cat toy tutorial

if it's not incredibly obvious, i love my cat. chairman percy fitzwallace aka fitz came into our lives this january and is never leaving.

growing up with dogs i never thought I would be a cat person, but I am definitely a fitz person.

today i am going to share a tutorial for some owl shaped cat nip toys i made him.

neela banana peela

today I am going to share the things I've sewn for this sweet girl. 

when sammie told me she was having a girl last September I immediately got to work on my future niece's wardrobe, because as a fellow youngest sister I didn't want her to be left out. 

by hand london by maggie

two years ago our friends joe and kathryn got married and i decided to use the occasion to make myself a new dress.

i found myself wanting something special so i went to spoonflower, a site i had read provided a lot of the fabric for the little things to sew book by oliver + s.  

it was amazing. i spent hours looking at prints before ordering a few swatches. once they arrived i quickly settled on the teal serpentine and placed an order for two yards in cotton sateen.

men's rugby shirt

victor comes from a family of all boys, i come from a family of all girls. which means we've had to educate each other on things. during our relationship i've learned how to properly throw a baseball and he's learned what i mean when i say something is the perfect size for molly and addy.

i've also learned that for victor the love of sports doesn't stop with baseball. yes we watch soccer, football, hockey, rugby, and if I'm being honest, ncaa softball, get watched with intense passion in our house. 

big man flannel

remember the lil' man flannel

well it's actually a miniature version of one i first made for vic.

last summer when we were in jackson hole for a friend's wedding i decided to check out the local fabric scene (like you do).

in one of the stores i picked up some classic cobalt plaid and men's button down pattern.

make the napkins, buy the curtains: the economics of sewing for the home

when i moved to california two years ago i had grand dreams of refurbishing or making all our home furnishings.

i was going to find a vintage school map and hang it as a funky piece of art, put $75 worth of anthropologie hardware on a $50 dresser from craigslist i lovingly refinished while listening to podcasts, and of course sew any and all fabric components of the decor along the way.

these days i am a wiser woman and have come to realize just because you can make something it doesn't mean you have to. so today i am going share my thoughts on what is worth it to make vs. what is okay to just buy. 

snowflake pjs

last summer while in jackson hole for a friend's wedding i visited a local fabric store and picked up materials to make victor a flannel shirt, the scraps of which became the lil' man flannel

at the same time i came across some pretty awesome snowflake flannel. so i got a few yards with every intention of making holiday pj pants for the girls. however a month before the holidays my sister abby informed me that her girls (nora and etta) didn't like to wear pants to bed, preferring nightgowns. 

so like any good liberal arts graduate i had some iced coffee and came up with a plan b.

so very retro (part one)

a little while back vic's mom asked if i would like some vintage sewing notions and patterns. you see the mother of one of her friends had passed away and the friend could only part with her mother's things if she knew they were going to a good home.  

well i was happy to provide said home, and today i'll share some of the wonderful things i received.

baby gift

i'm the youngest of three girls and each of my two sisters has two daughters of their own. also my mother has a sister who also has three daughters (spaced similarly to us) and three of their four babies them have been girls.

so i guess you could say there is a lot of estrogen in our family.

100 hours dress

because of our age vic and i go to a lot of weddings these days. because we meet in college (same freshman dorm) a lot of these weddings have the similar guest lists.

last fall we had three weddings, three weekends in a row, all on the east coast.  by the time we got through the second (our fifth of the year) i was so sick of all my dresses i couldn't bear the thought of wearing any of them the next week, especially when half the guest list would be the same.

so i did the logical thing and decided to make a dress 100 hours before the ceremony.