The Lady Beekeeper

For the last few years people at my work have been asking the gym for a yoga instructor.  This year they’ve finally started to give in and have been scheduling weekly trial sessions with different instructors to find the right fit for our workplace.  I have really been enjoying the sessions.  I’ve described my yoga experiences as a workout where “I don’t really feel like I’m doing much of a work out during it, but the next day I am sore all over”.  I consider that a good work out.  Like when I run I feel awesome after I am done with yoga.  It’s not that endorphin induced runner’s high but more of a sense of inner calm – similar to when I’ve just finished meditating.   Yoga may be my new favorite thing.

The one awkward thing about yoga is that you have to wear the right clothing or you end up flashing people or showing them a little too much rump.  Luckily my mother in law bought me an awesome lululemon work out outfit a few years back that is absolutely perfect for yoga.  The pants are similar to these:

Lululemon Groove Pant III

And let me tell you they are fabulously comfortable and they have this VERY HIGH waistline that prevents any accidental mooning mishaps.  AND they are so clever that they have this built in little pocket in the waistband so you can tuck in a key or ID in case you need it.

Well guess how much this well-designed pair of pants costs?  Drum roll please… $98.  Yikes.  $98 of pants I’m going to roll around on the floor in and get sweaty in!  My normal pants don’t cost half that!

Alright I’m just being frugal.  They really are very nice pants.  If you have the dough definitely invest in some; they will be your new favorite pair of pants.  I don’t want to cough up the money to invest in another pair but I am greedy and want another pair.  With Christmas so far away I decided to attempt my own.  Below I give you my copycat version of the lululemon Groove Short II.  Note that sewing stretch knits is tricky so unless you’re like me and are just doing this for some practice you won’t want to conquer this as your first sewing attempt.

Here’s how I made them:

Copycat Lululemon Groove Short II

You will need:

• 1/2 yard “performance quick dry fabric”** I bought a yard just in case – you can make a second pair with the other half later.
• Pattern below – I am around a size 6 and these fit comfortably.  You’ll also need to cut 2 pieces of 4×6 fabric for the pocket.  See the bottom of this article to understand how to print the pattern! **
• Priscilla of cillastitches.wordpress.com was kind enough to send me her version of the above pattern in PDF form!  It is here.  She says to make sure it is at 100% size when printing, and use the poster option.  Thanks Priscilla!!!

**The lululemon pants use a proprietary blend they call “Luon” which I assume is a play on the words “lululemon & nylon”.  It claims to be: 87% Nylon 13% Lycra Spandex & 40% Nylon 42% Polyester and 12% Lycra spandex.  The stuff I bought is 100% polyester but it feels very similar to the other pair of pants I have.  Basically just get something that is stretchy and breathable.

1. Cut out your pattern pieces – be sure to pay attention to the marks I made on the pattern for the grainline.  Though the fabric will stretch in both directions you’ll have the most give in the crossgrain direction.  In case you don’t know – the grainline I have marked should be aligned parallel to the selvage.  I did not include seam allowance in the pattern.  I recommend adding 1 inch seam allowance so you have some wiggle room on the length.
   

   Add one inch seam allowance to pattern pieces

2. Pin front pieces together at center front.  Pin backs together.  Pin backs  to side fronts.
   

   Pin back pieces together up to marking on pattern. Pin back pieces to side fronts.

   

   Pin front sections together on center front up to marking on pattern

3. Sew each seam together using a straight stretch stitch being sure to stop at the marks I made on the pattern.  You’ll insert the crotch piece here later.  I’m debating if instead of doing a straight stretch stitch I should have done a plain old running stitch baste but I’ll let you know next time.  Make sure when you sew knits (like you are here) you use a ballpoint needle.
4. After straight stretch stitching the seams together trim the seams down to 1/4 inch.  Fold the fabric to one side of the seam and  slant overedge stitched over each seam.
   

   Stitch over trimmed seam allowance.

5. Sew the inner seam of thighs using a straight stretch stitch.
6. Insert a 3×1″ eye shape (plus 5/8″ seam allowance) into crotch area using straight stretch stitch.
7. Trim seams in 5&6 down to 1/4 inch and again stitch over each seam as in step 4.
8. Take pocket rectangle and sew along the two 6″ sides in a straight stretch stitch.
   

