Fabric Love - Lotta Jansdotter's Bella

I've really been getting into fabric recently .. as in the last six months or so. There are so many cute collections, so many things you can do with it, so many new things to learn .. ugh, love it. Did I tell you that I'm now thinking I'd like to open a fabric and yarn shop in my hometown or nearby? Yep, it's that serious. Serious enough to go to a business class and start writing a business plan serious. I'm going to start showing you some of my favorite collections that inspire me to create on the blog. Not so into fabric? It'll give you something cute and sweet to look at. :)

Source

This collection is not really new anymore in the world of fabric .. It's been out the last couple months. I've been itching to get my hands on some, but the frugal, "you don't have anything to make with this" side of me pushed me back until a couple weeks ago. Alas, I caved. And thankfully so. I wish I could've bought the whole collection (minus the bird ones .. I don't really see where those fit in with the rest) but my frugal side was there to hold me back again. Look at this pretty:

Now what to do with it? My first quilt, maybe? A pretty tote? I'll figure something out. If you're looking for somewhere to purchase this collection, the blog Fabric Shopper Online has a list at the bottom of this post. On that list, the only one I've purchased from is Contemporary Cloth, and I don't know if it was because they were having a sale or what but it took almost two weeks to ship my fabric (and three more days to arrive) with no notification about the delay .. wouldn't recommend. I would recommend Hawthorne Threads, who's not on that list, but I've had a good experience getting fabric from them and they even sent me some advice for starting my own fabric shop.

You can also read all about the Bella collection from its designer here.

Michigan Football + Picnic/Rainy Football Game Blanket Tutorial

My sister and I got tickets for the UM football game last Saturday in Ann Arbor from her boss. When we looked at the weather, we were trying to decide if we wanted to go (there was a 90% chance of rain the entire time we were there), but decided to tough it out with some rain gear and a cool blanket I made from a tutorial on The Mother Huddle. See the photos below. The tutorial is towards the bottom.

My purdy sister

It rained a lot ..

.. But we were still happy. :)

The blanket in use

I was planning on making this as a picnic blanket over the summer, like it's intended to be, but never made it and with the imminent rain, thought it would be perfect to flip over and use the vinyl side as rain protection. Here's how it's done.

Picnic or Rainy Day Blanket

Supplies
A vinyl tablecloth (mine was purchased at Wal-Mart)
A fleece blanket (I reused an old one from around the house)
Scissors, thread, sewing machine

1. Lay your vinyl tablecloth right side down on the floor. Lay your blanket on top. If any dimensions are significantly bigger than the other, cut it down so there's about a three inch border all the way around your blanket. In the original tutorial, her blanket was larger than her tablecloth so she cut that down to match. My tablecloth was too big for my blanket so I cut it down (see below).

Chopped blanket

2. Fold the extra table cloth over to create a border around the blanket and pin. The nice thing about vinyl tablecloths is they have a finished edge. If you cut your tablecloth like me, you should double fold over the edge of the tablecloth that has been cut to hide the unfinished edge.

3. Add an elastic strap by measuring to the center of one of the short sides and pinning a length of elastic there.

4. Sew all the way around, going back and forth over the elastic a few times.

5. That's it! Enjoy your non-wet-butt picnic and cozy sitting-in-the-rain blanket!

Business Cards on the Cheap

Look what I got yesterday:

Hello, cute box. The envelope even had a "Yay!" sticker on it, which is exactly what I said when I saw it was in the mail. They know me so well already.

Mini business cards! I love anything miniature and these are just so sweet. They're from Moo, a printing company I came across from a blog I just started reading, megan E sass. If you have an Etsy shop, you can take advantage of an offer they have going to get 100 of these little cards for free (though there's a $5 shipping/handling fee). If you ask me, $5 is totally worth it for these high quality, front and back printed cards. 

I'll give you a look at a couple other cheap things I've taken advantage of to get the word out there. In the past, I've ordered business cards from Vistaprint, which I purchased a deal on (I can't remember if it was Groupon or LivingSocial), so if you're looking to get a deal on business cards, keep an eye on the deal sites. At the time, I didn't know what I really wanted to specialize in, so I designed some generic ones in Illustrator with my logo and info that were pretty versatile.

