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11.23.2011

Contest Winner

We have a winner for our facebook contest!

Also, I apologize for being absent so long. I have been doing this: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ which is a lot of fun and unfortunately almost over for this year. You should all go check it out anyway though! And I promise that next year I'll let you know before it starts.

7.26.2011

New Contest

Running a contest now on Facebook! The 20th person to "like" Love Green will get a free 3 oz lotion (made with Rosemary or Eucalyptus essential oil) or 4 oz body scrub (made with all natural, edible ingredients!). The person who referred them will get a free 8 oz body scrub, or two free 4 oz body scrubs! This free item includes U.S. shipping, but not international as it costs a fortune to ship things outside the U.S. 


Good luck!

7.12.2011

So Sorry!

I apologize for such a long delay! I recently moved and became very busy with school and managing the new place. Moms have so many chores! Oy.

I have not had any time to craft, but I have been gathering up fabric, buttons (oooh the buttons! You will see :) ), and other items essential to crafting. I have big plans to make a steampunk outfit for my birthday coming up soon (probably too soon to get the outfit done!), and other little things.




Keep checking back, and I'd love to see some comments!

6.05.2011

Product Orders

Now that I am up & running with the business, feel free to order anything you have seen me post before, or something similar. When I make an order I'll be sure to take pictures and post them so that you all will know what I can do. For now, let me know what you want and I'll give you a price estimate.
Shipping inside the U.S. starts at $3. Sadly I cannot do international shipping at this time (the lowest shipping rate is $35.50. For that you can easily hire someone much closer to you to make the same item).


I'm looking forward to two weeks off of classes! I get to sit at home, work on jewelry, and watch Dr. Who all day.





~To place an order simply post a comment with the item you want and an e-mail address. I'll log your order and send a confirmation e-mail~

6.02.2011

The Business Is Slightly More Official

Crafting a Better Future is launching its business! You can find us on Facebook here, or email us at LoveGreen.Artistry@Gmail.com.

While you're at it, check out Blue Heart Art. They are a wonderful local business who showcases artists, like myself, in their beautiful downtown shop.


As soon as I get it completed, I'll post the logo here for you all to see. I can post my sketch of it however. The finished version will be more stream-lined and professional-looking.


5.30.2011

I'm Back!

We got a new machine, and I'm back in the game!

Since Friday I've been working on a pinwheel quilt for myself, and one for my son. I have nearly finished the top for a quilt for a friend's baby, and I've made the tops for a few mug rugs. I've certainly been busy!



This was originally going to be a mug rug, but I fell in love with the fabrics, the pattern, and the quilting. So instead of doing a bunch of mug rugs, this is now the first piece in my quilt-as-you-go quilt for myself. My son's is green and blue pinwheels.

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have for you right now, as my camera's batteries are nearly dead. I promise there will be more photos soon!

3.09.2011

The Sewing Machine Broke!

So, until we can get it fixed, I am unable to do a lot of sewing unless I want to do it all by hand.


I am working on an embroidery sampler, though. In a month or so I will be teaching a friend and her 2 daughters how to do embroidery, so I am busy whipping up a sampler with a bunch of different stitches and techniques. I've found some really cool ones here. It's a really cool blog that has been very helpful in my embroidery endeavors.

2.24.2011

Clothing Refashion & Somewhat Tutorial

This is a project I have been working on for a little while now. I got most of it done on a Saturday, and when the day was over it was put away in my "works in progress" bin. I brought it out again today & discovered a dastardly mistake, which I will reveal later.



Here is the before picture of the size 24 stretch slacks that I started with. I helped a friend out with her wedding, and as a payment her mom gave me her old fat clothes, knowing that I love to repurpose clothing. The bigger your starting pieces the better, I say.



See the fancy zipper, double button closure? I actually didn't use it lol but I think it will make a nice embellishment to some future project.



Here you can see that I cut off the entire leg of the pants with my trusty rotary cutter & ruler.




And the other leg, matched back up.



I took the pant legs and opened up one side seam on each, getting two large panels to work with.



Making sure to keep the already hemmed edges together, I sewed the two panels together to make one large piece.




This part was odd. The hems were done in such a way that I couldn't machine stitch them up like the rest, so I plan on hand stitching this part with whipstitch.






After fitting it around my body I determined that four panels was too much. So I removed one panel (one half of a pant leg) to get these three left.



I don't have a picture of this next part, sorry! But next I fitted it around my body again and decided that the bust was good, but it was a bit tight everywhere else (I'm still working off my pudge and I have somewhat wide hips) So from the part that I removed earlier I cut out a triangle and attached it in the back.



