Sewbot's Laboratory

I've moved

2013-03-11T12:26:00.002-05:00

At least temporarily, I've moved to a new blog. Check out the blog my mom and I have over at 2 Hens.

I may be back at Sewbot's Laboratory eventually, but for right now (at least) you can catch me blogging over on the other site. Hope you join us!

-Jessica

It's been a while.

2012-08-06T15:52:00.000-05:00

This is what I've been up to.

I am the luckiest mama in the world.

I get to hang out with this little cutie all day, every day.

He's not only funny...

but he's smart, too.

He's happy.

He loves Goodnight Moon.

He's a dare devil (sitting up in a chair all by himself).

He loves Sophie the giraffe. She's gotten him through 4 teeth so far.

And he is very loved by his mama.

So, I'm not sewing a ton these days. Mostly I hang out with Daniel and go to play dates. I did get a new toy of my own a few months ago, but have yet to play with it very much. I bought myself a Grace Quilting Frame. My first quilt is loaded onto it right now. :) Hopefully before too long, baby D will let me get to sewing more.

Quilt Market

2012-05-17T07:47:00.002-05:00

Today I'm headed to check out some school house classes at Quilt Market today. It was a year ago now that I presented my school house at Quilt Market. It was so much fun to go and check it out and I am really looking forward to going again this year. I have a million ideas floating around in my head about where to take my business and am hoping to investigate a few things while walking the floor. Hopefully there will be some changes to Sewbot's Laboratory coming soon!

Bow Ties & Suspenders.

2012-05-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

Is there anything cuter than a little dude dressed up? Nope. I think not. We went to a wedding last weekend and Daniel needed something to wear.

I found a few tutorials on pinterest. One for suspenders

Source: makeit-loveit.com via Jessica on Pinterest

and one for bow ties.

Both were really easy to follow and I think it turned out adorable. He might have been the cutest little guy there. :)

Source: thehowtogal.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I made a few things for Easter.

2012-05-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

That was more than a month ago now. Oops. I meant to blog about that. I even took a photo of this project on April 10th. Sorry. My life has kind of been consumed by my little cutie.

Anyway... I am hooked on pinterest and found this little sleep sack tutorial on there. I made it super long (or so I thought) only to put it on the little munchkin and realize, holy cow! He's kicking the bottom of it already!

The tutorial was awesome and it went together super easy. I just can't size things apparently.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Rocking Chairs

2012-03-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

You saw the rocking chair I showed in Tuesday's Tour of Daniel's Nursery. Here's the scoop!

The little chair on the left is my little rocking chair from when I was a little girl. It's still a work in progress as it was recently repaired and still needs to be repainted.

The big chair on the right is a chair that has spent the last decade or so on a porch at my parents'. My dad painted it fresh for us. My mom recovered the pad using the dinosaur print and a print from my stash.

I had planned on spending a lot of time nursing and rocking Daniel in this chair. Turns out we nurse in the living room most of the time and he prefers to be bounced on the exercise ball, so it doesn't get as much use as I had thought.

Before we figured out he liked to be other places better, I had decided we would need several things right next to me. We searched and searched for a lamp for his room. Finally, we were on a stroll at Target and spotted this gem. It's shade was the perfect combination of colors for the room. How awesome is the pterodactyl pull chain? We had to have it.

To have a lamp, one must have a place to put it. We bought this little bookshelf to house some books for the little guy, hold the lamp, and have a spot for a glass of water for mama. Remember the rug? Well, we ended up with a few spare tiles and I decided this one would be used for a coaster.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Rug

2012-03-10T07:00:00.000-06:00

Jason and I struggled and struggled with our search for a good rug for in Daniel's room. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on something we knew wouldn't last for very long. We shopped high and low for something that would be the right size for the room, would be a good place to play with our baby, and wouldn't cost a fortune.

We found a white shag rug that was the right size for the room at Home Depot. We bought it and brought it home. Jason carried our rolled up rug into the room and it hit me. This was the worst rug we could have possibly purchased. All the furniture in the nursery was white. What were we thinking dragging home more white? We needed some color!

I tried to come up with a way to either paint or dye the rug. Then it hit me...

Why don't we use carpet tiles? Jason works for an architect, so we were lucky enough to have the hook-ups. We picked out a few colors that we thought would work nicely with the dinosaur fabric we had for the curtains and crib sheet.

I used duct tape on the backside to attach the tiles to each other. I used 2 strips of masking tape along each edge on the back because we were worried the duct tape might damage our floor. We weren't worried about the tape in middle of the rug because we put a non-skid pad down underneath so the tape wasn't going to come into contact with the floor.

