Leah Day Block Party #2

I shared with you the piecing of my second block, here is the quilting.  First up- a video that shows how I quilted it. It's sped up, so it's mostly to get an idea of how I moved around the block:



Here is my finished block. I have a hard time quilting so big. It is so much quicker, but man, small is easier!  I wish I hadn't decided to use red thread last month, because this design doesn't look so great.

And the back:

 

This has been a fun project to do. So often I just stipple on quilts, so it is fun to practice other skills too.

I made something!

After getting addicted to Atelier on Netflix (it's in Japanese- the acting style is weird, but it got really addictive to read it and see such pretty fabrics...) I decided I wanted to learn to sew bras. Turns out it was a huge blogging trend like a year ago, so apparently I'm late to the game.  But that meant Craftsy had a class for it (actually, now 3 of them! I've taken two...)  and lots and lots of bloggers had reviewed a lot of patterns!

I settled on Watson from Cloth Habit.  And I bought a kit from Tailor Made Shop on Etsy. Having someone else figure out exactly what supplies I needed made this easy!

And yesterday I made my very first bra!  (My "dress form" is a bit fatter and a bit flatter than me, since it's a pillow- but you get the idea...)

 

You can see it isn't perfect.  I need to get used to sewing to the very edge of the elastic so the fabric folds over nicely. I missed in a few places.  I also used the wrong elastic for the straps, which then means I used the wrong one for the ribcage band. The straps were supposed to be a pretty patterned elastic, but it looked too thick, so I used a different one. So now the straps just look like elastic...

Another look- this was more successful than the matching bikini bottom, mostly because I learned just how little you need to stretch the elastic.

And my big mistake: I thought I did well with the seam allowance, but I must not have, because my band turned out much narrower than the hook and eye fittings.  I might try to find single hook fittings and switch these out.  But it's underwear, no one sees this!  Except you guys- but y'all won't tell, right?

I have leftover fabric that I am trying to dye, and so far it looks like the fabric is taking the dye beautifully, so I will make a second one. I have elastic in my stash but will need to find all the notions. I might tear apart an old bra that doesn't fit to get the metal pieces, those don't go bad!

I had trouble with a few things on this.  First- I broke two needles. The first one was because I was using my quarter inch foot, and well, you can't zig-zag with that. Oops. The second was when I was sewing the strap onto the bra, I hit a ring. Needles don't go through metal.  The second was with my machine "eating" the fabric when starting new seams. I ended up using a "leader" like you do in quilting- a small piece of fabric that I stitched on, and then lined my new fabric up with it. That worked just fine.

One other lesson learned: when searching "Watson Bra" to look for tutorials or blog reviews, make sure to add "sewing". Otherwise you get photos of Emma Watson in a bikini.

After I make another of these, I'm going to eventually try underwire and foam cup bras. The only problem is the bras I wear are really cheap- and to make those will be really expensive... so it's kind of hard to justify- but man it's so much fun!

Test

This post is just testing a badge for a bloglovin program.  (Bloglovin is the feed reader I use ever since google reader disappeared.)

President's Day Quilt Block

Yesterday I completed this month's Block Party square from Leah Day's block of the month sew along. It involved making flying geese and then sewing them to a rectangle to create a block. I thought "why wouldn't you just sew them to a square and not have a seam in the middle of your block  So then I made this block to see what that would look like.  (I also made up a new design so I wouldn't have two of the same block in my quilt!) Leah's quilt a long has 12 blocks already, so I will either replace one with this block or make a few extra blocks and make the quilt larger.

Today I took a different approach to the video- I recorded pressing instead of sewing! 

I wanted to make this one really quick- it was about 45 minutes total in the sewing room and edited together really quick.  I hope you enjoy this insight into my sewing room!



You'll note that my piecing isn't perfect. I'm still practicing!  When sewing the 3 block rows together I pinned the first one, and it was a little off. So I didn't pin the second- and it was a little off.  SIGH!

Swagbucks

Today is President's day and I'm off work. I made a quilt block this morning (took about 45 minutes)- and made a video of it. I will share it in a blogpost as soon as it is uploaded to youtube.

I also plan to spend most of the day on the couch eating cookie dough and reading Little House on the Prairie books- but first I wanted to see if I could get just one of you to sign up for swagbucks. (They are doing a promotion and I need one referral! But I'd gladly take more!)

To sign up, click here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Skittl1321

Many of you may be hesitant to sign up for swagbucks. I am careful what activities I do, so I get almost no additional spam to my email (or gmail takes care of it for me...) but you could create an email account to use just for this.

I don't spend much time on swagbucks and earn $25-$50 a month. I know of some people who spend a lot more time and earn two to three times that!

An easy way to earn a few swagbucks each day is to answer the Daily Poll, do the Daily Crave, and NOSO.  With NOSO, make sure to select “More Deals” or “Skip if you don’t want to share your information.  Doing each of these will earn you 4 swagbucks each day.
 

To find surveys, on the left of the main page, select “Answer”. Here I like to do the Gold Surveys and the Peanut Lab Surveys. I skip the Partner surveys as they are often long and don't credit. Some days you get disqualified from more surveys than you are able to answer...

In this same menu, you can select Play.  Most of these games cost money to play, but at the very bottom of the page there is Swagasaurus Run and SwagJump.  You get 2 swagbucks every 2 games. You don’t have to play them for real, just open them, jump once, and then “die” (don’t close the window)- that is enough to have it count as played.

Next in this menu, you can click “watch” .  You can watch videos, or another easy thing is “nCrave”, which is a menu on the upper left side.  Encrave requires you to click every 30 seconds; but once you have done it once you can select videos that have a “discovery mode” as indicated by a little arrow in the corner. With this, it will run through the videos, so you can have them open in a different tab while you do other things. This is one of the easiest ways to get swagbucks- although it is good to pay attention because sometimes nCrave doesn’t work.

 

If you are going to be on the compute nGage and JunGroup are easy to multi-task with.  These will pop up a timer and every 35 seconds or so you have to click it.  

 

There is also the “earn 2 easy swagbucks" that shows up on the mainpage. These are super quick videos that you just need to watch and click on once or twice.  I didn’t have them on my screen to take a picture of, but they are usually a girl in a tie or a group of blue stick figures.This is my favorite thing to show up!

Swagbucks also has a number of iphone and android apps that you can run to earn more swagbucks. As well as a search bar feature you can install that randomly allows you to earn a few SBs for searching.

And of course there is shop and earn (but I use ebates: http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=%2By14mx7SJ7RS7KaJtfQrpg%3D%3D&eeid=28187) and then there are tons of various activities you can try and sign up for. But the things I listed above are my bread and butter that I do each day.

Every day there is a daily goal. You do not have to hit your goal, but I try to because you can get a bonus at the end of the month. In a good month I can get $5 worth of bonus! It all adds up.

There are many things you can redeem your points for. Most often we get a $25 Lowes, Target, or Amazon giftcard first- the first card is only 2,200 points. My second gift card each month (2,500 points) is always Paypal. Then I transfer it right to my bank account!

Give it a try:
To sign up, click here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Skittl1321