Will have updates next week!

Sorry I am behind. I have been working on a project that I can not post until the gift has made it (via mail) to the person we sent it to.  I will have an updated post on many finished projects and WIP.  Sorry for falling behind once again!! I promise after this small break I will keep up!! I have many many projects to complete!!

Sewing: How to make burp clothes

Well I finally pulled out and dusted off my sewing machine.   I wanted to make burp clothes as a gift and to experiment.  I plan on making some for my little one.  Well first, I have to say  I bought my fabric, birdseye 27" wide diaper cloth white, at full price from Joanns.  After paying this price and looking at gerber's birdseye diaper cloth, I learned its cost more to buy the fabric. The only way its cheaper or comparable  is if you get the fabric for 50% off or you can buy it online for pretty cheap. So my first suggestion is to do some research and find your fabric for $3.00 or less a yard.  You can find it for this cheap check out fabric.com.  So for this project you will need:
1. Diaper clothe white fabric ( 1 yard makes 2 burp clothes)
2. 1/4 of a yard of flannel fabric (or your choice of fabric ) for the center per burp cloth.  So I got 3 different colors in 1/4 yard each.
3. 1/4 " wide ribbon. I got 3 different ribbons per burp cloth
4. pinking shears
5. straight pins
6. white yarn
7. fabric pencils

 

The first step is to wash, dry, and Iron all your fabrics.  Once you have your fabrics washed you want to cut 3 squares per burp cloth. a yard is 36" so you should get 3 12" wide burp clothes. I cut mine 12x16.  Clean up edges and make sure they are the same size.

 

Once they are cut and even, place each one on top of the other and pin all three together.

 Once you have it pinned now its time to use the sewing machine.  Sew 1/4 " around the edge of all four corners of the burp cloth like so!

 

Now that you have your border finished, you want to make 2 seams in the middle like the diaper clothes you buy in the store. To do this, you measure the whole width of the burp cloth and divide it by 3.   You want to take your ruler and mark your fabric, with your fabric pencil, on the 1/3 mark, and the 2/3 mark. Now you have 3 even sections on your fabric.  Once you have them marked draw your two lines.

 

Once you have your lines drawn, take the fabric over to the sewing machine. You are going to sew down the center of these two lines to make seams.

Once you are finished sewing the seams, now measure the width and the length of the center of  the burp cloth.  Cut out a piece of the flannel fabric to fit in the middle section. Note:  I cut it so that I had left 1/8 short on each side to make room for the ribbon but made sure there would be fabric under the ribbon.

Place the strip of fabric in the center.

Cut 2 strips of ribbon 16 " long , or how ever long your burp cloth is.

Pin the ribbon and the flannel to the burp cloth together.

 

Sew down both sides of the ribbon making sure you are sewing the flannel strip under the ribbon and securing it to the diaper cloth.

 

Once you have it all sewn together you need to make the edges so they do not keep unraveling every time you wash the burp clothes. There are two ways to do this.  The first one is to sew along the edges of the burp cloth in a zig zag pattern.  The second way, the way I chose to do it, is to take some pinking shears and cut the edges.  The best way to do this is to lay the fabric down and cut along the edge as the fabric is on a surface.  

That is it, you have completed your first burp cloth. I made a total of 4 and I am pretty happy with them I plan on making 20 for our baby. Ill will update you with pics when I get to them.

Finished Maternity Top

This is just a quick update on my Maternity Top that I was knitting. I finally finished it this past Friday September 30th. I am quite please with how it turned out, but I must say its huge on me. I think it will fit in the 3rd Trimester quite comfortably. Right now I can wear tank tops and short sleeves under it, when it gets colder I will wear long sleeves under it. This is probably one of the harder patterns I have knitted thus far so I am pretty happy with it.

As you can see its quite big around the armpit area.  Its was the correct size so I think it just that way, since I don't normally wear this size.  I usually wear a medium top, unless cut too small then I wear a large. I think the XL was a bit big for me. I made it this was so it would get around my baby bump.  I think when my belly grows and it will stretch and it will fit better.

How to organize your knitting stuff

Well I promise a year ago that I would do a post on how to organize your knitting and a year later here it finally is.  I will first start off by saying my way of organizing is not the cheapest way but its not the most expensive either. The reason it took me a year to finally write this post , is because it took me a year to finally purchase all the items I wanted in order to finish this project.  There are many creative and inexpensive ways to organize your knitting, however, my knitting is in our study and out in the open.  So I wanted to do this in a very appealing way t and  would not be an eye sore.  You will need the following items to complete the project.

