It’s a unicorn! No.

I’m pretty excited about this project, but a little afraid it won’t live up to the hype. Not only have I been trumpeting my excitement about it on the facebook page, Nicole has been excitedly telling anyone and everyone that I’m making her a unicorn skirt and it’s a real unicorn, it really is. Except a) it’s embroidery, and b) it’s a Pegasus and not a unicorn at all. Technically.

(it appears that someone touched my lens and everything is a big foggy in these pictures. Please interpret this as being in a dreamlike state, glorying in the majesty of a real unicorn.)

Okay, so, favourite features of this skirt: cute embroidery (triple yay on that one, and it’s from www.urbanthreads.com) thick hem, full skirt, the yellow topstitching on the denim using topstitching thread, pockets with pink lining. It should fall to just below the knee and have some good twirling and swishing power.

Dislike about the skirt: I should have done the topstitching on the hem with a double needle. Also, I was super duper proud about my topstitching up the side and how it tacked the pocket down a bit. Until I finished the skirt completely and realized that I had done it backwards. Odds are, nobody will notice, although my husband did agree that if you didn’t look at anything but the pockets, you’d instinctually put the skirt on backwards. Makes me want to do a big stompy fit, just a little bit, because I was oh so proud of how it looked and just sure that I’d done it the right way for some reason. Live and learn… check and recheck and then sew and recheck again, seam ripper in hand. Seam ripper and I did in fact have several goes at putting in the pockets and not getting them inside out or backwards. Note to self,  doing it successfully once does not equate ‘so experienced I can do it from memory without consulting tutorial.’

 

Uncertain about the waistband. It has a little ruffle on it and a lot of color, which tied into the pegasus. I stole it off a pair of capris I didn’t think she’d get a chance to wear, my mil picked them up for me from a thrift store and the brightness was right up Nicole’s alley. I think I have to see it on her yet, otherwise I will take it off and use more denim and do an equally thick but more simple waistband, possibly with a zipper on the side. Feel free to nod and agree that might be a better choice, because unless this doesn’t fit there is no way I can give this to Nicole and then maybe take it back to change something. She has been excited about this skirt for five days already.

Please enjoy my photography studio, aka tacking the skirt to a foamcore board and leaning it against the cupboards. You can see the thumbtack above, if you look. hehe. That sort of attention to detail is exactly why my blog makes the big pretty much non-existent bucks.

Fly free, little pegasus! I do love how it looks like it is run/flying along the hemstitching line. Suffice it to say, I am just in love with my new sewing machine! Aside from the awesome embroidery feature, I have come to realize that a lot of problems with my sewing before, or frustrations, were very much a ‘it’s not me it’s you’ between me and my old machine. My stitches have quite literally never been so even! And egads, automatic buttonholer! It’s like some sort of foreign magic. (I went back and edited in some modelled shots of this skirt, taken with my normal camera and free of hazy smudge)

Speaking of magic, I apologize that I haven’t shown my kitchen reveal yet. (Try not to think too hard about that segue. It really did not make any sort of sense whatsoever.) We keep adding little things here and there to the kitchen/livingroom! Almost done now, I’m pretty sure, and I’m hoping to get that rephotographed soon. But here’s a sneaky peaky!

Oh no, wait. That’s Nicole’s two year old backside and a sortof view of our kitchen before we painted the old cupboards white but after we had ripped out the wall between kitchen and livingroom.

Here we go, this is more like it! The table is where the fridge was in the first picture, more or less. Since this photo was taken the door has changed, the window and door were framed out, and we hung a chandelier over the table. We’ll be putting a dishwasher in where that garbage can is later this week. See what I mean? Still changing lots of things!

 

 

Craft Room – 99% finished!

It needs new chairs, and the drop ceiling and lighting need to be dealt with. Also, the plug in thingers are still kindof hanging out of the wall. But not bad for a corner that started off like this when we moved into our house:

The wall to the left there that the TV was on was actually a stone panelling, so that makes three types of panelling in here, plus another kind in the hallway leading up to this, if I recall correctly. Very stylin. Also, the carpet had the texture of astro-turf, so that was nice. Chris stripped it down to the concrete and reinsulated, framed everything up differently, and now we have our gorgeous playroom and MY gorgeous ‘play’room! My husband totally ROCKS.

