Live and learn from mistakes: Part 2

Well, got to thinking last night a lot about my pattern. I just couldn't let it go and had all kinds of thoughts going through my head so I'm at the project once again. I thought to myself, it may not be perfect but at least this way I can learn from my mistakes, try to fix them and continue on with what I was making. I mean, it doesn't have to be 100% perfect. At least to me it doesn't because after all, a first project is always exciting no matter what.

So I'm at it again, and I'm half way done! :) I'll probably continue working on it tonight but wanted to take a break. Before you know it, I'll probably have it done late tonight, early morning since I'm a night owl and all. :P

Update: I'm also wanting to add that my husband has been bummed all day because it has been raining and tomorrow is opening day for Bow Season. He's hoping it will clear up so he can go out in the morning, but if it doesn't he'll be going out in the afternoon. He just wishes it wouldn't be so dreary outside and raining, but hopefully we'll get luck and it'll stop raining!

Live and learn from mistakes

Well, I think I have been defeated by my pattern idea or I am just not doing it right. I'm not entirely sure of which though. I have the pattern written down, but I think I'm going to leave it for another time. I just can't seem to get what I cut and sewn together to lay right and I'm not sure if that's because I didn't cut the materials right so that they wouldn't stretch or what. I'm not sure. I am pretty sure I will learn eventually the correct way to cut material so it doesn't stretch but for now it is not the time and too late. Kind of mad it didn't work out right when I was so close to be done with the first side but that's okay, we live and learn from our mistakes. I mean that's all part of sewing, right?

So for now, pattern idea I had is "put on hold". Which doesn't break my heart. :P

Mini Deer Trail Cam

Today I ended up doing a few things. I didn't plan on doing vacuuming, but there's always tomorrow. At least that is how I see it. My hubby has gotten his early Christmas/Birthday gift already. Well he hasn't physically gotten it, but he knows what he'll be getting next week sometime. He had a deer trail cam for hunting, but lended it out and hasn't gotten it back. Well this one is much smaller and is a whole lot better than the one he has already (the one he lended out). I like looking at the pictures that he captures and it was driving and has been driving me nuts not being able to look at pictures of what he has an opportunity of shooting.


So hubby got a new deer trail cam that he picked out and I got. I know we didn't have the money for it, but I told him I know it will be used and it's something he likes having for hunting which I can't blame him because it let's him know what time the deer are coming around at night or in the early morning hours and etc. He's excited about it, and so am I because I want to see the pictures. This mini deer trail cam does video recording as well. This shall be very interesting and I'm sure the hubby will be happy to have a new toy for hunting. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited for him to get it as well. :)

Fabric Selections...

I have been wracking my brain as to what kind of fabric to get to make a baby quilt. I am not entirely sure what kind of baby blanket design I want to make. However, I do know that the baby that will be arriving in December will be a baby girl. So that's a plus. I'm looking for some suggestions from everyone to see if you guys can suggest some charm packs or some fat quarter packs that are cute for a new born baby. Please pick something that does not have a whole lot of pink, maybe very little pink is okay. But I want something different! :) I'm also looking for something that isn't a theme... Just something that goes together good, flowers, butterflies and etc. If you pick some fabric that isn't in a charm pack or a fat quarter pack that's fine too.... Just link me to the fabric, that should work too.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! If you find something in particular, please point me the way. I like shopping on fabric.com site, so if you could point to something there that would be a plus!

Thanks again, and any help would be appreciated. :) I'm still new to all this, so still learning about what prints and fabric colors go good together.

Blog finally situated!

Yesterday, I had some issues that I just could not get figured out for the longest time. For some reason the comments link was only available for three of my blog posts and the other three didn't have it available. However, it was a simple fix in the options section of when I'm creating a new blog post. Now I just have to remember to make sure that it stays "allow" for comments.

I did a few other changes to the blog as well. I changed the font style look, which was pretty cool and wouldn't have happened had I not stumbled upon another blog that explained how to change the font style in my blog. I was up so late last night working on changing the font, and spicing up my blog that I wasn't able to start my other blog. I wasn't going to publish it just yet because I hadn't "completed it just yet". However, I started doing my pattern idea, or I should probably name that pattern Sewing machine Mat? I don't know. ha! You'll just all have to wait and see! :)

Woods Adventure

Trail entrance to woods

Well the hubby wanted to take a walk into the woods to check and see if there are some buck or doe tracks in or around his tree stand. Well, he was happy to see three piles of poo from a buck. He even took a stick and poked it to see how fresh it was. Yes, the hubby is a hunter and loves it and he can't want to sit in his tree stand and get himself some venison. I admit I can't wait either. I like seeing him happy when he gets a deer or loves it when it comes close to deer hunting season.

Upon walking into the entrance, I noticed this weird looking plant which we'd had seen previously but I never had my camera on me in order to take a picture. Today I made sure I had my camera to take a few pictures and to show to see if anyone could identify this particular plant. I do not know what it is, but it is scattered throughout the woods and we noticed that either the deer are eating them or some kind of animal is.

Mystery plant, do you know what it is?

I'm very curious if anyone knows what kind of plant it is, and if you do please comment and let me know! Hubby and I have been wracking our brains as to what it is. Looks like some kind of berry plant but we're not entirely sure. I know the picture to the left isn't the greatest, it might be better if you click on it and it enlarges a bit. I didn't know that the picture didn't take very well after taking it the second time. I'm still learning about my new camera that I got but I'm starting to get frustrated with it though.


Anyways, off to relax for a while and then do some stuff around the house. Oh fun! lol Chores are not the thing I like passing the time with, ha!

