A Hoot!

Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted anything...we've been so busy!!! A tiny sliver of that busy-ness was making my baby girl's first Halloween costume. I used this pattern from Martha Stewart. The pattern calls for regular white felt for the front "feathers" but there was some fuzzy white felt on the shelf with the regular stuff and I thought fuzzy would be more fun. Also, if you go to the link and look at the picture of the baby wearing the costume, you'll see that that baby seems perfectly happy wearing those goggles. Marian resisted them at all costs. There was screaming, pushing, and even tears. So I didn't push it.

My husband and I wanted to keep our costumes low key, so we figured we'd go thematic. A few felt leaves stitched to headbands and gloves, a little bird's nest with a few eggs in it, color-appropriate clothing, and we were all set. Easy, and nothing spectacular.





Disclaimer: the lighting wasn't working for us when we were taking these pictures, and so they suck.

Apple Crumble

I took my favorite recipe from Jen and used apples instead. I took 3 apples, pealed cored and chopped and put them in a skillet with 4 T butter and about 1/4 c water. I heated them over medium until the apples were almost like applesauce (with some just a little thick or tough). I made the incredibly easy crumble topping, placed them in the ramekins and baked them according to the recipe. Top with vanilla ice cream. There you have it, another hit.

Sew Serendipity

I bought a few patterns from Serendipity Studios and this shirt and skirt are what I have made so far. If any of you live in the area (Houston) I will gladly lend my patterns to you. The shirt is made from her Olivia Dress pattern, and the skirt from her Emaline Skirt pattern. These are great patterns to have because they are easy to follow and manipulate or change to create something unique. They are a good base to go off of.

Sewing Group #4

I made the Katiedid quilt. I think I might embroidery my nephews name on it. What d oyou think?

Halloween Party - Malone Style!

Adam and I (above) hosted a Halloween party at our house this year. I wanted to share the costumes and some of the ideas. We got our pictures from the favorite children's book Where the Wild Things Are. I am Max in my wolf suit and Adam is a wild thing! I got the tutorials for our headdresses (i coulsn't think of a better word! hats?) here: Max, Wild Thing
Chris Brown (above)won a prize for most creative costume. He was a bacon eating robot. Kallan and Joseph (she has already posted their costumes) won best couple. Adam won best overall. It was really hard to vote because there were such great costumes.



Steve and Kalina Broadbent pulled this off nicely!
This is my little nephew - what a charming and short vampire!
My bushy tail and my witchy-witch of a sister Candace!
Megan looks Awesome!





Bosc pears with skull name tags for guests to take on their way out.
Megan Hicks made this pumpkin look easy to make - I don't know how she did it but it was AWESOME!

I did not take any photos, so I am at the mercy of Kalina (the official photographer of the evening) to share hers. She is posting them little by little as she has time to work on them here, if you want to check them out.

Landscape Quilt

Hi everyone. It has been a while since I have posted, so you are going to get a lot of me today. This is from the landscape wuilt class I took at the Quilt Festival. The first photo is one I took of my sister, below is the quilt I made from it.

I wanted to share the how-to so that you can make one, if you wish. It is very easy, and makes a great gift. Mine is still not finished. All I need to do is the binding, once I find something I like, and when you do the binding you need to also sew on a fold or "tunnel" of fabric, from which to hang it. The end size is the size of a fat quarter.

How-to:

• Gather all of the fabrics to make your picture. It is important to get a sky (if you have one) something for the base layer (I used a print with foliage because I had no sky in mine), and any other of the most important layers (horizon, lake, mountains, etc.). Then gather bits of fabric to make the other images in your picture you want there. For example, I found fabric with a park bench on it which fit in perfectly with the picture, and I also took out my sister. :) It is important to simplify - take out anything unnecessary or anything that distracts from the main reason you chose the picture. I took our my sister, because the reason I chose this one is obviously because of the beautiful blossoming cherry trees. However, thanks to Kallan, you know you can print pictures onto printable fabric, cut out your subject and glue them in. Also, there are many batiks that are wondrful for creating the natural environment: rocks, trees, water, etc.
  
• Other supplies: acid free glue stick, clear thread (or color of your choice for quilting), scissors, tracing paper and pencil, an 8x10 color print of your image and a 16x20 black and white print.
  
• Cut out your shapes. Trace your main images from your 16x 20 onto paper, cut out and then use your pattern to cut the image out of your fabric. For instance, if you have a mountain horizon, trace the shape onto paper, cut out then place it onto your mountain fabric, cut, and glue onto your base layer. Continue until you have replicated your picture. Pin onto your batting and the fabric for the back of the quilt.
  
• Quilt. Quilting it with the clear thread is helpful because your thread will not take away from your picture. Or, use your thread to enhance your picture. For example, if you have a sky, you can use a blue fabric and then quilt in shapes of clouds to give that effect. This is also a good way to do water.
• Bind and add some sort of loop for hanging.

Please take a moment to check out my teacher's site. That way you can get a feel for how beautiful they can be.

