New Website

I have moved my blog to my own web address!!

Check out new posts at www.sewcraftycat.com

iPiccy

While reading other's blogs, I always notice how they have fun little captions on their pictures. When asking my more computer-literate husband about this, I was told you can use Photoshop.

While browsing a favorite blog of mine, I came across a post about iPiccy. This website is great for doing some fun photo edits! Including adding text to the pictures like I did below!

I can spend way too much time on this site editing my pictures! It is free and you don't have to register to use it! Check it out at ipiccy.com.

Pre-Washing Trick

The one thing I dread when buying new fabric is having to pre-wash it. 

How many of you end up with messes like this?  

I have tried many tricks in the book, including using pinking shears to cut all the raw edges. I don't have a serger, so I tried using a tight zigzag stitch along the edges and decided it was too time consuming.

One night as I was laying in bed thinking of the million things I have to do, I thought about how to save some time when prewashing. And here is what I came up with. It might not be ideal for everyone or all types of fabric. But for my cotton fabric, I thought it worked wonders! 

I took my fabric I wanted to prewash and folded it to have the raw edges meet together. (I forgot to take a before picture!) I then sewed a quick top-stitch making sure to catch all the layers. I threw the whole piece into the wash, with a few other pieces of fabric and here is what I found when I pulled it out!

There were still some lose threads, which is going to happen no matter what, but they were not wrapped around the fabric squeezing the life out of it. 

So I threw it in the dryer, pressed it a little with the iron, and cut off the strip of frayed fabric with my rotary cutter. I figure I cut all those bad boys off anyway, why not keep them more contained.

                       

I used this fun fabric to make a fabulous baby gift set which can be seen in my other post!

Baby Gift Set

Baby Gift Set - 2 Burpies, 2 Bibs, and a Diaper Holder

A neighbor contacted me last week about making some baby items for her babysitter who is due any day now. She is having a boy, so I looked through my stash and found these coordinating fabrics that I had bought a few weeks ago with the intention of making more boy items. I put together a little gift set for her and love how these pieces turned out!

Here are some more pics!

I took the pictures on my phone - I need to get a better setup going with my nice camera. I love the color scheme of this gift set. Turquoise is my favorite color to use lately! I love how it looks with green and also with pink! 

Remember to check out my shop and facebook page! With summer break only 2 days away, I will be adding lots of new items!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/sewcraftycat

https://www.facebook.com/SewCraftyCat

               

 Linked up to some fabulous blogs!

New Project!

Finished up a new project tonight! Here is a sneak peek of it before I take some more photos with my real camera to list on Etsy. Any guesses as to what it is? =)

I will be listing it on my shop very soon! www.etsy.com/shop/sewcraftycat

I think I will be using this project to write my first tutorial! My goal for summer vacation is to post a few tutorials on the projects I have been making. Anyone have other suggestions as to what else I could write about in a tutorial?  I am definitely writing one about this project because when I searched for a tutorial, I could not really find one! So I figured it out myself and I think it looks pretty cute!

   

Is May really almost over?

It has been one busy month! We have had something going on every weekend the entire month of May. We started off the month having our 2nd annual neighborhood chili cook off...and chilly it was. We were huddled around the fire by the end of the night! However,  having about 6 different chili dishes to eat, along with corn bread, mac & cheese, and delicious deserts made the cold weather bearable.

The following weekend was graduation & mother's day! I am happy to announce I am officially done with grad school! Many people say, "I don't know what I am going to do with all my free time now." Well I say - I am going to sew, sew, sew, and sew some more! Unlike the weekend before, graduation day was quite warm especially sitting on a football field in our caps and gowns. And I have to share, this was the first time I have graduated on a football field!

The next weekend we had a birthday celebration for my awesome mom at our house. My husband also ran in a spring marathon that weekend. It might have been called a spring marathon, but it was more like summer weather! My mom and I waited for him at mile 25 to cheer him to the end, but with the temps already in the mid 80's at 10am, he made a wise choice of walking most of the second half. I give anyone who finishes a marathon credit, running or walking, 26 miles is one heck of a jaunt.

Although I have loved every minute of the excitement, I have been looking forward to some downtime so I can get back to sewing! School is wrapping up in the next few weeks, so I will have plenty of time to sew once we are on summer vacation. Armed with a gift card, coupons, and my mom, I hit up the Jo-ann Fabrics that just opened. They were having a fat quarter sale, so I stocked up because I love all the projects you can make with them! Because I tend to get the same colors of fabric all the time, without realizing it until I get home and add it to my stash, I made sure to pick a print from every color.

I am so excited thinking about all the projects I can get started on!  But first - prewash!! Pulling all 28 of those suckers apart took awhile and the cats got really excited seeing this big pile of clean fabric.

Be on the lookout for new projects posted on my Etsy Shop:  www.etsy.com/shop/sewcraftycat

And I will be adding new product photos to my Facebook page! www.facebook.com/SewCraftyCat

Baby Bibs

New Bib Design!
After making several reversible bibs with a single fabric design on each side, I decided to get a little creative. I used these two fabrics to make a bib for a friend's baby and I love how they compliment each other so well. It was like they were meant to be used together! Even better is that I found them on the clearance rack at my local store - I really stocked up on this fabric!

As an afterthought, I sewed the ribbon to the middle to add a little bit of an embellishment, but I wasn't very happy with the ends hanging off a little. I added some fray stop to make sure it wouldn't come apart while in the wash, however tried to think of some other ways I could add these ribbons more effectively.

After some research, I found that if I sew the ribbon on before I sew the front and back together, it will be part of the seam and look even better!

Ta-dah!  Tried it with this one and loved the result!