Ember Costumes and Crafts

Here is what 415 basted English paper pieced hexagons look like! The stack of cut fabric in the back right is what I have left to baste. I hope to have around 1300 hexes when they are all basted!

I started this project back in July and haven't made as much progress on it as I had hoped with the pregnancy and the holidays slowing me down quite a bit, but it is a sizeable stack of hexes nonetheless. I've gotten much faster at making them and can pretty easily baste 12 hexes during a 1 hour t.v. episode.

I have also started sewing them together into bigger groups. I hate how uneven the flowers are to arrange, so I've decided to sew them into blocks of 48 in a rectangularish shape. I really need to do more planning, since I still haven't decided how I want to place the land/oceans and how if I want a border and how big exactly is this going to be???

According to CD Designs Website's Hexagon Quilt Calculator, I'll need 1077 hexagons for a queen sized quilt, which is…

This year for Science Society, Jack had to participate in the Science Fair! I managed to talk him out of a complex shrimp-breeding plan and convinced him to do a simple-ish water-testing experiment. We tested 5 home aquariums, 5 wild ponds, and 5 pet store tanks and compared which had the best water quality for fish to live in. We used water quality test strips and an ammonia test kit that we ordered off of Amazon, and got to it!

The complexity of this project wasn't so much in what we were doing, but in how many placed we had to go and tanks we had to find. The wild ponds were easy--there was no one to ask permission or anything as long as the January weather cooperated. We had a few really nice days that Jack and I got to have some one-on-one time going to different ponds and testing the water. 
The home tanks were a little trickier--I ended up asking all the other moms at elementary school pick up if anyone had any tanks and we walked around the neighborhood testing Jack's…

What I'm Reading

This month I read books 4 and 5 from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. I'm a longtime Sci-Fi and fantasy lover, and the Wheel of Time series is considered a classic epic. When Amazon announced that they would be adapting in into a Game of Thrones style high-quality live action show, and when John said he wanted to read it, I decided to take the plunge into the 14 book saga. I started a few months ago, and have been reading about 2 per month, though book 5 is dragging a little bit. Overall I'm liking the world and the characters, but the beginning of each book is always a slow start, and I am definitely getting tired of the men vs. women culture of the world that just never ends. It gets really tiresome when every action by a character is punctuated by "men just don't understand!" or "women are so confusing!" Of course, the men vs. women thing is built into the entire magic system and the hi…

Another baby quilt under my belt, this time for a friend of my mom's who just had a baby girl! Her nursery was "coral" color themed, so I ordered two jolly bars that were on sale from Fat Quarter Shop called "Sweet Marion" from Moda Fabrics by April Rosenthal. I didn't use all of the patterns in the pack, opting to leave out most of the really dark blue and really light pink ones, and I still had plenty for the quilt.


The pattern is a familiar one, I again used Lori Holt's Half-Hexie large template. I was sorta crunched for time so I did a pattern I knew I could handle and do well quickly. I added a white border, backed it in teal minky, and bound it with satin blanket binding. 

The quilting is simple--I stitched in the ditch around each hexagon and then measured an inch in from each line, marked them with a water soluble marker, and then quilted the smaller hexagons inside the big ones. Very geometric, but I like how it turned out! 

 Finally, I used t…

James as Link! He said he wishes I had named him Link instead of James. Sorry dude! I named you after your grandfather instead. 
It was a miracle that I managed to get this done at all considering how nauseous and exhausted I was in the midst of all my first trimester misery during October, but I did it! 

With the belt that Uncle John made, which was promptly removed and lost the night of the Halloween party, never to be seen again. 

It was hard to get pictures of my impatient, wiggling 4 year old just before trick-or-treating! The Hylian sword and shield-backpack I got off of thinkgeek.com. They were on super sale AND I had a thinkgeek gift card, so I paid nothing for them. 


I patterned it from one of his larger t-shirts since I knew that this twill wouldn't have the stretch of jersey-knit t-shirt material. No mockup or anything, just went for it. I've made enough renfair style shirts to be pretty good at this by now!
I struggled with how to add the white decorative design. …

Back in October, my friend Susan mentioned that her little girl was begging for a Little Mermaid doll costume to match her Little Mermaid Halloween costume. And it just so happened that I had all the materials on hand, so how could I resist? It was really fast to make and it turned out adorable!


 In fact, I had all the materials already because I had made a Little Mermaid costume for myself back in 2010, and when my parents cleaned out their house before they moved last year they dropped off a pile of my old costumes. So this was a chance to get rid of something I'm never going to wear again and make something for a sweet little girl. 


The top is made from purple satin and has elastic along the bottom. It closes in the back with two small hook and eyes. 

The tail part is made from stretchy sequined material and green organza, with velcro closure in the back. I'm still not great with sewing stretchy to non-stretchy fabrics, so getting that trip on the top was challenging. I thi…