stitched togeth­er) pat­tern very well, but it’s real­ly soft! Very com­fort­able for loung­ing in at home, I think.

Then I sewed a dress. With fab­ric I got from my mom’s col­lec­tion. It’s a very soft kind of fab­ric with love­ly pol­ka dots and I’ve been want­i­ng to make some­thing sum­mery with it for a long time. Was hav­ing a very moti­vat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with my friends about sewing dress­es, so I thought instead of mak­ing the square top that I make a lot of, I’d try to sew a dress!

It’s actu­al­ly still a square top with faux but­ton pan­els (which means that the but­tons are just sewed on, there are no but­ton holes), for which I got the idea from C&C’s tuto­r­i­al. The top was cut to a mid-waist length, then I sewed on a skirt made with two trape­zoid pieces of fab­ric. I found enough yel­low but­tons in my col­lec­tion that looked like lemon drops :D

And last but not least, shop update for the fall season!

The fall har­vest treat mag­net set! Here’s a close­up of the pump­kin pie, which I’m rather hap­py with…

I actu­al­ly made his cousin first, which has an upper crust, because I did­n’t know that pump­kin pies aren’t like apple or straw­ber­ry pies, they don’t have upper crusts! (prob­a­bly because I don’t bake very much, and did­n’t grow up in a coun­try where pump­kin pies were pop­u­lar) Mike remind­ed me of that and I remade the pie slice.

I also start­ed Christ­mas-elf­ing (i.e. mak­ing Christ­mas presents) and made 3 scarves, but of course I can’t show you those yet… ;)

Off to the Bruce Penin­su­la this long week­end! Will bring back lots of pictures!

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone!

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again — Val­ue Vil­lage is a mag­i­cal place.

:D

It tru­ly is! I have a pair of capris that I tried to turn into shorts, but then I cut too much and it was too short, so I thought I could length­en them with some hem trim­ming. And I thought some vin­tage fab­ric would look cool. So I had in my head this vision of a yel­low flo­ral vin­tage sheet and looked through hun­dreds of list­ings on Etsy but could­n’t find any­thing I wanted. 

So I thought I’d make a trip to Val­ue Vil­lage and give it a try. And it was right there, wait­ing for me on a hang­er in the linen department…

It was per­fect! Not only was it the pat­tern I was envi­sion­ing, it was also a ginor­mous king size sheet for 4.99! There are parts of it that are more yel­low and parts of it more grassy green. I think I’m going to make a 1960-esque sun dress with the rest of it :D

I got so car­ried away try­ing to find a sun dress pat­tern I almost for­got about trim­ming the shorts. But here they are :D

Love­ly pat­tern, eh?

Also from the linen depart­ment I found a pil­low case made of a very light fab­ric with leaf pat­terns. I’ve always want­ed a leaf pat­tern top :D (I used a square blouse pat­tern like this one.)

That’s not it. On my way out of the linen depart­ment I spot­ted this… *gasp*

YARN!!! It’s YARN!!! 4 skeins of this soft mot­tled brown/tan wool for 2.99. It kinds of look like rov­ing, but it’s 30% wool + 70% acrylic. Don’t know what I’m going to make with it yet, but I like the colours a lot.

See? Val­ue Vil­lage is a mag­i­cal place :D

On a sep­a­rate note, it was my niece Lucy’s first birth­day last week and I mailed this to her…

Because she’s also known as Queen Lucy (as in Queen Lucy of Nar­nia). And because it might be use­ful for future dress-up games. I made it fol­low­ing this pat­tern. It can be quite a ver­sa­tile crown for a queen, king, princess, prince, or oth­er royalties. 

I was going to sew on some but­tons, but then I thought but­tons could be chok­ing haz­ards. So I embroi­dered with some pur­ple yarn instead. 

I don’t think Queen Lucy would mind me try­ing on her crown to show my blog friends.

Mike and I lat­er got a pho­to her wear­ing it and spin­ning :D

Have a won­der­ful week, everyone!

Mak­ing more stuff for my friend Jes­si­ca’s shop. This sim­ple ring was my favourite out of the batch. I called it the robin’s egg.

Love the red and teal togeth­er. The but­ton is iri­des­cent. Even used a metal­lic thread to sew on the but­ton for a bit of sparkle. Was tempt­ed to keep it but I don’t real­ly wear rings oth­er than my wed­ding band.

On anoth­er thought, I think I will bring it home if it does­n’t get sold by the end of the month :P

Some cher­ry blos­som rings.

Made ring stands for them out of an old birth­day card I received. 

Tried some­thing new and made fab­ric cov­ered but­tons. My friend who is the shop own­er said that ear­rings are pop­u­lar. Have been want­i­ng to try mak­ing fab­ric cov­ered but­tons for a while, but haven’t found a trust­wor­thy glue to attach but­tons to ear­ring posts. When I told my friend that she said, “mak­ing dan­gling ones!“ 

Great idea, Jess! :D

The ear­ring wires came with plain met­al beads, which I swapped out for oth­er kinds of beads to go with the fabric.

I also don’t have a fab­ric but­ton mak­er, so I cov­ered the back of the but­ton with some hand sewing, with a wire hoop sewn in for dangling.

It’s quite a pleas­ant med­i­ta­tive process actu­al­ly. I’m hop­ing to make more. Now when­ev­er I look at fab­rics my mind would think: how would that look on a button?

The spring gar­den brooches were sold out! :D (I only made two, but still.) So I restocked with moon flower brooches. 

I made up that name, moon flower, but I lat­er looked it up and they do exist! I’ve seen them in a park before and called them origa­mi flow­ers because of the way the petals are fold­ed togeth­er. Here’s a video doc­u­ment­ing how it unfolds at night­time. It’s quite magical.

Alto­geth­er now :D

Real­ly hav­ing fun with this new ven­ture. So grate­ful for the opportunity! 

Have a hap­py Wednesday!