Internets......

Oh my goodness everyone! We just got our internet hooked up, and I feel like I can breathe again! (Is it a problem that I feel stifled or oppressed by not having access to the internet? Nah, of course not!)

So much has been going on here, I can't even begin. We have moved into our apartment here (it's a beautiful apartment on the 12th floor that feels like living in a fancy penthouse) although we don't have our furniture here yet, we have been given some loaner furniture to use until our household goods get here.

I have been painting the walls so that when our stuff gets here we can just start hanging things and moving in furniture, I'm not sure if I can do everything before then, but I am going to try (I have paint for the living-room, master bedroom, Isaac's room, Emmie's Room, and the kitchen, that I shipped over from the US in our fast shipment, I haven't quite braved trying to buy Korean pain yet, which I will need to do for the 2 bathrooms, the family room, and the hallway.)

I will try to do a real post later as soon as I can; I have to run to a meeting for Isaac right now, I just wanted to document having the internet again!!!

In Korea

We've managed to arrive safely, yay! Now we just have to get checked into our temporary lodging since we can't make it over to the housing office until tomorrow, and we are all in desperate need of a shower!

Here are some of the 16 bags we have been toting around (8 of which are 70lbs a piece.)

We apparently didn't decide to go with a minimalist approach!


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Thanks for reading!

Catherine

I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane.....

Well, we are on our way (I'm on the plane to S. Korea right now, we just haven't taken off yet!)
I'm not sure what our Internet situation will be as soon as we get there but we should arrive Wednesday morning (Korea time) and hopefully get a grip on what's up then.
The kids managed to sleep in the terminal last night, apparently not suffering from the same issue of being weirded out by strangers walking by while I try to sleep, that I have!




We arrived in Seattle at 1:20 a.m. and then had to check in for our flight at 2:30 a.m. with all 16 of our bags (8 of them being 70 lbs a piece!) and the line for that was HUGE, as it is the busiest moving time of the year for most military families.




Next we had to get through security, and finally we found a nearly empty terminal to get the kids some sleep, and to charge all our electronics.
Poor Paul is the walking dead, and has already fallen asleep next to me, while the Isaac and Emmie have just started to get hyper from excitement (it's 8:00 in the morning now) since they did manage to sleep. (Which also means I won't sleep, since I'm convinced someone must be watching them at all times or else evil plans will be hatched!)
Anyway, I'll be back on here being all bloggy and stuff as soon as I can figure things out, please forgive my absence!
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Thanks for reading!
Catherine

Happiest Place On Earth {photo of the day}

We are enjoying our last few days in the US with a visit to the happiest place on earth!


We have found it as advertised!

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Thanks for reading!

Catherine

LA Fabric District, and a Brush with a Bloggy Rock Star!

We left my mom's house yesterday, which was so terribly sad to do, saying goodbye to my family until what will most likely be next year is always hard, but knowing we will be so far away is heartbreaking! I will be seeing my big-little sister, Sarah for the next few days, since she drove up to LA with us to go to the fabric district, and then tonight her husband Scott with join us for 3 fun filled days in Disneyland, before we drop our car off to be shipped, and we hop a flight out to Korea.

The fabric district was AMAZING! I had been before, (last summer) but we were terribly rushed because we got there just before stuff was closing, since we were really only passing through, and I didn't get to see everything I wanted too. This time we got up at 4:00 am and drove from Phoenix to LA, to be there in time for the shops to open, and we had the most fabulous time!


We started off at the FIDM store where we way under bought since it was our first (but favorite) stop of the day, we are talking about going back on Friday since it was so good! Next we hit some trim stores, and then   onto Michael Levine,

I'm going to take this moment to point out that I have no makeup on in any of these photos, and I have been up since 4:00 a.m. and have terrible hair- not my best look, (especially when standing near my super model sister who did all the same things I did, but managed to look amazing!) But I'm glad we documented! (I have no idea what Isaac was doing in this picture!)


I am clearly VERY excited about the button selection in this photo....

