GARDEN SPECIAL ALERT!!!

Not only is the zucchini NOT dead (woo!), it's already blossoming!

And check this out:

I'm successfully growing stuff! Now, most likely in two months when we're up to our ears in zucchini I'll be somewhat less excited, but for now this is pretty thrilling.

Bag: Lily

OK, I have to admit, I'm not as productive as the last run of posts might suggest! Most of what I've been posting lately are things I've completed over the last few months, but never got around to photographing. My actual sewing lately has pretty much been all diapers, since the baby is ready to move up a size. And 57 diaper posts in a row would be kind of dull, so I'm saving those photos until I get a whole bunch done and then I can just do one post.

Anyway, this is Lily. This is a pattern I designed for a LARGE messenger bag. LARGE. It's LARGE. Did I mention LARGE? This is the diaper bag you want if you cloth diapering and going out for an entire day. Maybe two days. Or you are diapering twins. And you need to carry the entire contents of the nursery with you. And maybe you want to stuff a toaster or two in there because you really like toast and are worried about maintaining your access to toast at all times.

It's a big bag, is what I'm trying to say here. Also, it's possible I didn't get enough sleep last night (toast?).


Ahem. The details. Fabric is black twill and IKEA PATRICIA. Yes, it's the return of IKEA! I realized the other day that I live within a reasonable driving distance of four IKEAS. Granted, two of them I've never been too, but if I really wanted to I could go to four IKEAs in one day.

Is it just me or is that excessive? Also I think I may not have needed that third cup of tea this morning.

Back zippered pocket. It is what it is.

This bag is a bit less structured than I usually do, so she's kind of soft and, for lack of a better word, floppy. She doesn't hold her shape unless she's stuffed full of stuff. But since she's intended to carry lots of stuff, I think that's OK.

Hardware detail. I love these triglides, they have opening just slightly larger than two inches so I make the straps exactly two inches wide and they fit beautifully.


Inner is some sort of twill, although I don't recall if it's 100% cotton or a blend. Couple of elasticized dividers. Woo.

Front, behind the flap, features two flat pockets and a pen pocket. The side pockets are elasticized for bottles or sippy cups or small loaves of French bread.

Yeah, I definitely didn't need that last cup of tea.

Bag: Marissa

Marissa is another of the Craftapple bags. Cotton outer, some sort of mixed fibre twill for the inner (I'm not sure about the fibre content, it's something I picked up at the thrift store for next to nothing - I LOVE finding yardage at the thrift store! Most of the time the fabric they get there is hideously ugly, but sometimes there are some gems, and this pink is definitely a gem.)

It has pockets on either side. These are flat pockets, just because for various reasons I couldn't deal with making them the more usual elasticized or gathered way.


The new necessity, a cell phone pocket! Man, I love these. I don't even really use my cell phone that much, except to check the time and occasionally send text messages, but having a specific place for the damn thing is so helpful. Now I only lose it about half the time, instead of 80%.


Key loop. Label, of course. Have I mentioned I love my labels?


The inner, with two additional pockets.

I think overall this is a very nice bag!

Hot weather is here - just what the garden needs!

Finally the weather is getting warm and sunny! Which is just what the garden needs. I swear in the last 48 hours everything has suddenly gained 1/3 in size. Of course, no rain means heading over every day to water and check on how things are progressing.

The peas. I need to make their trellis a little less half assed. That's a project for tomorrow, I also need to get some more decent stakes.

Cauliflower! These are growing REALLY nicely.


The tomatoes and peppers. Some of the tomatoes are growing better than others, but they're all growing, and some are flowering already. I cannot WAIT for fresh tomatoes.

Peppers, eh. Not really a fan, frankly I'm only growing them because my husband eats them and I got the plants for free. That's why there's only two pepper plants and a zillion tomatoes.


Another view. The lettuce is looking great!


Well, it looks great except for this. Which used to be an unbroken line of lettuce. I suspect bunnies - do they steal entire heads of lettuce?


The spinach is finally looking a little better. Not sure what's going on with it, it just wasn't growing at all until the last couple of days.


Fresh herbs in the herb garden! Now I just have to remember to actually PICK some.

The whole garden (or at least most of it, there's a couple of plots not in this picture). So much amazing stuff growing! It's going to be fun to take this picture again over the rest of the summer and compare how it looks!

Pattern writing - donuts

I was serious about the pattern writing thing! Turns out that long ago experience working as a technical writer (if you happen to own CorelDraw 10, I'm in the credits) was handy.

This came together a lot faster than I thought it would. Right now it's in the hands of a couple of testers, so we'll see what they think! I tried to target it as a beginner level pattern, since that's the kind of level I'd like to work at. I find commercial patterns are so hard to follow if you are just starting out. Or even if you are experienced, given that they usually have at least one, if not more, glaring errors that cause the whole thing to be much more difficult than it should be. Patterns I've purchased from seamstresses working on a small scale have been much, much better, like the CraftApple diaper bag pattern I use quite a bit. That's the kind of thing I'd like to do - write high quality, easy to follow patterns that can hopefully get people excited about sewing, not confused and irritated!


It needs some more editing, tweaking, and I may re-take a few of the pictures, plus incorporate the tester feedback. Once it's done I'll toss it up in the Etsy shop for a couple of bucks - it's a PDF pattern, so I can email it to buyers.

Now I have a half dozen pattern ideas buzzing around in my head. I definitely see myself doing less selling of completed objects and more pattern development in the future.

