Little Bit of This and That.

I've been working on a little bit of this and that lately. Below are two fleece tops I made, the blue and grey last Fall, and the red/black last month. I used the Textile Studio Santa Monica Tee modified to include armhole princess seams in the front and back. My goal was to make a more fitted fleece top. I get a lot of wear out of these because I love the feel of fleece on ultra-cold winter days. 'Ol Man Winter has been brutal this year! I used fleece purchased from Wazoodle, really wonderful stuff. Wazoodle is my go-to source from lightweight, good quality fleece. The color selection is fantastic and the superior fleece holds up well with no pilling like the cheapo stuff.

I'll do a review on the top with more specifics at a later date.


Here are some fleece sports headbands I made for my daughter and her friends. Same Wazoodle fleece using my self-drafted headband pattern.

Next up is DD#2's scarf. Here's the story on this funky print. We went to Target one night and she wanted to buy a scarf because her Varsity jacket is scratchy on her neck. She picks out a $12 scarf which looked flimsy to me, not a great print, but she liked it enough. Her money, so I kept mum about it.

Then we head to Walmart for a few odds and ends and to look at the quilting cottons for my niece's baby quilt. She sees this funky pink/black print and asks if I can make a scarf for her and return the Target one. Done deal. And more economical for her as well.

Last but not least, I was commissioned by DD#1 to make a hat for her at college. She goes to school in Philly and it is darn windy! It's brutal when it's really cold. So I made a plain prototype hat and sent it to her for a size opinion. I made the changes and whipped up the hat with the requested embroidery. Then I asked her if she wanted a matching scarf. I needed to know right away or my Wazoodle fleece will get used up for something else. She said yes, so now she has a cute set which will be shipped to her this week.

The last thing I did was make Version 2 of my Jalie Jeans. Don't have a pic of those yet, but will try soon. I also ordered cotton denim from Lura's for Version 3 with a fabric content of 96 cotton/4 lycra, but the was very disappointed with the color. I thought it would be darker blue. It's a lightish periwinkle. Oh well. I'll make the jeans and it will be good to work through a few more minor alterations tweaking each pair as I go. There is enough fabric to make two more pairs of jeans.

But it leaves me with this question. Why oh why is 96/4 denim so hard to come by in a great color? Is that asking too much? Where is 96/4 indigo or black stretch denim? If only we had access to the same suppliers as some of these apparel companies! Here's to wishful thinking...

I Can't Believe It!

Pictures are coming! I finished my Lingerie set!!! It only took me 5X as long as usual :( though. My Lingerie set includes a short robe, bra and panties. Tomorrow I will do the reviews for all and enter the set in the Lingerie contest at PR.

I'll leave you with three chemo hats I finished last month for Stacey. BTW, she is doing SO well. Her tumor is almost non existent now and she just finished up chemo this past week. Hopefully she can wear these as just winter hats or give them away to someone who might need them. Sometimes we don't need reminders of where we've been.

Here are the final 3 chemo hats in the set:

Tomorrow I will post my "Beautiful Blue Moon" Lingerie Set.

"Surprise Me."

I asked Stacey about what colors and styles she wanted for chemo caps, and she said, "Surprise me." I warned her that was a dangerous statement LOL, and told her she be getting groovalicious fashionista chemo caps. You know, leopard print fleece with leather flowers! (She'll probably get one of those too :) .) But in the meantime, I made two more caps in a different style with ribbon flowers accented with hot-fix crystals.

Tomorrow I'm making a true red one with the band embroidered in a Christmas theme. Embroidery Library is having a good sale so I'll hunt up some nice designs. This is cute, quick, fun sewing and very purposeful. So meaningful when doing it for someone so special!

Recent Sewing Projects

Thank you to the wonderful bloggers who added Stacey to their prayer list. She had her first chemo treatment on Tuesday. I made one chemo turban last night, and finished the second this morning. I sent Stacey links to different sites that had different styles of chemo hats so she could see different kinds. The ones that I made below are from the Charitable sewing projects at http://sewing.org/ . Nothing hard about them, but I found the depth of the tucks in the back of the chemo turban (3/4") may actually be too deep, not giving enough head depth. I told Stacey to let me know if the tucks need to be let out on the red hat. That one has deeper tucks than the blue.

Here are the chemo turbans. The front has a band loop at the CF. I embellished the band on red turban with a black, embroidered flower in my embroidery stash. If she doesn't like it, I'll remove it.


Here is a view of the backs. Notice the tucks in the red hat are deeper than the blue tucks. Well, it might not be that evident from the way the hats are displayed, but the head depth is definitely different.



Hopefully, they will have a new home with Stacey tonight.

Ah...that UFO I posted about a couple of days ago? It's done. BTW, thanks to my blogging friends that wished me healthy vibes :) . Today was my first day back at the gym since Friday and I'm pooped! Still not 100%, and my cardio routine gobbled up most of my energy for the day. (It's why I'm sitting here typing this post in the middle of the day.) But anyway...

I finished the first of three hunting projects for Rich back at the beginning of October, just in time for archery season. It was a hunting "thingamajig". Can't remember what he called it, but he really likes it. So I dawdled with projects two and three, but knew I had to get them done before deer season starts the Monday after Thanksgiving. So as of yesterday, projects two and three are done!

Here is a pic of the pad: The back was reused, along with the velcro straps on the front. But the camo fabric was replaced, velcro straps, reattached to the new front, and restitched to the original back. Here's the front:


Here is the back. It's the original back that was still in decent shape.

The third, and largest, project for Rich was the tree stand cover. He wanted something to take the bite out of the cool, Autumn "breezes" while sitting in the tree stand waiting for the right doe or buck to come along. The tree stand cover took somewhere between 3-4 yards of fabric, and the picture below shows the back of a small portion. The velcro on the top will go around the railing of the tree stand, and the pockets at the bottom are for supplies and/or small rocks or wood pieces to hold down the cover so the fabric flaps aren't flying all over the place when it's windy. It's not one long pocket, but rather a long pocket with vertical stitching channels to create several separate pockets along the bottom edge.

The tricky part to the tree stand cover? Using industrial strength velcro, the kind with the adhesive back not meant for machine sewing. After one hellish struggle on my machine and breaking a needle, I searched the Internet for tips. One great tip turned up: You can stitch the industrial strength adhesive velcro BUT sew slowly and clean the needle with alcohol every 10 stitches. Quite time consuming for all the strips I had to stitch to the fabric, but it worked like a charm with no needle breakage.

So now I'm moving on with trying to do reviews of two blouses, and hopefully making more chemo hats and DD#2's pants. More to come, very soon :)