how I make time for sewing

I must share my new sun visor with you! Some of you may have seen this on Instagram, but the pattern is so great that I just have to share a link to the free tutorial. I set out looking for a pattern for this because I tan super easily and I try not to tan my face at all. I wear good sunscreen on my face, but it still tans and I was getting raccoon eyes from my sunglasses and my skin just wasn't looking pretty. I wanted a visor, not a hat because I wanted to be able to wear my hair up and hats always fit awkwardly with buns or ponytails.

It didn't take much searching to find this free tutorial. It's great because it's wide brimmed and covers the ears too!
Here's how mine turned out.

I can't wait to make a few more! I think I black linen one would be classy and nice. Especially once I find a fabric to try the Bombshell bathing suit pattern!

I was asked in the comments recently to possibly write a post on how I squeeze in so much time for sewing. I have thought about that questions all week!

I think there are a few things in my favor, such as being home most of the time, not having a busy schedule (I am extremely selective about extracurriculars for the kids and commitments for myself because I do not thrive on being overly busy), as well as being a pretty fast sewer. I've been afraid before that if I post too many sewn things, people will think I just ignore my kids and sew all day. Ha! That's obviously not the case. I think there are a few deeper reasons that I get a lot of sewing in too. My kids self-entertain really well. I think this is true of many homeschoolers, just because of our lifestyle. We do school in the morning hours, run an errand maybe, and then afternoons are free time. I exercise in the afternoons, get some sewing in if I want and then clean up the house and start dinner. That's our loose routine. I get more sewing time on the weekends, which again, we work hard at not booking too full to enjoy. Also, I enjoy good health and when you're not tired all the time, like many Americans these days, you have energy for things you like to do. I really think the reason people don't invest in hobbies is more that they're exhausted than that they don't have time!! So when they do have time, they can only veg out or sleep! If you feel like you never have energy for the things you want to do, I'd suggest taking a look at your health habits and make some small changes to your lifestyle. Lastly, I have a super hard time sitting around, that's just how I'm wired! Casey laughs because I can't even watch TV at night without some hand sewing or a crossword puzzle. It's a gift ... and a curse ;)

I've love to hear from some other women, working moms maybe, or people whose lives are different from mine about how you squeeze in time to sew!

Bedroom redo and window tricks

I mentioned about awhile ago that I was wanting to give our bedroom a new look. So every week with my fun money, I bought a piece to replace an old piece. First I spotted the perfect bedspread and the rest all fell together in my mind after that. It's too pricey to do it all at once, though, so I just went back with my allowance every week or two and added the next thing. I'm loving how it looks now! My tastes have definitely evolved in the last year! I guess that's the fun part about moving a lot. You get to start from scratch with your decor if you want to. White walls aren't quite the nemesis I used to think them either. It helps that white walls are in style right now, just ask Pinterest ;)

 The bedspread, curtains and pillow shams are all from Target. I love Target. I'm so glad I have one here!! It's so pretty in there. Not like that other big store-that-shall-not-be-named. I think this is the first time ever that I have bought curtains from a store and not made them. (Actually, I found some Pottery Barn curtains at a thrift store once, if that counts.) I made the Virginia pillow out of a t-shirt Casey had bought me when he was training in Virginia several years ago and the Star Wars pillow case on his side, I made. Because I made a lot of novelty pillow cases for lots of kids for Christmas last year and he was totally jealous of the Star Wars ones. So I put one in his stocking :) It doesn't *go*. But we don't care. Ha!

Our bed is on a wall with a window. But there's a door to our lanai on one side that opens in, so the bed cannot be centered right under that window. Before we got curtains, it looked bad--so off-kilter. So I bought the floor-to-ceiling curtains, knowing we could fix this. Rather than framing the window with the curtains, we framed the bed, if that makes sense. You can see below that off-centered window and then see above how the curtains hide it. The curtain on the right is mostly covering wall, while the left curtain covers more of the window. Ta-da! Tricksy.