1. Shelving unit 
2. Canvas drawers
3. Vase
4. 3 ring binder
5. Needle pages
6. Pencil case
7. 3 x 4 resealable bags
8. Magazine storage bin

I will tell you where I got my items, the names, and what I paid for them.We will start with organizing your yarn.  To begin, I did some research and decided to buy a 6 cube system from target made by closet maid.   I happen to catch a sale so I was able to get it for $39.99 .

 

At this same I also bought 3 closet maid canvas drawers for $6.99 a piece.   Once I got the shelving unit put together I then put my yarn in each drawer.  I have to say they are not as organized as I want to get, but right now I have so much random yarn its hard for me to organize the yarn. The first drawers is scrap yarn, yarn that I have used but never used it  up. I am hoping to knit some charity projects with this yarn and get this bin empty.

The second drawer, is yarn that I will use for future project.

The third drawer is my knit picks yarn.  Eventually I want to organize the drawers by yarn weight.

Now that your yarn is organized and put on the shelves its time to organize your needles, notions, and books.  Using all these helpful products that are listed above.

First , I bought a magazine storage bin(from target fro $4.99) to place all my books and magazines in.  I placed this on top of the book shelf.

Now for the tricky part the needles and notions.  I will start with the easy part.  I found if you find a nice vase that you have around the house and place your straight needles in them, it looks like a needle arrangement. I took a rubber band and wrapped it around the points of the matching needles so they would stay together and I placed the vase on top of the shelving unit.

Now for the fun part the circular needles and the DPN needles.  In the list I said to buy a 3 ring binder.   I wanted one that would hold a lot and after much research I got a cropper hopper craft binder.  You can get these on line any where ( amazon, walmart, joanns). I got my from Walmart and had it shipped to myself for a total of $15.99.  I love it.   Then I went on line an purchased ( really mom and dad Sours gave them to me for Christmas) some needle pages.  These pages are made for circular needles and DPN needles.  Here are the links Circular http://www.yarnmarket.com/yarn/Knit_One_Crochet_Too-Needle_Notebook_Pockets_circular-3428.html
DPN needles http://www.yarnmarket.com/yarn/Knit_One_Crochet_Too-Needle_Notebook_Pockets_II_double_points-3971.html
The Circular needle pocket comes with 5 pages for $10.95 and the DPN pockets are 3 pages for $8.95. I found that so far one order of the DPN pockets are all I need.  I will need to purchase more of the circular pocket pages.
So how I arranged my circular needles is sizes 1-10 by 16"-36".  You can mark on the page what size needle and how long it is.   Since I don't have all the needle sizes there are gaps in my pages, but some day it will be complete.  Below is a picture of what each page looks like and how I marked my page.

I put these in the binder in order by number and length. So my first page is size 5 needle 16".  My last page is 7 needle 29".  When my collection is complete I will divide each length with dividers so I can find my 24" needles when I need those and my 32" needles and so on.  Now with the DPN they are organized the same way, however, I don't buy my DPN by length. So I just organize mine by size.  so my first size is 1 and my last size is 8. I don't have all the larger needles at this time.  This page holds 5 sets of needles. Below is a picture of the page and how I arranged and marked mine.  I placed these pages behind the circular needles and one day will have a divider, dividing the circular needles from the DPN needles.

 

 

Finally, organizing all your little notions like counters, pins, scissors, stitch holders, buttons etc.  This is where you will use your resealable bags and your pencil case. I placed all my little notions in my baggies and put them in the pencil case.

Then I put the pencil case in the 3 ring binder.

 

The binder I bought was too large to fit my shelf so I just placed it right next to cubes on the floor like so.

 There you have it all your needles, notions, yarn, and books organized.  Below is a picture of everything all organized and put together.

The 2 navy drawers are my fabric and sewing supplies.  I didn't get a 3rd navy bag as I need room for my blocking pads.  So what do I do with the projects I am working on?  My sister made me this beautiful basket for my knitting. So I place the yarn for my next projects and my current knitting in the basket.  Currently, I don't have any projects going on but I will start one tomorrow.  The yarn in there is for my next 5 projects!

I am pretty satisfied with the out come and hope to continue to organize as I go.