I LOVE custom orders!

It was a very productive day in the sewing cave! I had the pumpkin pillowcase finished last week, and the sheep pillowcase cut out, so the I was able to finish the sheep one today and will have it ready to mail soon. I have more of the sheep fabric, if you love sheep!


I made these for my internet buddy Anne. She is getting them for her lovely daughters Renee and Amanda. Renee likes the sheep and Amanda likes the pumpkins and crows. Anne has an awesome shop named Leather Made Nice, check it out here. She has wonderful leather jewelry and does custom orders as well.

Next up in the cave was a custom order quilted netbook cover for another internet friend, Deronda of Deronda Designs. Check out her website here. This was a challenge. I had the measurements of Deronda's netbook, so while looking for some fabrics I came across a quilted piece that I had once intended to be a placemat. This is a placemat pattern that I created and have a copyright. I started with the quilted piece and was able to add two pockets and some detail pieces, an elastic loop and pretty heart button to complete the project. I was making it as a prototype, creating the pattern as I went. I was hoping that Deronda might like the prototype well enough to purchase and she did! I love to work with Americana fabrics and have a handsome stash of them! If you would like something made with Americana fabrics, I would love to do it for you!

How McStevie got his name

Many of my friends and ALL of my internet friends know my husband Steve, as McStevie.

To clear up any confusion as to "why" I call him that I will need to dial back to an evening a couple of years ago when Grey's Anatomy was on the TV. I am a big fan, as well as many of my family members, especially my daughter, Mandy. Mandy happened to call me after an especially "hot" episode and her Dad got on to talk to her for a minute. He was a bit ignored because soon we began talking about the episode that was on earlier and we got all McSteamy this and McDreamy that. In the excitement of all the "hotness" we totally forgot about "Dad" wanting to talk. After several minutes, there was a big clearing of throat. "Ah, this is"McStevie"here.... wondering if you could stop to take a breath for a minute and let me say somethin." Needless to say, there was an eruption of laughter from both Mandy and me and I think I peed my pants a little.

~McStevie and daughter, Mandy~

Patrick Dempsey AKA
Derek Shepherd, AKA"McDreamy"

Eric Dan AKA Mark Sloan, AKA"McSteamy"

You can catch up with episodes here.

Lucky at BINGO!!

When my internet friend Mischelle "Mzz Thang" Martell from Fo-Shizzle Design Studios was having a BINGO game on facebook for a free piece of jewelry from her shop, I didn't hesitate to play! Well, imagine my "happy dance" when I won her bingo game!

When I got home from a mini vacation last night...this lovely box was waiting for me. I had to take a picture before I opened it because it was just sew pretty!!!

And when I got the box opened this lovely little bag contained.....

THIS gorgeous piece of jewelry! Sorry for the not-sew-great pic, but I grabbed the closest thing within my reach (a piece of fabric dunchaknow!!) and as you can see it is a very dainty, sterling silver hip and happenin' necklace. I CANNOT WAIT to wear it!!

Thanks, sew much MZZ THANG! You've made me sewhappy!

Baby Love

Sorry I have been so lax with my blog...haven't been inspired to write much...busy...busy....busy. We were in recently in construction mode for over a month having both of our bathrooms remodeled. We have a main hall bathroom which is the largest and, on a regular day-to-day basis is "Cindy's bathroom". We are also fortunate enough to have a very small full bath (shower stall) off of our master bedroom, which is ideal for McStevie. The makeovers were finished this past Monday and we are VERY HAPPY with them. We have lived in this home for 15 years this year and McStevie's bath had not even been painted, nothing, nadda...wall paper that has been slowly peeling and tiles coming loose from the floor....needless to say his bathroom is now SUPER luxurious from what it was.

Anywho, the contractors that we work with have done most of the "makeover" work we have had done to our home and God willing...will do more in the future as we enjoy them personally and the quality of work they perform. I learned that one contractor has a baby boy due in August that will join his 2 year old sister....so my grandma mode and quilting hands simultaneously started juices flowing for creating a gift for the culmination/celebration of the end of the project...and kinda the beginning of something new...a new life. Here are some pictures of my gifts:

For the baby boy....well of course he will do his share of spit-ups so viola...a set of burp cloths and baby bib...

