Marie Grace Designs

Make buttons...

Fabric covered buttons.

Tiny addiction.

You've been warned.

I love Etsy shops and I get all my button making supplies right HERE. Super nice, super quick, and always stocked!

 

Paper love...

 

 

 

 

 

I saw the idea HERE but used the colored paper we had on hand. There's something about sewing on paper that's just really satisfying.

Bunnies... en masse...

So Tater's class is making Easter baskets. Our local Farmer's Market (Thanks Stacy and crew!) donated the baskets and parents are sending in goodies. Now I know its all about the candy but for some reason I really wanted to send in something different. The way I see it between school, various other activities, and The Bunny the kids are getting plenty of sweets.

  I don't know if you saw this but I did and had to whip one up for Tater right away. See, we have a sort of finger puppet "thang" around here. Mac Daddy had a little frog with giant eyes for a long time and he drove the rest of us crazy with it. It got so bad that GI Joe kidnapped Frog and sent a Polaroid to prove it, complete with ransom request. But anyway.

 

Tater loved that little bunny puppet so much I figured it was a great idea for all the kids. See how I get myself into these things?

So Tater and I spent an afternoon making 20 little bunny puppets, 17 for the class plus 3 extra because for some reason 6 year olds always need "extra". Now, the Purl Bee version is all felt and all hand stitched but we needed to make some adjustments if I was going to make 20 of the little buggers.

I always save scraps of Warm and Natural quilt batting and this was a great way to use some of it up. Its felt-like and a nice bunny color. For the inner color we used material scraps from the scraps bucket. For the sake of mass production and stability we used iron on fusible webbing to hold it all together...

Once we had a piece of batting fused to a piece of colored fabric it was time to trace. I made a little cardboard template of the bunny pattern to make tracing easier.

 

If you're keeping count that's 40 bunny cut-outs (it takes 2 cut-outs to make each bunny). 

 

I stitched all the bunnies together with the sewing machine because it would have taken forever to do them by hand. Since the fusible web is enough to keep the fabric layer adhered to the batting layer I skipped stitching the ears at all...

 

Satin stitch on the machine made the eyes and the noses...

 

We hand assembled 20 little yarny bunny tails and stuck them on with a hot glue gun...

 

It was a pretty smooth production all in all. Meet Tater Bunny-Hands...

 

 

 

So the bunnies went off to school with Tater today and if you decide to make bunnies en masse there's still time... so hop to it! 

  

 
 

More paper love...

Funny how in this time of electronic everything simple paper strips wound around a pencil can keep a girl busy for an entire evening.

 

Paper love...

 

 

Its awfully mild for January. And its muddy and grey. Luckily January is right before February and February is the month of paper hearts, pink markers, and glittery stickers. 

We've finally taken down all the paper snowflakes, cut-out paper trees, and shiny stars and are slowly replacing them with new paper love.

My first "secret" Valentine showed up last evening, stuck to my desk. It showed up just in time to blaze a bright spot into this dreary weather week. Its anchored there... above the ball winder and below the little roving sheep Doodle made this past summer. Its held in place by a sparkly sticker.

And so begins a month of paper cutting, paper sticking, paper folding, and all things pink and red and sweet.

Let the love begin.

Dear Martha...

Shame on you.

You certainly must realize the issues you are causing.

Giving someone like me... someone who is so easily distracted by things like string and calico prints and pointy needles an entire book of yet more things to be distracted by, well, its just mean.

Its just too much. I can't be helped. Next to the word "enabler" in the dictionary there should be a picture of you.

You and your paper quilling. How did you know?

And tissue paper! The flowers made of light, crisp, colorful tissue paper.

By fall my entire home will certainly be plastered with pressed botanicals and flowers made from pine cone chips and there will be only you to blame.

Can't you see I have knitting and smocking and quilting to do? Its right there behind you... sort of out of focus and a little fuzzy. 

And as if it weren't bad enough... last night... I caught my innocent little daughter staring into the chapter on beading. She didn't even hear me when I called her name. She was completely consumed by the thoughts of stringing little glass beads into the shapes of dragon flies and lady bugs. I'm afraid I've lost her.

