by Sherri Sylvester | Sep 19, 2012
Last weekend we went apple picking for the first time as a family. A friend recommended a farm down the road from us. We are lucky enough to be a 2 minute drive from farm country, fresh food, pick it yourself and fun family outings.
The kids had a ball. Especially on the hay ride through the orchard pulled by a 1952 Ford tractor. Too bad I didn’t get a good shot of it! (I may have to beg for a nice digital SLR for Christmas!)
The farmer told us that they lost 60% of their apple crop this season. All because they had some warm days early in the spring and then a heavy frost.
Reminds me to be grateful that my income is not tied to the weather, and thankful for the farmers who keep farming despite the costs.
by Sherri Sylvester | Sep 17, 2012
I am wondering if this Monday series should be called “Great Online Sewing Tutorials I have Found, Pinned, Finished, Photographed and Blogged About”. I suppose with a title like that anyone reading would likely move on before they even got to the content!
Here are more pillows I recently finished. (The other pillows are here and here.) The chevrons started as a one piece table runner with the lighter chevrons in the centre and the dark on the ends – I was aiming for an ombré-ish look. Then I realized that there is no way it would ever stay on the table – much less on the table AND also free from crayon marks and stickers! I happened to have 2 pillows I was going to cover anyhow, so I cut the table runner in half and sewed a quick 2 piece backing for them. (For those of you interested, it took me just over one Dora episode to cut/sew and hem the pillow backings. Such is the life of a sewing mom!)
They look a bit busy together on the couch, so I put one on the hallway bench for now. We’ll see what happens, things don’t seem to stay in one place too long. Especially with 2 kids using them as stepping stones over the hardwood “lake” they are being rescued from. It’s a good thing all of the pillow covers are washable!
I used this tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts. It is super straightforward if you use one colour for every other chevron/zig zag stripe. Of course I had to be difficult and try to use a different colour for each stripe, which took some figuring and ended up being slower – of course! Either way I am happy with how it turned out. Maybe I will soon be aflicted by an addiction to making quilts? Hmmm… I am thinking about using this Pillow and Maxfield collection to make a picnic blanket. What do you think?
by Sherri Sylvester | Sep 14, 2012
I was on Tea Rose Home yesterday catching up when I found a guest tutorial from Me Sew Crazy that mentioned her new venture – Sew Set. I am hooked! She has made a website that gathers sewing tutorials and patterns from across the web. You can sign in and sort the patterns into “All”, “Patterns and Tutorials” and “Patterns for Sale”. They are further sorted by Children, Men, Women and Home Decor. The possibilities are endless – you can sort them, search through them… Here are a few that caught my eye. Also – check out the tote-able towel tutorial in it’s new location on Sew Set!
Anyhow, now that I have wasted an hour spent so much time researching for this blog post I feel the need to go sew something. See you again soon!
by Sherri Sylvester | Sep 11, 2012
I needed a gift for a couple of boys and went again to the Celebrate the Boy archives on Made by Rae and MADE. Dana and Rae do a month long group of tutorials from all over the web once a year or so. It’s great if you need to sew for boys – there’s so much out there for girls, and almost nothing for the boys.
This is the second time I have made these Trinket Keepers from Amazing Mae. If you add in a toy car it makes a little cute gift that doesn’t take hours to make. I happened to have some scraps of car fabric hanging around that worked perfectly for this.
These are great because they can hook the carabiner onto their backpacks or belt loops and take all of their important things with them. The tutorial has different size options and suggestions for holding different things. Super helpful and super fast.
by Sherri Sylvester | Sep 4, 2012
My oldest started school again today. Here are some photos to document. Also, amazingly, she decided to pick skinny jeans and a t-shirt instead of a dress when we were back to school shopping. I love the t-shirt. It’s so cute with the puffed sleeves, and even though it is a princess shirt they have drawn Cinderella a bit differently – so I don’t mind so much!
The basket of apples was an idea I found here. I think we have just started a first day of school tradition.
So – can you tell that I like my bench much?! It has been in three of the last 4 posts I think. I guess I will have to get more creative with my photo shoots. In the meantime though, it is super-helpful for taking pictures on a rainy day!
