harvest and a quilt

 

Salad, Salad, and more Salad is what we have been eating at our house recently. Lettuce and spinach have done really well in my garden this year...yay! However, we have so much lettuce it's slightly ridiculous. I pick at least two of these bowls, about every other day...crazy right? That's what having so much daylight does to a garden! My friends have definitely benefited from the spoils of the garden!

 We also have been picking radishes! We are currently out of town, but I'm sure the radishes are getting big...they are super tasty too!

I also finished a quilt for one of my best friends. At her wedding she had people write on white squares the messages they may have put in a guest book. I put the squares into the quilt and this was the end result!

 She had picked out the gold and snowflake material previous to the wedding...which was...almost 4 years ago. Yes, it took me almost 4 years to complete this quilt--by which I mean I had the squares for a long time...and then last week I finally put the quilt all together!

 The quilt turned out really well, and I received a phone call from her last night saying she got it--she lives in HotLanta...aka Atlanta, GA...so I had to wait until she got it to post all about it:)

 It turned out to be about a twin size...but not big enough to drape over the edges of a bed...just enough for her and her husband to cuddle under...in about 4 months...it's too hot in Atlanta right now!

 

Sarah

sweet deals and a sewing room

I recently have found some great deals at some garage sales and thrift stores...what can I say I do love a good deal! Above is a picture of the multiple cotton skiens of yarn I got at a garage sale fore .50 cents a piece...talk about a steal, at the store they are at least 2 bucks, even on sale! I use them to make dishrags.

The above fabrics are the groovy prints I found at the thrifts store. Our thrift store has it's own section just for fabrics...it's fantastic! A lot of them are retroish and I can't wait to start using them...but I have a lot of projects I still have to finish. Does that sound familiar to anybody? :)

As I've stated before, we just moved into a new house...and I get a whole room for all of my crafting and sewing stuff (yay!). However, until today, this is what my sewing room looked like...messy, unorganized and not functioning very well.

This is the sewing room post clean-up. So much better don't you think? Eventually I want to paint it a bright, funky color...but for now I'll deal with the peach walls.

I even hung stuff on the walls! This is progress...let me tell you! It also included unpacking a few more boxes, which makes me happy.

I organized the drawers of the dresser I revamped to hold all my fabric.

Red, Orange, Yellow

Green, Blue, Purple

 Brown, Pink, White

I think overall the dresser is working out nicely to hold my fabric...it's not in a great big tub anymore, that would get messy in 2 seconds flat.

I also made some little bags...not very exciting, but nevertheless, they were made by me today:) The bags are made out of some vinyly material I found in my stash, and some ribbon that I just got at a garage sale. What are the bags for? To hold treats for Lucy at the dog park! We've been using plastic bags, but they get thrown out and it seems wastefull to me. The vinyly material allows for quick wipes and doesn't stay wet long...perfect solution in my book!

I know my husband will love carrying around something with pink on it...not really but Lucy is a girl and girls love pink:)

Sarah

whats in the garden?

Summertime in Alaska is awesome! It's my first summer here and I'm loving it! We just bought a new house and are discovering what kind of plants and bushes we have in the garden. By our front door we have this massive rose bush. Regular roses don't really grow that well here but these rose bushes are here in abundance. The roses smell delicious and so I was waiting until the fall when the rose hips come out to make some jam. The other day I was surfing different blogs and found out that you can actually make jam from the petals!

So, whats a girl to do then? Make jam of course! I found a simple recipe online and Nathania came over to help me make it. It was super easy and turned out pretty tasty.

You can make jam/jelly out of any type of roses as long as you know that the petals and plants haven't been sprayed with anything. Because the bush I have has so many blossoms on it, picking the petals took about 2 minutes. A lot of the recipes call for wild roses, so you can venture out and pick those too if you so desire:)

 The recipe didn't make that much, but it turned out great and was pretty easy. It smells de-li-cious...and has a surprising tangy taste. Overall success!!!!

I had previously posted about my seedlings that I had started. Well, we since planted them in a raised bed and they are doing fantastic!

We have lots of lettuce, spinach, radishes and those green onions that I had started from the old roots of ones I had bought are doing great! We just cut the top part and it just keeps on growing.

Close up of the lettuce...not quite ready to harvest, but getting close!

The humungeous spinach...we keep picking, but it keeps growing...saves on the grocery bill:)

Sarah

p.s. we have had requests of signing our names so you know who is posting...we'll try and remember:) We love suggestions so if you have any feel free to comment or send us an email at sewdutchsisters(at)gmail(dot)com

a little pink and purple

What to do on a rainy day? Well sew of course:)

Today I decided to make my very first bunting...yay! I've had some scraps that I liked, but didn't really know what to do with, and I had just found this super sweet vintage fabric at the local thrift store ...so today was the day!

I cut out triangles of both pink and purple fabrics to make it reversable. I got the idea from my cousin Chris at sewintocrafts.blogspot.com...you can see the post here ( it's near the bottom of the post). I didn't have as many different scarps that went together, but I think it turned out great!

This is the pink side...the groovy floral is the fabric I scored on at the thrift store for 50 cents!

And this is the purple side. I've had the wavy fabric for years and didn't know what to do with it...I think it works well in the bunting:)

This is a little bit closer view....I pieced together the binding from other scraps that I had, it gives it more of an eclectic look that I like.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet...any ideas? I may put it in the sewing room for an extra little bit of oomph...but I can't pick which side I like best:)

We linked up to:

 Sarah 

Lets shed some light on it.

I posted these lamps 

awhile back and tonight I finally

finished one up, minus finding the

perfect shade.

I just popped one on

to snap a picture.

 I found them

at a garage sale and fell

in love with their shape.

I sanded it down, gave it 2 coats

of spray paint and rewired it.

I really like how it turned

out, now I only have

to find the perfect

shade!



a bed for lucy

We recently got a puppy named Lucy. She's super cute and very smart so it's made training pretty easy ;)We've been kenneling her at night, which is working really well...she seems to really like it...and in the kennel I put some blankets. The blanket however wasn't the right shape for the kennel and no matter which way I folded it...it just didn't fit right, and I'm too cheap to actually buy a dog pillow:)

So today I took it out and cut it up:)

The blanket was an old fleece tie blanket that had seen better days. I cut the shape I wanted and sewed around three of the edges. On the third side I left the knots. I left the knots so I could get in and out without a zipper.

 Although blurry you can see that I undid about five ties to turn the blanket inside-out so the seams would be inside...kinda like a pillow.

The leftover blanket was the right size so that if I sewed it together it would fit into the inside, kinda like a lining. Lucy gets really hot and loves to tear up pillows so I thought better of putting batting or fill in the inside.

And this is the finished project:

Not a very clear picture as someone...ahem...wouldn't get off of it. I even moved it to another room to take a picture and she followed me and laid down.

At least she's cute right?