Sarah and I kept feeling silly about the creeper (My husband) who was taking our pictures in the fabric store, especially when half the time I was pointing out "questionable judgement fabric" and it looked like I was selecting it!

BUT THEN IT GOT REALLY EXCITING!!!! I looked across the room at the cutting counter, and saw a very tall woman with cute short hair, and made an immediate bee line over like a crazy stalker (not so casually calling for Sarah to follow me.) 


I knew immediately that the lovely, stately woman was Ashley from lilblueboo, a blog that Sarah and I both follow and LOVE! (Ashley was actually there with Dana from MADE as well!) I felt like a total stalker saying Hi! But I was so pleased to meet her, and she was so gracious and gave us quite a bit of her time (AND a stack of Choose Joy bracelets, which was sooooo sweet of her!) I was so pleased when Paul asked if he could take a picture of all of us, (Having a creeper there paid off Ha, Ha!) as I don't think I would have asked otherwise! 

It was so fun to see someone I admire so much in real life, as she really is an amazing person, and business woman who is actually following her dreams with a lot of hard work and dedication! (She's a total Bloggy Rock Star in my book!)

Anyway, after we let poor Ashley run away, (and Sarah and I high five-ed over meeting someone so cool,) we went on to various trim stores looking for treasures we could use to spiff up our LA fabric finds, and any boring fabrics we may find from the regular stores at home!

 We got yards and yards of great trim and fabric, now I just need to figure out where to pack it all for the flight! Anyway, it was a lovely day, and we are looking forward to Disneyland tomorrow! I am dreading letting Sarah go home on Sunday, as it will make the distance from family all too real.  BUT alas, we will always have the LA fabric district, and having met Ashley (thank you for being so gracious to us, I'm sure you'll never see this, but you were very kind and sweet!) to remember.............


P.S. Here is my haul....

And Sarah's loot...

She spent less then $60 for all that stuff, YES WAY!

Believe it.......

Here are some patches we found at a discount Fabric store here in Tucson.....



I have no idea who had these produced, but I die.

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Thanks for reading!

Catherine

A Summery Sundress - a tutorial brought home...

I thought I would post the guest tutorial I did earlier this summer for Project Run and Play here, so that I had a record of it on my blog! So here is my Summery Sundress brought home.........

Hi everyone! I'm Catherine and I blog over at cathgrace, and I am so happy to be here at Project Run and Play sharing a project with you today! I have loved following and participating in the sew along flickr group over the last two seasons, and have enjoyed the push to keep up with my sewing while finishing up some schooling over the last little while. In my everyday life I am an Air Force wife and mother of 2 that dabbles in home decorating, up-cycling furniture, weaving and almost any type of crafting; but more than anything I LOVE to sew (which I have done almost daily since I was 13 years-old.) My children are my favorite subjects to sew for, since they are always super excited to get anything I have made, and the clothes I make them get more wear then almost anything they have! (They are also super excited to tell anyone and everyone that I made what they are wearing, how long do you think that will last before they are mortified to be wearing homemade clothes?)

Today I am sharing a quick and comfy summer sundress with you all that I made without a pattern - in just a couple of hours, (which is always so satisfying, I love instant gratification projects!)

To start this dress I took one of my daughter's t-shirts and folded it in half and traced it onto my fabric (in this case a stripy cotton knit) also on the fold. I followed the t-shirt's shoulder onto natural curve of the sleeve until it went a couple of inches off the shoulder to make a short dolman sleeve, making sure I cut back in time to follow the curve of the underarm seam. After cutting one piece out, I used the first stripy piece as a pattern to cut the second piece. (Make sure you match up your stripes!)  

I cut the neck of one of the pieces an inch lower for the front of the top. After both top pieces were cut out, I serged both shoulder seams, both side seams, and along the bottom edge (you could do this with a stretch stitch if you don't have a serger.) 

