Baby Sewing

My friend had a baby and last week I had the chance to go to Washington to visit with them and I sewed up a storm during nap times and in between snuggling the little one.

I haven't bought any patterns and have been using Pinterest exclusively for patterns/tutorials. It's been pretty successful thus far. Here is my run down.

Itty Bitty Dress: Rae was not lying when she said it was itty bitty. I sewed it in an afternoon, it was super simple. I even made it reversible. Then we tried it on the baby and it hardly fit. She looked visibly uncomfortable and was crying so we took it off. It was quite humorous. She is growing so fast! I figure the dress will fit a little doll. If you make this dress either size it up, or make it for the baby to wear home from the hospital. I also think making it reversible helped the sizing issue. It is awfully cute and easy. I'd make another, but in a bigger size. Lorelei hung the dress on a mini hanger in the baby's room for decoration.

Baby Bibs: I didn't use a pattern, I just traced a preexisting bib. I hate sewing snaps so I used velcro. Worked well, and I sewed these in no time at all.

Baby Car Seat Blanket: This was pretty easy to sew as well. I didn't add the hood so it could fit a little baby and a bigger baby. I really like the color combinations, and realized that I had bought this same pattern in cotton for an apron a year or so ago. Very easy to follow tutorial, I approve.

Quick Change Trousers: Am I the only one who laughs when someone says trousers? It sounds like such an old fashioned word, like slacks. These are from the book Handmade Beginnings. The pattern says to make the pants reversible but I didn't have enough coordinating fabric, so they're only one sided. But they are pretty cute.

 That's the sewing I've done over the last week and a half. I had such a good visit.

Lauren

Painting; The Month Long Process

It took us almost an entire month but Charlie and I are finally done (at least I hope) painting the house. My main goal was to finish the painting before we got the rebate back for the paint. We were successful, but that could be due to the fact that I just sent in the rebate last week, oh well, it's done. 

Since painting the house wasn't enough painting I also painted the cement foundation. I didn't like the look of the black sealant. 

Yesterday we were able to finish this side of the house, the scary tall side. It doesn't look really tall, but it is. If only ladders were easier to climb up and down, and not so shaky, and not so high. It also doesn't help that I have fallen off of a ladder not once but twice. My motto was; "Coat it thick and don't look down." I told Charlie the next time we paint the house I plan to be 8 months pregnant so I won't have to do it. 

Those two pictures didn't make it look scary enough so I took another picture. Scared now? Can you tell which part of the house we are both too scared to paint and therefore are going to pretend doesn't exist? I'll tell you at the end. 

This side was also scary. Luckily yesterday I only had to paint the cement.

You'd think I'd be sick of painting, but I'm not (rolls eyes) I still have to paint this shed. Isn't she a beauty?

I might even get around to taking the pine needles off of the roof. We'll see.

If you actually read this far the answer the the question is:

Luckily the paint color we spent an hour picking out, was the exact color the house already was, so you can't tell that we didn't paint that part. If you can tell you have two options 1. Come paint it for us, or 2. Don't say anything about it lest you hear my wrath.

Just kidding.

Lauren

Summer Top 2

Another top using Simplicity 1693. Sorry to bore you. I bought this dot fabric to make a throw pillow because Blaze has chewed all of ours, then I realized that if Blaze chewed the old ones he would most likely chew the new ones too. So I made this top instead. Same idea as the last one, just a different neck line. 

I only bought 3/4 of a yard, since it was going to be a pillow, so I didn't have enough to try out a different sleeve and just went with cap sleeves again.

I also didn't have enough to make it all the same fabric so I added a back piece in solid purple that matched the purple dots. It adds a bit more interest the the shirt I think. Or it just makes it look like I didn't have enough fabric and threw something together.

Now that I've made this pattern three times it comes together really quick. Like I said before I am going to try a peplum version. We'll see how that goes. It can also have long sleeves so I might make a version to wear in the fall.

Lauren

Spectrogram Art: A How To Of Sorts

One of my summer goals was to paint a picture. On Pinterest a few weeks ago I saw this website where you can turn a voice recording into sound waves and then the company prints the sound waves onto a canvas for you. I thought that was pretty cool, but I didn't feel like spending that much money on it ($700 for some, ouch) I also found an Etsy site that will do a custom sound wave art of a recording for about $40, again didn't feel like spending that much money.