After finishing everything but the bottom hemming I took a look at my work and found this mistake! These pieces are supposed to be even, and this is at the top of the dress. Woops! Short of tearing apart the 3 seams involved & redoing it, what do you readers suggest I do to fix it?



2.15.2011

Duct Tape Roses for Valentine's Day

My 17-year old brother decided, at 10 pm on Sunday, that he wanted me to make him 20 duct tape roses to give out on Valentine's Day. I chuckled and said "I'll see what I can do." I got one done before I went to bed.
So yesterday he tells me its okay if he hands them out on Tuesday, so could I keep making them? "Of course" I said. I managed to get 6 more finished between making lunch & dinner,  and feeding & changing my son. They turned out quite well, but unfortunately he snatched them up before I had a chance to take pictures. They were black and red and a few of them reminded me of the card knights from Alice in Wonderland.

2.10.2011

Pictures of my Busy Day

As promised, I have found the time to take pictures of all that I did yesterday.









These green squares are roughly 3 1/2" x 3 1/2". As yet I'm not really sure what to do with them. I'm thinking of surrounding each one with denim squares (repurposed from old jeans of course) and making a quilt. Another idea is to take 4 of them and make a larger square and turn them into coasters or trivets with denim on the back. (I really like repurposing denim)
The finished squares all started out like the one at the bottom. You take two like that one and sew them rigt sides together on all four sides. Then you cut them apart from corner to opposite corner (diagonally) both ways and when you unfold them you have 4 squares made up of triangles. It's much faster than piecing the triangles to begin with.





You may remember when I posted about finding some old quilt blocks that I had hand stitched. I found more of the purple and polka dot fabric, already cut into squares, and I machine sewed them together to make more blocks. Also in that find were blocks of horses. I took the ones that had their heads and put them into the blocks. Right now it is only a long strip but I hope to find more of these fabrics in my mother's stash (which is where I originally got them from several years ago) and convince her to part with them so that I can at least make another row of 2 above the horses. I'll have to find other purple and black & white fabrics for the rest of the quilt.







This is my favorite project right now. It is going to be a ticker tape quilt for my son. I only have one row done and with only one row it does look pretty silly. The fabrics laid over it randomly are the other fabrics I am going to use on this quilt. They are all scraps from either myself or my mother. Mostly from my mother as she does much more quilting than I do.

2.09.2011

Quilting Day

I had quite a long day of piecing quilt blocks. One is a purple, black and white quilt for myself. The other is a blue ticker tape quilt for my son. I did not have time to take pictures today but I will be sure to take some tomorrow and post them.

1.29.2011

Item Swapping

I found this site yesterday via Obsessively Stitching. You list your handmade items and get Whoops. You redeem these Whoops for items that other people have listed. I already have 6 listings under the username MommyOfOne. Check it out!

And while you're at it, check out Obsessively Stitching for some great sewing projects.

1.26.2011

Rice Cereal

We tried rice cereal for the first time today. It was super close to bedtime, so he was pretty sleepy and not very interested. I was probably more excited than he was. After a few spoons of it we waited about 5 minutes and tried again. This time he got very excited, banging his fist on the highchair tray and opening his eyes wide. But I couldn't get him to open his mouth! He would grab my hand with the spoon and bring it to his mouth, but then he kept his lips closed tight. Finally I caught him in a grin and dashed in with the spoon. He sucked on it for a few seconds and gave me another huge smile. After a few spoonfuls he got drowsy again, so I put him to bed with a bit of rice cereal in his bedtime bottle. I put another scoop in before putting it in the fridge to finish in the morning.
Here's to hoping it helps him sleep better. He gets 6 hours at once now, but I'm shooting for 8+

1.22.2011

Busy Busy Busy

I have some pictures to share of the progress on my corset, but today is a cleaning/organizing day. My crafting stuff needs it desperately. I should have some pictures up tomorrow though.

1.19.2011

Lessons Learned From Being A Mom

Babies do not conform to our schedules. We conform to theirs.
The difference to an infant between a 6 oz bottle and an 8 oz bottle? 2 oz on your shirt.
Some transit buses are not stroller friendly.
Everything changes when you have a baby. Absolutely everything.
Some days 2 hours is just not enough time to get ready to leave the house.
No matter how big the bib, the spit-up will end up on the outfit.
A tape recorder may come in handy when asked the usual questions about your baby. Or a sandwich-board sign.