It took about an hour for super pregnant me to tape it all together because I had to stop periodically to catch my breath. We're really happy with the way it turned out. We love the price of it (free!) and love the smiles we get from this little guy when he plays on it.

Tour of Daniel's Room - Curtains

2012-03-09T07:00:00.000-06:00

My mom and I made these curtains for the little guy's room. We used the same fabric that the crib sheet and skirt are made from.

All we did was match up the fabric so we had 2 fabric widths per curtain. I used a glue stick to line up the dinosaurs perfectly. Then we made some piping out of the bright orange and sewed it to the lime green. We lined it with a light grey marbled print I had laying around in my stash. Made a tube for the rod to go through and presto! We had cute little curtains to match the crib set.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Changing Table

2012-03-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

In the Tour of Daniel's Nursery I posted on Tuesday, I showed you the changing table we use. Here are the details:

These two little dressers have been around. I believe they were initially purchased from the goodwill to be used in my room when I was a baby. Back then they were white with red and blue pinstripes outlining the drawers. The knobs were those big wooden ones and I'm not sure what color they were painted.

I believe they were used for both my sister Katie and my nurseries.

I remember them being white at one point with peach colored knobs and used as end tables next to a futon in the basement.

Katie painted them a chocolate brown with turquoise knobs and used them in her apartment in college. Possibly in one of her dorm rooms, too, but I'm not sure about that.

After she was done with them, they retired to the basement again. My dad (also known as the grand master to some) sanded them up for me. I painted them white and replaced the knobs. Kind of fun how they have been used over and over again don't ya think?

The changing pad I found at a garage sale over the summer for a few bucks. It's nothing fancy, but it does the job.

I made the cover that is on it currently from a bath towel I found at Target for under $4. It was a piece of cake! I just measured my pad, cut the corners off to the right size, serged the corner seams together, serged the edges, and added elastic. It took me maybe 20-30 minutes from start to finish. So much better than spending $15 or so on a pre-made one.

The drawers are filled with our diapering supplies. We are cloth diaperers at home, so several of the drawers are filled with prefolds. Another with covers. We haven't gotten brave enough to do cloth outside of the home. Mostly, I'm worried my diaper bag isn't big enough to hold the cloth diapers since they are significantly larger than the disposable ones.

I also made some of these little guys. They're made using make it and love it's tutorial. They are easy to make, not so easy to use. My little guy wiggles out of them so fast I've found it's better for me to risk it and use both hands to get a diaper in place than to try to diaper with one hand and hold the little shields in place with the other. Jason uses them, though, and doesn't seem to have the same problems I do, so maybe it's just me.

That's how we diaper around this house. Baby seems happy to be on the changing table, so we must be doing something right. :)

Tour of Daniel's Nursery - Crib Set

2012-03-07T07:00:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned once or twice that Jason and I don't like to spend a lot of money, right? Well, this crib and the small bookshelf are the only new pieces of furniture we put into this room.

I made the crib skirt from my own head. It's made from a lime green striped fabric. The orange accent is kind of splotchy. I just made a strip of bias tape (minus the bias, so that'd be straight grain tape, perhaps?) to accent the skirt.

I made the crib sheet you see Daniel lounging on here. I used this awesome tutorial to make it. I'd use the same tutorial again to make others, but next time I'll do something different with the elastic. It doesn't really pull the sheet tight along the bottom like I think it should. That's an easy modification though. :)

The sheet took less than an hour to make.

It's made from a really cute dinosaur fabric I found at JoAnn.

Tour of Daniel's Nursery

2012-03-06T13:29:00.000-06:00

Jason and I don't love spending a lot of money on things we can make for a lot cheaper, buy used, or reuse something we already have. Daniel's nursery was no exception. We were able to reuse several pieces of furniture that were hanging out not being used at my parents' house.

These two little dressers were the perfect size to put next to each other and top with a changing pad.

The rocking chair was one of several my parents had to choose from.

Jason made this print in a college printmaking class. We thought it was little guy appropriate.

Mama and gramma made curtains.

Crib set made by mama.

Rug made by mama.

Happy baby also made by mama.

Check back over the next several days to see more details about some of the things shown today.

Check it out!

2012-02-08T07:56:00.000-06:00

My quilt, Plum Kebab, is featured on the Modern Quilt Guild's 100 Days of Modern Quilting series. Go here to read all about it.

Hello again.

2012-02-06T10:02:00.000-06:00

I've been a bit of a busy girl the last few weeks. And here's why...