I studied sound waves etc. in college as part of my degree. What I really remembered most was studying spectrograms. Once a professor gave us a quiz and we had to match spectrogram pictures to words, talk about hard, and useless. I have yet to use that knowledge anywhere in my job. That knowledge did come in useful when I wanted to do this project though. I knew there were free programs that would chart sound waves and spectrograms. Enter Audacity. Here is the run down of how I made my spectrogram art.

Downloaded the free program and played around with it a bit. Figured out what I wanted to say. In this case I went really cheesy and recorded myself saying "I love you Charlie."The way the program works is to chart the sound waves, but on the left under "Audio Track" there is an option to switch to spectrogram, if you so desire. Sometimes when Audacity opens it is in "waveform", make sure you're in "waveform dB" if you want to make a sound wave artwork.

Took a screenshot of the program, since I could not figure out a way to export it or copy and paste it.

In iphoto I cropped it down the the part that I wanted (the area in grey). Hilariously enough the below shot of the spectrogram also shows Charlie slamming the door right after I said I loved him. He had no idea what I was doing and was most likely ignoring me.

I wasn't 100% sold on the spectrogram idea so I did screenshots of both the spectrogram and the waveforms. Here is what they looked like. 

I printed them out as a reference, then got to painting. First I sketched a rough outline on my canvas, then painted the background grey and went from there. 

 Giving each color time to dry I worked from the grey to pink and red, then lastly did the yellow and a few different shades of blue. I was not extremely worried about making it look exactly like the real spectrogram. I figured it was a pretty abstract concept to begin with so I might a well make it look the way I wanted to. Plus, no one is going to know that it was not exactly right anyways, except you know now because I just told you.

Then you have a finished product, and I can check #16 off of my summer bucket list. Now I just have to figure out where to hang it up. 

Lauren

Summer Top

I liked my summer tank top so much that I decided to make another one. It's a modification of Simplicity 1693. Here are my model shoot from the beach on Cape Cod this weekend. 

I wanted to make a shirt instead of another tank top, so this was what I ended up with when I added the sleeves the pattern had. I didn't really like them, as you can tell my my expression. The pictures don't make the sleeves look as poofy as they really were. It looked silly, Charlie, my style expert (only other creature I see regularly who talks) said he thought they looked weird too, so I took them off.

To fix the sleeve problem I cut the poofy sleeves into cap sleeves, using the cap sleeve from the Washi dress pattern. I like it much better. Another change is the neckline. I scooped it out a lot more than the first version, to show off more skin, ya know, since I am so risque.

The last change was in shaping the sides more to be a bit more fitted, and leaving a little gap at the bottom seam. I saw that on another blog or Pinterest and thought it looked cool so I did it too. 

It's a fairly versatile pattern, another version has a collar which I might try at some point. I also would like to make a version stemming off of the pattern that is a peplum, which is apparently all the rage at the moment. Just like last time thought I used a fabric with tiny flowers on it, my favorite. 

Lauren 

Bridal Shower Apron V 9.0

Another Apron. I am not tired of sewing these, but I wonder if you're getting tired of seeing all the aprons I make. My Grammy says I am lucky that I have baby showers and bridal showers to go to because all she has to go to are funerals. Unfortunately I cannot go to this bridal shower because my family is getting together to spread my grandfathers ashes. Oy! I bet you wanted to know that. Charlie keeps making references to "The Big Lebowski" that I don't get because I've only seen the first 5 minutes of that movie and I didn't like it. 

Anyways, back to the apron. This one is made for my friend Amanda. We went to college together and were in the same major. We used to study all the time in the big room of the library and we spent way more time talking and stressing about about our test than we ever spent studying. After we both finished grad school she got a job near my home town and so we used to see each other quite a bit since she lived right down the street from my Dad's house. Then she had to move back to Maine. Bummer. She's getting married over Labor Day weekend and I could not be more excited for her wedding. 

I went with a simple apron, not too many frills. The waist tie has bias tape under it because I couldn't find a piping in the color I wanted.

I like the thick ties for the back. Very simple. I hope she likes it.

Lauren