Thursday, November 17, 2011

For a Girl and her Mouse


I spotted this pillowcase here a while back and I knew I had to do it for a little girl's birthday...



The little girl I am talking about is my baby's fried and she sleeps with a bed full of these...

I drew my own sketch of a girl and her mouse and hand stitched it to some fabric I added 3 farbic/felt hearts to it. And than I made a pillow out of the fabric square with a red gingham back. Happy birthday little girl!

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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Two Left Hands?

A sneak peek into my day...

Finger paint that turned into a face painting session (sorry - no pics of that!)
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and a pot holder in XS for my "Little Chef"
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Saturday, November 12, 2011

Corduroy Skirt

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I love the pink-brown combo

I love this corduroy skirt. I found it on sale a few years ago but way to big. I've worn it with safety pins several times... but it was always a very insecure business. The pins would always open up in the wrong moment and I feared the skirt would fall off me more than once. It's one of the quickest things to fix and yet it took me some years! I just put the skirt on inside out and pinned it to fit. Than took it off and sewed two pleats to the back. The pleats are not perfect, but good enough. On the bottom they sort of make a funny little bump because of the extra fabric (well the skirt was 3 sizes too big!) Now at least the skirt fits me perfectly. I might redo it again if I find a better way than the pleats. But this is working for now.

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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

How to open a pomegranate?

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I just made these addictive double dark chocolate pomegranate cookies. The recipe is from Dana. Click here to go directly to the recipe. I can't stop eating them. OMG!


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So anyways, while I  had to open a pomegranate for the recipe, thought I might as well snap a few shots and show you how to open a pomegranate without creating a giant juicy war-like scene mess in your kitchen. Most people just cut the pomegranate in half (and inevitable also some of the seeds who than start "bleeding" their juice for happy mess-making). Here is how I do it.

STEP 1: Cut of the top and the bottom of the pomegranate.
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STEP 2: Examine from the top. You can see where the natural borders of the clusters are. Cut into 3-4 of the broader white spaces. Don't cut deep into the pomegranate just into the outer shell. The deeper you cut the more seeds will spread there juice!.
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STEP 3: Pull the pieces apart along the cuts. That should go easy, since you are breaking the pomegranate apart along its natural sections.
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4 pieces. Some seeds fell out on there own. You could already do this step over water, so the mess is even less. I just forgot it in the whole cut-snap a picture-pull-snap a picture-process...
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STEP 4: No work section by section over a bowl of water and remove all the seeds... the remaining white skins will float on top for easy removal. The seeds should more or less fall of on their own if you work along the sections.
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STEP 5: Take out the skins from the water and rinse.

STEP 6: Enjoy your heap of pomegranate seeds in a clean kitchen.
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Bonus information: The darker red the pomegranate on the outside, the sourer the taste. If you prefer the sweeter pomegranates don't get tricked by the nice red color... buy the pale looking ones. They taste sweeter!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The Coral Skirt & A Boob Handbag

This is the first of the "A Skirt on Saturday" projects. I got this hand-me-down piece of ill fitting weird cut neck holder whatever tunic...

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I loved the fabric and the red lining so I couldn't just throw it out or pass on. I had to redo it. It actually was way to big on me around the chest so one time I just pulled it down to see how low it would fit and the idea of making it into a skirt was born.

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So first I grabbed my seam ripper and removed the top part both outer fabric and lining from the bottom part. I left the zipper in and just cut it shorter and finished off the new edges. I then pinned the lining and outer fabric to fit around my waist (since it was cut a bit roundish when it was a top... I basically straightened it to make it a skirt so it would bulk up weird around my waist. I then sewed the lining and outer fabric right sides together on the skirts top part. And that's it. A simple nice skirt.

The top part I made into a little purse. I cut off the straight parts that where originally on the back. I then sewed the two bust pieces together and added a strip of the same fabric on the bottom so the tiny purse could actually hold something. Repeat for lining. I simply knotted the two straps (that used to be neck holder straps) together and that's it. I can fit in my wallet, keys and phone.