Diaper cover and an AI2

These are for the craft swap I'm involved in. The green one is a diaper cover, the orange one is an All-In-Two (AI2). Both made from the Darling Diapers pattern in size medium. PUL outer fabric for waterproofing, interior of the AI2 is cotton jersey, Zorb, and athletic wicking fabric.

The inside of the AI2. It's called an All-In-Two because the absorbancy is split between the diaper and the snap-in soaker (two pieces). This allows the diaper to go on just like a disposable, but it dries much faster than an All In One.

I actually haven't done a lot of diaper sewing recently, and the baby is starting to look a little snug in her medium diapers, so this was a great warm up so I can get some more large diapers made! For her large stash I'm mostly going to do AI2s, I think, just for ease of changing, with some fitteds/covers for nighttime.


Diaper cover. I really like this green. Gussets. Yes, it's all very thrilling.

This is kind of fun! I have labels! And size tags! Check them out! I can't stop using exclamation points! I'm putting labels on anything that will sit still!

Ahem. Just need to run these through a wash/dry to seal up the waterproofing on the PUL, and they can go in the mail.

Doll Mei Tais

I am very fond of my Mei Tais, and daughter number 2 spends a fair amount of time being carted around in one. Naturally, daughter number 1 decided she needed a Mei Tai of her own, and after the fourth or fifth time she stole one of mine and got herself tied up in it (HELP ME MAMA!!!), I decided to make her one of her own. And that led to the creation of a pattern.

This is a very simple Mei Tai, and it goes on a child just like a regular Mei Tai - which means they generally require some help. I have a pattern designed for a version that a child can get in and out of themselves, but there are still some kinks to work out of that one, so for now I'm just making the standard style.

If my model cooperates this afternoon, I'll get some better pictures of her wearing it and get the ones I have made listed in the Etsy shop.


I really like this fabric; I wish I'd gotten more of it! Also I wish I hadn't screwed up the first two Mei Tais, I'd have more of this fabric left!

Felt donuts

YUMMY! About two years ago I discovered how easy it is to make felt food, and made a TON of stuff for my first daughter's play kitchen. Donuts are by far the most fun to make! And kids just adore them.


These are made from Eco-Felt, a felt made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic. Not as nice as real wool felt (what could be?), but wool felt is pricey, and this, to me, is a great second option. It's more durable than typical acrylic craft felt, and it's recycled, so it's all around a good thing.




Great, now I think I might have to make a Tim Horton's trip this morning! I'm hungry!

This set of donuts is available in my Etsy shop.

Since I'm thinking of getting into pattern making, I am going to practice/learn by creating a saleable pattern for these felt donuts. Not that anyone really NEEDS a pattern to make these, they're pretty easy, but it's precisely because they are easy that they would make a good first pattern for me to figure out the technical details of writing and photographing and creating the PDF file and all that jazz. Watch for an announcement looking for pattern testers!

Camilla version 2.0

The original Camilla has been my everyday bag for a while now, and I love it and get tons of compliments on it. But there are various parts of the pattern that make it kind of tough to sew (the outside pocket in particular!), and I wanted to try another version and write a pattern for a similar bag from scratch. So I got out my ruler, pulled out some fabric, and by the next day, this is what I had.

So this is Camilla v2.0 - she looks very similar, but is in fact constructed completely differently from the original Camilla.

Reverse side, different flower detail.

One outside pocket; future bags I think I'll do outer pockets on both sides.

Inner view - one large pocket, a cell phone pocket, and you can't quite see it but there is a key loop.

Very satisfied with this bag! And now I am completely out of the green fabric, so there won't be any more like this one!

I'm going to keep working on this pattern; I'm going to try experimenting with patchwork for the center stripes, I think I could make some really funky bags that way.

How does my garden grow?

SLOWLY! The temperature has been below normal for the last couple of weeks, so things are growing slooooooooowly. I have pretty much everything I want planted, now, so now we water and we wait!The lettuce is coming along, I believe we will have our first salad out of home-grown greens tomorrow.
Tomatoes are planted. There's also a couple of pepper plants, cucumber, and zucchini, although I think I might have damaged the zucchini when I planted it. We'll see, if it dies, I'll just get another one. Also I managed to reverse the zucchini and the cucumber and plant them in the wrong spots, which means I'm probably going to have to spend a lot of time moving zucchini vines around. Live and learn! Next year I am going to do a much better job of actually planning the damn garden, rather than just tossing stuff in at random. I'm also going to attempt to train the cucumber up a trellis, which could be interesting. I have this trellis netting stuff I'm going to put over the tripods once the plants get bigger and start requiring more support. Hell, maybe I'll try and train the zucchini up into the netting! I'm already attracting a lot of attention from the other gardeners for my crazy plastic weed barrier, why not go extra nuts!

Peas! I put together a half-assed trellis thing out of sticks and string for the peas on Wednesday morning, and then I stopped back at the garden around dinner time and some of the peas had already found the strings and started attaching themselves. Amazing! And what's even more amazing is that the bunnies haven't found them yet, bunnies ALWAYS eat my peas.

More of the lettuce. Yep, that's lettuce. Woo.

I've planted one final attempt at carrots - one of the other gardeners offered me his leftover seeds, so I figured why not take one more shot at it. I know his seeds are good, his carrots are growing! If these ones don't grow, to hell with it, I'm not meant to grow carrots.