{Sewing Tip Tuesday} #12

I've got a new sewing tip for you today! Hooray!

This one is a good one for anyone that does quilting or uses bias tape. I haven't quite mastered bias tape. I've only attempted it a couple times and I have to admit I'm not that great at sewing it. This is one of the reasons I haven't decided to make a quilt yet lol.

Anyway, I got this tip from MeiJo's JOY.  She uses the casing from a crafting blade to make her own bias tape. Check out this picture:

source

She has 2 blades at different widths. Remove the blades and the end piece. Fold your fabric into the shape you want and feed it through the casing. Iron when it comes out the other side. Go check out her blog to see how she does it!!

My Week in Instagrams

Can I just say how happy I am that last week is over?? Seriously, it was non-stop busy and I need a break! Last week was my last week of work until end of June and I couldn't be more thrilled about that!!!

Here's a little glimpse of my week. You can follow me on Instagram {meredith_hautetosew}

1.  Mr. Perfect brought home so flowers for our anniversary. So pretty!

2.  So I have my engagement ring, and my wedding band that runs along the bottom. The intention has been to buy another contoured band one day as an anniversary band to complete the look. Well guess what friends, Mr. Perfect bought it our anniversary. I already got it sized and soldered to the rest of the set. It's so beautiful, I just love it!

3.  Can you believe these twin's names???? I mean really. Nothing like setting up your children for a miserable life right out the womb.

4.  And once you stop laughing at the twins, start laughing at their older brother's name! What is wrong with these parents?!?! This is just blew my mind.

5.  We spent Sunday at Kauffman Stadium watching the Royals vs. Yankees. Part of my gift to Mr. Perfect for our anniversary.

6.  Our stadium got a major facelift a couple years ago and it is amazing! It is so much fun to go to ball games there.

7.  Gotta have peanuts!

8.  We met up with a friend who was part of a group in a dugout suite. It was pretty amazing to get that kind of view.

9.  Had a post-game cocktail on a rooftop downtown. I always enjoy discovering new places in the city.

10.  Last night we had some wicked storms blow through. Huge hail. Tornado sirens going off. Torrential rain. Us, the kiddo, the dog and my mom spent some quality time in the basement bathroom with a pizza. Good times.

There was so much more this week I could have gotten pictures of, but was just too busy! Celebrated a niece's birthday and a nephew's birthday. Work, work, work. Now that I'm done with work for awhile, I'm so excited to have time to get some projects done!! I have a super long to-do list! Can't wait to share it all with you. YAY!

Now it's time to take a breath, and quite possibly a nap!

Anniversaries!!!!!!!!!!

us at my cousin's wedding last weekend

Today is a special day.......it is my 2nd wedding anniversary!!!!!!!!! Since it is a Tuesday and we have his daughter, we can't really do much to celebrate, but that's ok. We have a sitter for a couple hours tonight so we can go to dinner.

I can't wait to share with you what I got/made him for the occasion!! I would tell you about it now, but as I'm writing this, he is laying in bed next to me. His cell phone has him in a trance so I doubt he would look over at my computer screen, but I don't want to take any chances. Hopefully I can find some time this week to show you though :)

Sorry I don't have a sewing tip for you today. I promise it will return next week!

OH, and I totally forgot.........last Friday was my BLOGOVERSARY!!!!!!!!!!!!! My little blog turned 1 year old!!!!! I had intentions on making an entire post about it, but it completely slipped my mind while I was out of town. Not every good planning on my part huh? Anyway, THANK YOU TO ALL MY READERS!!!!!!!!!!! I wouldn't be doing this if you weren't here to support me :)  Love you all!!

Here's another picture of my face for your viewing pleasure

us with my sis and her bf

Hope everyone has a marvelous day!!!!!

My Week in Instagrams

If you haven't noticed I've been a little MIA lately. I've been out of town constantly. My cousin got married this last weekend. Life is just moving too fast. I don't have any time to get anything done, which in turn means I have no time to blog. On the brighter side, this is my last week at work until July-ish so I will have plenty of time for new projects starting next week! YAY!!

Ok, sorry for the rant......moving on....

1.  My sis's bf talks about this "Tasty Tacos" place in Des Moines, IA ALLLL the time. So my coworker and I stopped there for lunch on the way to Minneapolis.

2.  Don't those tacos look like heaven?? The picture is not lying, they were to die for!

3.  Lifetouch corporate offices when my training was.

4.  If you follow me on facebook or twitter you know we made a trip to Ikea in Minneapolis. It was SOO much fun! And by the looks of it, you can see we made off with some loot :)

5.  Fancy chicken dinner at Napa Valley Cafe at the Mall of America. Yum-O

6.  Grooms cake at my cousins wedding. He's a huge Royals fan.....even made their wedding color Royals blue haha.

I can't promise you I'm going to have stellar posts this week, if I can get around to posting at all. Between work, my anniversary (tomorrow yay), my nephew's birthday, my brother-in-law's birthday, my niece's birthday and baptism, dental work, and more work work work, I'm kinda busy. And I'm hoping to get my flower bed planted on Saturday. We'll see if I have any energy by then.

{Sewing Tip Tuesday} #11

Hi all! Today isn't so much a "tip" as it is a TUTORIAL!! YAY! Everyone loves a good tutorial right?

For some reason I did a REALLY bad job at photographing myself in the mirror. It must have been the cold I had last week...clouding my head. Forgive my bad pictures.

Alright, here we go....