A picture's worth a thousand words, huh? The minicards do a much better job of showing what I do, but you can add photos to the ones in Vistaprint if that's what you'd like to do too.

There are lots of websites now that show DIY business cards. For the sales I make in my shop, I don't like using my fancy cards to attach to packages, so I often make quick tags with my website info on there and tie them on the item with some matching bakers twine.

For these, I use scrapbook paper I've had around forever cut into 2"x4" rectangles, a corner punch, a slot punch for the hole (or just a regular hole punch), and a stamp kit I found at a garage sale. The kit is one of the best things I've found at a sale and it can be used on a lot of different projects. It's similar to this one that I found at a flea market. Both were under $5 each:

I also designed a stamp and had it made into a self inking stamp on Vistaprint using that deal. I use it to stamp random things, like the outside of packages.

So there you go! A few ideas that I use to promote my shop. Have a great weekend!

Strong Bad Crochet

Have any of you seen Homestar Runner before? My sister and I used to watch it all the time on the computer growing up and thought it was hil-a-ri-ous! Strong Bad was mine and my sister's favorite character. 

So when she randomly suggested one day that I crochet a Strong Bad and sell it for mad money, I decided to make one for her for her birthday. Given the limited number of Strong Bad crochet patterns on the interwebz, I made this up from scratch. I'm kicking myself now for not writing down the pattern, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway. :)

Doesn't the light in the background look like the backdrop from a 90's school photo? An ode to the 90's popularity of this little guy. I totally did that on purpose ..

Yay for geeky crochet! Hope you're having a great week! 

Crochet Hook Holder

If you've looked at my Etsy shop recently, you probably noticed that I've been doing quite a bit of crocheting. Who doesn't like a cute little octopus? Or some flower coasters? No one, I say, no one. *Side note: Over the weekend I told my senior neighbor that I crochet and she kind of laughed about it. I know it's kind of dorky and something stereotypically for older people, but I love it anyway! My husband would tell you that he experiences the full scope of my crocheting endeavors because they cover (and I mean cover) our coffee table for weeks on end. I've decided recently to get a little more organized, for both of our sakes. All of my crochet hooks were housed in a recycled jar covered in a crocheted cozy, which worked for the time, but the jar was knocked over often, it was noisy (metal in glass..) and I had to transfer all the hooks into my tote to go places. p.s. Check out this tote:

I made this tote almost exactly like I saw one online for knitting. And, obviously, it's just a joke! I had someone concerned about me taking this in public because I might offend people..!

Now THIS was not in the original: I made some nifty slots to put my hooks in on the go.

Moving on. I saw this tutorial online a few days ago to make a clutch for crochet hooks and supplies, and thought it was such a great idea.

I made it the same day. Here's what mine looked like:

Not too shabby, right? It looks super cute, but here are a few issues I had and how I remedied them. The first issue was that my hooks have bamboo handles and are much larger than the ones the author used.

This means wider slots for hooks, which means less hooks in the holder. It also meant that the fabric bunched up a lot more when the hooks were in the holder, making it all ripply. Not cute. The clutch was also really floppy. I decided at this point to make it like this canvas roll up storage for some of my paint brushes. I cut off the button, and rolled the whole mess up to see where to sew the button again. I like it SO much better. It's a good throw and go option too.

If you decide to make this, you can just wait to put the button on until the end and decide if you'd like it as a clutch or roll up. Just make sure to only sew the button on through the first layer of fabric.

Here's another issue I had: You'll notice in the photo above that the inner-most hook slot is empty. That is where the scissors are intended to go. This is clutch not meant to be turned upside down. The scissors fall out. And you wouldn't want to drop scissors on your cat, your foot, or like a knife into the floor, would you? (I did two of these three .. I'm not telling which) Here's my solution.

