Recreating

(Before I get started, Jeromie's home!!! I am so incredibly excited! :-D )

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Recreating, re-creating, creating. Either way, I've finally been doing a little bit of it lately. :-) I am a much happier creature when I can run, which means I've been a much happier creature lately. It's less than a month til the Cooper River Bridge Run, and I feel like I can maybe, just maybe, make it without getting injured. 'Tis a good thing.

Craftwise, I've not been knitting at all, but I have been cursing at making friends with my sewing machine. Okay... so I haven't been cursing at the sewing machine... if anything, I've cursed at myself & my extreme lack of skill in the sewing arena. Last night, I decided that the average 8 year old could probably sew better than me.



Jeromie: Wow, you must know some 8 year olds.

Me: Yeah, in my mind 8 year olds have some mad skillz...



So perhaps not. Maybe an 8 year old with the right training.

Anyway, these were my projects for this weekend:
(sorry... originally started the post last weekend, slacker me)


I found a cute teal skirt on a recent thrifting trip... but it was way too big for me (22/24w), so i...


...made it fit me! (and removed the beads... i might put some different ones on it... I haven't decided yet)


I painted on some shoes.


I made some fun slippers... our floors are COLD! And tweaked a curtain for the front door, too!


I ventured into the world of applique. Learned the ropes, and then...


... made a design of my own!
(it's my "signature" birdy!)



*sings* how much is that biiiiiiiirdy in the windoooooooow?


I've had a lot of fun just daydreaming & sketching & doing lately. I feel that being back *in* community (as opposed to skirting it...) has something to do with this. It makes me hungry. Hungry for God, hungry for real connection. It makes me want to "seize the day." More days than before, at least. I've definitely had days (and some this week) where I just wanted to withdraw, and I did, but there's a whole lot of pursuing going on around here. God never lets me stay that way. :-)






p.s. I didn't exactly get a good picture of the birdy. I used my favorite fabricky Christmas present for the body... it had a faint blue leafy/viney design on it. One of these days I might post a good picture of the bird itself. :-)

Wardrobe Refashion

In the past year, I've become quite the blog fiend. There are a handful of blogs that I've subscribed to & read regularly, one of which being Wardrobe Refashion. Needless to say, I've been inspired. :-) I've already tried my hand at refashioning things a few times, so I decided to take the plunge during the last round of sign-ups.

The past month has been a little more eventful than usual (see Jeromie's post), but as things settle down, I intend to devote some of my time each week to refashioning & generally being creative... making a priority a priority again. :-) Here goes!!

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I pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of "new" manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 2 months. I pledge that i shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovoated, recylcled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thy thriftyness brings!

Signed: Lizzle

Creating & Resting...

This week has been a bit of a whirlwind, and today was no less so... but more in a restful way, I guess. This week at work, I pretty much officially took over responsibility for scheduling & coordinating bookfairs & signings. No big deal, just a few new things to learn & process. Today's whirlwind was more of the creative sort.

I got up to my alarm clock (!!), checked email/blogs, ran an errand (in case it *actually* snowed significantly... it didn't really do much), and spent the rest of the day in the craft room sewing and knitting. I managed to alter a wool skirt I found at a thrift store a few weeks ago, finish the curtains for the room (long time coming), and finish the fingerless gloves I started earlier this week.

It felt good to finally seize some time to exercise a bit of creativity. Working on projects tends to get me thinking about new ones, and it seems that the energy I spend making something just brings more energy with it. Unless I'm burned out. Running does that to me too. :-) Today was the first day in a while where I felt alive and resting ~ full of growing and mending and dreaming and resting and hoping, connected to my soul. As opposed to alive and wrestling, I guess, which tends to feel more like dying sometimes.

I don't really want the day to be over, but I won't cling to it and ruin the grace that it's been thus far.

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Kindling Fingerless Gloves


I think this experiment turned out pretty well!



A note: The fingerless gloves are my first real attempt at putting together my own pattern for something other than a scarf or a simple tube. The process was so much fun that I have to resist the urge to start working on another one right away!

Some non-Christmas crafty fun!

Today has been fantastic, including work somehow (retail, Christmas time crazy). December finally started acting like itself, which I *love*. I got some Christmas hunting done, wrapped A LOT of gifts for customers, and received the lovely gift of a spontaneous coffee from my very thoughtful husband... then came home and wrapped some more! I really enjoy wrapping presents, but I hope I can figure out a way to make this year be the last year of using so incredibly much paper. I've seen fabric-wrapping techniques mentioned a couple of places, and I hope to do that for most everything next year. (I used to wrap things in cool cloth napkins, but you can only wrap small things that way.)

Well, nice cold days = craving for nice warm soup, so dinner was a bowl of the Cambell's butternut squash stuff with parmesan. For some reason, I decided to take a picture (with one of the things I found on the excursion mentioned below).




Sooooooo... a trip to the thrift store the other day started as a hunt for gift fabrics. It ended with that plus some other fun finds! I won't picture all of the stuff... just what I tinkered with... but I got lots of usable stuff for a grand total of $5.67. I love it when that happens!

I found two cardigans in colors I've been drawn to this year. The grey one didn't appear to have any problems, but I discovered a hole in an inopportune place when I got home. The pomegranate colored one was a size too big and had a hole in the shoulder and arm. When I got home, I intentionally semi-felted the pomegranate one to make it smaller, but that also made it a little misshapen (shoulda used a sweater bag). SO... I made it into a wrap of sorts by sewing in a piece of ribbon for reinforcement, then moving the buttons over a bit. Then, on both, I dealt with the holes by doing some decorative stitching with leftover yarn. There's probably a name for the process, but I don't know it... embroidery?

Without further ado, here are the pictures!


The grey one!


Front!


Back!


Sneaky plan?!



Time to catch some zzzzzz's... Anyone else short on sleep??

I <3 my sewing machine...

I've been really busy these past few days... busy sewing, not busy doing things I should (like yardwork - don't worry, we did some tonight!). So now it's time to share some of the sewing goodness. I've had a TON of fun with it, though I'm a real slowpoke. I've made my first, second and third forays into the world of re-fashioning, and I believe they've been successful! I also know now that I *can* follow a pattern correctly, which means that I can at least sew simple clothing now. :-) YAY!

So here goes...

Refashion #1: Twin-sized sheet into drawstring skirt


Skirt



Skirt & Pup




Funnily-proportioned, funny-faced... just plain funny




Gumby-Liz (seeing if the skirt spins at all... maybe a little!)



Refashion #2: Old Camp Greenville t-shirt into a modest halter top


Tank in a tree




Teasing the furzy pup :-D



Refashion #3: A pair o' Jero's cargo shorts into a purse!


Purses climb trees too, you know!




Purse & pup




Outside pockets inside!




Not a refashion, but something I've been having fun with lately:


Fiddlin' around...

Refashioning

I just officially sewed my first wearable item (a skirt), and I made it out of a sheet! Yay!! I'll add pictures sometime down the road. I'm a bit too excited to leave the post til later though. :-D