   Sew sides of pocket.

9. Turn the pocket inside out and sandwich it between two pieces of waistband as shown.  Pin along top of waistband until you come to the pocket then pin one piece of waistband on each side forming a pocket.
   

   Insert pocket in front waistband.

   

   Make sure to pin the pocket opened.

10. Stitch as pinned with a straight stretch stitch. Open out, pin seam allowance to one side of pants (this will now be the inside) stitch close to the fold, leaving the pocket open.  Reinforce the pocket at either side.  Trim seam allowance.
11. Repeat steps 9 & 10 on the other half of the waistband omitting the pocket.
12. Open out both waistbands again and pin them at side seams.  stitch.  Make sure inside matches inside.
13. Fold band in half and pin to waist of pants.  Stitch.
14. Put the pants on and decide where you want the length to hit.  Fold under the appropriate amount of fabric and stitch.
15. Finally I trimmed where the waistband meets the pants and slant overedge stitched along this line to hold the fabric in place.

That’s it!

One yard of fabric cost me $10 and I only used half of that!  Grand total… $5.  That’s 10% the cost of the shorts on their website!  Not too shabby.  Next time I want to make a fun colored waistband or something but Joann’s selection was limited to grey and black.

**A Note on printing the pattern:

I’ve been busy recently with some other ventures (to be discussed in an upcoming post) and thus haven’t had much time for other crafts.  My list is growing though so I’m going to have some fun things to show you in the coming weeks.  Today I decided to whip up a solution to something that has been on my list for a long time.

The freezer.

As you know, I am a frugal spender in pretty much every department.  Why buy something for more, when you can pay less?  (I think that might be TJ Maxx’s motto.)  The same goes for food.  Every week the grocery store will feature different meats on sale.  So its either – eat what is on sale that week, spend more money on what is not on sale, or freeze a bunch of what is on sale to make at my leisure.  Thanks to our big freezer we usually do the latter.  I also stock premade meals that I’ve made when I have spare time like soups and stocks, sauces, ravioli and chicken pot pie.

All this is well and good, but when I ask Will to get something out of the freezer he gets all concerned.  He doesn’t understand my logic.  He also can’t tell the difference between pork and chicken or ground turkey and ground beef.  I can’t blame him.  My labeling scheme is half-assed at best.  I do put every meat type together in one area to make it easier to find, the problem is Will just can’t identify frozen meats.   So here’s what i have been planning for a while – some sort of labeling system on the freezer door so we don’t have to open the freezer and poke around in there.  I thought about using little pictures of things, but let’s be fair – how do I draw a chicken thigh?

Instead I settled on creating little chalkboards that I could move around and erase.   For example I currently have no beef in my freezer and the portion of the freezer usually devoted to beef is full of homemade pies and things.   Some times of the year I have fish.  Sometimes I am overwhelmed with fresh veggies that I have frozen. This mini-project cost me literally nothing because I had the chalkboard paint leftover from the little chalkboard in my kitchen and the magnets came from a few of the extra 50 save the dates we have leftover and magnets we got in the mail.

Since I was dealing with magnets I also decided to make a couple of magnet souvenirs and a magnetic pin cushion since I’ve acquired way too many pins for my other magnetic pincushion.

Here’s how I made the magnetic chalkboards:

Refrigerator Magnet Chalkboards

• foam roller brush
• flat refrigerator magnets
• chalkboard paint
• chalk

For my other projects you’ll notice I gathered E600 glue, a saucer and some other wooden things I wanted to turn into magnets (taken from the íslenska hamborgarafabrikkan from our trip to Iceland a couple years ago).  And as another side note, aren’t our save the dates cute?  Our friend Caldwell (a professional comic artist and illustrator) made them for us!

Cut magnets into desired shapes.

Roll chalkboard paint onto magnets using several coats.  Wait 30 minutes between each coat.  Let dry overnight.

Season the chalkboard with chalk by rubbing the side of a stick of chalk across the face of it then wiping it off with a dry paper towel.

Write whatever you want!

