Spring Colours!

I love Spring! My children often ask me my favourite animal, colour, hockey player, Bionicle etc... They have never asked about my favourite season. And although my answer for each favourite is usually the same, "I like them all equally" which is true. I love them all for different reasons. Actually, that may not be true for winter. I could do without winter, but the other three seasons I love for different reasons. Spring is definitely for colour. If you have ever looked through my shop you will have seen that I am quite fond of colours! I love them all!

                           

I love seeing the first flowers bloom.

I love dying eggs for easter in fun bright colours.

                          

I love going to the thrift shop and finding colourful tees for sewing with!

Layered twirl skirt

I also of course love sewing colourful clothing with the colourful tees I find.

Stripy Black and White Ruffle dress

Green Floral Ruffle dress

Tie Dyed Ruffle dress

These ruffle dresses are a new design that I have created for my shop, and I think they are lovely. They are made from thrifted tees, so are soft and super comfy. They are great for moving and playing in, as well as dressing up.

I'm not sure why spring always inspires ruffles, dresses and skirts for me, but I just can't get enough!

I do have plans for some great "boy" clothing as well, but for now the ruffles are calling me:)

And as soon as I finished writing this post I decided to browse through Pinterest and found this little gem. I thought it fit perfectly with my own feelings around winter :)

                          

Source: memegenerator.net via Jamie on Pinterest

Testing for TrashN2Tees

I had the pleasure of testing out TrashN2Tees first applique pattern, with my two littles, and we had a blast! I let my boys choose their fabrics from my ever growing scrap pile, as well as place the pieces of their trucks on their shirts. They kept trying to sneak peeks at the paper showing different ways to put the trucks together, but I really wanted them to be creative, and not be influenced in any way.

Before I show you the tees let me share a little info with you about TrashN2Tees. TrashN2Tees, run by Jenelle, has diverted more than 20 tons of clothing from our waste stream and she has created the patterns as a call to action for others to join her in her movement to change the way we consume and create. On the side she is working on the Create Change Movement App, which I am very excited about! It will be an app where you can search for ways to re-use items that are likely on their way to the dump, so rather then throwing out your unwanted trash, you can turn it into something useful, creating less waste! I love it! You can also check out her blog where she is running DIYU: School for Crafting Misfits.

And now onto the Trucks! Here are the two completed versions. Jasper's on the left and Jude on the right. 

Jasper's Truck and assembly process.

This is Jasper's truck. I was a little leery when he was picking out his fabric choices. He was all about the stripes, and I thought it would be too busy, but it came together perfectly and I love the finished product. I made one suggestion and that was to move the 6 onto the truck because I couldn't see it on the flag. He agreed it would be more visible there, so we moved it in the final sewing.

I of course decided to make the tees for them, so I picked out the fabric for their tees, they had no interest in picking their t-shirt fabrics. 

Here is Jasper in his rad truck hoodie! 

Happy Dance!

This was Jude's fabric selection and process. Again, I was thinking too much blue, but he also impressed me with his choices, because it came together perfectly. I also made a switch on his because there wasn't room on his shirt for the flame on the front of the truck so we moved it to the wheel. 

The shirt fabrics. Jude wanted a long sleeve, not a hoodie. He was very specific about his request.

Love it!

And this is often what happens when I point the camera at Jude! He takes off!

So all in all it was a fun project, and I was so happy to have my boys involved in the creative process. They also love their shirts so much more, because they had a hand in creating them.

I also managed to put a tiny dent in my mountainous scrap pile so that was fantastic too:)

So if you are looking for a fun project you can work on with your kids as well as a way of using up some scraps, head on over to TrashN2Tees and pick up your copy of the appliqué. She will be releasing the pattern today!

Watermarks, at last!

In preparation for my upcoming spotlight feature for Babiekins Magazine, Robert decided to create and add watermarks to my photos! Yay! 

Watermarks are essential in this day and age, what with people's photos being stolen on a regular basis. Now I have my own lovely watermark to add to my pics! 

Aren't they lovely? 

These are the photos we submitted for the spotlight feature in Babiekins. Rob edited them for me, and added the watermark. 

As I was searching for photos to use, I realized that it is really time for me to sew some new clothes for the boys!! In almost every picture they were wearing the exact same outfits, over and over and over. Which is why I am so excited about the Sew Fab ePattern Bundle Sale!! I will have a huge selection of fabulous new patterns to work with! So keep an eye out here for some new pics of the clothes I make. There will be the new challenge of zipper fly pants! Eek! But I look forward to the learning experience:)

Oh and the rock wall! Rob was concerned that every picture had the rock wall as a background. I personally like it, but I guess it can be a bit much, which is why he edited the one photo so the background was black and white. I really love that pic! The clothes stand out much better with the background edited.

What do you think? Do you love the watermark? Is the rock wall too much? Are you as excited about the pattern sale as I am??