And to make it all worse... soon there will be an entire book of cupcakes. Cupcakes! What will all the other mothers think of me when my children go to public school for the first time in the fall and when a birthday rolls around I show up with hand-made from scratch decadent cupcakes lightly dusted with real cocoa powder in sparkling cupcake papers and garnished with a little sprig of mint or a curl of chocolate. They'll hate me.

Dammit, Martha. Dammit all to hell. 

Simple is...

No matter how many new things I learn to do or how many technique books I read or how many new crafting gadgets hit the market... I still just love the posies.

The simple little lazy-daisy style embroidered posie... maybe with a French knot center.

The simple elegance of smocking which is just a bunch of back stitching. Really. Simple... charming and dainty and full of movement... but nothing more than precisely placed back stitches on a bed of funny gathers.

And yarn? Give me good 'ole stockinette and a soft-crunchy yarn in a soothing color any day. Maybe with a little touch of something blue or green here and there but really its all about the yarn anyway, right?

Don't get me wrong... I'm pretty darn happy working a cable deal and a stranded this or that but this yarn... every time I walk past it I have stop and smooth it out with my hands or fold it just so and marvel at the way its bright and clean and hazy soft all at the same time.

I'm still working on organizing the shelves in my studio space and going through some of my project binders. I've got pages ripped from magazines and pencil doodles with funny messages to myself that I'll probably never decipher. But one thing I've noticed is that almost everything I've saved... all the things I'm drawn to... are super simple and basic. 

Years ago I made Tater a smocked bishop Easter dress out of a gauzy toile print layered with a white under-fabric. It had wide gauzy lace at the sleeve cuffs and bottom hem and bullion rose buds all around the collar. It was so fluffy from all the layers of tulle underneath that a good wind would have carried it away kite-style.

That dress won Best in Show in the local fair but ya know... I never even wore it on Tater. For one thing we aren't the dressy holiday sort of people and for another it just didn't look comfortable.

Since then I think the most valuable lesson I've learned about being a mom and an obsessed crafter is that with the limited time I have I need to make good decisions about what I'm making. I want to make things that can and will actually be worn and used. 

Sturdy seams on garments combined with simple colorful designs work every time. Tiny details give enough fluff without being overbearing or stuffy. Natural fabrics and fibers like cotton and wool are wearable and washable and will last for a long time.

So that's my 2 cents for today. Its probably more of a reminder to me than anything as I'm sorting and planning. Its so easy to get carried away with all the beautiful books and magazines full of fabulous fluffy stuff. For me there's got to be some functionality in there too and finding that balance between beautiful and functional is sort of my favorite challenge, so to speak.

Oh, and the little lamb... we named him Elmer. He's sort of loosely named after John Ellman, the man who is credited with developing the breed. I get a kick out of history stuff like that.

 

The Art of Multi-craft-al-ness

Its been an observation of mine that, generally speaking, most people who have an interest in a craft tend to dabble in more than one crafting genre.

I would guess that crafting is a way to relax, or stretch one's creativity, or maybe just a way of producing something useful.

Though knitting is my favorite addiction outlet it certainly isn't my only pathway to obsession creativity. I'm almost as likely to bring home yards of fabric I have no idea what to do with as I am to do the same with hanks of yarn.

As happy as I am to see one of the kids running out the door in one of my hand-knits, I'm just as proud to see them sleeping soundly under a favorite pieced quilt.

My book shelf is crammed with knitting books, general sewing books, quilting books, smocking books, Sashiko, embroidery, and several variations of fabric origami. I have an uncontrollable urge... not to just collect random stuff... but to understand how to do it. 

I've tried paper tole, tatting, cross stitch, potato stamping, t-shirt dyeing, flower arranging, and scrap booking. 

My yarn cabinet is full of wool, cotton, and silky hanks and resides right next door to my fabric cabinet which is full of everything from baby-wale corduroy to cotton lawn, batiste, and calico.

Patterns? Honey, I have patterns for things to knit, things to crochet, things to cut apart and sew back together, things to fold-stitch-press-stitch, and things to wrap-tie-and pin.

Some new skills stick and others are soon lost and forgotten but one thing is for sure... I have to manipulate everything at least once just so I'll know if I like it (or not).

So... what about you? Are you a crafting clepto? An uncontrollable collector? A super-producer of hand stitched-knit-poked-folded-pressed-thingers?