Oh and here is my super cute pin “cushion”

Several years ago my sister in law gave me this pretty sweater covered in lace.  Technically it wasn’t supposed to go in the wash and was dry clean only, but usually I have no problem throwing sweaters in the wash and then line drying them.  Well I must have accidentally stuck this one in the wash on hot because the entire sweater shrunk.  It looks like a child sweater now.  So I saved the thing thinking it could do something with it.  

Well I finally did something!  I saw this shirt on pinterest and knew it was what I wanted to do with the sleeves.  I used this pattern from Burdastyle: Pullover 11/2012 #128 which I got  for free from their advent calendar give-away!  I started making the shirt for Valentine’s Day but became disgruntled with the pattern.  Yesterday I finally decided that it was supposed to be a bit baggy because it was a sweatshirt and just finished it after setting in the sleeves for the third time.

Here’s some tips about what I did and modified.  First – be sure you use a stretch stitch on your sewing machine and a ballpoint needle for knit fabrics.

When I came to the instructions of creating the sleeves, I forewent that construction and instead removed the sleeves from my old sweater.  This took a while because it is very tricky to stitch rip delicate lace.

Then I set in the sleeves, several times.  The pattern had a much longer shoulder seam than required, so I recommend marking that off before setting in your sleeves, and be sure to BASTE your sleeves before you stitch them.

At this point I also toyed around with taking in the side seams more because it really is a bit baggy, but eventually decided against it. I will probably take it in at some point later.  Also the length was way too long so I took about 3 inches off the bottom hem or it would have been a dress.  Here’s what the final product looks likes right now:

Even after taking the shoulder seams up quite a bit, they are still not quite how I wanted them, but if you look at a sweatshirt, that is where they are.   Eh, I’d give it an 85%.

If someone said to you “I spent last night redoing a mannequin head” what is the first thing that comes to mind?  “She’s gone mad!”  Am I right?  And then maybe “Why does she need a mannequin head anyway?  Is she making hats?” If you did follow that train of thought then you would be right.  I have become a mad hatter who spent several hours working on a mannequin head Saturday night.  And there you have the title of this post.

But in all honesty where am I going to display the hats I have been making recently?  If you said my head – well then that is just plain silly.  If you’ve been to my annual medieval party you’ve seen my hat collection and know I can’t display them all on my head. (Well actually that’s just the portion of the collection that are less anachronistic than the others but who’s counting?)  If you haven’t seen my collection I have about 20 different hats that I have mostly made for the purposes of the party (and wearing to ren festivals).  This year sometime I promise I’ll post about the Medieval Party and how to throw your own crazy bash like that, but for today – mannequin heads.

So anyway, I can’t wear all these hats on my head all the time and the only mannequin heads I can afford (the white styrofoam ones) are ugly.  And the ones that are more expensive are creepy.  Its bad enough I have the ol’ girl (dress form) downstairs looming over me, what I really don’t need are a bunch of creepy heads staring at me too.  So I wanted a head that was cheap, not ugly and not realistic.  Enter decoupage!  I have really been itching to decoupage something lately.  (Yes, that is a real feeling some people encounter.)  For those who don’t know – decoupage is the art(?) of covering something in glue, then sticking pieces of (usually ripped up) stuff to it.  Weird right?  And mannequins are weird too!  I had envisioned a sort of plaid decoupage’d mannequin head.  Here’s my first attempt – it is sort of what I was envisioning, so I’ll try again with another one in a few weeks and post it later.

The best part?  That pretty little head only cost me 6.19!!  I think I will eventually mount it on a stand (yes creepy head on a stand) but I haven’t gotten that far.

Here’s how I did it!

Materials:

• Styrofoam mannequin head 
• 2 oz of mod podge ($1 at the dollar tree)
• tissue paper (about 2 -4 sheets) (also $1 at the dollar tree)
• a foam brush and paintbrush (or your fingers)

Take your tissue paper and rip up into uneven 1 inch x 1 inch squares.  Variation is good, don’t cut the paper.

Apply glue with the foam brush to an area of the head.

Add a square of tissue paper – press down with the paintbrush or your fingers sweeping away any bubbles or folds.

Repeat gluing & papering, overlapping the tissue paper and alternating colors.

Let dry.

After it has dried apply an additional coat of mod podge as sealant.

