Techie Gift Guide- Charging Basket

Between my husband and I there are far too many little gadgets laying around. This simple basket is the perfect gift for the techie in your life.

They can consolidate their phone, IPOD, camera, wallet etc and charge things up without having cords running all over the place.

In the photo above the overall look is a little girly but done with solid blues, greens, or browns and it’s totally masculine. Check out the free tutorial by Oh Fransson here.

Gift Guide- Free Easy Skirt Tutorial

I’ve made the Barcelona Skirt and a couple skirts from “Sew What Skirts” with great results but if you want a free and easy skirt tutorial check this one out.

The tutorial is free and is designed to be used with a twin sized flat sheet. You can find great deals on these at any big box store or you can check out local thrift stores for a cool vintage sheet like the one above.

Any woman in your life would be quite happy with this swinging skirt.

Finally Moved In!

Fall Leaves, originally uploaded by Patch_Adams.

I’ve been quite remiss in blogging lately but I’ve been consumed by the move. I spent over a month slowly packing up the house and then had a mad dash the last two days to pack the remaining items (ie the kitchen and our clothes) up. Last Saturday was moving day and we had planned on having a moving truck, my father’s trailer, and my father to assist. What happened was that we woke up to cloudy and drizzling skies and my father calling to say he was running late. Hours late in fact, and he didn’t bring the trailer. We picked up our rental truck and started to load. It’s amazing how many boxes you don’t realize you have until you have to haul them out to a truck. We managed to get most of the boxes in the truck before our $20 an hour movers arrived to help with the heavy stuff. They cost us $90 total and were well worth it but the pace definitely slowed down after they arrived. My father finally arrived with his brother and the hand trucks. We managed to fill the entire moving truck up in 5 hours. The drive between our old house and our new apartment takes about two hours and it took another two hours to unload everything. We simply dumped stuff where it would fit and decided to sort it out later. We only had the rental truck for the day to Sunday we had to use our vehicles to haul the rest of our stuff to the new apartment. It took us two trips with two small SUVs and we still have stuff in the house! I plan on getting it out before doing our final walk through Thursday.

The past two days have been spent setting up the bedroom and kitchen. Everything else will slowly be sorted out over the next couple weeks. I don’t feel settled in yet but at least we have the move itself behind us. We will definitely have to downsize to fit into this apartment but I’m okay with that. Mostly because I know we will have to move again and I want to have as little stuff as possible!

Inconvenient Conveniences

Luna Moth, originally uploaded by gregp25.

Sorry the post has nothing to do with the picture but I can’t have a pictureless post so I just picked one I liked.

We are getting closer to moving day and have managed to sort through 75% of the basement which is actually a huge accomplishment since there were boxes down there that my husband has been carting around unopened for about 10 years. I may be a packrat but my dear husband is a hoarder! We are both getting better about letting go and hope to actually be able to fit into our 800 sq ft apartment by the time moving day (10 October) rolls around. I’ll be honest, that goal is a bit optimistic, but we will have an attached garage to catch the spill over.

Packing aside I’ve been trying to cancel all our utilities at our current house and start utilities at the new apartment. I thought that Comcast (our cable, internet, and phone provider) would be the easiest seeing as how they advertise the ability to “transfer your services to your new address.” This is supposed to mean keeping your current equipment and I would think save you a new set up fee. But none of that is actually true. What they really mean when they say “transfer” is that you call and cancel your service at your current location and that person will forward your call to the new service area where you go through the entire process of starting service (including the associated fees) again. Is it just me or is this not the definition of “transfer”?

The upshot is the savings we will reap from cancelling our cable entirely. Right now we pay $145.00 a month for internet, phone, and cable. When we move and eliminate the cable our monthly bill will only be $42.00 and my work (which pays for me to have a home office) will reimburse me that bill each month and reimburse me the $128.00 “set up fee.” This fee is communist! The house is already wired for cable! This set up fee is simply covering home delivery of the new modem and them confirming the line is active. The whole process will probably take about 15-20 minutes. If I had opted to include cable this setup fee would have been cut in half. That’s right adding a service to “set up” would actually save me money. This is just one of the many ways the cable companies screw you…

Cutting the Cable Cord

untitled, originally uploaded by randi bee.

I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I are moving and we are moving ourselves. This is not a fun prospect and the reason for my utter lack of posting lately. The sewing machine and my entire stash has already been boxed up although we won’t move until the 10th of October. Since we are moving ourselves and we both work so much I’ve been slowly packing up our house. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and prevents me from thinking about the fact that we still have to load all this stuff up and then unpack it again…

Besides a new job (which is the driving reason for moving) we are also trying to cut down on our expenses and moving allows us to shave a couple hundred dollars a month off of our rent. We have also decided after much discussion to cancel our cable service. If you know us you will be shocked and probably doubtful that we will see this through. Don’t worry we haven’t been abducted and brain washed. In preparation for cutting the cord we’ve purchased a box to stream Netflix movies instantly to our TV ($180.00), an antenna to catch the HD signals from the local and free stations ($34.00) and a small converter box to use that antenna on our Mac ( $129.00). So far this isn’t saving us much money… the total cost is $343.00. Since cable costs us roughly $80 a month it’s going to take us over four months to break even and five to start seeing a real savings. To offset this we’ve decided to sell our small flat screen TV for $100 (we will be using our Mac in it’s place) and our DVD player for $20 (this is being replaced with the streaming Blue Ray player). If we succeed in selling them for our asking price cutting the cable will only cost us $223…. Looking at it this way is depressing so instead I prefer to think about the fact that in a year we will have saved $737.

Playing Catch Up

Bee Modern August, originally uploaded by Indie House.