My sweet baby boy will turn 6 weeks old tomorrow! I can't believe how fast it's gone by. I've learned a lot about him.

I've learned that we are a fan of baby wearing. Right now Daniel is snuggled up against my chest wrapped in a Moby. After a long while of fighting with his fussing this morning, I wrapped him up and he fell asleep within a few minutes. Once I'm finished writing this post, I'm going to head down to my studio space and try to cut out the pieces for my quilt while wearing him.
Remember all those diapers my mom and I made? Well, I've learned that just because they are cute doesn't mean they will work. I think I've given up on using them because every time I have, they have leaked. I think maybe there are too many layers in the pattern I used to get a good gather at the legs and back, thus making the seal not so good.
I've learned that we're good at breastfeeding. Last Wednesday, the little guy weighed in at 9 pounds, 12 ounces!
I've learned that we like to snuggle.
I've learned that Daniel is a bit of a music snob. We listen to a lot of the Rockabye Baby station on Pandora & if he doesn't like a song he will whine until it is changed.
I've learned that Daniel is a fan of Wassily Kandinsky. In my living room, we have a poster of this Kandinsky painting. Daniel loves to stare at it.

I'll try to pop in a little more often, but right now my days are mostly filled with dirty diapers, naps, and feeding.

Potholder Swap

2011-12-19T08:13:00.000-06:00

I participated in the Log Cabin Potholder Swap between the KC Modern Quilt Guild & the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. Each of us was given a name of someone in the opposite guild & we had to research that person as best we could and make them a potholder.

My partner was Nancy Stovall. She didn't give a lot of information, so I was left to my own devices. I gathered from her blog that she's a long arm quilter. She didn't give any specific color preferences or style preferences, so I went with some fabric I had & quilted the potholders for her very heavily and pieced very minimally.

My piecing is based off of a pattern called Northwest Modern Quilt in Susan Beal's Modern Log Cabin Quilting book.

The quilting was all out of Judy Woodworth's Freemotion Quilting Handbook. I've been practicing my freemotion skills on my domestic machine on every project I've done lately. What do you think? Am I improving?

Nancy, I hope you like the potholders I sent for you. I had fun making them; especially the quilting part of it. Hope you enjoy!

Robot Baby Shower

2011-12-01T07:00:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, my mom, sister, & 2 close girlfriends threw a shower for little guy and I in Omaha. The decided upon a robot theme to celebrate & came up with some really great ideas I know you'll want to steal.

This little guy is made from a bunch of random things. His head is one of those sorter toys. His nose is a snot sucker. His chest is a dishwasher box thing for bottle parts and such. His belly is a plastic bin filled with plastic blocks. His arms are bottle scrubbers. He has candy piggy banks for legs & baby shoes on his feet. He was stationed on the table right inside the door to the party.

Amber made a robot centerpiece for each table. Aren't they cute?

Do you see the robot paper cut-outs that were on the table? And nuts & bolts were scattered about, too!

My last name on a bunting. My mom made this with some robot fabric.

The snack table. My sister made little signs with the robotic name for all the snacks and drinks.

Well, all except the robot cake, but that one is kind of a give-away.

Micro Chips = Potato Chips

Nuts and Bolts = yummy popcorn, pretzel mixture with pumpkin spice and caramel I think.

Laser Beams = Veggie Tray

Cogs and Gears = Cucumber Sandwiches

Liquid Hydrogen = Water

Robot Juice = Capri Suns

Battery Acid = Punch

Tammy & I.

I'm ready to tackle the present opening.

There were lots of presents.

Little guy has lots of clothes.

He has lots of toys.

Amber took photos of Jason & I when she came down for the shower in Kansas City. This book has some of them printed out in it.

My mom made the little guy a robot quilt. Fussy cut robots in the centers of wonky log cabin blocks. Super cute!

My gramma & mom. My mom got a gift, too. Emily brought her a brag book to tote around photos of little guy.

We played games. This game was fun! Katie, my sister, came up with it. Everyone got a little jar of playdough and had to make a baby out of it.

Even little Lucy got in on the action.

There were some funny looking babies!

I had to be the judge, but I couldn't pick just one baby as the winner. I picked 2.

Michael's baby was awesome.

Look at the back of it!

Emily's baby was too cute. I love the hair! So, Michael & Emily were the two winners I chose.

Everyone got to take one of these little guys home with them. Aren't they fun?

It was a really fun party. I got to see people I hadn't seen in a long time. I got to play games & celebrate the little guy. I was given lots of good presents to dress & entertain the little guy with. I can't wait for him to get here!