Voila!

I know I promised to show you my craft room but it is now so full of projects that it may be a while before I can photograph it properly.  Also the February winners of the Martha cookbooks are in!  I’ll have to try out all the recipes!  As always, thanks for reading and commenting!  I love to hear from you all!

I hope you all had an amorous Valentine’s day…

Our front hallway has been fairly boring and white since we moved in.  Painting this area is so daunting that I doubt I could even suggest it to Will without causing some sort of heart malfunction.  So instead I’ve been trying to make the space less boring without the use of paint.

For starters we got some purple and blue rugs.  I really love them, they already make the space less boring.  We also added my old desk from the apartment, a thrift store vase filled with pussywillows, and some assorted decorations from home goods.

Then we added a couple paintings found at thrift stores, yard sales, and even one we received for our wedding.

Then we added a rug and bench to the upstairs space, which was always just sort of open and awkward.

After those changes I was pretty happy with the entrance for a while… until about the 100th time I walked upstairs.  At that point I had been incepted by some pictures on Pinterest and once again thought the hallway was too white.  I didn’t think I wanted more art on my walls, but we have a dearth of photos in our house so I decided a rotating gallery wall would solve that problem.

To avoid having to figure out how to color coordinate all the photos I decided black and white was the easiest, most dignified, way to go.  And of the gallery walls I’d seen on Pinterest, my favorites were the ones with matching thin black frames and large white mats.  I went to several Michaels stores and finally found a fairly reasonably priced frame that I liked.  Strangely each store had a different selection and this particular frame doesn’t even appear to be in their online database.  We waited for a 20% coupon day to buy the frames (which were originally $17 a piece) and got 10 of them for $136.   Pretty pricey, but nothing compared to the cost of real artwork…

After obtaining the frames I stalled for a while and left them sitting on my green bench in the hallway.  Eventually the combination of the boring white wall and the pile of frames cluttering the bench annoyed me into motivation.  I drew a sketch of how I wanted to hang the frames in paint.net.  (I realized later that I could fit 2 extra frames if I spaced the frames a little differently, but this was my starting point.)

Hanging all those frames perfectly straight was going to be a challenge.  To make matters worse, the frames I had purchased did not use picture wire but instead “D” ring hangers.  This meant I had to level the two d-rings before I nailed into the wall, rather than readjusting the frame once it was on the wall.  So I went to work creating 10 paper mock-ups that I could use to measure out frame spacing and nail placement.  I re-used my favorite brown recyclable paper leftover from amazon packaging to create the mock ups.

I first ironed it flat

Then I traced out my 16×20 frame on the paper and cut it out

Next I added the marks for the nail holes based on the d-ring position.  Because the position of the d-rings varied from frame to frame, I had to number each piece of paper and each frame.

I put loops of painter’s tape on the back of each mock up so I could easily re-position.

Then I employed my husband’s help and height.  He helped me level and space all 10 mock-ups on the wall.  (Note that I kept the frames above where a railing would sit since we should probably add a railing someday.)

When I was satisfied with the layout, my husband nailed hooks into the walls right through the mock-ups (I usually use the tools, but even I will admit that I was a teensy bit too short for this task).

I printed 10 8x10s at Walmart (after deliberating for a couple hours) and added a picture to each frame.

My husband then hung each on the wall in its numbered location, removing the paper before hanging.  (Though this seemed nearly impossible to do initially, my husband became a pro at this).

Here’s the finished wall!  I now feel like I actually have something to admire while sitting on my bench!

I’ve been working on revamping my basement corner into a cute little sewing nook that I’m not embarrassed to take pictures of.  I’ll show you my before and after in a couple posts, but the whole thing that inspired me to re-organize was that my fabulous husband got me this awesome wooden thread holder last year for my birthday.  I had all my thread on it, but the stand takes up 2.5×2.5 square feet of space on my desk, which is about half the size of my sewing desk!

Since my sewing room is in my unfinished basement there are no walls to hang anything on.  I guess I could run something from the ceiling, but that seemed like it would be in the way.  What I really wanted was a rolling pegboard.  I was thinking about something like this design, but in order to keep the very tall pegboard upright the legs would have to be fairly side to counterbalance the thing so it didn’t just topple over.  This seemed like a waste of space in my small basement nook.