Costumes!!!

I guess I'll be the first to post pictures of this years Halloween costumes. I want to see what all of you did also! I usually don't go all out with my costume, but since I had a party to go to that required them, I had some fun with it.


We went as an old timey cop and robber. I'm really bad at taking pictures showing how I made things, so I just have pictures of the finished product and I'll have to tell you how i did it. This was a surprisingly inexpensive couples costume. My husband used his navy blue suit and we pinned the collar up (you can kind of tell if you look closely). The baton is unfinished wood sprayed black, the hat is an old hat that we covered in navy fabric and stuffed batting in to get the height, and the badge is from a costume store for $4. I bought a kids long sleeve white shirt from Hobby Lobby for $5, used tape to make wide stripes, and spray painted it black. For the money bag, I cut a big circle out of some cream cotton fabric, stuffed it with newspaper, and tied it together at the top with a rubber band. Everything else (the mustache, belt, $ on the money bag, badge on the hat, and mask) was made from felt! Felt is my new favorite fabric (if you can call it fabric). Especially since it's 4 sheets for $1 at the craft store and stays in place when sewing together. All I did was make templates for everything (see below), cut out two of each, sewed together wrong sides out, and flipped it to the right side. For the money symbol, I just made one copy and sewed it face up on the fabric (before I stuffed it of course).

Again, I want to see what you did this year! Especially kids costumes.

Happy Halloween!

I need some help from all of you. To get in the Halloween spirit, my husbands family has a pumpkin carving contest every year. They can make anything a contest... The prize is bragging rights. So, if you get a chance, I would love for you to vote for your favorite pumpkin at BurgerTyme which is my husband's burger blog. All the votes are tallied on Halloween night.

If you carved pumpkins this year, I'd love to see them!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

10% off at Sew, Mama, Sew!

Ends Nov. 1st. Includes sale and clearance items. Type in the code HH3KICKOFF.

Developing your fancy photos

I just wanted to share this great site for developing your photos. I heard about it from a friend who is a semiprofessional photographer who has won many awards for his photography. He has really nice equipment, as I know many of you have recently invested in some nice cameras. Well, this is the place to get them developed. Mpix.com
This place is great because their products are professional quality and the price is extremely cheap. You can even get all of your framing done through them as well, which is equally affordable for custom framing. You should sign up for their specials sent via email, which are pretty frequent. An example of their pricing: 8x10 = $1.99, and many times they send out the promotion for half off, etc. Also, you can print your images in many media types: wall clings, deck of cards, puzzles, greeting cards. Another perk, you can order your prints, framed items, etc. in boxes that will no where have their name on it so that the receiver is surprised until time to open. This was especially useful for me last Christmas. I got a few of Adam's prized photos printed and framed by them. When the boxes arrived, he was home to get them, but had no idea what would be inside. (Also, I had budgeted a certain amount for the picture to get framed, when I found out how cheap it was, I got to order another one of his favorites in a frame!)
This is a really affordable way to print your photos that you have taken great care to make professional and memorable. If you have invested the money in a nice camera, this site is the way to go. They even have a service that allows them to have one of their professional developers look at the photo before printing and enhance it in all the right ways. And, if this option is not free, then it doesn't cost much. I've used it a lot and can't remember paying much (if anything) for it and it is really helpful.

Anyway - in answer to your question, yes, I am getting paid for this post. JKJKJKJKJK! Ok, i'll pass the mike on . . .

Fabric Frames and Mattes

I sort of mentioned this craft before, but I thought I might expand on it and show some pictures of how I did it (even though I'm sure you could figure it out on your own). This is a cheap and really simple way to use scraps from your favorite fabrics and to bring color or tie a room together. The matte below is for a 4x6 picture and cost .50! The unfinished wood frame above cost only $2.00 and is wrapped in one of the larger scraps of floral chiffon. As a side note, I don't have kids yet, so my sweet pup, Pearl, is the subject of a good bit of my photos. And yes, that is Lord of the Rings in the background...I admit I'm a nerd.

First, I positioned the frame/matte face down over the desired part of the fabric (face down also) and freehand cut with a rotary cutter ½-1 inch around the outside of the frame/matte. It doesn’t have to be perfect because that extra fabric will be glued to the back of the frame where no one will see it. I hot glued the ½-1 inch fabric borders one side at a time to the back of the frame, making sure it is pulled taut. Then I freehand cut about ½-1 inch inside the matte. With a rectangle frame/matte, I cut a slit from the inside corner to the frame on all four corners and pulled taut and hot glued it to the frame. With the circle frame/matte, I made many slits about 2 inches apart from each other. Each slit should be glued one a time so you can control how tight the fabric is pulled over the frame/matte. The bottom left picture shows this step. When you’re done, there should be no wrinkles or gathering of fabric on the front of the frame/matte.

