Sewing Day and the yard sale gem of the day!

Well, yesterday has been kind of a sewing day for me.  Julia once again did her ritual of confiscating my laptop for quite a while.  And I decided to go find my sewn up tubes for the fabric bracelets.  I think I must have sewn them about three to four months ago and they've been sitting in one of my bags collecting dust and crying out for me to finish them.

I grabbed the lot of them and finished putting in the elastic.  Then, I decided to make three new ones with some other lovely fabrics I have waiting for projects.  Some of the fabric I think I just want to leave for photography.  Or maybe I will cut up a huge square large enough for photography and set those aside.

And I decided to whip up a few yo yo circles for the future blanket or throw.  I think that project got started back in November or December and all the circles I cut out have been also collecting dust.  And now, I am starting to sew those so I can get them out of this nice fabric box.  I'd like the box to put collage pieces in and design work for the scrapbook pages.

And the great yard sale find yesterday was a food dehydrator.  I came back and sliced up bananas and pineapple chunks and later the girls and I put in some hot dog slices.  Mollyanne liked the banana slices.  I forgot that it takes quite a few hours of running the machine.  I plan on keeping this one.  I had one quite a few years ago and got rid of it for some reason.

I'm going to try putting in herbs sometime and maybe some flowers.  I forgot that once, I tried putting in soaked bread to dry it.  Soaked in butter and spices.  Yum!  And I probably tried meat in it once or twice.

I keep hoping I will find scrap booking and other supplies at yard sales.  The thing about going yard saling is that you never know what you are going to find.  It's the hunt and the search for that hidden treasure that makes yardsaling so much fun.  And I try to make sure that I don't end up buying something that I'm not going to end up needing or later on find it going straight to Goodwill.  That does end up happening with some of the Ebay items I list.  Not everything sells and it either ends up going to Goodwill or it ends up getting cut up and stuffed inside a pincushion.  T shirts are good for that and outfits that a needle is going to sink into. 100% cotton doesn't work well.  My first pincushions were stuffed with that and the needle doesn't want to stay in.  It's a whole lot cheaper than going to buy the stuffing at Walmart.  Not that it's expensive anyway, but why go and get the poly fiber stuffing when you can be thrifty and use your own?

I remember the days when we used to use nylons and the dryer lint to use as stuffing.  Anybody remember that?  My first Shawn Cassiddy doll I made was stuffed with dryer lint.  And it's a good thing he was long gone!  But it was my first sewing project and I remember sitting in the quilted tent hanging from the clothesline all day sewing the thing.

Well, we had a night of fun in the living room and Julia had to wait while I wrote a post last night.  Then she later got it back.

Mollyanne ended up sleeping down in the living room with us last night.  She came down in the middle of the night complaining that she heard a bee and wanted to sleep downstairs.

Then they were sleeping for a while this morning.  Julia ended up staying up till 3am playing on my laptop.  No wonder she slept longer.

Sean and his Dad went to Canada yesterday for the day to go see an IMAX movie of the new Batman movie.  And then they came back and we all got treated to Chicken Charlie's.  Yum.

I guess I will end this post with pictures.  Julia is patiently waiting for the computer.  I think they want to listen to music on this new site today.  Mollyanne was listening to Katy Perry yesterday and asked me to sing along with her.  So I got singing to Part of Me as I know the lyrics to that one.  Mollyanne wanted me to keep singing and Julia wanted me to stop.  I sing pretty good with music. I'm by no means a great singer but I can carry a good singing voice if I have the music playing and if I know the words.

Mollyanne has recently expressed an interest in becoming a famous singer.  She's 11 so she's got a long way to decide what she really wants to do.  But yesterday, I found myself also telling her that I wished I could be a famous artist or writer.

I got talking about how some people take their whole lives to get famous, and that some just get lucky and get noticed.  I told them about how Van Gogh never was famous while he was living and then became famous after he had died.  They heard about him, so I pulled out my little reproduction of Starry Starry Night to show them and they recognized it.

At some point I found myself reciting some sayings to them.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Practice makes perfect.

And a few others that I can't recall.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted July 29, 2012

The cool find of the day.  I might look up what you can dehydrate in these things besides food.

a bunch of the fabric bracelets that I finally finished.

