June - July - August

Since May, when my sewing momentum was completely shut down, I haven't done much at all. The busy-level of the summer felt a lot more hectic this year, even though last year was had the exact same pattern: 17-day vacation followed by summer theater followed by two camps, and then back to school. I'm getting old ... anyway ...

JUNE
mending: 6

zip totes: 4 for teacher gifts at the elementary school, made literally the day before school year ended. But they were done, and they were gift-wrapped and ready to go when the girls left for school on the last day!

quilt blocks: 1 - the cake block from the Spelling Bee book. My intention is to make a "Happy Birthday" banner to hang up for birthday parties and include this block, but this is as far as it's gotten.

crafting: lots and lots of "tornado streamers" for the summer theater production of The Wizard of Oz. The choreography was that Dorothy and Toto spun in circles while the Munchkins ran in circles around them, first with the dark colored streamers for the storm, and then switching to the colored ones to indicate her travel to Oz. I came up with how to do the streamers - I bought the plastic-y tablecloths from the dollar store, cut them into strips, and hot-glued them to craft sticks. We made about 150 of these (total, both sets combined) and each one had 3 to 8 streamers. It was a lot of cutting and a lot of glue, and a lot of time. But only about 10 bucks.

JULY
mending: 1

quilt blocks: 4, put together in a quilt-as-you-go small project. I did this at my friend Sarah's house in Utah so she could teach me the technique. I took a bunch of photos with the intention of posting a tutorial here, but obviously we haven't gotten to that yet.

summer theater: I am such a glutton for punishment. I still agreed to be the costume manager again, even though our family wasn't even IN the show this year. On the morning of THE SHOW - not the THREE dress rehearsals - Adam helped me figure out the Tin Man costume, and that gave me fits all the way through the show. Every break, I was pinning it somewhere just to keep it on the guy. We were both happy to take it apart and throw it in the trash within an hour of the final curtain!

- I'm most proud of our Yellow Brick Road - it was a PERSON! She danced, and Dorothy and crew followed her. I made the cape, and this cute girl was so excited when I told her she could keep it when the show was over. I hope she dresses up as the Yellow Brick Road for Halloween.

- a lot more tornado streamers
- elastic waist/knotted tulle skirts for the Munchkins
- I altered the dress for Glinda - I had to take in the bodice of a formal gown so it didn't fall off her.


AUGUST
- mending: 1
- zip tote: 1 for a birthday party gift
- fabric shopping bag: 1. A new state law in Connecticut requires you to pay for any store plastic bags you use, to try to encourage people to use fabric bags. Yay for the environment and less plastic! Really, I support this. Now I just need to get my bag supply up to speed.

No photos of anything in August.

February's list

Quilting
1 - Squared Away: the last 4 blocks are DONE!! Hooray! I did the final two sets - dark green and purple, and got everything boxed up and into the mail for Mindy. I was apparently so excited to get them done and out the door, I didn't even take pictures of the last block. Ha! I just got her last two blocks a couple of days ago, so as soon as I get the doll quilts done and on their way, I can lay out this quilt and start putting the full top together. Hooray!

2 - Night Sky: 5 more blocks made, and section 2 of the quilt put together. So the entire top section is now done, and it's 60 inches across. The plan is to make it 80 inches long - right now, it's at 33. I was running out of the gray in the top center spinner, so in the bottom left Hunter Star, I used the gray scraps from SM's apron from last year's theater costume. It will be fun for her to have that memory incorporated into her quilt.

3 - Letter blocks: one so far, for a new mini quilt project. I got this quilting book called Spelling Bee by Lori Holt and it literally is the instructions to make every letter of the alphabet, both upper and lower case, plus a bunch of punctuation marks and some fun extra bonus blocks. The globe was the one that got me to buy the book. I have so. many. ideas. of what to do with the letters.

