Ember Costumes and Crafts

This doll ensemble was made with the pattern " Medieval Lady's Wardrobe " by Lee and Pearl that I bought off of Etsy. The pattern included instructions for a shift, dress, and cloak, all of which I made. It turned out....okay. It was a lot more work than I expected (fully lined so you basically make two entire dresses), and I definitely had a few problems! I thought about not lining it and just using a petticoat from another project to puff out the skirt, but because the dress is so tight, the lines from the petticoat would have stood out and made the waist look bulky. The lining gives it a much nicer silhouette. The dress itself is made from an old cotton/sateen bedsheet and very fitted. I went for the smooth-front variant, with laces up the back and it is a struggle to get the doll in and out of this dress! I know it's historically accurate for the dress to be so fitted, but this is not an easy on/easy off dress! The other big problem I had was the velcro o...

This year I decided to try and use my Silhouette cutting machine to make Valentines for my boys to get some use out of it other than just making hexie templates for my Catan quilt which is the reason I bought it (used) in the first place. Jack, of course, wanted "Red squids and sharks" but I didn't have a ton of choices of cardstock paper on hand, so I added in some black and blues. I also convinced him to put heart stickers on the sharks and squids to make them a little more on-theme with the whole Valentine's Day thing. I think they turned out cute! I'm not great with the Silhouette machine software by any means and had to look up a tutorial on how to do this, but it has inspired me to try more things on it and venture back into scrapbooking maybe. James wanted Batman Valentines. These are super simple. I love his cute little signature. Jamezzzzzzz Happy Valentine's Day!!

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,...

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 ...