Spinach-Ricotta Pesto Pasta with Crisp Prosciutto and Asparagus

Josh and I got to enjoy this scrumptious pasta dish for Sunday dinner. It was super easy to make. We really really liked it. Hope you do to, if you make it that is.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ask-aida/spinach-ricotta-pesto-pasta-with-crisp-prosciutto-and-asparagus-recipe/index.html

Giant Cupcake

I've been looking for an excuse to buy Wilton's Giant Cupcake cake pan for a while now. My niece's 4th birthday proved to be the perfect reason. She loves cupcakes, and she loves the fun girly-girl color schemes that would make the cake especially cute. I did a little bit of research online, and I found this tutorial for making a candy liner for the cupcake.

I used two Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mixes to fill the pan - I discarded about a cup of batter, but probably could've discarded two because I ended up having to trim quite a bit off the top of the cakes once they were cooked. I started baking them at 350, but after 15 minutes or so I found some tips online that said 325 was better so I reduced the temp. I'll start at 325 next time, because I think the outer edges were a little overdone. It takes a long time to cook because it's such a deep, thick base. It ended up being in the oven for 65 minutes. I don't think I trimmed the base quite enough before putting it in the candy liner, because this morning it was cracked a little bit - I think because it was too big. But it wasn't too noticeable, and luckily held together long enough for the birthday girl to get a good look at it. I also could have used a turntable (or helper monkey!) when frosting it, because I had several breaks and crooked parts in the frosting. I used my Cricut die-cutting machine (my most favorite crafting tool!) to make the letters and flowers, then taped them to lollipop sticks and stuck them in the cake.

This picture with the water bottle helps show the scale of the cake - it really is a giant cupcake!

The birthday girl was thrilled with the results - she'd never seen anything like it. Now I'll have to think up more excuses to make this!

OOooo Scary!

And these I just made with the left over chocolate, i thought they were kinda cute.

Candy Corn Cookies

These yummy and cute looking cookies are super easy to make. All you do is use your favorite sugar cookie recipe (or if in a hurry you can use pillsbury) add orange food coloring and cut into triangles. Bake as directed. Use white and brown baking chocolate for the ends. Don't dip them into the chocolate just spread it on with the back of the spoon. If you dip it adds too much weight for the cookies and they tend to break. Enjoy

Decoupage and such

So I love going to craft stores and looking at the unfinished wood section because it's like a blank canvas, the creative possibilities are endless. The prices are great too, especially if you hit the 50% off sale (which is almost every other week). I needed an extra box around the apartment to keep my growing number of craft supplies in, so I bought this unfinished wooden box for around $4. First I had to unscrew all the hardware so that I wouldn't have to cut the paper any more than necessary. Then I measured and cut out one of my favorite patterned papers to fit all the sides of the box. I used Mod Podge to "decoupage" the paper onto/into the box. You can do this to about ANYTHING. These are a few I found online that I would like to try one day:

-the ceiling!
-plates
-pumpkins to make them scarier
-furniture

You have to be careful with Mod Podge because I found that it will make the paper bubble up if you put on a thick layer. Apply lots of thin layers to make it look good. I've only ever used Mod Podge, so if any of you have used something else with a greater success, let me know!


I have another question now. For some reason I had this HUGE wooden paper clip and I was bored one day, so I decoupaged patterned paper to it. Now I kind of like it, but I have no idea what to do with it. Any ideas? It's about a foot long. Please help me!

This is one I just liked the technique of using a bunch of small squares to create value.

Obviously I really liked the tree quilts.

This one is really neat. It is a Lord of the Rings quilt. The longer you look the more references you see. These picture are of the center, but there was a huge blue border filled with pieces of the book.

I know it is hard to tell from this pic (i took these with my phone) but Gollum is in the right hand corner crawling on some rocks and the men on horses are the Dúnedain.

International Quilt Festival 2009

Hi all! I haven't heard from many of you in a while. I hope that we are all still enjoying the blog. I really am.
Last week was the International Quilt Festival held every year here in Houston, TX. It was my first time going and I had no idea how much I would love it. I thought going one day would suffice, but I went EVERYDAY it was open except one. I had a blast! The festival consists of 5 days of lectures, quilting classes that range anywhere from basic skills to very complex design and specialized techniques I did not even know existed, and each class ranged from 3 hours to the whole 5 days, booths where you could learn, teach, buy, sell, and a massive area where the most beautiful quilts, ancient and modern, were on display. Above are a few of our favorites, the top being my personal favorite. The detail and obvious labor involved was truly breathtaking. I hope that we can all attend next year. It was truly an inspiring experience.
I have a few more pictures I will share later. I just wanted to share these with you all - thought you might enjoy it.

Question

So - am curious about quilting with my sewing machine. What if I take 2 pieces of fabric and make the quilt sandwich with them. Do a binding around the edge. Could that be a blanket? Or, do you have to "quilt" it so that the layers are attached securely? Any help you can offer me will be greatly appreciated.

Thank You Candee!

So, my cute sis Candee posted about these glitter pumpkins. I loved it so much, she sent me some of her glitter so I could make them.

Thank You!!