There are a few more things I'd like to do in here. I want to get those guitar photos printed and frame them up. And I have a beautiful white vanity that is in desperate need of repainting. I'm going to be brave and paint it a color so it will stand out from the white walls. It's going to be fabulous! Maybe a paint project is in order for when Casey leaves town next week. I just need him to haul it down for me first. And then I need to drag the kids to home depot for paint. And they will whine. Blerg.

a whale of a good time! hehe

I finished my humpback whale shirt and wore it to church yesterday with the skirt I just made. I really love this fabric, but I think I love the shirt so much because I made a button down that looks professional and fits awesome. I've made a button down shirt before, but the fit of that pattern wasn't quite right for me and I don't ever wear it :-/

I know soooo many people really love the Grainline Archer pattern, but before spending the money for an indie pattern, I wanted to try some that I had in my stash already. I made a muslin of McCall's 6436 and that's the one I ended up using.

The fit could not have been more perfect and I made no alterations! It helps that this is a pattern with cup sizes, of course.

 I used a darker turquoise thread that really adds interest to the top stitching. I almost went with orange buttons, but the whales are pretty whimsical in themselves. Orange buttons might have taken it to clown level, haha!

I'm excited to make more of this pattern. Button downs are so in style right now and I think if I make a few with sleeves they'll be a great alternative for cardigans this winter in Hawaii ... in the evenings when it drops below 70 ;)

simple top and school room rescue

I think my clean sewing room has made me a sewing fool this week! I can't stop! Having some fabrics in my stash helps too, of course, thanks to Jenn's iPhone shopping and my new fabric store. Speaking of which, I snapped this iPhone pic when I was at June Fabrics. This is the gist of it. There's more behind me and lot more to my right. There is a huge shelf of lace trims and at the register, there are about a hundred peanut butter jars filled with buttons. Ha! In this pic, you can mostly only see Aloha fabrics, but there is so much more! Such a great place and the family who owns is is so nice and helpful and friendly, which is actually the reason I don't like going to the other fabric store in town--they are NOT nice, friendly or helpful. You wonder if they read their Yelp reviews, because I am not the only person who's scared of the people who work there, haha! Fabric shopping should be relaxing, am I right??

Anyway, I had a soft pink rayon knit in my stash from one of Jenn's boxes o' fabric. I finally made it up into my favorite knit tee, the same I used for my favorite feather tee, out of this pajama top pattern.
I think my neck binding turned out spectacular, if I may say so myself ;)

I'm wearing it here with a sweatshirt knit pencil skirt I made last year. So soft and comforable! I like to wear pink, I'm trying to buy more colors that make me feel pretty. Pink is surprisingly tough to find, though, unless you want sweet or floral prints, which I haven't been gravitating toward lately. 

In other news, because my main gig is actually NOT sewing, but is really homeschooling, believe it or not, I spent a few hours making our dining room school space more functional yesterday. 

I was using this little bookshelf for most of our school books and it was just flat overflowing! The shelves are too short to fit books upright, so everything was stacked and it was not working! 

 I knew I needed a bigger shelf, was fine with the super cheap kind, but Target has been out of the white ones ever since we moved in here! They finally got more in so I was able to change this out for the little one. (I think the message on the chalkboard is too cute.)

Under that bench is our record collection! Still so fun. A cheap, educational family hobby :) 

Added bonus, I now get to use the old shelf in my sewing room closet so my fabric has a home, hooray! 

where I'm sewing these days

I just realized this is my 800th post! Aw. I've never actually noticed any of these milestones before, ha! That's a lot of blogging. I started when I was pregnant with Layla, now 7 year old. A blog can become quite special to a person, no? Especially when one's hard drive erases all the backed up photos she felt so responsible for putting on it. That happened to me several months ago, but no worries ... all my faves are on the blog anyway :)

I thought I'd share my sewing room today! I rearranged and orgainized it over the weekend because Casey bought me a little smart TV for up there as an anniversary present. Our anniversary isn't for three weeks or so, but he's leaving town for the mainland for a couple weeks soon and thought it would be nice if I could spend my evenings up there watching Murder She Wrote, sewing and yapping at my kids to get back in bed ;)

Here's what it looks like for now:

 Some of my fabric, cottons and kid fabrics, are under the table in easy-view bins.

 Everyone needs a mirror in their sewing room!

 I have a walk-in closet!

 Yeah, I could use some shelves. These are my clothing and home dec fabrics.