Velcro it up! I did this after the fact so it was a big pain hand sewing everything on, but if you add the little flap just after you sew on the slots for hooks, it would be super easy! I also added a little patch to hold straight pins, since I use them a lot for temporarily holding on octopus tentacles before I sew them on.

That's it! Easy storage for crochet hooks. It took me around an hour to make from start to finish .. plus a little more for the hand sewing additions after the fact. Check out Little Birdie Secrets' full tutorial here!

Tomato Basil Summer Pasta

One of the benefits from my job is being able to take off Fridays in August. The office is slow, so I don't need to be there as much.  I love having a three day weekend, being able to have an extra day of the Saturday morning feeling (my absolute favorite time of the week), and having enough bright sunlight when I cook to take photos! Here's recipe I found online and adapted to my liking. It's fresh and light, perfect for a summer lunch or dinner.

Tomato Basil Summer Pasta
Adapted from Ina's Summer Garden Pasta
2 pints grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
12 basil leaves, sliced
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp salt
Pepper to taste
8 oz whole wheat angel hair or capellini pasta
3/4 cup shredded parmesan


1. In a large bowl, place the cherry tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper, and toss to coat. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature for four hours.

2. Prepare pasta. Drain and add to the tomato mixture. Add cheese and toss to coat. Garnish with basil and extra cheese.


Total time: 4 hours 15 minutes
Hands on time: 15 minutes
Serves: 3

The Garden of Broken Dreams

Dramatic, I know. But there's a reason why I haven't done any garden updates recently! I really REALLY had high hopes for my garden this year. Here's the story: The problems started when I started my own seeds indoors. Everything was great until I took the cover off my plants and this pretty little girl, who eats everything from hair to dust bunnies to string, decided the plants were a good snack:

And yes, her eyes are always that wide. .. Unless she's sleeping. Anyway, a piece of poster board to keep the kitty away and the plants were growing again. Then I moved them into my cute little greenhouse outside.

This is a photo from last year, when I was smart and had the long side of the greenhouse against the house. This year .. not so smart! I had it turned perpendicular to the house to allow for a better view of the backyard from the house, and in a strong wind storm, the whole greenhouse tipped over. Onto the ground. With all of my plants inside. Unfortunately I was too distraught to take a photo, but I managed to save a little over half of them.

For deer prevention, I thought I was so clever in fending off the deer. Check out my circus tent style draping of deer netting over the garden:

Seems super smart, right? I draped it several weeks before planting so the deer would realize it was there and could even totally destroy it before I put in the plants. We'll come back to the netting. I set up my trellis that I made last summer inside the netting. This is what happened during a tornado warning - destroyed!

Two words when you make a trellis: wood glue. Along with the staples it probably could've held up. Also, I need to pay attention to wind direction .. again.  I have to admit, this post is kind of fun to put together after the fact, now that the shock of everything going wrong is gone.

Back to the netting. The netting did work, until about three weeks after I planted. Then they decided to just hop through anyway, tearing it down, and eat, eat, eat. Again, distraught moment, no photo. After the first attack, I still had enough plants left alive to re-drape and attach strings to the netting so the deer would maybe notice that it was there. A week later they tore it down again (they liked coming on Sunday nights for some reason..), this time pulling up plants that they didn't eat. Out of twenty tomato plants, most of which I planned on using for canning and I wanted to try some varieties I hadn't grown before, I had eight left. One cucumber plant from two. No squash from one. Thankfully they didn't touch my eggplant, and my three jalapeño plants had enough leaves left for all to survive.

And so, I downsized. I transplanted the tomato plants that had more than one leaf left into the front little garden. The back garden only has about a third of the area occupied now. The tomato plants that seemed almost hopeless (one leaf left) I transplanted into pots by the porch. This is what it looks like today.

Whose idea was it to make lawns out of grass that dies when it's not watered, anyway? 

Everything that's left is thriving and the deer haven't bothered the small gardens in over two weeks, other than chowing on a tomato plant through the fence. No telling what the yield will be (probably low), but I'm just happy to have tomato plants that have tomatoes on them and a garden that's finally able to grow.