Pumpkin Baby Shower

2011-11-30T10:37:00.000-06:00

Jason's family threw us a shower over a month ago now in Kansas City. We all partied at his mom's house.
Isn't this little pumpkin cute?

There were lots of yummy snacks.

This cake was delicious! I only had a nibble of it though, since I'm temporarily diabetic and it was pretty rich.

See? Lots of yummy snacks.

Fruit skewers stuck into a pumpkin.

This was a cheese ball! I love cheese balls. :)

And crackers for the cheese.

We were fancy and got to cut the cake like at our wedding.

We played the what kind of poop is in the diaper game.

Elle tasted it.

Jason's face is not reassuring of our upcoming adventures. It's fake poop; what's he so grossed out by?

Tammy & Michael were the best fake poop guessers.

The boys played a game. They were each given a bottle with 4 oz. of beer. The winner was the guy who could chug the beer from the bottle the fastest.

Joe was one of the two last guys remaining.

Michael was the other.

Oops! Joe choked up.

Michael was committed. Check out the beer drips down the front of his shirt. Perhaps that's why he won.

Joe & Kathryn.

My mom in the background; Katie & Amber in the foreground. Isn't my sister cute? I think so.

Michael & Tammy.

Mel & Alex.

Elle.

Jason & I. And Squirmy, too, but you can't see him all that well.

These were the party favors.

We had a lot of fun. We got a lot of really cool presents for the little guy. It was a really nice party. The weather was beautiful that day; great for the people who drove 3 hours to party with us.

Diapers!

2011-11-28T09:57:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, I went to Omaha for a baby shower my family & friends were throwing to celebrate my little guy. I stuck around an extra day and a half so my mom and I could whip up some diapers. I had picked up this pattern a while back for making all-in-ones.

I dug through my stash of fun fabrics before I left Kansas City & my mom dug through her stash. The pile of fabrics shown above are what we ended up using from my stash. I didn't take a picture after she added her fabrics to the mix. :(

Cutting things took FOREVER. I hate cutting. Have I mentioned I hate cutting? It's my least favorite part of sewing.

I love that the dogs are never far from any possible action.

Our babylocks got to play together again.

We spent about a day and a half at the dining room table. We cut fabrics. We sewed parts together. We attached elastic. We topstitched stuff.

This is what we ended up with. 20 diaper shells & 21 of the soaker pad inserts. Some of the outer shells are from flannel & some are just quilter's weight cotton. I think the next time I make some, I'll just use the cotton; it seems to form a little better than the flannel.

Aren't they adorable? They're super soft inside. I think little guy will like wearing them. How could he not like wearing such fun panties?

A suggestion I would offer for the pattern making people... I wish the pattern would have said how much fabric and other supplies was necessary for each diaper, not several. I found a fat quarter was enough to do one of the outside shells, so that may help you pattern following people.

How we did them:
We used either flannel or cotton for the outer layer.
The inside layer you can't see is a white PUL.
The lining is a white fleece.

The soaker pads are all fleece. I serged the edges of each of them. The serging is a little tricky to do with 4 layers of fleece, so be careful. My soaker pads aren't the prettiest things, but we must keep in mind what is going to be done on them. I think they'll do the trick. :)

I'm really excited to give cloth diapering a try. Currently my stash consists of:

20 AIO's that are a size small
21 soaker pads for the size small AIO's.
36 newborn chinese prefolds
6 small prefold covers
20 regular sized prefolds
1 medium prefold cover
5 size 1 snappi's

I need to make some prefold covers to fit a newborn, so if anyone has some suggestions on good patterns to use in a newborn size, I'm all ears. I'll also need to make or obtain some larger prefold covers, but I'm planning to hold off a while on those and see how this cloth diapering thing works out for us.

Also, I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to work the pail system. I picked up a lidded trash can to use as my diaper pail & was planning to go with a dry system. Anybody have suggestions on how to work that? I have to carry my diapers from one end of the house and down the stairs to the laundry room, so I'm liking the idea of a dry system to avoid spilling a heavy wet pail.

Is there any diaper stuff I will absolutely need that I'm forgetting? I'm open to suggestions!

Cyber Sale!

2011-11-28T00:01:00.000-06:00

I feel a little bit bad about not being around the blog the last month and a half, so I'd like to share another coupon code for the etsy shop with you. Today only, you can type in 2011CYBERSALE and receive free shipping in the United States.

Does that make up for me getting ready for my baby to come instead of hanging out sharing cool stuff with you? Don't worry... I've been making lots of cool stuff that I'll share when I get a chance to take a breath from my nesting habits and sit in front of the computer for long enough to upload loads of pictures. Be ready to see some fun baby shower ideas my family came up with, cloth diapers, and few fun things I made for in the baby's nursery.