1.17.2011

From the Vaults

I found this hiding in the bottom of my fabric bin. It is completely handsewn, from about 3 or 4 years ago. There are only 6 of the blocks (4 blocks are shown here) so I think I'll dip into my scraps and see what I can find to finish it with. Very excited.

Birds, Elephants and the 100 Day Cough or The Picture Obese Post

I've been sick the past few days (I'm thinking its the 100 day cough the CDC has been talking about) but fortunately I've been able to do most of the things I normally do, just with soem caughing and a bit of diziness and light-headedness.





Last night I finished this:


I used the same pattern as for my son's elephant . I know the button eyes are a little wonky but I think it just gives her a bit more character.






I used a new way of closing the stuffing hole. I think it looks a lot better than whip-stitching/overcast stitch.



And today I whipped this up:

The first two were mock-ups. They actually didn't turn out too terrible. The first one was too small and the second one had a massive head so I just used the head from the first pattern and the rest from the second to make the third birdie, which came out just right.


You can see the differences in head size better here.




I did some stitching on the first one to make the tail look like it had feathers. It didn't turn out quite like I had wanted it to, but I think it's fairly cute anyhow.


No fancy tail stitching for the end product. The tail looked too cute to stitch over.

Since this is going to a baby, I had to do the toilet paper tube test. (We didn't have any empty rolls, so just bear with me)


And again, this time tail down. She doesn't squish into the tube without quite a bit of effort, so I give it my Crafty Mom seal of approval for babies.


After finishing the bird and having a lot of time left, I decided to make a bag to match it.


It's a drawstring bag. My very first! I've determined that I love drawstrings and will make many more bags like this in the future.

All cinched up.


Bird and bag together. As you can see, they were made from the same material so that they match perfectly.

The elephant was made from fabric my mom had, and the birds and bag were made from my stash.

1.14.2011

Not Much to Report

It's been a long and boring day for the most part. I've been trying to get my homework done for my computer class and the subject matter is eluding me. The labs online have nothing to do with the textbook section we're in for this week, so I had to crack open the book we supposedly aren't going to need until next week.

1.13.2011

Weight Loss

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to lose 50 pounds (roughly a pound a week). Since the beginning of the year I've been weighing myself about once every five days, and I actually saw a 1 pound increase once. But today there was a 3 pound loss from my beginning of the year weight. Thank you exercise.

1.11.2011

Mutants, Dentists, and Pilates/Yoga

I finished up a baby mutant sock monkey last night.



(it's supposed to be an ear on top, but since he's a mutant it could really be anything)






Shown with the keyboard for size reference.

I made a blue one for my son out of a pair of his old socks and he loves to hold it by the tail. And then he stuffs it into his mouth, which is how I know he likes the toys I make for him.

The mutant monkey has not, however, been in my son's grubby grasp. I will put him up for sale on Etsy for only $5 (plus $2 for shipping) if there is a request.


And I spent 3 hours at the dentist's office today, only to find out I need a root canal. So back I go on Thursday.

1.10.2011

More Alphabet Magnet Goodness

I got more letters finished, and they all have magnets on them. As it turns out the magnet tape I got is nowhere near strong enough to hold them up from the inside, so the magnets are stuck to the outside. If I do any to sell I will need to get stronger magnets.

These are all the letters (and numbers) that I have finished so far. The blue letters (except for two 'e's, and the 'd') were done on the machine. (and are also upcycled from a woman's button-down shirt) There aren't very many of them because I discovered it was much more work than it was worth to try to manuever the tiny pieces of fabric on the machine. So now I use a quilting hoop and quilt many letters at a time, then just cut them out.


Alphabet magnets are so much fun. I need to hurry up and finish the whole alphabet.

Welcome a New Addition

Please welcome a new addition to our little family.

I finished this little guy yesterday, and my son absolutely loves him.


From tip to tail the elephant is about as long as my son's head and body. He likes to have it sitting on his chest and belly so he can munch on the trunk. Mmmm elephant burger.


The two green ones were made from the same basic pattern and were both completely handsewn. I decided I wanted to make one that I could give him now, while he still puts everything in his mouth, so I did the grey one almost entirely on the machine. The elephant is stuffed more than the others, so he is firm while the others are floppy. They are all made out of fleece blankets that I got from the thrift store, with cotton for the insides of the ears and buttons for the eyes. I like them all though, and I think my son will too.

(ultimate brownie points if you can name the tv show playing in the background of the elephant pics)

1.09.2011

Snow!

It snowed all night and I woke up to this:


This tree usually stands upright. The snow is very heavy.



And this is several hours later, as the snow melts and falls off.