Lake Tahoe and some

Archana's house decoration

Lake Tahoe trip was an amazing break from the years ' staying home...Samanvita was a joy, even though we were anxious about it... she slept quietly in the back for couple of hours , and later we all enjoyed the ride....

The kitchen in the cabin was amazing, we made lot of barbequed veggies and also the Indian bread 'naan'. Also I prepared the 'Apple Babies' from posiegetscozy.com.

And the moment of wait had come to an end and we witnessed the first snow fall , only it was in the night and by the time we wanted to see again in the morning, it was just raining.

Blast from the past....

I was checking some pictures from the past, and I found some stuff I can write about...  a paint and a wreath I did for cauveri ( Cauveri is Dixit's friends wife), she celebrates christmas in a grand way, so I thought gifting a small wreath would be a good idea. She is the thoughtful kind, she had gifted the oils before, so it was only fair to make her a painting for her new house. The painting is a Bob Ross tutorial project. Painting it with Bob Ross painting tutorials that comes in KCSM. He paints a piece in half an hour, can you imagine that?

One of the Halloween carving s in 2012, got the tools and copied the art work and just carved them.

The 'Bangle and Rangoli art' was something me and my mother came up with  for a baby shower in India. More like showers they throw to the here, in India they do something like 'Bangle and blessings' for the mother to be. This baby shower was for my cousins' wife, for whom we did a small art work as they asked amma to do. The center is a banana leaf, which is used a lot in preparing food and also used as a disposable plate( you can call it organic ). We smeared water on the leaf and kind of carved out the mom and baby art taking the simple design from web. Flowers are drawn on Rangoli with a match stick.

Rangoli is something every woman does in her house almost everyday. She uses a white powder, she may also mix colors to it, or use some flowers , light and any material which forms a  good outline and is at home.

Last couple of weeks have been lots of fun and work. Will write about the in the next blog.

Rose stamp for fabric printing

Last time I saw the roses in my small garden was sometime back, except when Dixit got some red roses for anniversary, I have not been much successful in blossoming roses past few weeks, even though its summer. Also I have not been successful getting any rose printed fabrics for my quilt. I see 'em everywhere in the quilts so far but very less choices on for sale. So here goes my effort to create some roses of my own. Yeah you guessed it right! I carved a small rose on , to make a fabric painted rose.

 

Create a rough design and use fork, needle, and a small scissors to cut of the black parts

 

I used these tools. I poked the lines with the needle. Used a fork or a scissors to cut out the part.  It takes a bit of patience and time. But it will come fine.

The stamp comes out like this. Use fabric paint to paint the top part of the stamp.

 

Stamp the rose into the necessary spot on your fabric. Its simple and effective way to tie up colours or make the quilt your own or any sewing project your own. 

Samanvita picked up on walking very early, I was wondering why? but looks like she observes and very curious about people and things:-). You might have guessed she would be talkative but no, for my surprise she loves to play ! she loves hide and seek , she carries around all heavy objects around the house, plays with water ..putting one cup to other and back again.

Oh I wanted to blog about my first stitching. This one I hand stitched may be back in 2010 or even 2009... from a pattern from New Look.

It was out of the blue...one day I thought I will stitch a new dress for myself and bought this pattern, when I remember how I stitched , I feel how much of a rule-book obsessed I was.

It came out good. I was a very proud to stitch the dress. Will post the picture the actual dress here. I wanted to let everyone know that I would like to hear any comments or if you had done the same thing before please comment with the link or even just a pic.

I am trying to make a new quilt - I have started planning and decided on Farmer's wife quilt. It will be something like this.

I got this pic when I googled it.

So what do you think? Will make an effort to share as I sew.

Today I completed the long awaited Jacket...

Wineous Jacket

 

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/bharadwn/seven-seas---bubblegum-baby-set

Whenever I see this I  remember grapes , So for me this sweater is wine. Its Simple and its was for a beginner, but I did learn many things in this like garter stitch , changing yarn and knitting with dowble yarns. I also learnt to block as this jacket definately needs blocking and also learnt to improve the design by adding the trims and collar. 

There is one cool trick while joining the seams which I learned from you-tube. Also I taught myself the art of joining the trims by picking up the stitches , she shows both row wise and column wise ..it is pretty straight forward once you start with it.

I have used couple of yarns, not sure I should have done that but it turned out great I guess at the end.... Couple from Martha Stewart collection and one from Lion brand. I totally missed the yardage calculation and had gotten less wool and I bought two more skeins of white and gray. The buttons and inner lining I picked from Jo-Ann's. Oh I have totally forgotten to mention the pick yarn which is from Caron Simply soft medium four ply in Victorian rose. May be I could have done without the pink but somehow its like cherry on top of the ice-cream or fruit salad for me. You will find all the yarn information in the Ravelry website.

 Hand sewed the lining using the white 2 ply yarn so there is flexibility on wearing.

A line frock

A line frock - 18months

Feels like its been sometime I have wanted to blog... if you get into my head, you will wine to see me belaboring ... and postponing ... procrastinators rule! everywhere..gosh!

I started on the fabric my amma got me last summer , she got me three of 'em pink red and blue...does everything happen in threes or is it only me and me hubby!

I thought I would start with a A line frock for Samanvita.. she looks so pretty with her cutey legs flapping ,she walk and hops and tumbles.







And my inspiration being something on pinterest.com(of course! duh!)

I cut the pattern in haste as putting it into back-burner would not be such good idea. I had a smaller size paper cut of Sammy for sleeve and neck... from the bandana dress I stitched earlier..

When I was cutting the fabric, I thought of using the same paper cuttings with some modification... I had made this paper pattern from a fitting dress like 6 moths back. I cut sleeve and neck for back and front ..

So started stitching it, saw that I needed to make back button strip... made it by memory of how amma had shown me before, it is tough to do it. But still finishing was acceptable as my first time try. Stitched the sleeve and gave like a lining for the bodice from the same clothing. As the cut was just a guess work, the neck seemed a bit big. thought I will just not meddle by re-cutting and started stitching , it was 3 am... thought I would finish up..then the needle broke! (my luck!) So it was definitely a sign to go to bed...

Then in the morning could not wait to put the dress for a trial .. definitely big necked dress! slump....  Decided to fix the needle and finishing the stitching before worrying about the neck size....

Later added some frills in the neck ( as you can see it would have been a really big neck if had not done so). Actually thought it looks kind of cute with the frills. That night when to San Jose ..she was wearing the dress and looked gorgeous.

Samanvita completed a year! Must say we had an amazing year with her... :-) Stitching the crochet dress from scratch with the design in my mind was challenging but it was wonderful to do that and she glided with it making it such a beautiful dress.

Sammy has always looked like Dixit for me! from the beginning ..Do you guys see any resemblance with me and Samanvita...? I looked like this! May be sometimes... right?!


Have a good day..
Nandita