You can't give a gift to a newborn that has a little one at home without thinking of them, so I created this little lovie taggie quilt for his sister, Lanie (pronounced Lane e...pretty name, isn't it?) I also machine embroidered her name in a few spots on the quilt...hope you can see....click the pic for a closeup and look in the black...

I really love to make baby and children items....if you have something special you would like made, please contact me through one of my shops or my Request an Order Form.

Happy National Quilt Day!

Today is National Quilt Day. I celebrated by goofing off some and then quilting a new spring table runner.

The quilt is still in "sandwich" form and now needs the binding sewn and attached. I quilted it with a leaf design from one of my sewing machine stitches. (If you double click on the last picture you will see the quilting close up.) I turned up the quilt on one edge so that you can see the pretty green fabric on the bottom. Haven't decided for sure which fabric I will use for the binding. It's sew beautifully bright I prolly should have worn sunglasses when I made it to protect my eyes.....



Can you see the tiny leaves quilted in "the ditch" in orange sulky thread?

I also tried a new soup recipe.....sweet sausage soup, made with sweet turkey sausage. Here is my National Quilt Day soup. I tried to duplicate a soup I had for lunch at a restaurant this week. Although that one was made with pork sausage, I think I came very close to the flavors. I served it with a little fresh Parmesan cheese on top, like the restaurant did.


I absolutely love these corning ware soup mugs that I got for Christmas. I took a picture of them in the store with my camera phone and emailed it to my family. It worked.



And that was my fun Quilt Day!!!

Some Little Quilt Love

Just finished up some new little quilts and thought I would share. These are currently for sale at Painfull Acres, my consignment shop. The table runner was in progress in my last post. I love to make the little projects and have made so many of the little table mats that I think I sometimes make them in my sleep!

Hope you enjoy the pics! If you wish to see the detail of the stitches, just do a double click on the picture.

This table runner pieces together very quickly as the main blocks are cut at 4 1/2 inches. The slow part is the quilting, but I picked a leaf pattern that was a built-in stitch on my sewing machine. The colors are just lovely for spring.









I love sunflowers. I'm a fan of sunflowers as sunflowers were the signature flower from the movie Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood. This is where I got the name YaYa Sisterhood Diva Quilters Club for my sisters, niece and daughter.

What I Made Today

I watched a sewing program on PBS today. I came in on it late so I don't know if the instructions for the cutting were given or not. I set the dvr and rewound it later for the sewing instructions after I got some fabric cut. I just wanted to see if I could make the darn thing....hers was sew cute. I grabbed some fabric that I didn't care if I messed up and gave it a shot. It didn't appear to be coming out correctly...until I got ALL the corners sewn.. and then it made sense. I CAN FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS...yay me!

I guessed at the cutting, as I said I was just curious to see if I could make it. I was feeling like a challenge. Anywho, this one is smaller than the one from the program, so I will make another...with nicer fabrics...and make the cuts larger so the little bag is larger. I just thought in the end, it came out cute! I'm going to keep some stuff in this one for my hand sewing...needles, thimble, small scissors etc. It will make a cute gift too!


It's kinda a mini-version of the one on PBS today....

Honey Wheat Bread Recipe....mmmm.....

I was sew impressed with this recipe I found in the newspaper around Christmas that I bought a new bread bowl (Merry Christmas to me) with the idea that I was gonna give it a try. The cottage cheese ingredient intrigued me.

I guess the cottage cheese is the ticket...or that the honey and whole wheat were made for each other...a true marriage of great flavors in this bread. I will make it again...and soon...I hope. It was the maiden voyage of the new baking bread bowl, however, I was not as impressed with that. Used once and already a chip on the edge. :( I thought the bread would be more rounded. I think next time I will bake it in a regular bread pan...will be easier to slice. I'll get the cobwebs and dust off my bread machine and give that a try too, just to see if it turns out the same.

Here is the recipe. Although it is for two loaves, I cut it in half and made only one. I wanted to be sure I would like the recipe first.

HONEY WHEAT BREAD

1 cup cream-style cottage cheese
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons salt
2 envelopes dry yeast

Heat 1 1/2 cups water, cottage cheese, honey and butter in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until very warm (120-130 degrees).