Take care.

A Little Catch Up

Well hello! It has been a long time since I have checked in. I kind of forgot how to use my blog and this post is taking way longer then I had anticipated! And so far all I have done is load the pictures and write these sentences:) 

I thought I would do a Wordless Wednesday for my first post, with a mish mash of photos from the last couple of months, but then I felt like some of the photos needed a bit of explaining, so I've scraped that idea. Most of the photos are random selections I made while scrolling through our photos, so there really is no rhyme or reason, but it will give you a tiny idea of what we have been up to.

I just like this picture, and it was taken after my last post so I thought I would throw it in, and it's kind of a nice beginning to this post.

Lots of teeth have been lost. I think the one lost in this picture, was actually lost. Like swallowed lost!

Two teeth in one day. One of them was ripped out of his mouth while visiting the dentist. She noticed how loose it was and decided to pull it out without warning!

My camera decided to stop working properly and so a lot of pictures are blurry! The auto focus works occasionally, and now the light meter has stopped working. Lame! But cute little photo, if it wasn't blurry. This is Furno. Jude's costume for Halloween. Furno is a Bionicle, for those are not familiar with Bionicles.

And the another Halloween shot, must have been taken by Rob, because he uses the flash, and I refuse to use the flash.

 Me and my last minute costume. I was dressed as Janelle from the Chipettes. I just used Jai's Simon costume from last year. 

It's winter now, so a lot of time is spent indoors building set ups.

Lots of booties

I finally tried on some dresses. These are by Discarded Courture. It was a last minute crap-I-really-wanted-to-get-some-nice-photos-of-me-in-these-dresses-and-she-needs-them-back-tomorrow moment, so they are taken after we put the kids to bed, as we were getting ready for bed ourselves. Not a great time to take photos.

I entered an Upcycleing contest through Brushfire Records and my piece was accepted and entered into an auction fundraiser. They sent me all this as a "Thank you". I'm pretty stoked!

On the ferry.

It is impossible to get a decent photo of us all. At least one person was blurry in every single one of the 50 photos we took. Well that's not true, there was one photo where we were all in focus, and I thought this was the one, but clearly it's not, but I'm too lazy to find the focused one, so.... 

I felt super guilty for not sewing my kids some cloths for Christmas, so I made them some "warm, cozy" pants as Jasper calls them. I have a bunch of fleece that I was given a couple of years ago, that has been sitting in my closet and I couldn't decide what to do with it all. It's cold. And the boys like to play outside, so this was a good solution.

 Jude on his Furno bike wearing his red warm and cozy pants. Furno is red so Jude likes wearing red.

 Jasper's super cute legs in his new warm, cozy fleece leggings.

And that's all I've got for today. There is a lot more that went on, but too much for one post. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and I wish you the best in this coming year. I have a feeling 2013 is going to be the best year yet!

                             

KCWC Day 5

Silly me! I thought today was the last day for KCWC, turns out it's a full week, so I have two more days to sew for my kiddos.

Last night I was tired, and struggling to come up with ideas. I finally settled on making slippers for my biggest guy. He was commenting on how cold his feet have been, and so I offered to make him slippers, which he was excited about. Well I didn't get around to it until last night.

The slippers are made from felted wool sweaters (recognize the tops from Jasper's cardigan. I will be making him a pair too, to match his cardigan) from the thrift store, and the soles are suede from a suit I also found at the thrift store.

I didn't have a pattern, so it did take quite a bit of fiddling around, once I figured it out, they were super easy to put together. I can't wait to make more for the rest of us!

Jai said he loves them, and they are awesome! What more can I ask for from an 11 year old?

Have a great day! We are off for a field trip to see the Raptors in Duncan. It's going to be a great day!

KCWC Day 4

And back to my regular colourful sewing schedule. 

After Jas saw Jude's red pants yesterday, he requested a pair for himself. These are just simple sweat pants with a fitted yoga waist.

The cardigan is from a felted wool sweater from the thrift shop. 

And now for the blurry photos. My camera has decided not to do auto focus anymore, and I'm finding it difficult to remember to adjust the light meter, AND focus at the sametime, plus I'm in the habit of just pressing the button and letting it focus for me. Sigh!

Tomorrow is the last day of KCWC Fall 2012! I feel like I need to go out with a bang, and still have no clue what I'm going to make. Hopefully inspiration hits me soon, because I'm not likely to last long today. I was up late (until 2 am) reading the second book of the Hunger Games, Catching Fire. OMG! I can't wait to start the third book! 

Staying up until the wee hours of the morning is not such a great idea for me, and I wish I had a little more self control, but it's just such an exciting book, and I couldn't tear myself away from it. So there is a chance I will be making something simple and not too exciting, but keep your fingers crossed for me, because I'm not a coffee drinker and have to make it through without help. 

Have a great day everyone!!