Mom's Pillows

I finally found them I knew I had them somewhere, they were totally still in my camera.

So here is the story, my mother knows I know how to sew... and so she wanted me to make her pillows. Sometimes I think she requests things because she just wants stuff from me that I made to show off to people that come by the house. Like my daughter made that for me, look how talented she is and how much she loves me. It's almost like putting one of those A+ exams on the fridge. She's very funny and cute like this. She still thinking of ways to replace "A+ exams on the fridge".

Anyways so we were out shopping and she saw this fabric at Walmart in the color she really really loved. To be honest I have never seen this color before, it seems to me like a dark purpley pink? Is that even possible. Anyways she wanted me to make something out of it, like pillows! Haha. So she bought 2 yards of it and made me take it home to do something with it.

I asked her what kind of pattern she wanted, she said whatever. I asked her what other colors she would like with it, she said whatever. I asked her what size she wanted it in... you guessed it... whatever.

Anyways I bought the fabric home and looked at it... and looked at it some more.. I seriously I didn't know what to do with it, I mean I'm not a super talented sewer or quilter by any means yet. I took out quilting books to get inspired and I looked at maganizes because this is for my mother it has to be nice right?

Eventually because it was taking me so long to decide I ended up going with a simple pattern of just square, and I chose a black fabric from my stash to complement the dark purple pink (I should mention here I think I'm semi-color blind so it might look purple pink to you).

This is how it turned out.



It was enough fabric for 3 16x16 pillow covers. I probably could have stretch it out to move pillows if I didn't use the purple/pink fabric for the back of the pillows but I thought if my mother didn't like the pattern she could at least flip it over and it be the solid color of the fabric she picked.

Here it is bagged up to give to my mother. I love how pillows can stuff so easily into a bag. It's kind of fun to put them in also. ^_^



It turns out my mother is getting new couches and she's going to pick the color to match the pillows it it was a really good thing that I choose to stay with simple.

Simple = good.

100th post!

I was saving this post for something good.. sadly nothing good to write about but I wanted to write something before too much time has past. I didn't want to "forgot" about this blog again.

Happy Chinese New Years everyone! For some reason I remember the ox year being a good year so I was excited about it coming again because the econ is sooo bad right now but sadly my mother informed me that it was the working/muddy ox year and it will be really hard also on everyone... (last ox year I remember was actually the golden ox year which is why I thought ox years were good). Oh well we just need to keep fighting on... I really believe everything works out for the best!

Just a few things to update about

- Work has been pretty busy we have some deadlines coming up and my computer broken down this week, it was kind of a pain to get fix... but I know now who to contact if I want things like that to get done asap.
- School is also busy next week is midterm week the only good thing about that is there is no homework due, just study!
- Super Bowl is this weekend... yay! Lots of parties and stuff.
- I got some new quilting books. I can't wait to read them this weekend.

Looking back this week wasn't too bad... through for some reason I wasn't able to quilt this week yet, usually I can get in 1-3 hours every other night while watching a show (I'm watching desperate housewives now... so addicting... I should have started watching this soon... seriously) but this week.. nothing.. well I had more homework than usual which could explain it. Also on Monday the day I could have been sewing I decided to wash and iron fabric (I have been in this washing and ironing kick since December when I decided all my fabric just needed to be pre-washed before sewing now.. I'll tell you how that goes when I sew more pre-washed fabric).

I wanted to upload the pillows I made for my mother.. I'll do that soon, for some reason I can't seem to find them... I think they might still be on my camera.

White Totoro

I was crusing around flickr and found a knitting pattern for a white totoro and thought it would be fun to make one day. So I'm saving the link by posting a blog about it.

It turns out pretty cute. If any of you knitters want to try it out.

http://heavens-hellcat.livejournal.com/730.html

Update on the improv block - I added 4 strips to it last night and I thought I was close to being done (I have about 10 strips going around now) and it's only 7 inches (needs to be 12.5 x 12.5)! People making improv blocks on flickr must use bigger strips than me, I'm only really using scraps. I must admit now that it is getting cuter though. I was just trying to stay with blue and green but when you add more color (I added a strip of red and yellow) it looks a little better. I haven't figure out why that is through.

Improv block

I actually started working on it last night. Mine is not as cute as other peoples... I'm not done with it but when I am I will show it off... I'm a little concern about it not being that cute through...

The deadline is April 1st so I have some time to make a cute block by then. ^_^

I'll update with pictures soon. Take care everyone!

Epic Roasthouse

Darn me, I didn't get to work on my improv block this weekend. I'll try working on it tonight after school.

This weekend though me and Patrick did a dine about at Epic Roasthouse. I totally forgot to take pictures at seasons so to make up for it I took a ton of pictures at Epic.

Only I did the dine about Patrick got their burger because the waiter said it was super yummy.

This was the first course

minestrone soup, it was pretty good, there were fava beans, cherry tomatoes and some sort of greens. Actually this was a little to acidic for me so Patrick got to eat most of it, though I did like the fava beans. ^_^



this was my second course, i believe it was sword fish with a potato croquette and some sort of squash pasta (it was strings of squash that was used for the carb part of the main). Now this was really really good. Patrick says that sword fish is usually never as tender as the one that came in this meal.



dessert! okay I actually got whole cookies but I forgot to take the picture before i split the cookies with Patrick since he didn't get a dessert with his meal we shared. every cookie was super yummy except the plain looking one which turned out to be a ginger orange sugar cookie... it was very strong orange sour taste, normally I like orange but this was way sour, like they used the orange zest only.