Maybe you draw (I can't) or paint (only walls) or sculpt (only with play-dough).

Or maybe you really are craftily monogamous? 

Ah, the love... and the cynicism...

So... Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Anybody that's been around me long enough knows I'm pretty cynical when it comes to stuff like this and, in fact, Mac Daddy is forbidden to buy flowers or chocolate or any of that other over-marketed crap. 

You can't even go to the drugstore to buy a chapstik without walking down an aisle full of sour heart gummi worms and Bratz foil wrapped candy and every other cartoon character known to man on a box of pre-made Valentine cards for $1.99. 

Call me snooty or Martha-made or whatever but where's the love in that? 

But as moms of little girls know you can't stop a little girl from being all swept up in the little paper hearts and sweet ribbon curls and I would never want to squelch that for her. It does take a little prodding (and whining and hanging on my elbow) for her to get me to cut out "just one more pink heart pleeeeeease". And it takes lots of patience to "spell Grammy" one more time.

But at least she doesn't even bat an eye when we walk down the aisle at the drugstore. And she leafs through the latest Martha magazine because she knows its the "hearts" issue and wants to find something to make for Daddy before he comes home. And the older kids all act surprised and thrilled when she presents them with a wobbly cut out heart with their names scrawled across the back.

That's the love... that's what you won't find at the drugstore. Geez, people... I know lives are busy and the economic outlook is scary as hell right now so there's never been a better time to make your own Valentines... colored paper is cheap and you've already got scissors and colored pencils or pens or whatever. Stay out of the drugstore... sit with the kids... write your own Valentine to your sweetie... write something in it that's free but worth a million.

All bound up for a new year...

This morning the kids helped me put away all the holiday deco and set the house back to some sort of normalcy.

Though the last few weeks have been a delightful whirlwind of sewing and knitting and baking and visiting and twinkly lights it was nice to clear it all away and wrap my head around the beginning of a fresh new year.

The thing is I'm not really sure why the numbers on a calendar are so powerful. I mean... this morning I felt like I could do anything, like I had some great expanse of optimism and time and patience and space. Like I was looking into the new year as if it was a big empty, clean white space just waiting to be filled up with whatever I felt like filling it with. I took a big deep breath and felt strong and accomplished.

But really, its just another day today and really I'm wishing I'd look at every day like a fresh new day instead of waiting for a whole new year to be so optimistic. What's wrong with a fresh new month or a bright new week or even a crispy clean Tuesday afternoon waiting to be filled with stuff?

I'm think'in its the cookies.

I've been baking and eating cookies for weeks and I haven't run out of them or gotten sick of them yet. I'm pretty sure I'm so hopped up on sugar and pecans and cinnamon and chocolate chips that I'm not gonna come down until mid March.

Yea, I'm pretty convinced its the cookies that are missing the rest of the year. (Note to self... bake more.)

Anyway, the clearing out and cleaning up sparked a quick organizational frenzy for me. See, my life is contained in a bunch of binders... 3 ring binders. It all started when we began seriously homeschooling and I figured out pretty quickly that binders are the end-all be-all of homeschool organization. Now I have binders for household finances, record keeping, business stuff, recipes, and knitting pattern stuff, and still lots of school stuff.

So today as we were putting things away I realized we had amassed quite a few really great ideas and crafts we never got around to doing. I didn't want to lose or forget them until next year so I made a new "Winter/Holiday crafts and ideas" binder to add to the collection.

I figure I can continue to collect stuff all year as I run across things I'd like to save for the next holiday season whether its a recipe or project or gift idea. Did you ever find yourself running across the perfect gift for somebody smack in the middle of June only to completely forget about it by December? Problem solved. Ripped out magazine pages, scribbled notes, printed projects and lists of ideas can all get stuffed in there for months and then be poured over just in time for a new festive season. It would also be really nice to refer to the binder when the desire to calmly get an early start on handmade gifts hits.

I already have binders for loose leaf and printed stuff and all those sewing patterns. I just put a stack of those clear plastic pockets in each binder so there's always a few empty pockets to stuff something new into. Keep the binders labeled and you'll never waste time digging for that pattern or idea or schematic again!