The three newest ones are in the front.  I should find some of the other fabrics later that I haven't used for the bracelets yet.

The one rubber stamp I found at a yard sale yesterday.  And a little girls outfit that I bought to sell.  I discovered that I had another girls outfit with this pattern so am going to keep the first one for photography pictures as I looked it over and it has some paint spots on it.  So obviously I can't list that one but will list the good outfit.

Two pincushions that I sewed up yesterday.  The girls want them and will probably use them as Webkinz pillows until they later want to use them as pincushions.  The flower container in the background is a simple salsa jar with an elastic around it and I had these planter popsicle sticks on hand and stuck them in.  Another day I want to try one with wooden sticks from outside.  I saw that on Pinterest and thought it looked cool too.  Maybe I could even paint on them.  Food for thought.

The little Avon container I found yesterday.  I liked it for the rose pattern and gave her a quarter for it.  Mollyanne wants it and I told her I will probably also use it for photography.  We discovered when you take the little cover off the top that it's broken at the bottom of the cover.  But it doesn't show, so that's okay.

The little alligator purse that I got at a yard sale.  I'm going to put my basic knitting tools and other neccessities in it that I'm always searching for.  Don't you hate when you can't find something and have to dig for it?  Right now it also has some Krazy glue in it.  We had a broken Littlest Pet Shop dog yesterday where his head popped off and even Krazy glue wouldn't fix it.  So I had to tell Mollyanne she might as well just keep it for their horror videos.  And I guess this next month we will be searching for a replacement on EBay.

More of the pincushions.  These were on embroidery hoops that I got at the yard sales and I cut them out of the hoops as I want the hoops for paper making and the woman's designs were too pretty to just throw away.  So, the designs aren't mind.  I just added the lace edging.

Mollyanne's painted fingernails.  I had her pose for some hand shots for some of my future drawings.  The one below would be nice for  adding butterflies or hearts.  The two pink bracelets she is wearing is from an old preschool dress that she used to wear.

This one could also be pretty for releasing butterflies.

Mollyanne's feet.  She decided to wear them on her feet.

Closeup of the butterfly design someone made.

A pile of my dolls in a bin.  There's the Toni doll, a vintage Revlon, a little antique doll made of sawdust and that bigger one is made in Canada.  She would be cool for Gothic photography.

Two winter headbands I am going to list closer to winter time.  I got them at a yard sale and they are handmade with tags on them. I bet these would be fun to make too.  I've got some patterns for it, but haven't done them yet.

Close up of flowers from my recent walk near the kids house.

My small collection of yo yo's for the blanket or throw.  I think what you do is sew them back to back so you can see the fabric sewing on both sides of the blanket.  That way, there is no need to sew them onto a backing material.  But I've seen people do that too.  These could also be cool for a little pocket book or something else.  Bracelets?

The fabric hoops for paper making.  All I need to do is get my mesh and cut it to fit.  Then you're just dipping them into your trays of your water and paper pulp.  I might try one with dandelions or mint first.  I've got a big bag of paper scraps from all that paper punching week before last.

I'm waiting to do more paper punches until I can purchase a few new paper punches.  I have quite enough of the scallops and the Martha Stewart hearts for now.  And a bunch of daisies and a few of snowflakes.

A cool knitted back pack I got a yesterday's yard sales.  I love the popcorn stitch.  That one is easy to do too.  The girls haven't seen this yet, or else they would be asking to have it.  It will probably contain more of my yarn for a while.  And someday it will be one of their's.

Some of my masks for Halloween time.  Closer to Halloween I think I will do a photo session with this stuff. I bought a bunch of them last year along with a white ostrich feather boa and a pink one.

The mint from my garden.  It's still drying in the pantry.

One of the tank tops I got at the yard sale yesterday and will later be listing it.  I would think someone would like it with the pretty butterfly pattern on it.  I am so glad I got this mannequin form earlier this year.  It really helps to display the outfits.

Close up of the new bracelet.  This would probably also be pretty as a scrunchy.  If I make some scrunchies, I will probably use a thinner elastic that I have for it.