A real quick recycling project and here is how it looks like in real life.

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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Apple A Day...

...keeps the doctor away... and a skirt a week keeps the girly chick!

I like skirts and I love to make them. I have a bunch of skirt projects hanging around in the sewing room so I will start posting a skirt project every Saturday. This is to end the procrastination.  There are skirt patterns that need to be tried, too big skirts to be fitted, some other refashion projects and lots of nice fabrics and patterns. So I am excited and I hope you too.

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If you would like to follow "A Skirt on Saturday" or join in (it doesn't need to be every week) I would be very happy. There is a flickr group and an album on my facebook page to post your pretty skirt creations - so share share share! If you decide to post A Skirt on Saturday on your blog please link back to me, so I can come over and have a look! Grab my "A Skirt on Saturday" button in my sidebar!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

A Book Cover For A Friend

simple but beautiful - felt flowers and buttons

mushroom ribbon

gingham love.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Happy Sukkot! (Feast of Tabernacles)

 Wednesday night was Erev Sukkot (the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles). We had a bunch of friends over at our house for dinner. Unfortunately we don't have a space to build a real Sukkah (tabernacle/booth) but you can't really have this holiday without one. So I put a bunch of craft supplies out on the table and had each family make their own mini Sukkah. It was a lot of fun. You only need some craft paper, stapler, tape, olive branches, throw in some crayons and crepe paper for decoration and there you go. It was quiet busy that night and everybody took their Sukkah home, so I don't have any proper pictures. But here is what I snapped during the happy booth making! Hope you don't mind the craft mess around...

A Sukkah for the table

side view

colored Sukkah, and Sukkah-making in action

It's tradition to decorate the sukkah with fruit


A triangle sukkah

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

5 Minute Shirt





  This is probably the simplest and quickest shirt I've ever sewn. I needed something new to wear  in the last minute... So that's what I came up with:

cut 2 identical rectangles of fabric
sizing: 
height - measure from shoulders to hips (or longer if you wish) 
width - i took a different boring regular wide T-shirt and measured from sleeve to sleeve
my rectangles were each 50cm x 65cm (about 20 in x 26 in)

Cut out a rounding on both sides of each rectangle and on top according to the sketch. (You should now have two identical pieces of fabric looking like the darker shade of blue in the sketch) :

Pin the two fabric pieces right sides together and sew along the rounded side edges and the two straight edges on top (the purple dotted lines on the sketch).

Believe it or not,
You've got a new shirt!

Well, you got a shirt with raw edges... you can always finish off the edges with a regular hem or whatever else you like... but than it might take you 10 minutes to finish the shirt :-) I only finished off the edges on the sleeves in my version in order to hide the selvedge of the fabric that was showing on one side. It looked odd to have one sleeve with a wider stripe of the light blue color...

Some notes:
- If you use a striped fabric like I did line up the stripes when cutting the fabric and before sewing the fabric together line the stripes up again and pin in place.

- Add a matching fabric flower for a fresh look!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Felt Backgammon Board

simple hand stitched felt backgammon board
I made this backgammon board a while ago... It turned out more difficult than I thought to get those triangles straight (which I didn't)... but I like how it turned out.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Shanah Tovah!

Today we celebrate the Jewish New Year - Rosh HaShana.

So I made this little simple felt garland with my daughter. It includes the Hebrew version for a Happy New Year and the seasonal fruits -apples, pomegranates, pears and some leaves for variety. I simply cut out the fruits and letters from felt and sew them together in line...

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

latest addition to the sewing room

after a long search for a cute owl pin cushion pattern and no pleasing results i just sew up my own today... i present to you:

itchy stitchy


my sewing slave...

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My creative corner

i rescued this chair from the streets and gave it a new life...

...and made a matching sewing machine cover

it's a mixture of some of my favorite fabrics and colors
like some apple?
or a little strawberry?

i like the fresh look of my corner. and i have to do something about this pampers box. it holds a ton of stuffing...


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