the result of this weekend’s crafting

I participate in a few “challenge” blogs and communities for scrapbooking.  I find them to be inspiring for getting some layouts finished– sometimes I work better with a deadline!
This set of pages, which is about our visit with my in-laws over Christmas 2006, was done as a combination of two different challenges.  The layout is [...]

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Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy

We had a great time putting our costumes together this year!  Husband and I, after many ideas and iterations, finally decided to do a period costume.  We decided on the Regency era because we were able to find a good men’s pattern as well as a women’s pattern that were manageable in the span of [...]

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Costumes finished!

I have really been in the mood to scrapbook recently, but haven’t been able to quite as much as I wanted because I was committed to sewing our costumes for this year. (I have found that I tend to go in cycles of what crafty type of thing I’m in the mood to do… sometimes [...]

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The end…for this fall at least…

Well, it’s over for this year.  Last weekend (Oct 10-11), it started getting cold enough to warrant frost warnings on the NOAA site for our area.  Husband has been so very helpful– on the 11th, he went out and picked all the tomatoes that were left on the plants, red, not quite red, and green…
They [...]

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IL State Fair rosette

A couple posts ago, I mentioned that I had won some ribbons at the Illinois State Fair in the Textiles division… Here are a few photos of the birdie mobile that won a blue ribbon for its subcategory (“Any item not previously listed” in the Miscellaneous category) and a rosette for “Best Miscellaneous Item” (out [...]

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Buttonhole tutorial for the Baby Lock Ellure Plus

At the end of May, Sew Mama Sew asked for volunteers to make a tutorial for using the buttonhole attachment on their sewing machine.  I haven’t had my machine for very long, but oh man oh man, do I love my buttonhole foot.  It’s seriously like magic.  So I volunteered, and here I am with [...]

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Sewing Machine Meme

I’ve been enjoying the Sew, Mama, Sew! community recently.  June is Sewing Machine Month and I decided to fill out some of the Sewing Machine Meme questions:

What brand and model do you have? Baby Lock Ellure Plus
How long have you had it? My parents gave it to me as an early graduation gift over Thanksgiving [...]

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Stress-relief skirts

When I get stressed out over my research and dissertation writing, I have to do something completely and utterly different for a while.  Sewing is great for that, because it completely takes over all my thought processes and gives me a break from quasars  
Needless to say, since I’m now in full dissertation [...]

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Recent non-gardening projects

I’ve been keeping myself busy around here while the gardening season is getting warmed up…  I’ve been doing a lot of sewing:
Both of these pictures were taken on an extremely windy day.  So windy, in fact, that the power went out for a few hours later that afternoon.
I also finally finished the project I had [...]

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Thankful Friday

This week I’m thankful for 
*time with friends.  I’m definitely an introvert, but it is so good to have quality time with friends.  
*progress on my paper.  I have done a lot of work this week revamping my paper.  I had hoped to have it in a form to submit to our collaborators by the end [...]

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