simple joys

Here's one of my favorite things in life.

You're inside on a breezy, not too cold and preferably sunnyish day. You are perhaps on your bed or favorite chair, reading, writing or drawing. The windows are open a bit and the pretty curtains billow back and forth in the breeze. You hear birds and maybe some kids or cars far off. The air smells sweet.

The curtains fall flat and billow open, moving back and forth, sometimes swinging high and sometimes just swaying back and forth.

Sometimes you stop what your doing and just watch them.

Last weekend I did two things that I have been meaning to do for a long time. 

1. I finally found this fabric I bought a year or more ago and made the very simple alterations I had to do to them to make them in to curtains.  I don't really know how to sew. I took one short class when I was about 11. 

The window is quite big and the all white is kind of a lot. I am thinking about adding some trim to the sides - which gave me a great excuse to not hem them. But, I love white curtains in the bedroom, especially in spring and summer.

2. The other thing I did last week that has been on my to-do list for a couple years is make a video clip for my Dad's film.

I got my Dad's film on DVD in 2009 and last week I finally got into the hard drive that it's stored in and created a clip (it was much easier that I thought). Now people can see a bit of the film. This is really awesome as before now there was no clip of it anywhere on the internet.

I hope I can cross of a couple more things this week. It feels so good when you do something you've been meaning to do for a long time. And, trust me, I've got a long list!  Hope you all have a good week!

(This post is 100% April Fools free)

Oilcloth Tote Bags and Mom

I've been meaning to post this for about a month. And now, with the symbolic last day of summer I finally get to it. In my defense this summer, especially the last month and a half has been pretty crazy. Between visits from family, making the zine, doing the zine symposium and then for the last month dealing with a really bad back injury - I've had little time to catch up. I'm looking forward to some cooler weather and stronger days ahead.

I've posted before about my mother and her amazing talents. She has been cranking out amazing quilts for the last couple of years. She never sells her work and it drives me crazy, because her stuff is so beautiful and well done. But, it takes a lot of work to do that and I can understand her not wanting to spend time on that. She'd rather sew!

I spent a couple of weeks at the beginning of summer looking for a good lunch bag for work. I wanted Mexican oilcloth because it's easy to clean and so bright and cheery. I looked and looked on Etsy and there was nothing like what I wanted on there. I finally settled on something that wasn't what I wanted. Then I thought about my mom and how she could probably make one with her mad skills.  So, I bought some oilcloth online with contrasting gingham colors. So cute! I took it to her house with a placemat I liked, too. Hoping she could make me some customer round placemats as well (I forgot to take pics of those, but trust me they're awesome).

She was pretty unsure of working with oilcloth, especially since I wanted the liner to be oil cloth, too. I knew she would be able to do it and in fact she did quickly crank out some awesome lunch bags. She made them to my specifications, which were a little bigger than I probably needed. So, I use them more for picnics. And truthfully, they are so beautiful, I've been cautious about using them at all.

In her usual fashion she added lots of sweet little features, including pockets inside and matching placemats and coasters for the bags! She used this stitch for everything and it worked great. The cool, thing about oilcloth is that you can just leave the edges cut. It won't unravel.

She took some cardboard and covered it to make the bottom more sturdy and flat. You can also remove it if you want.

I can't offer you the directions for these bags, but something even better recently came out if you like the look of these totes. A new book called Sewing with Oilcloth is now out. And you can get free patterns for the tote bag and the table runner.  This book almost makes me want to sew!

best laid plans..

I had a nasty computer virus for the last couple of weeks and have not been able to spend more than a couple of minutes on the computer. I think it is over now (knock wood) and am glad because there were blog posts I wanted to get too...now if I can just remember what they were.

While I am trying to figure that out I thought I would pop in to say hello and let you know of some neat vintage sewing patterns I put in my Etsy shop today. I am trying to help my mom make some extra money, so I volunteered to list them. I have a lot more from the late 80s and 90s's that I may list later if they don't sell when I take them to the Twilight Rummage Sale next week (Portlanders, that is on 50th and Hawthorne at the Eagles Lodge from 4-8 on Saturday).

Anyway, take a look a these if you are interested. Some of them were bought for me in 1965! Almost all seem unused.

Etsy Buy Handmade thecedarchest