Take a pair of jeans you want to cut up and turn them wrong side out. Lay them out on the floor. Take a pair of skinny's you like and lay them on top, wrong side out as well

Next pin along the edge of the top pair of jeans as a guideline for where you will sew.

Then sew about 3/8" in from that line of pins. Don't make your pants too skinny that they will cut your calves in half when you turn them into capris! Make sure you backstitch at the top. Don't worry about the bottom because you will be cutting it off anyway. I used a denim needle and jeans thread, but you don't have to. I did it to match the inside of my seams with what was already there. If your pants have dark thread, I would use dark thread.

Ok, so try on your pants to make sure your legs aren't too tight. If they fit well, cut off that extra flap. I used pinking shears to prevent too much fraying on the inside.

Now you need to decide how long (or short) you want them to be. I put my pants on, decided where I wanted them and then just stuck a pin in the front of my jeans about 2 inches lower than that.....on just one leg. Take them off. Line up your legs and cut them at the pin.

This next part is key to making them look professional, like you bought them from the store. See how the inside seam has the yellow stitching, then that light blue serged edge?

Well I don't have a serger, so I can't serge my edges. You have have one, but all means serge your edges. If you don't, follow these steps....

I set my machine on the #8 stitch. I don't know what it's called, but it did the job I wanted it to. Find one similar on your machine.

Then sew along the outside seam at the bottom 3 or so inches. I used a cornflower colored thread to match the other leg.

It doesn't look exactly like the other side, but it gives your jeans a little something extra to make it look nicer.

Now all you need to do is cuff them, iron them like CRAZY, and tack those edges down. If you need help with this, check out this tutorial on cuffing shorts.

And that's it!! Way to refashion those jeans you weren't going to wear anyway!!

 Don't forget to like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter! I promise I won't hound you about this every day ;)

My Week in Instagrams

I'm back! Bloggy Boot Camp was uh-mazing! It is such an informative conference for a blogger. I left there feeling like my head was going to explode. I was saturated with info. I met some really great people too! I'm not necessarily "shy", but I am timid for sure. I don't just walk up to people and start chatting. That's not my thing. So I was kinda forced to break out of my shell and be friendly. It was a good experience for me.

Anyway, I drove back saturday night when it was over. Then yesterday, the hubs and I did nothing but lay around in our pj's all day and watch tv. It was a much needed, relaxing day. So I'm a day late on this post, but I'm still posting it!

Here's what my week looked like.

1.  I took these drugs like an addict all week and I'm still fighting this cold. I sounded like a 60 year old smoker at my conference. I'm sure it was super attractive. At least I didn't end up coughing while people were speaking!

2.  I mentioned before there's a new temple here in KC. Me, Mr. Perfect, his brother and sis-in-law all went to a tour. My bro and sis-in-law are both LDS and had been up there giving tours, but not on one for themselves. It was really interesting and gorgeous to see.

3. LOL! We like to tease Carmen by putting her "bonnet" on. She looks like she's going to murder me in my sleep.

4.  My hair needed a color refresh. I just love the way it looks when I get done and it's all wet

5.  St. Louis Cardinals Stadium from my hotel room window. I had quite the view!

6.  I've seen the arch a million times in my life, but when I came up to this stop light, it just looked so majestic.


There you have it. My week in a nutshell. Tomorrow I'm driving up to Minneapolis with a friend from work for a training session. I was pretty excited about it when I said I would go with her, but now I'm not really wanting to go. I really just want to stay home and relax, not sit in a car for 6.5 hours one way. Oh well. We are going to go to Ikea on Wednesday after our training so that will make it worth it :)  Expect some Instagrams from Ikea, and frequent posts on my facebook page.

Oh, and I joined the world of Twitter. After going to this conference, I learned I'm apparently missing out by not being on there. I haven't tweeted yet, but I'll get into it. So won't you follow me please? You can click on the link to get to my profile. I'm @hautetosew. I think I did that right. I'm not really sure how to use Twitter yet. I tried to search for myself, but couldn't get "me" to come up. If you have problems finding me, please let me know!

Business Card Altoid Tin

I think I mentioned earlier in the week I'm going to Bloggy Boot Camp this weekend. It's in St. Louis, which is about a 4 hour drive from me. Soon as Mr. Perfect gets home from work, we will switch cars and I will hit the road! I'm pretty excited to learn some new things. And equally nervous. I'm not exactly the most outgoing, social person around new people, so this could be challenging for me. Mr. Perfect suggested I take a flask to help loosen me up lol. I don't think that's really necessary. I just hope I don't end up being the weird, socially awkward girl that no one talks to!

Anyway, I made business cards this week to take with me. They aren't fancy or anything, but I think they work well with my blog design. What do you think?

I feel so savvy having that QR code on there! Fancy right? But does it look like something is missing?? Yeah, that's my email address. I made these and had that "something's not right" feeling, but couldn't figure it out...then when I was like 2/3 done with cutting them, I realized I forgot to put my email on there! DOH! But I suppose it's going to be ok. My email is on my blog, so if someone wants it, they can surely find it right?? At least that's what I told myself to feel better about my mistake.

So I can't just throw these in my purse with a rubber band around it! Bust out the mod podge, scrapbook paper and an altoids tin.

SO CUTE! Now when I hand out a card, it actually looks like I'm crafty, not ghetto.

I suppose I should probably go pack, and figure out what I'm going to wear, and hope I don't have a breakdown trying to figure it out! Wish me luck! Hope everyone has a great weekend!