Sew Ready For Spring & Summer

As usual our Spring in SoCal is proving to be our crummy weather season. We had full blown summer all winter long but at soon as Spring hit things went a little wonky. But we still get Spring fever here, ready to school to get out, for the summer heat (that won't come until July or August and the extend through October), beach days and wearing bright, summer colors.

Monday night I made the very interesting decision to take the entire family to the fabric store. Anyone who sews has already done a face palm at this hair-brained idea. LOL. I needed to take The Bug with me so she could choose her fabrics for her new clothes and The Man wanted to get some craft supplies, so "Why not! The more the merrier!" That is until you're trying to make decisions about fabrics, look at patterns and locate all the needed notions. "Oooh, dawgie."

Three opinions in the fabric department were too many with hundreds of choices and the need to match more than one fabric that will go into one of the skirt patterns. I decided to give Daddy one choice as long as The Bug approved, then The Bug and I picked two others that she really liked. By this time things were beginning to swing out of control. They wandered off and a few minutes later I heard The Bug calling "Daaaad, Daaad," in that "I'm lost" voice that every mother can hear from a mile away. I quickly located her, still no sign of The Man but instead of staying with me she wanted to go find Dad.

Sigh. So finding him a few short seconds later I left again, only to begin hearing a loud ball bouncing and their voices from across the now mostly empty, very quiet fabric store. Head down, I ducked into the pattern section hoping to find a blouse pattern for myself. After quickly skimming three books, I found an easy sew pattern in the round racks that would work and then realized the didn't have my size. Gave up on that.

Went to the notions department where the clan joined me again to show me dozens of cool ribbons that had nothing to do with our current projects, to which I patiently replied again and again, "Yes, that is very nice," or "Oooh, I like that too." I finally found two fantastic silver trims that would work with our blue and silver metallic fabric, only to find at the cutting table minutes later that one of them was in sad shape and very clearly would not withstand a rough and tumble second grader.

Hiding so the other two, who were now very ready to go home, wouldn't see me I dashed back to the trim section only to be disappointed with a much lesser exciting choice but my only good option. By the time I got to the elastics aisle chaos had taken over, the still bouncing ball hitting the cart and rolling back and forth between the aisle sides. The Man was getting antsy to leave. I'll say he lasted about 30 minutes longer than I actually anticipated. Making a decision on which one-inch elastic to buy was now creating a major stupor of thought for me with the two of them spinning round me and talking.

My plan had originally included finding fabrics to make me a knit pencil skirt and a lovely, fun print to make an easy-breezy cotton summer skirt. I ended up scraping all attempts to make any decisions for myself amid the commotion as my anxiety increased and my decision making became more blurred. For some reason I bought myself a yard of dark chambray. I guess I'm making myself a simple skirt to start with....

But oh, didn't the new fabrics light up everyone's eyes. The best part about these three skirts we're making for The Bug is that I hope she's going to be sewing them. Yes, exciting. Last Christmas our dear friend asked if she and The Bug could do a secret project together. They got together for two nights, the first night they went fabric shopping and the second night they made pillowcases for our family for Christmas. With excellent help, The Bug did all the machine sewing. So she is ready for more sewing machine adventures and I think these will be perfect for her to start on with her excellent guide.

That leaves me more time to sew for myself. As hard as it's been to find clothes I get excited about in stores lately I am very interested in doing a little sewing. I can't find a skirt in any kid's store that goes anywhere near The Bug's knees being as tall as she is so making skirts is ideal and so easy for her too. Plus I love the all-out creativity you can have making your own clothes. You know you won't show up some place with all your friends in the same top or skirt and you can really put your personal style on things.

Hopefully I'll get my own sewing shopping adventure done sometime soon. I think I will need to go during the day while everyone is gone so that I have time to quietly sift through my options and make the best choices possible. I'm looking forward to it. It's a good time to be a seamstress in the Spring when the color palette in stores is overflowing with pretty, bright colors. Are you dreaming up some sewing projects this Spring? If you don't sew, is there something you wish you could make for yourself that you can never find just as you want it in stores?

image by kalanicut

DIY Key Rack: How To Reduce Console Table Clutter

I've been wrestling with a basket full of keys at our front entryway for a while now and feeling really frustrated. When I was a single gal the front entryway table was serene and a way of welcoming people, giving them the first taste of my home.