While I was contemplating all this, Joann Fabrics had a crazy sale on this Gutterman thread tower around Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately it was such a good deal that you could only get it in stores because the online stock sold out instantaneously.  At the time of the sale we were in Nashville visiting Will’s family for Thanksgiving… but I had to have it so we drove 45 minutes to the nearest Joann Fabrics and then had to figure out how to get it home in our luggage.  I didn’t even want the stand because I already had my fabulous thread holder, but when I got the behemoth home the thread spools didn’t fit on my thread holder so I had to keep it!  So now I had another thing to store!

This lead me to more poking around and I found this guy’s plans for a rolling pegboard with shelves for tools!  Perfect!  This seemed pretty practical, though in actuality I don’t think this design would be stable at all so don’t really try it.  Since I was concerned about the stability and material costs are expensive I designed mine slightly differently.

You can see from my rough plans above my frame is built from 2×4’s and is 4 feet high x 2 feet across on the front faces (exactly the dimensions of pegboard from home depot).  The depth of the piece is 1 foot 3 inches (which gives an inside depth of 1 foot).  Several years ago my friends had created and brought an “ice luge” to one of our parties which included a stand built of some crazily screwed together 2x4s.  When they left they told us we could “keep the stand for firewood”.  Its been sitting in my basement for 4 years taking up room so I finally disassembled it and got about half the wood for free from that.  Thanks Joe & Kayla!!

So here’s how I built it:

Materials:

• 4 – 4′ 2×4’s
• 4 – 21″ 2×4’s
• 4 – 1′ 2×4’s
• 2 – 4’x2′ pegboards
• 3 – 1’x2′ pieces of plywood or other wood for shelving.
• 4 casters
• angle brackets to hold up shelves (I used 4)
• screws in assorted sizes

The first step is cutting everything down to size.  My friend Amy recently told me about this device that would have dramatically increased the precision of my circular saw cutting, but she was 2 days too late!  I will have to invest in one for my next woodworking project.

Assemble the front and back faces, use a dog to help. 

I used two pieces of scrap 2×4 and a right angle ruler to align the pieces.

Attach the sides to the front and back faces.

With the frame assembled I screwed the pegboard to the faces

Finally I attached the casters

The depth I used makes the whole thing very secure.  There is no chance of tipping over here. I shoved the thing several times to make sure.

Next I decided where I wanted to position the middle shelf and screwed in the angle brackets (being sure they were level).

I attached shelves to the bottom and top of the organizer with screws.  I used scrap wood for all of the shelves.  The bottom is a piece left over from the kitchen bookshelf project, the top is a piece of particle board used from one of the damaged drawers that were previously part of the kitchen bookshelf, and the middle piece is left over from some ugly shelving the previous owners had in our “man cave”.

The next steps are optional…

After it was assembled I thought it could use a little pizzaz so I decided to paint it.  You’ll see in a couple posts that my craft room is predominantly blue.  This is mostly because I was reusing what I had on hand.  If I had my way it would be pink or purple instead.  So I decided to do a blue to purple ombre paint job on one pegboard face.

Materials Needed:

• 8oz of red paint
• 8oz of blue paint
• 8oz of black paint
• 8oz of white paint
• 1″ masking tape or painter’s tape.
• foam brush
• cups for paint
• polyurethane
• teaspoon

This was a fun art project.  For starters I divided the board up evenly into rectangles. Since I had 1 inch tape and a 24″ wide pegboard I could divide width-wise into 5 columns 4 inches wide.  Height wise it was 48″ which yielded 7 rows 6 inches high.

I marked off the location of the tape in permanent marker and then I applied the tape. 

I made sure the tape was secure and even.

Once the taping was done I began mixing paint.  I decided that horizontally from left to right my rectangles would go from blue to purple.  From top to bottom my rectangles would go from dark to light.  My plan was to start with cups of blue to purple paint and then add white gradually to make them lighter and gradually add black from the same starting point to make the paint darker.  For this reason I needed a “dark” set of paints and a “light” set of paints.

