A Knitted Minion

Do you love the minions from Despicable Me? Who doesn't?!! So when I saw this free minion pattern that someone pinned, I instantly repinned! But I didn't just repin! I actually knitted, and made one for Laura's birthday that was Monday, the 9th.

If you click on the pattern link above, you'll notice that I made some changes. Some were intentional, some were probably a knitting gauge thing, or knitting inexperience thing. Like I'm not sure why his feet look like he's wearing elf shoes.

I made his goggles removable, and one change was to make the eyes out of felt with painted eyes instead of knitting them.

His overalls also come off, so theoretically, I could knit him more outfits. Or maybe I'll sew him some... that would definitely be faster.

The birthday girl was happy!

She named him Frank.

A Celebration

Today has been a fantastic day! Sure, I wore a me made dress, but the reason I'm taking this little vacation and able to participate in the mini me made event is all about my daughter, Laura.

And, if I remember correctly, the Flickr group Friday theme today is "hat".

Congratulations, Laura, on your Master of Arts, Security Policy Studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University!

Great hat!

Posted with Blogsy

Mini-Me-Made-May Officially Started

Yesterday. It was a day of travel, so I opted for total comfort, and wore this ol' thing:

I originally made it in 2011, but this spring felt like the arm holes were too gape-y, and just sewed the side seams together more. Maybe not the official fix but it worked. [Edit: I made it in June 2010! Time flies, right? Vogue 8575]

The picture was taken outside of Red, Hot and Blue, a favorite BBQ joint in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Today, was a very casual, and slightly hot day, so I wore the black kwik sew shorts and the cotton voile jasmine top, both made last year. [oops, let the record show that I made the shorts in 2011!]

We are concluding our visit to the Pentagon Memorial, which is very moving and well done. Blue t-shirt behind me (son, Kyle) and the rust t-shirt (husband) spent at least 15 minutes discussing how the significance of that concrete wall works. The design of it does have some significance. I'll link to it when I sort out how linking works in blogsy.

So... links to all things linkable will come later. I am still a certified blogsy beginner, aka "wow, I am so slow at composing anything on my iPad."

Posted with Blogsy

Simplicity 5030, Version 2

Have you ever thought up a project, and you couldn't make anything else until you've seen if that project can work? Yep, this is one of those projects. Here's how it came about:

Step 1: Daughter Laura cleans out her drawers when she graduates, and presents me with 2 large shopping bags full of t-shirts, and wants a quilt.

Step 2: I make a quilt.

Step 3: There's still a overflowing bag of t-shirts left. What else am I going to do with them?

Step 4: Get inspired by a girl I see at a folk art festival who is wearing a pillowcase-style sundress, clearly made of t-shirts she (or someone) has sewn together to make a new "fabric".

Step 5: Decide Laura wouldn't wear that kind of dress in public, but she might wear a nightgown.

Step 6: Make Simplicity 5030 for myself, and decide it would be a great pattern to use for this project.

OK, enough with the steps... this is a project that just took on a life of it's own, and words just can't do it justice. So, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Sam (the dog) is just mesmerized with the awesomeness!

Happy 25th Birthday to my Baby Girl!

I think that must be a typo! How can she actually be 25?!!

Happy Birthday, Laura!

Fall 2007

June 5, 2010

July 6, 2012

And, for your listening pleasure, the #1 song September 9, 1987:

Images of New York City

It appears that I've been missing from the blog! Not much sewing happening, but that's not the reason. The real reason is that I spent last week with my daughter, Laura, first in NYC, and then with her and her husband, Thomas, at their apartment in Alexandria, VA. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Bonus points if you can name some of the buildings or places and even the dogs. Enjoy...

Me and my friend Amy

You bet!

Is it over?

Laura Learns to Sew

I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season! I've spent the last few days enjoying the company of my daughter, Laura and her husband, Thomas, and their 2 puppies. Chaos! But fun chaos. They left this morning, and my 2 dogs have done nothing but sleep, sleep, sleep all day!


For Christmas, I had purchased Laura a new Babylock sewing machine, so it was time for some sewing lessons! As much as I sew now, I did most of my sewing for kids when they were younger than 6, and then just sewed sporadically, so she wasn't actually exposed to it that much.


Fast forward to this year though, and she had mentioned a few times that "if she had a sewing machine, she could make XXX ". That was enough encouragement for me.

In addition to the machine, I also purchased the Colette Sewing Handbook, which she promptly read cover to cover. She's also an avid blog reader, so she's been reading the sewing blogs too.


And the first thing she made? A pair of clover pants! Really, we're calling these a wearable muslin, but they do fit pretty well. I'll adjust her pattern pieces just a bit, and she says maybe in a year she'll attempt another pair! For her next project, she says perhaps a skirt. The hardest things for her seemed to be keeping her stitching an even 5/8" away from the edge, going around curves, and "seeing" how it was all going to work out in the end. Things seasoned sewists (like myself) take for granted, but it really is just a matter of practice and experience.


Enough about all that though... you just want to see the finished product, right? Right! And I am so proud... they look great!

A fantastic fit in the back! (She is wearing my shoes which are a couple sizes too small... all in the interest of a cute look).


Before you know it, maybe she'll have her own sewing blog.