I’ve been a slacker… well not exactly. I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed by the idea of moving and having to pack everything up and move it ourselves to a new and much smaller apartment. On top of that I’ve been traveling more for work and feeling much less inspired.

So two stacks of fabric have sat rather forlorn looking on my tabletop amongst a sea of cardboard boxes. At first I was simply going to pack them up and finish them later. But that meant finishing them a month or two late! I think that’s a bit much so today feeling guilty and inspired I finally knocked them out. I only made one block for each lady, while I would have liked to do more, that’s all I had in me.

Now I just need to bind one last quilt and I can pack the sewing machine up in it’s cardboard box.

Lessons from the Shred Pile

076: Spring Shredding, originally uploaded by william couch.

I’ve been a little absent lately. My husband recently accepted a new job that includes a pay cut and a relocation so… I’ve been worn a bit thin lately trying to prepare for the move and rework our budget. It will all work out but in the meantime not much crafting is happening. Instead I spent over an hour today shredding documents from the past year. I’m not certain what you should shred but I shred everything with a name and address including offers for insurance, credit cards, requests from charitable donations, and loan offers.

You can actually learn quite a bit from shredding. For instance I learned-

1) Despite having signed up for electronic billing and notification from my credit card company and bank I get more “junk mail” from them then anyone else.

2) National Geographic REALLY wants my husband and I to subscribe again I think I shredded at least five “one more chance” offers from them to get a reduced rate.

3) I “don’t have” enough insurance, the right insurance, and I’m “paying too much” for my insurance

4) The Geico googly eyes are funny the first time and darn right annoying the tenth and eleventh.

5) American Express really wants my husband’s business (there were at least ten offers for him) but not mine. They have apparently figured out he does the spending and I do the saving

6) The little prescription bottle stickers that have my SSN are a PAIN to shred

7) A year’s worth of shredding takes up a large garbage bag and it’s not recyclable (what’s up with that?)

As soon as you shred everything something will come in the mail that needs to shredded and the pile begins anew

Sew What Skirts- Straight Skirt Finished!

Sew What Skirts- Straight Skirt, originally uploaded by Indie House.

I was so excited to create this skirt, so empowered by the idea of drafting my own pattern custom fit for me and now that it’s done…. I feel slightly let down. See how the skirt flares out by the side slits? It isn’t supposed to do that! It should fall straight the way it did here.

It didn’t start flaring out until I sewed the seams on the slits so that must be what is causing it except I followed the directions exactly so it shouldn’t do this. I don’t know if it’s the material or if I should draft it differently next time… The skirt fits well at the waist follows my hips but isn’t skin tight and then it flares. It’s perfect except for the flare and I don’t know how to fix it.

Flare aside the directions were concise, informative and easy to follow. I drafted my pattern using the back of christmas paper (a neat tip from the book) and didn’t have to tape copy paper together. My only “complaint” is that the book teaches you how to put in a regular zipper and attempt to disguise it instead of teaching you how to put in a hidden zipper. While hidden zippers are a bit harder, especially for beginners, they are a necessary skill and create a more polished look.

I will definitely make more skirts from this book, including straight skirts but without the side slits, and I totally recommend it if you are looking to try out pattern drafting and skirt making.

Drafting a Skirt Pattern- Sew What! Skirts

Self Drafted Skirt Pattern, originally uploaded by Indie House.

When I reviewed Amy Butler’s Barcelona Skirt I said your money would be better spent buying Sew What! Skirts because it teaches you to make a variety of skirts including an A-line like the Barcelona. But I said that never having attempted to draft my own pattern and I will admit the idea of doing so was a bit intimidating. After all people spend whole semesters or even years learning the art of pattern drafting- how much could I learn from a book?

The answer is quite a lot. Of course it helps that skirts are relatively easy to make in their simplest form and as your skill and confidence grow you can build on the basics taught in the book. My first attempt was the “Polka Dotty,” a simple straight skirt with side zipper and two side slits. I made mine in a nice, slightly stretchy dark denim.

The glory of drafting your own skirt pattern is that you are creating a skirt that will be ideal for your body so accurate measurements are key. I suggest having a friend do the measurements.

You will need:

A tape measure
pen and paper
Marker

Step 1:

You will need to measure your “waist,” hips, and the distance from waist to hips. Where you put your waist is entirely up to you, I placed mine about an inch below my belly button. Since this is arbitrary I suggest making a small mark on your skin with the marker.

Step 2:

Measure your hips. This measurement should be taken at the fullest point of your hips, usually indicated by where your buttocks protrude the most. Again place a small mark on your skin indicating where you took this measurement directly below where you placed the mark for your waist measurement.

Step 3:

Measure the distance between your waist and hips. If you decide not to use the marks it may be hard to get an accurate measurement because you may have forgotten where exactly you defined your “waist.”

Step 4:

These measurements will become the building blocks of all you future skirt patterns so accuracy is key. To these measurement you will add your seam allowance and ease.

Most commercial patterns use a 5/8 in seam allowance but you may find it simpler to use 1/2 in. If you find the skirt is to tight you could reduce the seam allowance but be careful there is a reason most seamtresses use 1/2- 5/8 in allowance.

The amount of ease is entirely up to you, your body shape and the type of skirt you are drafting. For my straight skirt I wanted it fairly form fitting but not skin tight.

To recap:

Waist = waist measurement + seam allowance (SA)+ ease then divide by four (for fabric cut from a folded fabric)

Hip = hip measurement + SA+ ease then divide by four

Waist to Hip = waist to hip measurement + SA at waist

Length= desired length + hem + SA at waist

Step 5:

Draft pattern using these measurements.

Sunday Stash- Munki Munki Addiction

canonjuly09 002, originally uploaded by Indie House.

I can’t help myself, I NEED them! I’m still on the hunt for the bicycles so if you see them please let me know.