I took equal amounts of blue paint (1 Tbsp I believe) and added it to 5 cups. Next I added red paint to the blue paint incrementally forming a deep purple.  I left the first cup alone, added one tsp red to the second, 2 tsp red to the third and so.  I repeated this process for another set of 5 cups.

I then painted the middle 5 squares with the original blue to purple colors.  

I took one set of colors and added 1 tsp of black paint to the first cup.  I then painted a square.  I added another tsp black paint to the cup and then painted another square  I repeated this process until I came to the top.   I repeated this process for each color.I repeated the same process with the other set of cups and the white paint.  

After it was dry I carefully removed the painter’s tape.  Dany inspected my work

Supervisor Dany

I then applied a coat of polyurethane to seal everything.  

Here’s the finished product – you can see I added some hooks to hang up my ironing board which also lacks a wall to hang on.  

reusable_bag

Thank you for everyone who entered the give away last week!  We had so many wonderful suggestions for ways to save the planet – I’ll give a shout out to my favorites in a later post (perhaps around Earth day…).  By random drawing out of a hat (since we had so many great entries) our two winners are:

Amy & Erin!

Congratulations!  I’ll ship your grocery bag holder and reusable bag off in the mail!  That’s right… your mystery prize is an actual reusable grocery bag so you can cut down on all the plastic grocery bags when you can’t fit anymore into your bag holder!  Here’s a video proclaiming my love of reusable bags (and testing my camera for future uses):

For those who didn’t win this time, don’t be discouraged!  There will be 11 more give aways this year and I’ll announce the February give away soon!  Now – on to instructions to make your own reusable bag….

Reusable Grocery Bag

• 3/4 yard of rip stop nylon
• Polyester thread
• 2 inch piece of velcro
• Pattern here (Its a bit of a puzzle.  Print out all 6, and match up the arrows and tape it together.  (The arrows are labeled with the two papers that they connect.)  I have also included a picture of the final result.)

1. Cut out your pattern pieces below (be sure to size to the 2″x2″ square when printing.  Make sure to cut the bag itself on the fold and the handles on the fold.  You’ll also need to cut out a 5.5 x 8 inch rectangle and 2″x6″ rectangle for the velcro strap.

2. Attach the handles to the bag lining/reinforcement with right sides together.

3. Reinforce the connection by folding the excess back onto itself and stitching again 1/8″ from the other stitching.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the bag handles onto the body of the bag.

5. Fold under 3/8″ fabric on the bottom of the lining to form a finished seam.  Stitch.  At this point the right side of your lining should look like so:

6. With right sides of the bag and lining together pin the bag opening and handles together forming a large “o”.  Stitch.

7. Open out the fabric and finger press and pin the opening and handles that you just stitched.

8.  Stitch once more around this opening on the right side. to reinforce the seam.

9.  On the strap side seams press inward and pin to form a finished seam. Stitch. Repeat with second side strap seam.

10. With bag right side out stitch the sideseams of the bag 1/4 inch from the edge.

11. Flip the bag inside out and stitch the sideseams of the bag again 3/8 inch from the edge to reinforce.

12.  Take your rectangle of fabric and roll 1/4 fabric of one of the long ends under and then under again to form a rolled hem.  Stitch.

13. Fold your rectangle in half to form a pocket and stitch the two unfinished sides together. (I don’t have a picture of this step but it will look like this minus the strap.)

14. Fold the thin rectangle of fabric in half the long ways to form a tube and stitch down the unfinished edge.

15. Open out the tube, flatten and stitch 1/8″ from each side to flatten.

16. Fold under 1/4 inch of each end. Stitch.

17. Attach one side of velcro to strap.

18. Stitch strap to inside top of bag.

19. Open the carrying case right side out.  Attach the other side of velcro to the outside of the tiny bag, taking care to match where the strap will land when closed.

20.  Turn the carrying case inside out and stitch the unfinished side edge to the side seam of the bag about halfway up.

21.  Go shopping!

One advantage of using rip stop nylon is in a pinch you can pull this out of your pocket and use it as a parachute if you’re falling out of a building!  (Please don’t do this. Ever. This is a joke.)  Next week I’ll show you some of the projects I’ve been working on to make my sewing corner feel more like a sewing room and less like a basement!