A final look, with Ella (Sam is the black one... say their names together... yep, you got it right):

Wilma on Wednesday: Chicken Tortilla Rolls

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, if you're reading here in the U.S. If not, I do hope you had a lovely day last Thursday while we were all dining on turkey, watching football, and giving thanks (not necessarily in that order).


We celebrated a small feast at a restaurant on Thursday, and then Laura, Thomas and Thomas' dad came down from Tennessee, and we had more fun Saturday and Sunday.


Saturday was definitely all about the college football for us...

Laura, UGA Redcoat Marching Band, 2007

The University of Georgia played their rivals Georgia Tech (and won!!), and with a kickoff at noon, we needed a basement friendly menu, so chili, guacamole, chips and chicken tortilla rollups made the cut. I don't really know the origin of the rollup recipe, but it's in Wilma's cookbook, and true to form, it's a little vague... I've listed in red what I actually used or did.

Chicken Tortilla Rollups

5 cans Swanson or Underwood Chicken spread (I only used 3 4.25 oz cans)

3 pkgs cream cheese (8 oz pkgs. I used 2 regular and 1 1/3 fat)

1 medium jar Pace picante sauce (I used 6-8 oz.)

1 small can chopped green chilis

Finely chopped onions

Chili powder

Garlic salt

10 flour tortillas

Mix chicken spread and cream cheese together. Add picante sauce to make mixture spreadable. Add the green chilis and onions and add seasonings to taste. (I didn't this time, but I think I've added chopped green olives with pimentos in the past, as well.)

Spread on flour tortillas and roll-up. If you spread it on about 3/4 of the tortilla and tightly roll up, it squishes to the edges and makes it slightly less messy. Chill overnight (well-wrapped). Slice and serve.

The plate above shows about 5 of the tortillas, sliced. You can use any size really, but if you use the smaller ones, you'll need more than 10. This is super fast to mix up, and very popular. The chicken spread is a little weird, but mixed with everything else, it makes a very tasty appetizer!

Dog Sweaters

Hang tight... I'll have pictures of the "wedding dress" at the event itself in a couple of days, but these little sweaters have been waiting in the wings. A little back story... earlier this year I knitted sweaters for Laura and Thomas' 2 little puppies that were not going to get much bigger. Haha. Like any good rescue puppies, they turned out to be something a little different. And bigger. So now their adorable little sweaters looked like they were shrunk in the wash.


Fast forward to a freak snowstorm in October, and reports that the puppies hate cold weather, and I had to get busy. Too late for that storm, but they're ready now.


Basically, Laura sent me new measurements, and having traced a dog coat that my mom had for her little dog, I only had to "grade up" in length. It's a flat style with tabs that go around the neck and belly and velcro shut. I used a sweater knit scrap, interlock knit scraps and batting, giving them 3 layers of warmth. I basted the batting to the interlock, treating it as one piece, put right sides together of the interlock and the sweater knit, left a hole for turning, and stitched around the edge. Then I turned, topstitched to close the hole, and put a buttonhole near the neck for their leashes since they use harnesses. Like this:

I did sew the collar on separately, and I think it is upside down from the original tracing, but it works. You know, they're lots cuter ON the dogs. Hit it!

Sam modeling the sweater side, collar popped, and leash attached.

A good view of how the tabs go around the belly and neck.

Reversible. Looks like a little jailbird (jaildog?).

Ella with her collar popped, leash attached.

Close up of the buttonhole.

The reverse side of Ella's. She's thinking "do these stripes make me look fat?"

"Nah. I'd like a treat now, please. All this modeling has made me hungry."

Secret Sewing Revealed

I mentioned sometime earlier that I was doing some secret sewing, and now I can talk about it, since they were gifts for Laura, and her birthday has passed. I'll just show you one of the things today, though.


A little background story is in order, though. Last year (or 2 years ago maybe) when Laura was going through her possessions to prepare for a move, she brought me 2 shopping bags full of t-shirts, and asked if I could make her a t-shirt quilt. I agreed, because I'm sentimental about things like t-shirts (crazy, I know), even though at the same time I think that t-shirt quilts can look a bit too crafty. Not sure that makes sense, but anyway.


Then Patty made a gorgeous quilt, and said that her inspiration was the new modern quilt movement. I started browsing through blogs of modern quilters, bought this book:

and inspiration hit. (I was going to show you a picture of the exact inspiration quilt, but I can't find it online, AND I can't find my book. Arghhhh! It was a variation on the Chinese coin quilt if you're familiar with that.)


I dumped out all the t-shirts, and whoa! There were a lot! But they could be categorized, and I decided to make the first one from all her t-shirts from the University of Georgia and their Redcoat Marching Band that she was a part of.

 To consolidate the "journey" I've made a slideshow of the quilt coming together...

A final look:

The Front

The Back

Happy Birthday to my Wonderful, Marvelous Daughter!

Today my baby turns 24... years old! Where does the time go? And today, all 4 members of my family (husband, me, daughter, son), are in 4 different cities, and 3 different states. So I drove down to Macon to celebrate Laura's birthday with Kyle. Well, ok, I was going to Macon anyway to bring him more clothes, but it was a good excuse to go out for cake.

Happy Birthday, Laura!!

photo by Nam Nguyen

photo by Thomas Sands

(who is also her husband)