Here we can see how I’m allowed to be as ridiculous as I want to in here. Hot pink iron was a wedding gift (holla, Deen!) and the ironing board cover was from Winners. Also you can see a partially-pieced quilting project. It was technically my first project, but after I pieced it I pieced and quilted a dolly quilt with some scraps, since I figured I better actually try quilting first. I will find it and post about it later. Also you can see some blue hearts fabric, because EVERYTHING HAS TO BE BLUE for Nicole lately. Not that she hates pink or anything, thank goodness. But “No… I want blue.” is her fav phrase. When I work on a project that requires the serger, I have it pulled out all the way to the front of the desk and then there is ample room to use both machines at once. Not like I can actually physically do that, but I don’t have to move anything around (except say, myself) to be able to switch back and forth. I have a little nook for Nicole. In the storage thing goes craft supplies I don’t mind her having full access to. So, not her paints or glitter glue. She’s three. She still gets Bright Ideas sometimes. Okay I just love all the shiny whiteness and the organized-ness. I fit all of my crap priceless craft supplies in there! I love boxes. Theoretically I could hide lots of things in the cubbies under the desk but I am hippo-pregnant right now and crawling under a desk isn’t so much going to happen right now. When there is no flash, my memory makers cabinet looks like it was MADE to be in this room. (I got it a few years back with a 50% off Michaels coupon!) My spool ribbons live here… a cheese whiz jar full of little vials of glitter… thread… cutting tools… inks… some double-sided tape type adhesives… fabric glues, fabric paints, painty paints… and a bunch of random small things. From left to right… knits, clothing-type fabrics (denim, suiting, shiny, etc), upholstery/home dec fabrics, quilting cottons. And of course my little Janome serger had to sneak in the shot. Look, an almost empty shelf! I will probably put a few more pictures and little happy things in this one yet. Upper left shelf, this is where Nicole’s paints and glitter glues are hiding. Also my prismacolor pencil crayons, the craft supply that’s been with me the longest. It was a gift from my parents back in highschool! (I bet a lot of you didn’t even know I draw. Drawing was the first thing I did. Actually in highschool, the only thing. As opposed to schoolwork. cough.) And a box of fun pens and painting pens and gel pens and markers and doodad writing thingers. And of course, Mod Podge! My cricut, a gift from Chris the Christmas after Nicole was born. I don’t use it nearly often enough. Actually, I haven’t used it in forever. I do have some projects with it planned though, if I can find my Doodlecharms cartridge back! I have a lot of patterns. Not counting my supply of Ottobre magazines, which are all over the house. I love Ottobre…My broom! It makes me happy when I sweep. Chris would describe it as ‘the most hideous thing I have ever seen. In my life.’ …I think he’s just jealous. He asked incredulously where you even buy stuff like this. Well, this baby is from Winners, but I text messaged him victoriously on Saturday because at HomeSense there is an ENTIRE AISLE full of fancy brooms and mops and suchlike. Yay!  The view when you first enter the room. Nicole’s stuff is up in front so she has no excuses to hide under my table and ‘help’ me press the footpedal. And just for funsies, this is what I looked like when I finished doing all the dragging-downstairs-of-the-craft-supplies and organizing. No fear, Chris did the heavy lifting and I broke down my crap supplies into laundry baskets full and hauled it downstairs that way. Seriously, you have no idea how much crap supplies are in this room. Suffice it to say, more than several laundry baskets full, over several days/weeks.Awww, I love you baby. Even if you are made of lead. Seriously, my midwife didn’t even weigh my yesterday, she just felt the baby and was like, “Wow, baby sure grew a lot this time!” Yeah, I noticed. The three-point-turn middle of the night rollover has turned into a five-point-turn, occasionally with assist. We have a 24/7 Charlie Horse over here, too. Low, low baby. I’m gonna sneeze this little goober out when the time comes. There’s not much distance to travel. Six weeks left! Not enough time to get everything I’d like to finish done, but holy-cow-seriously-I-have-to-keep-getting-bigger-for-another-six-weeks?! at the same time. 

I’ll be linking up to a few linky parties. Don’t be shocked if this post gets edited a few times as I add some more. Here we be: