by Sherri Sylvester | May 17, 2013
*** The giveaway is now closed. Thanks for entering! Find out who won here. ***
If you read yesterday’s post (well, this morning really!) right to the end, (Good for you, pat yourself on the back!) you know that the Fabric Spot Giveaway has been extended into next week. Due to technical difficulties here on Thread Riding Hood that made it impossible for people to post comments, which made it impossible for some people to enter (Ack!), Karen has decided to give you all another week to enter. Hooray!
I’ve updated the Giveaway Post with a new giveaway pic to pin and new dates. Head on over if you haven’t entered yet! And, you should really check out Fabric Spot! Here are a few comments from folks who visit Karen’s store for the first time:
- “I think I’m in fabric heaven!!” ~ Crista
- “Such lovely Fabrics!” ~ Tambra
- “Beautiful fabrics!” ~ Kathleen
- “I have a thang for orange and grey so some of those Comma prints and solids from Karen’s shop would be on my purchase list. Hey her website is easy to navigate and visually appealing.” ~ Fiona
- “Awesome selection. Looking forward to placing an order!” ~ Jennifer
- “Beautiful fabrics! Can’t wait to see Karen’s booth at the festival today!” ~ Laura
Following Fabric Spot on Facebook is amazing – she’s posting great fabrics and patterns that are coming to the shop almost every day right now! So, go ahead and enter the contest. You now have until Friday May 24th at 10pm. Also, it is your last day to use the Fabric Spot 10% off Discount Code! Check out the bottom of this post for more details.
And… Spring Shorts Week has been extended into next week as well. The last pair of shorts is coming up this Monday! (Check out Thread Riding Hood on Facebook for a sneak peek!) Have a great weekend!
by Sherri Sylvester | May 2, 2013
I went to Creativ Festival last Friday afternoon with my (also loves sewing) friend Laura. I was really happy to find a place to shop for some fabric, too bad it only happens twice a year! I found out about the Festival because Karen from Fabric Spot mentioned she was going to have a booth there when we were planning her interview and giveaway.
I’m not sure how I missed this one, but apparently it has been happening since 1988. I have heard, from those who have known about this for longer than me (lucky them!), that the fall one is a lot more put together. Hooray for us – something to look forward to!
Speaking of Fabric Spot – I was able to meet Karen at her booth. She is amazing and let me grab a shot of us together. I really hope she comes back to Creativ Festival in the fall. It is so nice to be able to shop by touch rather than by click! (and I really do love her fabric selection, I’m not getting paid to say this!)
Just for something different than the norm on Thread Riding Hood – here is a photo of something I think is really great! They had this “Yarn Bike” on display at a crochet booth. The bike’s creator, Michael Sellick, is the founder of the Crochet Crowd, a quickly growing website with free crochet information and videos. It took him 8 days to make this thing! I know some of you are crocheters (is that a word?!) – check out his site! He also had a huge hot air balloon and a crochet covered lamp post on display!
Funny thing, when I went to ask permission to photograph the bike and post it for you all to see I ended up talking to Michael himself, and I found out he runs the social media for the Festival. And (shameless self promotion) he put me up on their Facebook page! Hooray! So, if you want to see a really scary photo of me and the yarn bike you can visit their page and scroll down a bit – you can’t miss me! It was also fun to randomly run into someone at Karen’s booth that had read Thread Riding Hood before – Hooray again!
So, I know why you are really here – to see fabric of course! Here you are! I was able to pick up quite a few fat quarters, and a bit of yardage from the Lens Mill booth. And of course I had to get some of my own Tsuru from Fabric Spot.
I got some Piper and Oh Deer fat quarters to play with from Karen as well.
This photo is kind of random – but they “match”! (clockwise from the squirrel) Birds and the Bees by Tula Pink (same designer as the fabric on my Octopus chair), Yard Sale by Dear Stella (Dear Stella is quickly becoming one of my favorites – I would love to stash some Clementine) and 2wenty-thr3e by Cosmo Cricket (Not from Fabric Spot, but I don’t know which store it was now, sorry. I think this is destined to make a camera strap).
Rounding out the fat quarters are these two. Sherbet Pips from Aneela Hoey (not from Fabric Spot, same problem as the Cosmo Cricket) and Robotic The Lab from Birch Fabrics (organic!).
Last but not least, the yardage from Lens Mill. My mother-in-law found a really cute sundress for my oldest and I’m going to try to re-create it and provide a tutorial. Though it might not happen until the fall at the rate I am completing the ideas I have in my head! (Then I suppose I will have to make a sweater tutorial so your girls can wear the dresses!)
Alright, so, save the $2/metre pink fabric and the rainbow Anne Kelle fat quarter I made the snack bags with, that is what I bought at the Festival. To be honest, once I had finished shopping at Fabric Spot I was pretty well done. A lot of the booths had great fabric, but you really had to hunt for it as most of the stock was traditional quilting fabric, not modern.
I suppose a lot of it looks familiar – seeing as how I posted them as my “favorite picks” from Fabric Spot the other day in connection with Karen’s giveaway. Which, by the way, you should really enter right now if you haven’t already! Really!
So, the one thing I don’t know now… what am I going to do with my Tsuru fat quarters? Do you have any great fat quarter projects I could use?
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 15, 2013
Ottobre Blouse Top + Skirt = The Hula Hoop Dress!
I have been planning to make this dress for about a month now. I am always looking for good ways to use clothing that I don’t wear anymore and re-purpose them for the kids. So… when I saw the skirt for a good deal, I also remembered that I had a perfect purple (too short, shrunk, ack) shirt of my own in the sewing box. And… tada… an idea was born!
It would be fun if that was the end of the story, but I have a much more random way that this dress finally came about….
A few weeks ago we bought a (standard Ikea) shelf on Craigslist. Nice shelf, nice people. While we were moving it into our vehicle my husband told me that the lady of the house liked to sew. This (of course) was very exciting to me, so I asked him to give her my Thread Riding Hood card and thought maybe she would like to come visit the blog (I know – shameless self promotion!)
A week or so later I got an email from her, she said she was moving out and selling off some of her fabric stash and would I like to come and see it? Turns out I was excited and so were 3 of my friends – so we all trooped down there on Wednesday night of last week to take a look.
Long story short she was selling A LOT of fabric! We got some really great deals and I scored some Ottobre magazines for FREE! If you have not heard of Ottobre, it is a sewing magazine designed in Finland. Each one of their issues has about 40 patterns in it, a clothing sewers dream!
I got home and immediately thought I should find a kids shirt pattern I could shorten to empire waist length and use above the skirt I had found. The pattern went together really well, and I am so excited to use another one! Once I had the dress bodice I took the skirt, opened the casing to shorten the elastic to fit my daughter and stitched it to the bottom of the bodice. Perfect!
Since the skirt has pockets, the dress does too – and my daughter loves them! The drawstring adds a cute detail to the front and I was able to use the extra length to add a ribbon detail to the neckline so the whole thing looks more matchy and put together.
Just a note for posterity! My daughter wanted to call this the “Sparkle Dress”.
So, my random fabric adventure turned out to be pretty useful! A bookcase led to some fabric which gave me some free magazines that had the pattern to the top of this dress in them! It also shows how you can “recycle” adult clothing into cute stuff for your kids. Seeing as how it is Earth Day next Monday maybe you want to try too?!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 21, 2013
I love it when a package is in the mailbox – especially if the package is addressed to me! I got a super surprise yesterday when this showed up from Double Decker Fabric.
The Michael Miller fabric is so cute – and especially appropriate for this blog – check out another shot of the print below.
That’s right – Little Red Riding Hood (of course)! I’ve got the perfect project in mind for this, the red matches perfectly (and happens to be my favorite colour – hooray!) Double Decker Fabric’s owner Dorienne is our Canadian Online Fabric Shop interview for tomorrow, so come on back and meet her! She’s got a couple of surprises planned for you too!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 19, 2013
A quick update on the Canadian Online Fabric Stores Pinterest list. I’ve just added about 15-20 more shops and the list now stands at 35 Canadian stores! Now we Canadians have NO EXCUSE to shop across the border! Again I have had help from Jennifer who sent me another long list. Everyone say “Thank You Jennifer!”
Now – go browse, whatever you are doing can wait right? I mean – we are talking about shopping for fabric here… come on – that trumps everything!
While we are talking about Canadian fabric, another exciting event is happening here on Friday. I’m posting a second interview with a Canadian Online Fabric Store owner. She’s got a couple of surprises for you! Come on back, you don’t want to miss this one!
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 28, 2013
Tomorrow is the day, we are having a second gathering of the “People I know that Sew” club! The consensus last time was that we would work on the same project together this time. So we are sewing the Library Tote by Noodlehead. (I have posted my version of the bag here.) Exciting news also, we have grown by 2 people since last month! Now we will have to fit 7 sewing machines around my dining room table. What fun! I am also interested to see if we can all finish the bags between snacks and sewing talk! I am hoping to be able to get a photo of our work this time around.
In other news, my “Canadian Online Fabric Stores” pinterest board is growing, hooray! We now have 18 Canadian online shops listed for you to choose from. I have received amazing help from two readers, Jennifer from South Alberta and Lindsay. Both have given me links to the new stores. Can I remind you just how much duty and shipping we pay buying fabric from the US? Now – go and try them out! It will take me into next year to order from them all one-by-one, so if you try them let me know how it went. I will do my best to secure an interview with the owners and post it here.
On a completely different note (and in case you are wondering about the photos!) Last weekend my oldest daughter participated in her Awana Grand Prix and managed to win Third Place for Speed! We (being normal parents) are super excited and super proud of her. The making of her “Pig Car” that she named “Happy” was completely her idea – and of course it involved pink paint! We have had no experience (’till now) in making a derby car, so we didn’t expect much – what a great surprise. It’s really fun seeing your children when they are so proud of themselves for things they have worked hard on. It makes all of the hard work you put into being a parent worthwhile!
