Book Scrapping...

One of the crafty things out there that I have never had a desire to get into is scrapbooking. Now don't get me wrong... I've seen many beautiful scrapbooks in my day... and every time I think, "Wow, that looks great! But that is just not for me!"



Scrapbooking seems too high maintenance for me. The thought of sitting down and cutting out all of those little bits of paper, gluing them onto the page, picking which picture you'll put on the page out of the hundreds that you have... I don't know. Not to mention, I'm a cheapskate. It seems like it's a hobby that requires a lot of money on ribbons, paper, little clips...you name it!!!

So there you have it. Please don't hate me! But that is why I have never gotten into scrapbooking...



With that being said, I have so many pictures that I want to put into an album that are just sitting in boxes. I also am a pretty sentimental gal so I have lots of coaster, napkins, ticket stubs, etc. that I also want to put into an album. So I've been trying to tackle this project in a non-scrapbooking type of way. I wanted to give you a sneak peak into my idea on what I'm doing here... I came up with a few rules to making the book that I am following.



1- Absolutely no glue or tape will enter the book. Every item that is attached to the page has to be sewn.

2- The "sewn" page only contains items that have meaning to the particular day or situation. Either pictures, fabric from clothing, little sentiments that have been kept from that day.

3- Each page has a typed out description as to what was important about that picture or that day. I like attaching the memory of why this was important or what was meaningful for that day.



I'm working on putting my wedding album together right now. Here is a peek at the first description page that I put together...

This is from the day that we got engaged. I have a picture of us smiling from ear to ear, a tree that I sewed onto the page since we got engaged in the mountains on a hike. I also saved the bandanna that I was wearing when we got engaged so I cut it up and sewed that onto the page. Total cost for the page - $0.29!! That's all the the piece of paper that I sewed it on cost. The rest of the items I already had.

I found these great page protector refills that have 4x6 pockets to store the rest of the pictures from our engagement on the following pages. This way I can put all of my pictures into the book and I don't have to make a separate page to highlight all of them.

I am so excited about this project! Each page has only taken me a short amount of time to put together. I have a few more to do before I finish the wedding album so I'll show that when I get it all done.

Joel Dewberry...

I'm not into name brand anything... for the most part. I don't buy name brand clothes, or shoes, or food!!! Until it came to fabric...

I'm finding myself being so drawn to certain textile designers. One that is probably not new to you, but is new to me is Joel Dewberry. I just love his stuff!!! Especially his Aviary Collection. I've been trying to find a great fabric to recover our dinning room chairs with and this one might be the winner...

Jean Quilt...

I finished the jean quilt just in time for my family to use it! We had company this weekend and I was so happy that I did not have to borrow any blankets from my friends so that we didn't freeze!!

Sorry that my pictures are fuzzy... Unfortunately I don't care to retake them...

For the top of the quilt I sewed together all of the jean squares. I didn't want to to be your average/typical jean quilt so I added two strips of this black and white flowery material in there. There is a black border around the whole thing, but it didn't make it in the picture. It's kind of hard to take a picture of a big ole' blanket like this you know!

For the back I did a strip of jean that matching up with the strip of fabric on the front. Then I just pieced different fabrics onto the back till it was big enough. I think that I like the back better than I like the front.

To quilt it I used my walking foot and just did straight lines down the diagonal of the squares. It was a workout, let me tell you! Some of my lines are... straighter than others... It's going to take a little practice to get good at this machine quilting business!

I'm really happy with this blanket, it's a good extra blanket to have around! I love the memories that are in here. Six years of jeans from Trent and I! Some of my favorite pairs that I wore down to the last thread almost.

Balls of Yarn...

I admit that I spent a lot of my "spare" time yesterday rolling all of my skeins of yarn into balls of yarn.

Why?

I think that balls of yarn just look so much better!!! And yes, I think that it was time well spent...

New Feet...

January has been a slow month for crafts... instead life has happened. It's been a wild roller coaster ride, but I think it's starting to slow down a bit. Refreshing, depressing...time spent with family... both happy and sad times. I've found that instead of wanting to dive into a new project I would rather spend my time cuddling on the couch with my two favorite boys... so I have.

But as the end of January is here I find that something is missing... so it's time to jump back on the saddle. I pulled something out of the "craft dresser" that I am soooo excited to start using!!!

Meet my two new feet...

Some girls ask for shoes for Christmas... I ask for feet! (Yes, I'm aware of how corny that sounds but it's true!) Here are my two new quilting feet that I got for Christmas! One is a walking foot for machine quilting, and the other is a darning foot for free style quilting (thanks Mom!) I've never tried either of these out before so it's going to be good times! Probably more ruined projects before a real keeper, but that's okay.

The first project... I'm going to attempt to machine quilt a jean quilt that I've been working on. Is it possible to do this? I really don't know... I hope so. I'm sick of tying quilts. Messing with the boards and the clamps... so we will see how this turns out!