 And this is the ginormous box that my girls have free reign over. I cleaned out my fabrics and was *this close* to donating this box, when the girls spotted it and went nuts. So it was kept and moved and I'm SO glad they have a pile of fabrics to use without having ask me if it's ok. Our upstairs landing ahs a built-in desk where we set up their sewing machine so they have a space to create too. They come up with some pretty great things!

 And I couldn't exclude the view out that sliding door. You can see some tiny tall buildings on the left edge and that is Waikiki. In case you're wondering.

Since we were offered a four bedroom house here, Casey pretty much insisted the girls share the huge fourth bedroom so I could have this little one for sewing. One of the girls in particular was not happy about this at all and I would have given in like a big softie, but he held his ground and I am so glad he did that for me! In the past my sewing spot has bounced around from guest room, to living room, to basement, to right inside the front door, so having a room of my own is a special treat, especially since our downstairs is basically one huge room and the noise levels get pretty up there!

I have great plans for this space to make it even better! I plan to paint the chair green and recover the seat part in a fun fabric. And recover the ironing board also. And hang some floor to ceiling curtains. We are going to mount the TV on that wall at some point and I'd like to buy some fun art from Etsy that I love, but wouldn't really fly in other parts of the house.
Like this Nancy Drew print! LOVE! (source)

And this Jane Austen quote: (source)

Among other such literary loves of mine. I am glad to have that closet so I can keep the room relatively uncluttered. I love looking at great sewing room ideas on Pinterest and I've found my favorites are those that look clean and don't have wall-to-wall bookcases of fabrics and notions (although that can be so pretty too!)

Put your best sewing room organization and storage tips in the comments! What are your favorites thing in your sewing spot?

Happy Friday!

how many of the same pattern can you make before people notice?

My friend Jenn went iPhone fabric shopping for me again and one of the things she sent was this lovely gray twill. I really wanted to make some casual shorter skirts and shorts and especially something to go with my whale shirt (buttons arrived yesterday!) so I got to work on this gray twill right away.

I chose Simplicity 1887, view E

I've had this pattern for a long time, but I remember reading reviews about the shorts having way too much ease and looking rather clownish so I'd put it aside. I pulled it out and thought I'd give the skirt a try and you can see that I did modify it a little:

 I REALLY love how this turned out! It was surprisingly fast to make because it doesn't have a zipper. More on that at the end.

 This fabric has the perfect amount of stretch for a casual skirt and the length is great for my lifestyle here. I have definitely had to rethink sewing functional clothing here in Hawaii because one day can see me at a lunch with Casey's work crowd and hiking a mountainside without a change of clothes. Also, layers, linings, pants and camis are OUT! It's too humid for any of that and the weather remains pretty consistent year round.

 So about those pleats. The pleats in the front and the elastic in the back really made the skirt sit funny. It ballooned out in front and then pulled the hemline up in the back! So I started by sort of pinning and topstitching 4 inches or so down those pleats. That helped a little, but I still didn't like how it ballooned away from my body, it looked weird from the side. So I pinned and topstitched those pleats all the way down to the hemline.  And it worked!!! The fit is beautiful now and the stitching added great detail to a solid skirt. I have plans for another one of these out of a polka dot fabric, for which I'll just fold those pleats out of the pattern piece completely before I cut it out.

 The main reason I love this is because of the elastic, rather than a zipper closure. It's only in the back and side fronts, which makes it still look nice and flat in the front. It made the fit so easy, it was fast to sew, no hand sewing, etc...  And I got to use a little bit of my leftover camera fabric for the facing! We'll call that white serger thread "contrast" instead of "too-lazy-to-change-it" ;)

So, back to my original question, how many of this very skirt pattern can I get away with before people notice that I keep wearing the same skirt in different fabrics?? Cause Jenn also sent me a teal twill that it begging to be sewn up too!

Lastly, since I bragged about the sunset from my lanai, I took a picture to prove it. Unedited! Isn't God glorious?

epic slip and slide

Well, thank you all so much for all the encouragement after my last post! I already feel more excited about blogging after those comments. It's nice to know others are thinking about those things too! I've added several of your suggested blogs to my reader and followed several of you on Instagram, so that's fun! What I've always loved about blogging is the community part of it and it felt like I had lost that for awhile. So thanks again!