4 - 15 doll quilts to be sent to A Doll Like Me: the two TA and I made a year ago, the star one that JE started in January, AND 12 more made this month by our church activity group. My part of the 13 made in the past 60 days:

• organized all the adults for the evening activity, plus some other adults helped with the fabric 
• cut 230 squares, other people brought more and we had probably around 1000
• made the "Made by kids for kids" labels
• after the activity, I finished 4 of the quilts at home
• made 7 quilt sandwiches, 6 to go but I ran out of pins

Another woman from church, who donated some of the fabric, has agreed to do the bindings. Bless her forever!


Other sewing
1 -  two more scripture tote bags ... I made the ten in January for the church activity girls and had a little fabric left over. So I made two more for my girls who didn't have bags for church items. For our family, the "quiet" materials are sketchbooks and writing utensils (pens, pencils, markers, etc).

2 - more service sewing, this time for Days For Girls. My church's women's organization is part of an interfaith group that makes fabric reusable menstruation products to be taken to developing countries, where the women and girls don't have hygiene items during their cycles. The original intention was to give girls these products so they don't have to miss school during their period, but I'm sure it's spread further than that. Our local group is getting a shipment ready to send to Senegal this spring and I went to a Saturday sewing day this month. I have a schedule conflict for the Saturday in March, so I brought home 25 shields to finish here, and a friend will take them back. They're done and ready to go.

SM goes with me - she and her friend JM put snaps on one of the pieces, and they're knocking out quite a few service hours!


Mending: 8

Z is for zig-zag

Four years and six days later ... I have FINALLY finished the Sew All 26 Challenge!! With lots and lots and lots and lots of zig-zag stitches. I ended up with this: a purse made of rope.

I got the idea for a rope tote bag from this post by SouleMama - second picture down. LOVE that. I didn't have enough rope to get quite that large, but still ended up here and I'm excited to use this! The bottom is 11 inches long, and the widest point of the curves is 14 inches. The height is 10 inches.

The curves are totally accidental but I like them a lot!

The handles were glued on with a whole lot of hot glue. My sewing machine will barely fit one layer of rope under the foot. No way I was even going to try with two layers.

The general idea when sewing with rope is to set a zig-zag stitch, and put two sections of rope right up against each other. You just keep turning and turning the piece until you get what you want - lots of people do bowls because they don't take much rope. I made some small rope bowls in 2015 - they hold random little things, and one is currently on JE's dresser to hold a bunch of hairbands.

For the Sew All 26 Challenge, I'm excited this is my grand finale!

September journal

At the beginning of the month, I wanted to get back into my quilts after a crazy summer, and it's fall! It's quilt season! But there was a bunch of random stuff all over my sewing table, and all these unfinished little projects annoyed me. So that's what I started with.

1. Zip pouches for TA and JK - my last two girlies who didn't have their own bags. They chose the fabric forever ago and have been waiting so patiently, and I finally just sat down and made them. They were SO excited, and immediately put their markers in the bags. TA calls her's the "everything bag."

2. Squared Away quilt blocks: 4 pink (2 of each fabric set) and 2 aqua.

That's it. Didn't even take pictures of the zip bags. I meant to do a lot more, but I've been editing a book this month. I really want to get it done so I can get back to sewing!

another way to use a quilt block

JK's friend BR is really into snails, which utterly confuses her parents. It's really hilarious. But they humored her at her birthday last week (she turned 5). They had a garden themed birthday party on Saturday and even gave her live snails as a pet for her gift.

A couple of nights before her party, I was randomly surfing quilting blogs and came across a snail quilt block. Stop. The. Presses. I am making this quilt block for BR and putting it on a tote bag for her gift. Now. I didn't buy the pattern, but eye-balled it, and this is how it ended up:

The snail itself is 6x8 inches. If I were to make this again, I would start with an 8-inch colored square instead of 6 to give more room for the seam allowances. The body started at 3 inches wide. The corner squares started at 2 inches, and then were sewn on the diagonal and the excess trimmed off. The smaller size worked great this time because BR is a tiny girl.

