Apron for Cresy

Growing up in my family, we had a Christmas tradition of making homemade gifts for each other. A month or two before Christmas we would draw names and then make a homemade gift for that person. After a few years, we started a rotation. My sister had drawn my Padre's name for the past 3 years and he is one of the hardest ones. So the rotation began and it continues today.

Crescent asked for an apron for her homemade gift. I set about searching my boxes to find some cute fabric that I had to make the perfect apron. I had bought an apron pattern before when I made an apron for Ryan's mom a few years ago. The apron for her turned out okay, but the pattern was not the best. The binding along the edge was done in several strips so there ended up being layers of fabric at the top corners of the apron.

I learned my lesson. This time, I made the ties, neck loop and edges one continuous strip of binding.

Hair cutting cape

One of the first traumatic moments of our marriage occurred about 6 weeks after we had been married. Ryan asked me to cut his hair. I had never used clippers, I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't attempt it again for several years.

Ryan asked me to make him a hair cutting cape. But he wanted it out of "slippery" fabric. I had made one when I was younger as a gift for my father, but it was cotton fabric.

However nervous I was, it was a great excuse to drag Ryan to Joann's as we looked for suitable fabric. This process of looking for the perfect fabric took several months. One day after a shopping trip on my own to Joann's, I came home with the perfect fabric.

Slippery spiderman fabric. I made many phone calls to Mom asking for instructions and advice on what to do. My plan was to use a rolled hem around the edge. However, the "slippery" fabric didn't take to a rolled hem.

I was stuck. I finally gave in and finished the entire thing with bias tape. When Ryan opened it Christmas morning (no surprise this year), our brother-in-law Luke exclaimed "I want one of those"! (One year later, Luke received his own slippery spiderman hair cutting cape.)

Josh, our nephew, wouldn't get his hair cut without the spiderman cape.

Yoda blankie

Every year I make Ryan a homemade gift. I love coming up with an idea and then usually I can surprise him. I had bought this fabric a year before for another purpose. But when the next year came around, I set to work.

It was really hard to find a time to cut the fabric when he would be gone for at least 4 hours. He had tickets to go to a BYU football game at UCLA (i think) on a Saturday. So I spread out the fleece and began cutting. It took forever. Fleece stretches so much and can change shape. The front side is the Yoda fleece and the back is black fleece. Each of the sides had to be cut at 1/2 intervals and then the black fringe is tied to the Yoda fringe. I managed to get it cut and cleaned up before he got home.

I spent the next few weeks at work during lunch tying together the fleece during my lunch break. It was well worth it. He was extremely surprised on Christmas day and loves his Yoda blankie.

Willy Wonka

My niece Brittany loves Willy Wonka. For that matter, she loves anything Tim Burton. For her birthday party, she wanted to dress up like Willy Wonka. So her grandmother bought the fabric and I set off to make the Willy Wonka outfit. It turned out okay. I didn't have time to make a vest, but the jacket and hat looked good. She wore it in the city parade at Christmas time as well and handed out candy to the kids.

Shag quilts

My mom told me about this great new look she had seen for quilts and blankets. Shag quilts I think. My brain got thinking and I decided it would be fun to make doll quilts for my nieces out of leftover flannel scraps.

I'm such a planner, that I actually worked out the pattern in an excel spreadsheet. I wanted the random look of each suare being a different size. I ended up making two for my nieces and one for myself. One of my co-workers asked if she could pay me to make one for her daughter. Like I could take money her money when it gave me someone to make projects for. I have all these cute ideas and no kids of my own. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I have boxes of finished and unfinished projects waiting for our baby(ies).

Simpson Blanket

Ryan loves the Simpson's. I wanted to make him a Simpson's blanket ever since we got married. I searched all over for Simpson fabric. I couldn't find it anywhere. I couldn't even find a website that carried Simpson Fabric.

One spectacular day at the Ogden DI, I found a Simpson's flat twin sheet! And for $2! It was in pretty good condition. My creative brain started forming ideas and I remembered my grandma used to turn flat sheets into twin quilts. I was going to make him blanket with that twin sheet. Mom had 2 bolts of royal blue backing fabric and it matched exactly so she graciously donated to the cause. I decided to surprise Ryan at Christmas with this quilt.

I finished my finals and went to work at 11pm one night. 12 hours later at 11am i came home, called my sisters to come over and help. I was going to need their help to finish this before our flight that night. Ryan was going to be home at 5pm and we were leaving for the airport to fly to California for Christmas. We furiously tried to get it ready for machine stitching. I was just going to sew 4 straight lines down the the quilt from top to bottom. It wasn't going well. I no practically no experience machine quilting. I spent more and more time unpicking and time was running out. 5 minutes before Ryan would be home, my visiting teacher showed up at the door. I didn't want to be rude, but I had a really tight deadline. Luckily, she understood my predicament. Finally, despite the crooked quilting lines, I stuffed it in suitcase about two minutes before Ryan walked in the door. I would just finish the edges at his parents house before Christmas.



He was so surprised when opened the present Christmas morning. He stayed wrapped up in the blanket the rest of the trip. He wanted to put it on our queen size bed when we got home.



** Confession - It took me another year before I got around to finishing the edges. Better late than never, right?