Black Friday!

2011-11-25T00:01:00.002-06:00

Did you survive the food coma yesterday? Are you crazy like me and headed out shopping bright and early this morning? Well, to kick off the official holiday season, I'd like to share another coupon code for the etsy shop with you. Today only, you can type in 2011BLACKFRIDAY and save 25% off anything you purchase. Be sure to stop by and shop around for gifts for all those special people in your life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T00:01:00.001-06:00

Jason and I are cooking up a storm for our family today. We're really excited to be able to have everyone over to our house to share in all the food and festivities.

Because I didn't want you to feel left out, I thought I'd share a coupon code for the etsy shop. Today only, you can type in the code TURKEY2011 and receive 10% off anything you purchase in my shop. Be sure to stop by to see all the fun Christmas things I have listed currently.

Enjoy your day and don't eat too much turkey! Happy Thanksgiving!

Roundabout

2011-10-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

This little quilt is also making it's way into Fabri-Quilt's Quilt Market booth in Houston in a few weeks. It's title is Roundabout.

This little quilt was a lot of fun to make. I used the six-minute circle method to make all the dots you see. They take me longer than six minutes, so don't feel bad if you try it and they don't go as quickly as you hoped. I made each of the 25 circles on a separate block and stitched them together to make the quilt top's center. It went pretty easy even if it took longer than 6 minutes for each block.

I tried trapunto to puff up the circles. The rest of the pink background was quilted in a simple stippling pattern on my domestic sewing machine. I even stitched in the ditch along the blue and orange borders since my husband thinks I need to learn how to do it.

I really like the way the cirlces bubble out from the background. I think it turned out really bright and fun.

Quilt stats:
Pattern Title: Roundabout
Designed by: Me
Pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Me
Size: 48"x48"
Fabric: Calypso by Paintbrush Studio

Square Dance

2011-10-12T07:00:00.004-05:00

I just dropped this quilt off to Fabri-Quilt last week.

This little quilt is about 48"x48" and was made to head to Quilt Market in Houston in a few weeks. I titled it Square Dance. Doesn't it look like the geese in the center are dancing in a square?

I haven't done a lot of this sort of quilt before... there's only 4 blocks in the center. The majority of this quilt is made from the borders. I think it turned out pretty fun.

I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine. You can see a little of the quilting in the last photo. I used orange thread and just did a random overlapping rectangle pattern. It took way longer to quilt than I thought it would.

Quilt stats:
Pattern Title: Square Dance
Designed by: Me
Pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Me
Size: 48"x48"
Fabric: Calypso by Paintbrush Studio

Boxed Breezes

2011-10-10T07:00:00.003-05:00

This is another one of those quilts I made a while back and forgot to blog about.

This one is titled Boxed Breezes. It was made for Fabri-Quilt using Paintbrush Studio's Cape Cod fabric line.

I think this one turned out pretty cute. I think this is basically a Bento Box pattern, but I'm not sure. It was nice and easy to put together, but was rather time consuming to cut all of the parts and piece the top.

Quilt stats:
Pattern Title: Boxed Breezes
Designed by: Me
Pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Me
Size: 60"x60"
Fabric: Cape Cod by Paintbrush Studio

Seismic Shift

2011-10-08T07:00:00.008-05:00

I made this quilt a while ago, but forgot to blog about it.

This quilt is titled Seismic Shift. I made it for Fabri-Quilt from Paintbrush Studio's Color Explosion fabric line.

The back of it turned out pretty cool. I rented time at Jackie's shop and traced a pantograph.

Quilt stats:
Pattern Title: Seismic Shift
Designed by: Me
Pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Me
Size: 58"x58"
Fabric: Color Explosion by Paintbrush Studio

Quilts on the Quad

2011-10-06T07:00:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday was the KC Modern Quilt Guild's first quilt show, Quilts on the Quad. It was a lot of fun & I think we can call it a success.

We had a lot of fun quilts. How cool is this Mario quilt?

We had a steady stream of traffic the entire day.

Don't you just love that bright Dresden Plate quilt on the left?

We had almost all of our quilts hung on clotheslines throughout the quad on UMKC's campus.

All of them except for these ones that were draped on the fountain and a few other large ones that were draped over a wall. Isn't that fun the way they are just hanging out there?

I had my own section. All the quilts on this line are mine.

I had fun hanging out under the tent with the other KCMQG ladies. It was a beautiful day to be out in the sun enjoying the quilts and the fall weather.