   

The block isn't quilted at all, but there is interfacing behind it. I used this tutorial from Simply Notable for the bag itself. It's a good sized bag for a small child for library books and carrying random toys around. I also experimented a little bit with the handles - I originally cut the strips at 2 1/2 inches wide like usual, and then folded them shut like bias tape. My addition was that I tucked a 1-inch wide strip of low-loft quilt batting into the fold before I sewed the strip shut. I like how that turned out - makes it softer to put over your shoulder! Planning to use that again with future bags.

T is for travel

More zip bags! This makes 11. (I need a card on the wall to make tally marks - I'm going to lose track one of these days.) I made these as a set - they're reversed from each other with the inside/outside fabrics.

The larger tan/red one is identical to the one I made for RG's teacher at school - my sister-in-law saw it and wanted one too. She didn't have toiletry bags for traveling, and her birthday was coming up anyway ...

And here they are in her luggage ready for their spring break trip.

S is for school

We've homeschooled from the beginning, but this past summer, for a lengthy list of reasons, it was time to register our girls for the local public schools. SM went straight into middle school, RG and JE are at the elementary school, and TA and JK are still little and home. They'll join their sisters at school in a couple more years - the current plan is to put them in late, like at 2nd or 3rd grade. (Although with the way they keep fighting, they may go into 1st and K next fall just so they don't kill each other. But that's another discussion.)

So that meant that for Christmas, I entered the obligatory world of Teacher Gifts. I don't like feeling obligated (and I do), but at the same time, I really do appreciate the teachers our girls have - they've made our transition from home to public school SO smooth! The girls aren't just tolerating it, they're thriving. RG is getting a ton of therapy that we couldn't find in private practice, particularly physical and occupational therapies. (Why is no one willing to treat special needs kids? The demand is massive!!) So big huge thank yous to the new members of Team Caudle! Presents all around! I seriously had to make a list of all of "my staff" to give gifts to, and I still didn't get to them all. Need to finish the list at Valentine's Day, I suppose.

Since I have far more time than money, I made:

- Zipper bags from Noodlehead for the 4th and 2nd grade teachers. They really are amazing. This was entirely from my fabric stash, and Mindy had given me a few zippers forever ago. I got more zippers in bulk from Amazon so I can make more for all the therapists for an end-of-the-school-year thank you. (If I get to it. That's the idea, anyway.)

2nd grade teacher - the inside was a blue with an abstract of the phases of the moon

4th grade teacher. I need to make this one exactly as-is again because my sister-in-law loved it, and her birthday is coming up.

This one was for a gift exchange at a book club - I nailed it on the fabric/zipper contrast.

- Pocket handwarmers for the principal and vice principal. They are not sit-in-the-office guys, I always see them out and about, including outside at all the recess times. These were all flannel scraps. I added some lemon essential oil to them, and Mr. T loved the scent. Mr. K raved about how nice they are because it's a SUPER cold winter this year!

- Peppermint foot soak - you have to scroll down in the link to get to the foot soak. I didn't just give little tiny one-time "servings." I put it in pint jars and labeled them to use 2 tablespoons at a time. This went to the special ed teachers, 3 therapists, and their extra-curricular dance class. I saw one of the special ed teachers in the hall after I'd left it in the office, and she said it smelled so fresh! She was excited to use it! I made 7 of these. Seven pint jars out of my house! Hooray! (We have a crazy amount of pint jars and we don't do THAT much canning, so I specifically looked for things to make that would be put in jars.)

- Cookie jars - particularly to get rid of the millions of Snickers bars that I stashed away at Halloween. We had SO MANY Snickers bars! And we have an obscene number of canning jars in the basement. So all I had to buy was the cake mixes, and those are a buck each. Here's something silly for you: I saw Walmart had cookie jars for sale for $5 each. Ha! I'll make it myself, thanks! We made five jars. These didn't end up going to school - we gave them to people around the neighborhood.

- 3 minute fudge - this is my secret weapon for the holidays. My alternate is to make it with the Ghiradelli peppermint chips and white chocolate. We took a bunch to the public library for the librarians on the children's floor, because THEY are part of our teaching staff as well!