Projects - Part 2

This one is for Laurs. :)

Two winters ago (this would be 2004) I made this duvet cover. Ambitious girl that I am, I decided that king size was the only way to go. :S I emptied all the closets in our house for old jeans, cleaned them, and cut them all into 12 cm x 12 cm squares. Then I sewed them all together to make this:

















I love it! It was a huge job, but totally worth it. All the jeans are from my family and Chris', so even when we're on our own there's a bit of our families in our new home. I'm making a smaller version right now for a friend, but I have tons of jeans sitting in a pile by the sewing machine that aren't being used yet, so if anyone out there is interested, email me for more details. (Little plug for me there!) They do take a while to make, because I do them in the evenings after work, so it takes me a few months.

Enough pictures for today, I think. Time to get some work done!

Projects - Part 1

I promised a while back to post some pictures of my recent sewing projects here, and I'm finally getting around to it.

The first two pictures are of the throw I made for K&S. It's blue fleece accented with patterned blue/grey fleece, and the pattern is repeated on the reverse side. The second picture shows a little bit more detail. To make the body of the design, I cut out 2" x 5" rectangles (I think a few hundred) and pieced them together into squares. I sewed the squares into rows, rotating each new square a quarter turn to get the design you see. Then I just sewed the rows together, added an accent border and a finished border. I did this twice to get the two sides, sewed the sides together inside out, flipped them, and piped the edges.

The third picture shows the blankets I made for the girls for Christmas. Also fleece, this time cream and waffle-patterned blue. I checkered the fronts, and then cut backs for them out of a single piece (one back was blue, the other cream). I finished the edges by cutting through both front and back layers to the first seam in 1" slices, then tying the slices together all the way around in double knots. This is an easy blanket to simplify; just make the front and back out of single pieces, cut the edges and tie them. No sewing required! And of course, I had two wonderful models to help me display the finished projects.

I'm always looking for new ideas for blankets, so if you've got any, let me know! :)

Pictures!

I was cleaning up my room this weekend (an annual event, Chris will tell you, and I think he despairs of me ever being organized at home!), and I found pictures from last year's trip to the Toronto Zoo. So now, for your viewing pleasure, I present a sampling:

Randomness is the spice of life

Oh wait... that's variety. Oh, whatever.

Yeah, this is going to be a random Monday post, written as I sit at my desk at work, enjoying a lunch of cinnamon-raisin bagel, toasted with butter, an apple cheese danish, and a honey-lemon tea. Timmie's has been my lunch-provider of choice since I started working here in June, and despite repeated warnings from my mother that buying lunch every day will send me straight to the poor house, I just can't make myself get up early in the mornings to make myself a homemade lunch. I kind of enjoy being a regular at a local coffee shop, enjoy greeting the ladies there by name and having them know how I'm feeling based on what I order (cappuccino normally, tea if I'm sick or tired). And the contest doesn't hurt either, although I think at the moment I'm 1/23 or so. I'm still trying to figure out where I have space to put the barbecue I'm going to win...

So, Chris and I went to another wedding this weekend, Reuben and Irene Helder. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that one of my high school buddies is married; not that he's the first one, but he's the first guy of all my high school friends. That's going to change in the next year or two, as more and more of us get hitched. But anyways. So Chris wore his suit and I my fancy dress, and we had a ball, notwithstanding the fact that I was so overdressed. But, it was too late to worry about that -- we were late for the wedding because, at 10 minutes before, I was still at home running around trying to find something else to wear! Good thing the church is close. :) Between the ceremony and the reception we had a few hours, so we ended up going to the mall to get Chris some jeans and stuff. Imagine us, all dressed up to the nines, strolling through the hordes of people in the mall! It was fun! And the reception was beautiful. Reubs, Irene; all the best to you two in Ottawa. We're going to miss you!

The only downer of Saturday was (and you'd think I would be used to this by now, and able to shrug it off) the oft-repeated question: "So, Jo, are you engaged yet? No? When?" ARGH! I wish that I was more patient about this, but I'm not. We know that we want to get married, our families know it, but I still have to wait. And I hate waiting. (Sorry, hun. But you know all of this already, right?)

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K, happy things now. Sorry for the rant.
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Some more random stuff:

• Prison Break is on tonight! Only the greatest show I've seen in a long time... I've been so missing it since last year. I'll have to try to tape episodes this time around, so that I can enjoy them again later.
• Does anyone else think that the new Kelly Clarkson song sounds a little like FeFe Dobson, or is it just me? Not that I particularly like either of them, mind you...
• I was a total girl on Saturday and picked up 2 new CDs: Michael Buble and James Blunt. Argh :). I also admit to owning the first Clay Aiken CD. So shoot me. At the moment I'm trying to find Tchaikovsky CDs, The Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake. I found other discs that have some songs from those pieces, but I'm really hoping to find the complete works, one on each CD. I hope that made sense... it did to me, but that's not always a good indicator. If you see one of those CDs, let me know? Thanks!

What else? I'm really hoping that spring weather gets here fast (on that note, happy first day of spring!), so that I can start walking at lunch. I'm close enough to the lake that I could probably make it down there and back in an hour, and I'm really wanting to get back in shape this year.

I think perhaps that I should go and get some work done now, before the whole day is gone. Less than two hours to go and then it's home time, and Prison Break!

J.

I hate shopping.

Well, ok, let me clarify that. I hate shopping when I have to find something and I can't. I'm officially 0 for 2 on Burlington shopping mall successes. Little Sis and I went on Monday night after supper to Mapleview, our goal being a dress that I can wear to Reuben & Irene's wedding on Saturday. I didn't find anything... Marsh got slippers. So I went yesterday again after work. After some rearranging of schedules, I ended up leaving and coming back with Wucka, who also needed something. And do you think we were at all successful, even at a different mall? Uh, no. However, we did have a fun 2 hours of complaining about shopping. Some great quotes:

• "Did you know that I hate shopping?" "Have I mentioned how much I hate shopping?" "I really hate shopping." (uttered by both of us ad nauseum)
• "Ugg boots... the vomit of the shoe world."
• "I saw this, and I thought of you." (about UG-LY blouse)
• "Wow... that's kind of... urban chic meets ghetto trash."

Yeah, it's always nicer to go to the mall with someone you can laugh with. Thanks Wucka! Too bad we didn't find anything. I think I'm just going to [gasp] wear the same dress I wore for Kev & Sarah's wedding (that's the one I'm wearing in the picture from last post).

I haven't yet had a chance to take a picture of myself with the new 'do, so my apologies to all the fans who have been breathlessly waiting for it. You're gonna hafta breath, darlings, cuz otherwise you'll be pretty dead by the time the picture makes it here. Sorry about that. ;)

Tonight is Girlz Night! I'm meeting my college girls for coffee tonight before soccer. We're only 3 out of 4 right now, as Marlies is still in Holland, but it's fun.

I'm going to try to post some pictures of my sewing projects on here from time to time. Reason being, I bought myself a new sewing machine recently, and I've been sewing up a storm of throws and receiving blankets and even a quilt! Yeah, that's right... I made my own quilt. From scratch, no pattern to follow. The best part about that one is that my dad is telling everyone how cool it is. My dad, people. That's, like, unheard of. I love it. :)

More to follow, but for now, back to work!