After all the serging was done I folded the neck and arm edges in and sewed along the edges to finish them (I used a coverstitch machine, but twin needles on a regular sewing machine would do the same thing, the main goal here is a finished edge that can still stretch so you don't pop stitches or restrict movement!)  If you were making a shirt, you would also hem the shirt in the same way, and then you would be done now! But since we are making a dress, we need to move onto the skirt.

For this dress I am using a quilter's cotton for the skirt; to figure out how much I needed, I just measured how long I wanted the skirt to be, and then multiplied it by 2. (If you have a smaller child you may need less) I started by cutting the fabric into 2 pieces x length I wanted the skirt to be, then I folded them both in half and stacked them on top of each other. I used a sharpie and a french curve to trace the shape of the sides and a pocket onto the salvage side of the fabric.  

Here's what it looks like all cut out, I added some very high tech visual aids to show you what my skirt looked like, (I have a 9 year-old that wears 12-slim,) but you can use this same shape in the size your child needs for your skirt.

Here are all the pieces laid out, there are 2 skirt pieces that look like this, a piece of 1" elastic cut to the size of my daughter's waist, and the top we made earlier. to sew the side seams of the skirt, put the right sides of your fabric together and sew down the sides (around the pockets and all) and then serge or zig zag stitch along all the edges. Now give your skirt a good iron on all the seams.

Sew your piece of elastic into a loop, and then fold it into quarters and mark with pins (4 pins total) and then do the same quarter marking on the skirt. now match up your 1/4 pins on your skirt and elastic, and while stretching your elastic sew your skirt to the elastic using a straight stitch as close to the edge of your elastic as you can. (I have 1/2" of fabric under the elastic) I am afraid I don't have any pictures of this process, as it takes two hands to stretch and pull at all the pieces, so hopefully this makes sense!

The end result of this process is a completed skirt with pockets that you *could* be done with if you just wanted to add a hem, without having to do any manual gathering, the elastic does all that for you!

For the hem of this dress I folded up an inch and top stitched all the way around the edge, then I added a pintuck for interest, and to give the hem a little more body. To add the pintuck I just folded 2 inches of hem up and sewed another line of stitching 3/8" over from the last line of stitching. After the hem and tuck were sewn, I steam ironed everything really well.

Next I added the top to the elastic in the same way that I added the pins, with the 4 pins 1/4 of the way around etc. Here is what the dress looks like turned inside-out , you can see the 1/2" of skirt fabric, and 1/2" of shirt fabric meeting up in the middle of the 1" elastic.

And then here is a close up showing what the elastic looks like on the outside,

And here it is the right way up!

I made this in the evening after my daughter Emmie went to bed, so after I had finished it I went and put it on the table in her room - the next morning she came downstairs wearing it and boy was she excited! I didn't have time to take pictures of her, but I didn't have the heart to ask her to take it off! So I just asked her not to get it messy at school so that I could do a photo shoot with her when she got home!

 Emmie says she loves it, and that it is super comfy!

 You can sort of see a peek of her pocket in this one, they are perfectly matched and without any extra seams to clutter things up, so you have to look really hard! I love this length too, even though she always wears leggings with skirts, I still like that she can bend (and berry pick in this case) and not worry about how short her shirt is!

 The back, I love that the top isn't too tight, or too loose, just right for a little girl, not sloppy, not SEXY (I wish all clothing stores would get that memo for children's clothes!)

 I also love this style of sleeve, so comfortable, but stylish.

Anyway, thank you Project Run and Play for having me! I would love to hear if anyone makes one of these dresses, and would like to extend an invitation to everyone to check out my blog! My family is going through some exciting changes right now as we move to South Korea with the Air Force this summer, (I'm actually in transit right now, so I had to write this post in advance!) and we are hoping to settle in quickly and continue crafting, sewing, and decorating our new place, (not to mention touring Asia!)

Yo, Ho, Ho, and a Bottle of Rum!

My quilt that I have been working on with my sister Sarah (she and I are each making one) is finally done (I am afraid I jumped ahead and finished mine before she was done with her's because she is home in Phoenix for the next couple of days!)

