She don't care

Yes, we have hopped on the honey badger wagon. Jo is our little honey badger. She don't care. She don't give a s%*&!

I saw this patch in the Oksmalls shop on Etsy and had to have it. I will be making our little honey badger a cute little bag that will have this cute little honey badger patch on it. She better love it!

Fab.com Alert - Interweave sewing & crafting books

Interweave has a bunch of awesome sewing books on Fab.com today.

Get your craft on! I just love the cover of Sew Wild. It reminds me of the work my mama does.

Photos from Fab.com

My new toy

My mama sent me this Clover bias tape maker. I love it. I've been making my own bias tape for all of my sewing projects and it takes so much time to cut and fold and iron and fold again and iron and fold again. This bias tape maker makes it all so much easier.

You can see how nice the single-fold bias tape is that I made (using a lovely print by Lotta Jansdotter). I rarely make the double-fold bias tape because I like to be able to adjust that last fold if I need to while I'm sewing.

The only thing I don't like about this little guy is that it makes both sides of the fold even. I like to have one of the folded sides a bit shorter than the other to make it easier to catch the underside when stitching in the ditch. Maybe there's a trick that I don't know about? If you know, please share. Thankyouverymuchandhaveaniceday.

Oink

So I'm sticking with the pig theme here. My grandparents were pig farmers. We spent a lot of time on the pig farm. Pigs are cute. Especially this one from Lovi (a super cool Finnish design company). And it's interactive since you get to put it together.

On Fab.com for 21 more hours.

Etsy Love

In the process of getting our Etsy store up and running, it's been fun to see what others are doing. I've certainly been building my favorites. Here are a  few:

My friend, Kirstin, hand appliques custom onesies, shirts, and other clothes at The Happy Hoot.

Corrabelle at The Mayberry Sparrow makes super adorable little rubber stamps like this one. His name is Rolf.

Honeycup has illustrations, cards, and prints that are perfect for kids and babies with just the right amount of quirk.

 micielomicielo sells onesies infused with pop culture like this one:

Support small business, people! In many cases Etsy shop owners are mamas or families - kind of like us!

So batty

Ok people, I love these hats from Bats in the Belfry! With names like Crazy Horse and Psycho Bunny, you will too.

Bats in the Belfry was started by a mama getting ready for her baby. She just kept sewing hats -- and now she sells them. Cool, right?

You know what? They're also on Etsy.

Free jeans!

Well, sort of free jeans -- old jeans that I've made new again. I've been purging my closet in an effort to get a lot of crap out of our condo, and I found some old jeans that just fit. This is amazing since I'm in between sizes right now and can't seem to find anything in my closet that fits. The only problem is that there was a hole in the leg (which was probably cool the last time I wore them). So I fixed it!

I remember the way my mama would patch up pants when I was younger so I just used her method. Here's a peek at what I did. This is my first follow-along post so hang in there with some of the photos.

Cute jeans. Ugly hole.

First I picked out the fabric I wanted to use for my patch and cut a piece that was slightly larger than the actual hole. You'll see that I decided not to be subtle with my color choices.

Next I cut a matching piece of iron-on interfacing.

Guess what I did next...yep, I ironed on the interfacing to the patch piece.

Then I turned my jeans inside out and pinned my patch in place.

Now comes the fun part. I stitched like crazy! Like I mentioned before, I chose bold colors. I wanted to use neon pink thread to contrast with the green fabric, but I'm out. So I used orange instead (it also happened to be what was on my bobbin). I used cream thread on the inside since that was also what was on my machine. Let's see how it looks right side out.

Looks like I need to do a bit more stitching directly over the hole, so I used pins as guidelines and stitched away again.

When I was satisfied with my stitching I clipped around the patch on the inside to remove some of the bulk.

Flip them right-side-out again and tada! I have seriously been wearing these jeans all week.

Here's my sewing station which also doubles as our dining room table. It actually is cleaner than it was earlier today.

Flower Power

I just saw this paper flower tutorial on Grosgrain and it reminded me of my wedding. I'm always in need of a project so I made it my plan to have only paper flowers at our wedding party. I started making flowers in June, 2009 in preparation for our September 5th, 2009 party date. I was crazy about making flowers. I made flowers after work and before bed and over the weekend. I had my family make flowers. I had my friends make flowers. I had my friends' families make flowers. Flowers galore! At my bridal shower I had everyone help make flowers. I think when we were done we had around 500 flowers. All in all it turned out to be a super special way to get everyone involved.

Since I had never made paper flowers before, I found these kits from Paper Source and they provided a great pattern. This Martha link also gave us a good starting point. Then I bought a crap-ton of all kinds of paper. It turns out everyone who helped created their own designs based on these basics, which made for an awesome variety. 

Here's what we came up with. All of these photos are by Moments Shared Photography in Minneapolis.

My mama rounded out the decorations with these lovelies and these pom-poms.

Here are a few more links for flowers (yay Martha!):
Kids' paper flowers
Giant poppies

Another cool thing about these paper flowers is that, like regular flowers, we could give them away to guests at the end of the night. Anyone could take home a vase. We were at our friend's house last night for the SuperBowl and they still have their paper flowers out. My mother-in-law has a vase with paper flowers in her house. I have this collection of flowers in our living room.

 
Here are a few close-ups of my faves.

Itty Bitty Baby Bunting

In preparation for our Etsy store, my mama did some prototyping for her Ravel series. Here are a few things she made for Jo. I love all of the little monsters creeping out. Jo loves them too. She's my little monster.

The Ravel Series: A mish-mash of shapes are sewn on the bunting with a wicked straight stitch leaving raw edges. In the washing process, the edges of the fabric will fray adding a soft lovely texture. Maybe it should be called the Unravel Series.

Getting ready for Etsy

Mom, Liv, and I have been busy working on getting our Etsy store up and running. We have a name! We have an Etsy store! We have inspiration! We have materials! We have a model:

Holy baby, Batman!

So Nick's favorite superhero is Batman. We have Batman comics on Jo's bedroom wall -- it used to be Nick's office and we didn't change much. This is one of four vintage comic book covers that we had framed, and it's my favorite. I told Nick he could put Batman on the wall as long as Poison Ivy was included.

When I was making super cute baby clothes before Jo was born I wanted to make a few outfits that Nick would love to dress Jo in as well. So I whipped up these little pants.

Then my sister, Liv, surprised us with this awesome Batman onesie that she printed herself (in two sizes).

Oh yeah, and I also made a pair of matching Batman shorts for Nick...I just haven't gotten a picture of them quite yet.