In a large bowl, combine saucepan mixture, 2 cups of the flour, the whole wheat flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Stir enough of the remaining flour by hand (or use dough hook on heavy duty mixer) to make a stiff dough. Knead 2 minutes. Place in greased bowl. Cover and let rise in warm place until double in size, 45 to 60 minutes (mine took longer...about 1.5 hours). Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake bread for 40 to 50 minutes, or until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped. Remove from pans to cool. Makes 2 loaves, 12 slices each.

Per slice: 164 cal (14 percent from fat), 2.5 grams fat (1.4grams saturated, o.6 grams monounsaturated), 6 mil cholesterol, 4.7 grams protein, 30.9 grams carbohydrates, 1.5 grams fiber, 336.7 mil sodium.

If you try it, please come back and post your results, good or bad....would love to hear, oh.. and... a pic would be awesome too!

Go green, people.....please

I saw this picture on the internet.....
it through me into a bit of a hissy Caps fit.

Don't you think there are ENOUGH PLASTIC BAGS in the world?



I'm never without my "green" fabric bags when I grocery shop.

I just don't like to see plastic hanging from my roadside trees and ditches. It's just not very attractive...and so very wasteful and needless. But the thing that really makes me see red is that I see few people "bothering" with bringing their own reusable shopping bags to the store. Why? Is it really that hard to keep them in your car? They are so inexpensive to buy and if you have access to a sewing machine, very easy to make, (click on these tip-nut links, for a few). I wish stores would "make" you BUY your plastic bags like some do in European countries. If that were the case, perhaps there would be more "green" bags being used at the supermarket.

My friend Char over at her CharSpirit's shop makes grocery bags that fold into their own little pouch. Check them out.

I have a bunch of old denim jeans and when I get to it, want to try to make a few reusable bags for myself..as eventually the "green" ones I've bought will wear out.

And... because I love crafts....check out some craft projects you can make with plastic bags....over at Craftzine.com. You can do a google search and find even more!!

Go green people....please.

~Reorganizing Project~ Inside and Outside of the Sewing Cave

Sew I've been talking about my fabric and supplies reorganization project since the beginning of December when I got my new storage cabinets for my birthday. We got them half price at Lowes at Thanksgiving time. We've got a ranch style house with a full basement. In the basement is a separate room ("cave") that's used for my sewing and teaching quilting. It's a wonderful room with great lighting and lots of room to spread out. See before pics of the cave below (when I was crazy with sewing gifts for Christmas) and the after pics when Christmas was over and I was able to get it back in order. You can click on the picture for more of a close-up.

What a mess!



Now doesn't this look better?




Here are some of the lovely things that surround me when I sew...You will see that many of my lovelies were given or made for me by my wonderful friend Pat. We have many things in common...one of the major ones is our love of sewing and quilting.











The outside (one whole side) of the basement is devoted to SewHappyDesigns. The classroom/sewing room is a room by itself. Outside of that room the whole side of the basement is dedicated to my fabric/supplies storage and cutting area, and other tables for creating.

The cupboards sat around until after Christmas because there was just too much to do with the making of many of my Christmas gifts this year. We had a week off after Christmas so McStevie put the cupboards together (exclaiming, "wow, these really fit together well"....thank you Lowe's and Black and Decker) and my part of the organizing project began. Fabrics were brought out from several large clear plastic boxes and sorted, some by color, some by theme. One large container now has several pieces to donate to a worthy cause. There were stray patterns, tons of applique patterns I often use, books and more that had to be sorted so that I could find them more easily. Most of them now have a home in the old file cabinets that were partially empty at the end of the room. Clippings and appliques and misc. all have a home listed alphabetically, much easier to find. (Now I just have to keep it that way!) I still have a few things in files in another room upstairs that needs to be incorporated, but saving that for another day.

These are the BEFORE pics of this area....one cupboard is together, just hangin out in the mess.














And here is the AFTER. This picture is taken from the bottom of the stairs...at the door of my "sewing cave".




















So, with more moving help from McStevie, (my hero)...viola....the rest of the outside of the cave looks great...awesome even.

Keep in mind this is an unfinished basement, so it isn't super pretty cosmetically.