We found the adorable pirate fabric at a Walmart, and then filled in the other fabrics from Joann's and a couple of other places.  

I'm sorry my pictures aren't way better, I had to settle for laying it out on my mom's grass since she isn't really set up for photo shoots at her house!

The piecing pattern is one from Moda Bake Shop, we just used our own fabric with their wonderful instructions, although we didn't follow their instructions for rotating the squares, as we took more of a seat of our pants approach to that part! We just used their block directions, and added our own borders and sizing.

The quilting is done in a gray thread and I just sort of winged a crazy, plan-less, free motion over everything. The binding is just one we made from a brown fabric we used in the quilt.

We just sort of made the borders up as we went, but you could always use the Moda instructions too!

We decided that we wanted to make the back as exciting as the front, so we pieced the back together out of our 2 main pirate backs, and then appliqued "YO HO" onto the orange, with an anchor that Sarah drew between the two words!

The fabric is just too adorable, and I actually didn't even get half way through quilting it before Emmie had called dibs, so she happily walked off with it after I washed and dried it, and took very quick photos! Hopefully it will be a nicer travel blanket then the ones that the airline will give us as we fly out in a couple of weeks!

This is not the only thing I have been up to recently, I made my mom some bedroom drapes that I will share as soon as the painting in her room is done, and I have made several smaller projects too, which I will try to share over the next little bit.

I'll leave you with a look at the finished product again,

and as an aside,

MY GOODNESS WHERE IS THE SUMMER GOING?

linked up at,

 SYTYC 

Hey! I'm Still Alive!

I'm sorry I have been so quiet around here, I have been enjoying the last of spending time with my family before heading over to Korea and not seeing them again for at least a year. My mom took my kids to a family reunion for a week while I waited in AZ for Paul to arrive from VA, and by the time he drove here he was too wiped out for us to go to the reunion ourselves! We spent a few days here in Tucson, (doing some quilting and sewing) and then some time in Phoenix tubing down a canal, and going to a major league baseball game (LA Dodgers vs the AZ D-Backs.)

The kids are back now, and they are back to wanting to swim in Nana's pool every hour of the day, and sleeping from exhaustion the rest of the time! My Gramma is flying into town tomorrow and she will be here the rest of the time we are, and I am so excited to spend some time with her! She is a wonderful seamstress, and I always feel her near me every time I sew, even though for most of my life she has been in South Africa while I have NOT been. Her back is not great right now, so I am not sure exactly how much sewing etc. will do together, but I'm sure just sitting with her will be enough for me to absorb her sewing aura!

AAAAAAAaaaaaannnnnnnndddddddd, I have an exciting announcement! I knew about this months ago when I was asked to participate, but since the announcement was made today, I can toot the horn of a new series for boys that is going on this summer called "Sew in Tune"  hosted by Melly Sews and Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!



I am sharing my musically inspired boy's outfit on July 26th; hopefully I will be able to link to it on the day, but since I will have just arrived in Korea a day or two before, I am not sure exactly what I will be able to do - but I will try my best! 
We are sticking around here until the 17th of July before a fun filled trip out to the LA fabric district with my Little Sister, (the one we went to Peru with) where we will spend a couple of days in LA, before dropping our van off at a dock to be shipped to South Korea, and then we will get on a plane ready to start our adventure in another land. I am going to try to be better about updates, I just haven't been documenting things like I should have been, we've been to busy doing rather then recording! My sister and I have been making fun pirate quilts, and we are almost done machine quilting them, which we will share here when done! (I think this might be Sarah's first quilt, and she is kicking butt!) 
anyway, sorry for how quiet it has been around here, I am sure I will more then make up for it when I start documenting our journey to Korea for posterity! 
 

A Moving Experience {photo of the day}

While I am sitting poolside this morning watching children swim, Paul has this view from our house in Richmond,

The slow ship movers are here to pack our furniture and the last of our possessions into shipping crates, ready to be put on a boat bound for our final destination In Korea.

Dear movers,

Please don't break my stuff.....

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Thanks for reading!

Catherine