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Little Mermaid Doll Costume

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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…
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2019 Goals

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This year I'm having my 4th baby, so with a newborn in the house I'm trying to keep my expectations real. Like, survive until August when my two older boys will both be in elementary school all day! But I can't help but want to do all the things, anyway. So here's what I'm looking at: 
 1. Post on this blog once per week  I did pretty good on this last year until that first trimester sickness really knocked me down and I'm proud of that! It's not that I didn't have things to post, I just couldn't get out of bed long enough to post them. This year I'll definitely need a hiatus around May 10, which is when #newbaby (Rosemary, at 19 months, is still "baby" yikes!) is scheduled to arrive, but maybe I can plan ahead and have John get some posts up around that time. 
In addition to that, I want to post more blogging style blogs, like this one. I have a degree in writing and I write all the time privately...but I feel like all of my posts on…
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Butterfly Baby Quilt

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This was a really fun one. I got this  beautiful layer cake from fatquartershop.com called "Grendale." These 10x10 precuts were perfect for the large half-hex templates from Lori Holt, but instead of using them as hexagons, I turned them outwards to make what I thought looked like butterflies! 

First I stitched in the ditch around all the trapezoids, then I got really ambitious and cut out a "wings" template, traced it onto my quilt sandwich, and used my walking foot on my home sewing machine to quilt 27 beautiful butterflies! It was actually pretty quick and fun, even though it looks crazy complicated! 

The back is teal minky fabric, and I bound it with pink satin blanket binding. 
I was excited and happy to gift this to my dear friend for her baby Charlotte who was born just a week before Christmas! 

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Missing in Crafting; Good News!

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Well, this was bound to happen! Whenever I'm pregnant everything to do with my hobbies gets pushed to the wayside. And boy am I! I'm 5 months along with #4, who we are happy to announce is another BOY! He is due in May.

I am still sewing and crafting, but my ability to photograph and post these projects is spotty at best. I do have a few backlog projects to post, and preparations to make for the spring Sherwood Forest Fair, and another baby boy quilt to make! I'm feeling pretty good after a very nauseous first few months, just tired as can be expected. We're all really happy and excited and can't wait to meet our new little guy in May.
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American Girl Doll Camouflage Utility Army Uniform

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This month I needed a break from quilting and wanted to make something for my doll! I had a long-sleeve camo kid's shirt that was too small for my boys and instead of throwing it away, I bought this pattern from Pixie Faire to make an Army uniform! I used up eeeeevery inch of fabric in that shirt and it was just barely enough! In fact, I didn't actually have quite enough to line the inside of the cap, but I made it work anyway. 

I think it turned out great! I also made a rucksack out of some scraps of black canvas. I was inspired by the big green bags my parents had when they were in the Coast Guard. I want to make some cute duffel bags and backpacks for my dolls too, but I haven't had a chance to play around with it much yet. This rucksack was just the beginning! I also think this uniform would look cool in all black, like a SWAT or FBI type uniform. It also makes me want to make a Star Trek uniform for my dolls! 

Jack helped me take the pictures for this project too! I …
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Archive of Our Own

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Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE FANFICTION. I started reading and writing fanfiction in middle school, and even participated in a massive role playing/fanfiction message board for years. (Shoutout to my VH peeps!) I still read and write fanfiction on fanfiction.net, livejournal, and most recently A03.

I am strongly of the opinion that fanfiction, fanart, etc are transformative works; they take what was published and transform them into a new work, and also that fanfiction is an essential way for consumers to respond to our culutre. Fanworks are social commentary, they are community building, and they are legitimate art. Some fanworks have gone viral and for good reason--someone's imagining of the Disney Princesses as real life women says a lot about how we view women in our society and the changes that we wish to enact.

I also believe that once a creation has been released to the world, it belongs to the world. Not like, literally, but that people will respond to it and reac…
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Make a Wish Doll sized Quilts

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I've been doing some major scrap busting to clear out space in my closet between bigger costume projects, and this past week I finished up two doll quilts using scraps leftover from Rosemary's Make a Wish baby quilt.






I was originally going to make a scrappy binding for the baby quilt, but decided against it, so I ended up with a bunch of small strips. The backing for each doll quilt is a fat quarter that came in the pack that I decided not to use in the quilt top, ditto the binding on the strips quilt.



This one was bound in plain white, and is made up of leftover quarter-square triangle pieces. I bound it in white quilter's cotton and quilted it in diamonds. No way was I going to stitch in the ditch again, after breaking 5 needles on that previous quilt!  I gave this one away as a birthday gift for my friend's little girl Marigold. I'll definitely be making a ton more of these to give away! The strips one I am keeping for Rosemary, so when she's old enough for an…
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