Possibly Pattern #2

Well I started working on the pattern, I had to rework it because late last night is when I had written and drawn it out on paper. Well the numbers were right, the drawing was way off. So I had to redo the drawing, and just went ahead and re-wrote the pattern all together. I started cutting the fabric, and didn't finish because my shoulder started to bother me. But I'm happy that I at least started. Cutting small strips is tedious in my opinion.

I'm actually using the left over fabric from when I made my mother's birthday quilt. I definitely needed to be able to use the fabric up somehow so I figured this would be a way to get to use the fabric up. I'm sure tomorrow (technically later today) I will finish cutting and start laying out the pieces and then sew them up. I'll take pictures of my progress as I go along.

Well, off to finish watching my recorded Ellen DeGeneres show.

Possibly pattern

I came across this neat sewing machine mat a few times. One that seems to go under the sewing machine, and it has pockets to place notions into it. I have been running ideas in my head, and drawing out how I'd like to have it look and etc. I'll probably have to add a second blog entry with more in depth information on how it turned with pictures of my progress. I will probably end up starting it in a while. Hopefully what I have written on paper turns out right when I start to cut fabric out and what not.

Today seems like a dreary day, it's been drizzling outside and supposed to storm all weekend. I'm not looking forward to that because normally when it gets like that I do not want to do anything but be lazy. It just seems like the crappy weather always takes over my body. I'm still adjusting to the idea of having to turn the "heat" on instead of the air conditioner! I miss the warm weather, and fall has officially arrived. lol

Well I'm off to ponder some more over my drafting pattern idea.

New ironing board

For a while I had been using a simple 2 by 4 piece of wood wrapped with about 2 sometimes 3 towels to iron on for my fabrics, pants when hemming and etc. However, last night when the hubby and I went to Meijers for a few groceries hubby wandered off without me knowing and when I turned around he was gone. I walked back to where we were and there he was in a isle looking at stuff and when I got closer I noticed he was looking at ironing boards. I didn't need a big ironing board but needed a one so that I could PROPERLY iron the fabric and etc.


Well I ended up getting a tabletop ironing board which is good enough for me! I didn't care for the cover that it came with only because pinkish purple is not my favorite color (ew pink), and I told the hubby I could just make a cover for it so no big deal about that. Tonight I got to use it some starting to hem my husbands hunting pants because he needed a new pair badly. Well, it was wonderful and not done on a small 12" by 4" board. I was so glad! Ha!

That's all for now! Just had to share my new toy. :)

First Project: B-Day Gift - Quilt

Well, this was an exciting project for me to start with. I wanted to get into sewing, and sew all kinds of different things and not just quilting. I knew my mother's birthday was coming up and I knew I was heading up to visit her to celebrating everyone's birthday all in one weekend so I decided to make her a quilt for her birthday. Keep in mind this was my first sewing project and didn't know where to start or what I needed and what to get and how much I needed of anything.

Two fabrics selected purple and green.

Thank goodness I came across such a wonderful forum board on the internet which is located here; Everything Sewing Forum. I am glad I came across this forum because not only did I get wonderful advice in doing this project, but a lovely lady on the board gave me extra attention to help guide me on my journey in this project.

checkerboard patchwork

I had gotten the two types of fabric I wanted to do the project with, purple flowery type of pattern and a green subtle type of pattern fabric to go with it. I didn't want the two fabrics chosen to clash so I put the green with purple and it worked out great! My mother's favorite color was purple, so I knew I had to do something with purple. Once I decided on the fabric, it was time to decide the design of how I was going to do the fabric. That's when I figured a checkerboard design would be best for my first quilt. I know that when I chosen that it was a bit overwhelming but once I started and had help to get going I was on a roll.

At first when I was cutting, and when I started I didn't have everything an actual "quilter" would have which was a rotary cutter. So when I started cutting I had scissors! I didn't think I'd ever be done cutting with scissors, and all I had for a ruler was a regular 1" wide ruler that was 12" long and a box. Interesting! The other part that was interesting was just learning how to get the very corners of the squares to match up to a perfect point. At first I had to rip out some stitching that I did and do it over. Frustrating at times, but I was bound and determined to get it right! After I figured out how to do it, I didn't have too many problems after that.

Once I got the checkerboard all stitched together and ready to roll, I had to work on the backing. That wasn't too hard since I just did 3 strips of the coordinating colors. I decided to do green, purple and then green again. I didn't want the purple to be overbearing for the quilt since I was doing the binding in the purple color.

Since I finally got a rotary cutter and rotary cutting board, I was able to go a little quicker on cutting. Especially for the binding! The binding procedure went quickly. After doing the binding cutting measuring and sewing together, I had to lay out the quilt sandwich. I had fun doing that since it was pretty easy, but for my first time I had to follow a few videos on the internet which thank god for videos on the net because that helped out tremendously! Then I tied the quilt and sewn on the binding, and was done! Here's the outcome of the blanket!

Front of quilt checkerboard patchwork

Front and back of quilt

Tying and quilt tag.

Definitely enjoyed making this quilt for my mother, and she loved it. I put the nice little touch of adding a "tag" with my name and year date because she likes to do that on a lot of things. My next project will be another blanket for a toddler, that should be interesting!

My first post...

Hello to whomever is reading this blog right now. Thank you first of all for stopping by. I decided to create this blog so that way I can post my sewing journey and look back at it from time to time. Kind of a sewing diary for myself so I can read back and see when and what I did things. Mainly this blog is going to be about sewing, and what I had learned and how I learned doing stuff and etc. Just stuff that I'd like to remember.

I may even post things that I came across and was very helpful to me. It's always exciting when you can learn new things especially when you are a beginner! I may not post every day, but I'll post randomly and post snap shots of work I create or ideas that I come up with and etc.Stay tuned! :