Scrappy Belt

Sew Mama Sew is hosting a Scrap Buster Contest this month. They have had lots of great ideas submitted, please head over and check it out. I wanted to come up with an idea that would use up small, not-necessarily-quilting fabrics, so here's my tutorial to make a simple patchwork style belt out of any kind of fabrics you have on hand. Here's a link to my Scrapbuster Belt. It's my first tutorial, so please email me with any comments, suggestions, corrections. I'd appreciate it! Thanks!

Fabric Giveaway

Hey, mosey on over to the True Up blog for a great giveaway of a half-yard bundle pack of Liyohara fabric. Beautiful prints! And if you haven't visited True Up before, you'll enjoy getting lots of fabric news and tons of inspiration. Check it out!

Baking

Oatmeal muffins with dried cherries and dark chocolate chunks.

We've had our first snow of the season! The cooler weather makes me crave time in the kitchen to bake. I don't know why that is, but what I do know is I'm going to have a hard time fitting into my jeans tomorrow.

Chilly

My nose is cold.

My front yard is carpeted in yellow.

My back yard is sporting more than the usual red.

I turned my sprinklers off for the year.

I have a cup of hot chocolate on my desk.

I'm going to a football game this weekend.

I'm enjoying the moments of the season.

Seasonal Changes

Last week my daughter and I created our own little retreat in the mountains. As we arrived at our condo, the weather changed, snow fell to dust the peaks, and the air took on that special autumn crispness. By the way, no, the mountain's not on fire, it's just a Colorado sunset.

We watched movies, shopped, sewed, hiked, and slept late. It was wonderful.

Back home, the changing of the seasons makes we want to get in the kitchen again. I think it's the chance to cook up things I haven't cooked in awhile. To me, fall is the time to bake, make soup, and cuddle in with all those comfort foods. In honor of fall, I made up some mixes this weekend that help me with the baking and cuddling. For info. on where the recipes came from, see this post. From left to right, hot chocolate mix, oatmeal mix, cookie mix, granola, and biscuit mix.

From my spot at the computer, I can see the maple tree out my back door is turning red today. I think I'll go walk the dog now and get some more autumn inspiration. Enjoy your week, everyone!

Men's Dress Shirt Re-Do

Here's my first attempt at re-fashioning a men's dress shirt. There's so many examples on the web that inspired me, that I had to try it. In the end, I like it, but it did take me a little longer to do than I had hoped. That's probably because it wasn't that much bigger than my normal size, so I had to sew in some triangular pieces of fabric under the armholes to make the armholes small enough. Then I re-shaped the top of the cut off sleeves to give a more feminine gathered cap, cut straight across the bottom for the hem, and added bias tape inside to give me an elastic empire waist. If you try an elastic waist, make sure you add it directly in line with a button, so the elastic doesn't pull a gap in the front button band. I was quite pleased with myself for figuring this out BEFORE I had to rip and re-stitch! Sometimes I amaze myself.

And in the true spirit of recycling, I made the leftover cut-off sleeve parts into dog toys. I stuffed them with orphaned socks and stitched up the ends. Although they weren't pretty enough to take a photo of, my puppy didn't seem to mind that. She's busy chewing one of them right now.

On My URGENT To-Do List

I ask you: who would NOT want this on their to-do list? Find the recipe, along with tons (referring to the number of ideas, not the weight you would gain by trying them all...) of other tempting ideas at Bakerella's incredible blog:

http://www.bakerella.com/chocolate-chip-cookie-pie…-oh-my/