Drawing Challenge Part 3

   For your viewing pleasure, the next five days of the challenge.

Day 11 is a turning point in my life, and I chose moving back to Ohio from Connecticut after graduating from college.  It was a quick decision that really affected my life from that point on.



Day 12 is my most recent accomplishment, a dress I had just finished making.

 Day 13 was a comic.  I think the intention was a comic strip, but I went another direction.

 Day 14 was my favorite of this week.  It was my favorite fairy tale and I chose The Golden Goose from Grimm's.  I chose to illustrate the princess who had never laughed having a good chuckle.

 Day 15 was a family portrait and I went with a theoretical future family.  Myself and John of course in our little house with our beagle.  I wanted to draw in the style of a children's family portrait with the boxy house and the tree in the front yard.

Day 15 marks halfway through the challenge and halfway through these posts.  I hope you are enjoying them.

30 Day Drawing Challenge part 2

Here is the next week of drawings.

Meg Murray from A Wrinkle in Time.  I really identified with this character growing up and always felt that here description was very much the way I saw myself.  I gave her early nineties glasses because that is when I first read the book and so she has always looked like this in my mind.

 Day seven was illustrate your favorite word, which is a weird assignment because I love language.  I don't really have a favorite word, but this one works.

 My favorite animated character has to be Superman and I chose to draw him the way he was drawn in The New Batman/Superman Adventures, that started to air when I was eleven.  It was a half hour show with two stories, one about Batman and one about Superman.  It was one of my favorite Saturday morning treats.

My favorite television show ended up being a bit of a silly choice.  I chose The Great British Spelling Bee, because I had been recently inspired by it.  In retrospect it should have been Doctor Who.

 And day ten was favorite candy.  This is vegan chocolate covered nougat from Desiderio Chocolates on etsy.  You should try it, it's amazing.

30 Day Drawing Challenge part 1

Remember the Challenge I shared with you in this post?

(Credit to Be Up & Doing, a very cool blog.)
Well, I promised to share my drawings, and today I have days 1 through 5.
Day One is me.

 Day Two is a polar bear.  Because since I was five and my older sister got me a stuffed one, they have been my favorite.

 Day three is potatoes, because is there a better food?

 Day four is my favorite place, sappy but self explanatory.

 And day five is my best friend of 25 years, Camille who writes Gluten Free Soy Free Vegan.

The next five drawings are coming soon, so keep your eyes out for them.

Handmade Skirt

When I was a kid, I made a few pieces of doll clothing from patterns as well as making at least one dress with the assistance of my mother. After that, most of the sewing I did were modifications of garments I already owned, or making home-goods like pillows, tablecloths, napkins, quilts, and stuffed animals. I hemmed pants or altered the neckline of shirts. I have never sewn an item of clothing all by myself, that is until this week. I thought I should start with something simple, so I found this pattern from fabric.com for a very simple 8 paneled skirt. I figured that as long as all I had to do was cut the panels, sew them together, hem the skirt, and insert the elastic waist, that would give me a good idea of if I was cut out to make more complicated garments.
 I got some lovely red cotton crepe and started work. Once I had cut the eight panels I realized that the fabric was very sheer. Being me, I decided to modify the patten, and not in a small way. I decided to make a short underskirt to make the skirt a bit more modest.

I ended up cutting the pattern and cutting eight more panels. I joined the panels at the edges and hemmed the bottoms of both the under and over skirt. I then inserted the underskirt into the over-skirt with the seams facing one another. This had the somewhat unintended consequence of making the inside of the skirt tidier.

 I then followed the pattern instructions, folding over the top of the skirt and creating a sheath for the elastic by stitching almost all the way around the top. Next time I will try to create this sheath while also folding under the raw edge of the fabric. As it is, the inside of the waistband has an unfinished edge that I finished with zigzag shears so it won't unravel. The instructions called to pull the elastic through using a large safety pin. I couldn't find one (until, typically, 20 minutes after I needed it) so I used a paper clip. I just had to carefully push the end through between the strands of elastic. At this point, the pattern instructed to "join the elastic", since it was no more specific, I consulted the internet and found some advise saying to zigzag stitch the two ends to a piece of ribbon, so that doubling it doesn't create extra bulk. I did this, pulled the ends up into the skirt and sewed closed the opening, being careful not to catch the elastic in this seam.

 All that was left was to trim the rough edges and any stray threads I missed earlier.

 It think it came out very well. What do you think?

My current projects

This morning, I shared with some friends the reasons that I have not been posting here much in the last month and I realized I should be sharing this with you.  I am particularly bad at keeping up with posting when I have started things but have no finished product to show.  Right now I am working on a few things that I thought I would share. Think of it as a mini internet roundup with status updates about my own projects mixed in. 

The first thing I want to share with you all is this amazing British television show that I heard about from the blog The Feisty Redhead.  If you read my blog and like my posts about sewing, you will love the Feisty Redhead.  The blogger, Ashley, is a crafter who used to work for Martha Stewart and now writes posts for a few online publications.  She is always making interesting projects and sharing not only the results, but also detailed tutorials about how to make the items she creates.  I am an avid reader of her blog and recently she mentioned the Great British Sewing Bee.  She found episodes of it on YouTube and I followed suit.  The show is about amateur sewers making clothing.  Each episode has a cute tutorial on how to make something simple and some of the finished garments that the contestants turn out are truly spectacular.  I have always wanted to do more sewing of my own clothing, and this show inspired me to find a few simple patterns and get started.  I should have a few finished projects to show off soon.

Next up is 750words.com  This website provides its users with space to write every day.  There are challenges to complete every day of a month, write certain numbers of words, and a feature for looking at your most commonly used words and some data about your topics for each day and eternity.  The nice thing about it is that it allows you to journal and it gives you little rewards every day (even if it is just a completed day on the calendar) without the need to share with the world what you are writing.  I have been writing on the site on and off for over a year but I am back on and trying to write every day.  750 words lets me write about my life, write about my beliefs, plan for future creative writing projects, or creatively write.  It gives me an accomplish-able goal of 750 words every day and getting the daily emails reminds me not only to write, but that I want to.

The last thing I have to share with you today is a drawing challenge.  I found a pin on pinterest of this graphic. 

After some serious searching (come on guys, make sure the link leads somewhere before your repin) I found the original source.  I have taken it on and have just finished day 5.  The challenge will take me more than 30 days because I am taking the weekends off so I can spend time with John and catch up with other creative endeavors.  I have been having fun doing quick sketches every day and having the chance to challenge myself with different subjects.  I plan on sharing the results 5 drawings a time in future posts, so look forward to that.

I am sorry if you have been looking for new posts regularly and I have let you down.  I will continue to try to post something fairly regularly, even if I don't have a finished product to share.  Thanks for reading.