Monthly Archives: January 2014

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Parsley Pants (pattern by made-by-rae.com)
Parsley Pants (pattern by made-by-rae.com)

The pants of been on the back burner as I've worked on some other projects, sewing and otherwise. Today I got motivated by the notion that I need to finish these pants before my kids outgrow these sizes! I love the reinforced seams on the pants, though they present a bit of a bonus challenge to stitching them, particularly the flat fell seam on the inseam. But I feel all professional with the nice finished seams! Rae's directions are awesome and I love that the pattern goes up to size 10, they are unisex, and there are a ton of variations to choose from.  I'll be making these for YEARS! Get your Parsley Pants pattern here.

polka dots
pouch pockets and a flat front waistband

The Boy's pants

The Girl saw me working on her pants and excitedly declared, "me pants! me pants!" That's also really motivating! Of course, she didn't really understand why she couldn't have "pants on" as soon as we got home from buying the fabric. The Boy gets it a little more. And he's super stoked to have pockets on his pants. Having made the basic pattern for his first pair I decided to "level up" by adding the pouch pockets (which also dictated a flat front waistband).  Perhaps with pockets people will stop asking him if he's wearing his pajamas.

walking pants

P.S. The Boy has already picked out fabric for his next pair. Zebra print. Aw... yeah!

Update: The Boy has now started making promises to others that I will make them polka dot pants.

 

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Coding Using ScratchThis month I dove into the Harvard EdX course CS50x, Introduction to Computer Science (with a deadline of December 31, so there's time to join me!). Week 0 included the introduction to the concepts of binary and ASCII as well as the program Scratch. Scratch was developed by MIT to provide an opportunity to dabble in computer programming and be able to create a story, game, or animation with the use of blocks of programming code. Blocks only fit together if they are logically appropriate to do so. The CS50 course showed some great examples and you can view the code behind any of the public projects on the Scratch website for inspiration or to figure out how to do something.

At this point there are over 4.5 million projects on the Scratch website. A couple of them are mine. My first program was Game of Catch between Scratch the cat and a dinosaur.

Game of Catch

It wasn't interactive, so in version 2 of my program I created the possibility to move the characters around. Using keyboard commands you can move the cat and dinosaur around the screen, but only if they are not holding the ball.

Game of Catch 2

Once I got to the interactive stage, I let my kids "play" the game. Of course they were VERY excited to do this, which led me to my next programming idea. My daughter is learning her letters, so I decided to make a game that would allow her to learn and practice.

Toddler Alphabet GameThe Toddler Alphabet Game is aesthetically very basic. It's repetitive (just what a 20-month old needs). When the space bar is pressed a letter is shown and read, then it waits for the input of a matching letter from the keyboard. At the time that I'm posting this, my program is a little buggy, so I may work further to try to find and fix the problem, but I'm pleased with how well it does work and with the coding process I had to go through to get the results I wanted. Specifically, I'm pleased as how much I was able to clean up my code. I figure I spent about 15 hours on the program and it was riveting. I hope I'm as excited about learning some C as I move into Week 1 of the course.

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I've been talking about blogging for months. At least seven of them. Sometimes there's some nagging desire to do something that you just can't ignore. This is one of those times for me.

So, why am I starting a blog? In short, I like to make stuff. And since I like to make stuff, I really enjoy looking at other people's blogs that showcase their work. I find it inspiring to me.

As I've been able to carve out a space in the house to have a sewing corner and keep my sewing machine accessible at all times, I have been able to work on and complete more projects than usual. In recent months I've also started decorating cookies.

 

My most recent finished project is this lap quilt (48" x 48") that I completed start to finish in just one week. I was inspired by this pin on Pinterest. I was looking for something that size with a quick pattern. I was able to find fabric in my stash of blue fat quarters to get the job done, only having to purchase the fabric for the binding.

blue quilt 1

blue quilt 2

 

These are a pair of pants I made for my 3-year-old a couple months ago. I LOVE the Parsley Pants Pattern. Her directions were clear. They have some super reinforced seams. There are so many options to add-on and her pattern includes sizes 2 through 10!

mushroom parsley pants

This first pair was made using just the basic pattern and went together in about 3 hours. Not bad for my first pair of pants, ever. The 3-year-old decided he liked his so much (despite people continuing to ask if they are pajamas) that he wanted to pick out some fabric for me to make another pair. Then The 1-year-old decided she wanted her own pair as well and picked out fabric for her pants. I really wish I'd gotten a photo of her carrying the bolt of fabric around the quilt shop. Hers will be the basic pattern and I leveled up with his second pair by adding pouch pockets and a flat front.

I never have just ONE project going at a time, so here are a couple others in the works...

 

I'm doing Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along. I'm a few weeks behind due to some indecisiveness on fabric colors, but I finally landed on Lagoon and Sprout by Kona. Next up, starch and iron 10 yards of fabric so I can start cutting. All in good time.

lagoon and sprout

And last for today, here's a glimpse at a red, white and black quilt that I've been "working on" since the 2006(?) Shop Hop by the Bay. I enjoy the whole mystery quilt thing, though I don't realizing in step 4 that I'm cutting 288 triangles! At least they are all pieces together at this point. Here are a couple units of my many current piles.

red white black mystery quilt

I've linked up to Tuesday Archives to share my fat quarter quilt.