There was always a lovely basket there, a pretty plant, maybe a small keepsake and in the basket would be my main set of keys, a spare car key and a set of keys for my bike (locks, bike rack, etc.). Now it looks like an overgrown garden that as been ignored for 50 years. It has become The Man's gathering spot for baseball hats, phone, phone case, sunglasses (mulitiple pairs), post-it notes, business cards, and lots and lots of key chains to every facet of our lives. The things we give up when we welcome other people into our lives. Haha.

So finding my keys has become an increasingly frustrating scenario, not to mention my plant, the beautiful tray at the bottom of the mess, etc. So I decided finally to make a key rack. It was a very simple and hopefully successful solution to our key overwhelmedness.

Here's the DIY quickie lowdown:

1) I used a piece of wood I already had on hand. It is  2 1/2 inches x 3/4 inch x 2 feet long. I sanded it down first then wiped it clean with a slightly damp cloth. I picked up five two-packs of white hooks at the hardware store last week. Each pack was about $1.20. One thing to double check is making sure that the screw end of your hooks is shorter than your board. When I got home I was a little worried about this, but the screws did not go through the back of my board so I got lucky on that.

2) Then I did my measurements. I decided I wanted nine hooks and so figured out how to center them on the board horizontally and vertically. They are about 2.5" apart, which seems to work well to be able to get a hand comfortably in and out to reach keys without getting scratched or the keys getting tangled together. You could use any size or shape of board. I think a square with hooks spaced 3x3 or more would be really cute.

3) After I marked with a pencil the spot where I wanted each hook to be placed, I used one of the hooks to make a small hole over the spot. This way when I stained I would not have visible pencil marks and it would make it really easy for me to find the spots I had marked instead of trying to find pencil marks I had made under the stain.

4) Then I erased all my pencil chicken scratches on the board. I had made a few trying to figure out my placement. Once I'd erased them, I lightly sanded the entire board again and wiped it clean.

5) I used "Weathered Wood" stain to quickly put one coat on the board. I only needed a small amount and then I really stroked it across the board many times to get as thin a coat as possible. I didn't leave it on too long, but wiped it off with a dry, clean rag within just a few minutes of staining it. This gave me the look I wanted where you could still see the grain and the wood had taken on a nice weathered patina.

6) I let the stain dry, which didn't take very long because it was such a light coat. I didn't put a protective spray on it because it's a pretty temporary project. As I'm typing this I am imagining eating my words and this becoming some sort of life-long treasure or generational family keepsake "made by your grandmother..." What a laugh that would be. But anyway, I am all for it getting more worn and old looking.

7) Once it was dry I screwed in all the hooks. It can be a little tricky to get all the hooks to align well going the same direction without over and under tightening them. When you find the right method, stick with it. On these I found that if I started the hook facing directly towards the bottom of the rack it would end up pretty close to straight facing up at the end with a little jiggering.

8) Then it was time to hang this baby up. I decided to just screw it into the wall, even though I was a little bummed that this meant making screw holes into my rack surface. Didn't want two big holes in it. But I couldn't think of a way that would give me the secure, tight fit I wanted to the wall, hold the weight of all those keys and not be sliding around if it got bumped.

One last note: Something you might want to consider with a project like this is home security. If keys to every facet of your life are easily accessible to a would-be intruder that could be a problem. This might be a good project to put somewhere not easily visible, maybe on the inside of a cupboard door or something. But most often, people already do keep their keys right by the door they most often go into, so it might not be that big of a deal to a lot of people.

I hoping this will help solve some of our foyer console table mess. I thought today I could even hang a couple of baseball hats on it to get those out of the way and an umbrella there wouldn't be a bad thing either. Three cheers for home organization. Sending you warmest wishes for a great day!