I have to share these photos with you because they're too good not to. We had a block party here on July 4th. We've never been a part of anything like that before, but military housing has its perks and one of them is automatic community with your neighbors. Another one is Halloween ;)

I looked out my lanai window in the afternoon of July 4th and saw this:

 The biggest, soapiest, most fun slip and slide EVER.

 Then you walk up the hill and get the soap sprayed off your face:

 The dog piles at the bottom were so funny. Watching dads go down and fly off into those trees was even funnier. It just never got old.

 These are our new friends from church, also our neighbors now! They're newlyweds. Aw :)

Since our neighborhood is on a huge hill (it's so high that my ears pop every time I drive down it!), we can see the fireworks from a clearing on our street. We watched the ones over Waikiki and then went home and the girls could see the ones over Hickam air force base from their bedroom window. The kids say that was the best day ever, which makes me happy because July 4th has always been one of my very favorite days too :)

two sewn things and blogging pressures.

I lost my sewing mojo for a few weeks! And maybe my blogging mojo a bit too, if I'm being honest. I think the blogging world has changed drastically over the past year or two and I'm not gonna lie, I don't love what it's become. I open my feed on Bloglovin' and out of all the sewing blogs I follow, probably half of them are doing the same thing all the time--reviewing the same $25 indie pattern that they incidentally received for free, participating in a blog tour from another indie pattern company, sewing up the such-and-such dress for such-and-such blogger's link-up or the such-and-such sewing network (ahem, Vogue), or whatever. Blah. No offense ... I think it's boring. Even things like Project Sewn, which could be so fun, choose the same bloggers that get chosen for everything else. Why is that? I don't get it. Can we see some skills and ideas from lesser known sewists for a change ?? Do the prettiest blogs always have to win or can those who don't own their domain names join in the fun too? (I am not talking about wanting to be invited myself, I do not sew well under pressure, ha!)

I miss the sewing bloggers that sew from the big four pattern companies that we can all afford, post their free amateur tutorials for us all to enjoy and that include snippets of their real lives too. Those are the blogs I'm having a hard time finding! Are we getting fewer and farther between or am I just not looking in the right places? Are the bloggers with more modest followings and few comments per post getting discouraged because they don't have the time or money or desire to keep up with the changing blogiverse? (I made that word up ;)

At any rate, I'd like some ideas for blogs to follow that fit these criteria! Leave your favorite, but relatively unknown family life or crafting or sewing blogs in the comments so I can check them out!

Moving on :)

I have two things to show you. The pictures are not stellar. I haven't found my favorite photo spot at my new house yet. I miss my brick wall from two houses ago! That spot was so perfect.

The first is a dress I made for July 4th that I really love. I had a gingham from the thrift store that I decided to make a sun dress out of:

 I used the bodice from the Cynthia Rowley pattern, Simplicity 1688, but wanted a more casual skirt so the skirt is Simplicity 2588, a tried and true pattern for me. I like that it's pleated instead of gathered, which gives it a more mature, less sweet look. And I moved the zipper from the side to the center back.

I accidentally made my straps too short! So I got creative and made fabric loops and sewed buttons on to extend them in the back. I used a pop of green thread to sew the buttons on and that is now my favorite part of the dress! A happy accident.

Before that, though, I was making some old things new and made New Look 6285 from the skirt part of an Ann Taylor outlet dress that didn't look very good on me.

 I actually think these photos look alright, maybe I've found my new spot after all! This is my lanai off our master bedroom. You should see the view at sunset!

I bought this pattern because I love how you can mix and match snippets of fabrics, like with this lace and this knit. I wouldn't have had enough fabric for the whole top without the lace inset so this pattern was perfect. It's definitely a looser fit than on the pattern envelope, though, so keep that in mind if you make it. I prefer a loose top in this climate!

In other news, I have found my new fabric store!!!! It is so cool. It's literally an open warehouse in an alley, piled from floor to ceiling with awesome fabrics. If you follow me on Instagram (my user name is nikkischreiner), then you may have seen my posts about that and about the humpback whale print I am making a button down shirt out of! I had to order buttons so I'm waiting on those, but I cannot wait to show you that because it is awesoooome!!!

Cheers! And don't forget to link me to your fave blogs! Or YOUR blog, for that matter! Or your Instagram page, I really love Instagram, I'd love to follow more sewers and blog buddies :)