This dine about was super yummy way better than I expected because the sample menu was the main course was a sandwich which could be good, you never know. ^_^

That's all for now folks, hopefully I'll have one tomorrow showing off my wonderful improv quilt block. *crosses fingers*

Project Improv

I was reading the blog of one of my favorite fabric sellers on etsy today and she's doing this project improve!

It seemed like a lot of fun so I joined too.

http://tallgrassprairiestudio.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-improv-wont-you-join-me.html
or
you can click on the widget on my sidebar.

Turns out this person is actually in common threads which is the online quilting bee that Lynn is a part of... what a small world. ^_^

I'm part of the blue/green group. Yay!

Dine About Town

Today is the first day of Dine about Town 2009 for San Francisco.

If you don't know about it here is some info.

It's during - January 15 - 31, 2009
3-course, prix-fixe $21.95 Lunches & $34.95 Dinners.

They are usually at pretty nice restaurants that normally you would have to pay an arm

If you want to go to the website - http://www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/taste/dineabouttown/

Caution for those who plan to go - make sure you read the fine print about what days they are part of the dine about because it's really common to book a date and time that they aren't doing the dine about and you might go there and have to order off the regular menu which will probably cost more.

Every year me and my friends always do at least one.

It has changed over the years it use to be all of January was when you can go and now it's just the last 2 weeks but it's because they split it up... there is now two weeks in June that this also happens. That change happened last year.

This year they raised the price for dinner by 3 dollars. 3 dollars!? Okay to me that sort of makes no sense, and it sort of feels silly but I guess 3 dollars doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. ^_^ Also if they raise dinner prices, you would think lunch prices would rasie too but those stayed the same.

Today I'm going to one with a few friends of mine.

We are going to Seasons at the Four Seasons. I'll try to take pictures of the food. ^_^

The monster that came from the box

Okay I'm seriously going to try to blog more often I know I have said this before but really I'm on it this time.

I have been getting a lot of pillow requests from my family and friends and seriously pillow inserts are an arm and a leg, I have been basically been buying muslin and poly fil and making my own pillow insert. I did the math and they are super cheaper than buying the already made ones.

The cheapest ones I have found (16x16 insert) go for about 8 bucks. If I did the math right the cost of the muslin and poly fil run me about 2 bucks to make. Of course there is a trade off it takes me about 30-60 minutes from start to finish pillow insert to make it. Depending on how you value your time maybe it's not for everyone, but I have a good amount of free time still, well enough to still put effort into making pillow inserts.

I thought about making a pillow insert tutorial (since they are all the rage) but it's super simple I'm sure everyone who sews knows how to make one. ^_^

Before Christmas I seriously thought I was going to be in pillow insert making mode and bought this 10 lb box because that was the best deal, except I bought a ton of 16 oz bags at Joannes when they had that awesome after thanksgiving sale.

So after Christmas I kept bumping into the box and I sort of wondered what was in the box... see I thought there might be 10 - 16 oz bags stuffed in there... so what do I do? I opened it.

Let me tell you it's just one big bag and it expands fast! Within minutes it expanded about 3 inches above to top of the box. I couldn't close the box up again. Oh well. I didn't think much of it.

Slowly like a monster it expanded though...

Here it is at 3 days later.



Scary! It's almost twice the box size now.

It's pretty much looks like that still. I just thought it was interesting and wanted to warn people not to open a poly fil box unless you're ready to use it. *nods*

Catching up

I hope everyone has had a great vacation. I had a good time for the most part, it was very very relaxing. ^_^

Here is a picture of me at a gingerbread house party!



I made that cute tootsie roll crane on top. I'm trying to make a 1000 cranes... we will see how that goes. It's kind of a lot actually it means 3 a day till the end of the year and I haven't made one since this party! Bad Melody.

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I told one of my friends how I am making game pillows and he thought that was so cool and wanted to know if I can make some bubble bobble for him. So here is the result of that.



I think it turned out pretty well. Everything except for the black and white are from stashed fat quarters. He's going to give them to his mother that use to play with him when he was little... it's a cute story when he went to kindergarten they asked what his mother did and he said play bubble bobble. ^_^

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I got the hello kitty sewing machine!



It's super cute.



The only things that I don't like about is

1. it doesn't thread the needle for you (I know I'm so spoiled!)
2. it doesn't have a side thread cutter - I'm not sure what exactly this is called but it's that little blade that you use to pull out and cut your thread so you don't have to bust out your scissors.

Anyways this had the same thread tension problem!



I found it interesting that this bobbin holder opens from the side.

I did the same thing as with my other Jamone.



I think I have gotten pretty awesome at fixing bobbin tension now. ^_^ If only I can use this skill for good or at least more often, really the only then I can do is just blog about it and home someone that needs help will find it. ^_^

Ps. sorry for all the misspellings before! I was writing this on the fly and didn't get a chance to spell check it till now.