My Latest Obsession

Well for one, fabric. but now I can get CASH BACK on fabric. That's what I'm obsessed with. Ebates. I may be totally late to the game, but I signed up before Christmas and I already have $54.82 cash back. They put it right in your paypal account!

This is how it works, you shop online at stores that have an agreement with Ebates. Each store has a certain percentage that you get back after you buy something. You just have to go to Ebates first, and click the link to whatever  store you are going to.

Here are some stores that I love and have cash back...

Fabric.com- 3% back

Modcloth- 4% back

Boden- 2.5%

Herroom- 4%

and so many more. So here is the deal, you should sign up, because free money, duh. If you use my code, you get $5 to start and I get $5 dollars too! Currently in my fabric.com cart I have some black gingham, and some Cotton and Steel Lawn. I would get $2.13 back. Plus they have Liberty fabric, I mean you can think of it like 3% off Liberty.  All these little amounts really add up, I have the app too, and I obsessively check how much is in there.

PS. These are all my own opinions and I really am obsessed. I just wanted to share this little tidbit with you guys as friends. I think everyone wants to save money to buy more fabric.


If you are interested here is my link.
http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=c8zLphJ7FdTbht970k%2FefQ%3D%3D&eeid=26471

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Cotton + Steel Quilted Pillows

Well I've finally made us some new pillows. I've been hating on the pillows that came with the couch, they are just too small, and I've been searching for the right fabric.

The inside panel is a cotton + steel quilt weight cotton "august mezzanine". To make this pillow I cut a center square 16 x 16, and strips of the border print to go around the square. The border was sewed on and I prepared to quilt it. Layered cotton batting and muslin under the top. 

I'm not the best quilter, I tried the free motion foot first, and that was a disaster. It is impossible to keep the stitches even. Then I put on my walking foot and started to trace some of the shaped in the fabric. That took a while, and wasn't really quilting as much as I wanted it to, so I started to do the crisscross across the center. The border fabric I quilted separately, but doing diagonal lines all over and intersecting them, kind of like the fabric. Then I washed the whole quilted piece, even though I had already pre washed all the fabric, and it shrunk another 2 inches. 

The back was left plain in the contrasting print, I inserted an invisible zipper, and stitched around the other edges. Boom two original pillows! 

Rockford has been enjoying the pillows the most. 

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Simplicity 1609, another Jiffy dress

This is one of the things that has been hanging in my closet forever, and I have yet to show you. Not sure why, it is so shiny and pretty! I made this dress last year to display at fabricland, to show off this amazing silk fabric. It is a very lightweight silk jacquard, with silver metallic paisley print to it. 

The pattern is my second version of Simplicity 1609, the jiffy pattern. This time I made the bow instead of the scalloped collar. The entire dress is underlined in white kona cotton, to give it body. The white gave the light pink fabric the perfect pop, and made the metallic stand out even more.  I hand basted the layers together before sewing the dress. 

I even took and inside shot for you all! Woo look at those guts. I have to remember to tack down the underarm facing, it pops out whenever I wear it. I like how this dress has the all in one facing, it looks so much cleaner. You can also see how I can never bother to take out my basting stitches. Anyone else guilty of that?

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Two Valentines Day Wreaths

 

HAPPY GALENTINES DAY! Today is Galentines day, where we celebrate our lady loves. So thanks for reading my blog ladies, you are the best, and this creative community of awesome ladies that make things is the best.

So lately I've been obsessed with holiday wreaths. You have seen the Christmas wreaths I have made, but I also made a Thanksgiving wreath, and am collecting for an Easter wreath. But today I wanna show you my Valentines Day wreath.

This is a big one! I used a 12 inch wreath form, and covered it in this fabulous gingham garland from the craft store, Michaels. Then I added the large green BE MINE plate, with hot glue. The rest of the hearts are collected from craft stores and pier 1 had some valentines ornaments, the polka dot ones and the raffia one. It's seriously fabulous. I also made one for my Mom, which may be even cuter.

                    

This wreath took me 5 minutes. It's the easiest way to display the cute Valentines cards out there. These are repro vintage ones, but I would love to collect the real thing. Especially the vintage sewing ones, Sew Cute! To make this wreath I started with a wire wreath form, cut strips of some heart fabric I had left over from last years, Valentines dress, and wrapped them around the form. I just pinned the strips into place, I was being seriously lazy. Then all you need to do is clip cards to the strips of fabric. I made a hook with some rick rack.

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I'm now ErikaMadeIt.com

Hello my fellow makers of wonderful things! Just an FYI I moved my blog from erikamadeit.blogspot.com to Erikamadeit.com!
Some of you are nice enough to have links from your blog to my blog, and I just wanna say THANK YOU! I'm trying to update everything, I'm not sure I've done everything, computers are hard.

I'm very excited to be sort of "official". There hasn't been much sewing going on around here, I was sick after our trip, and now my husband is very sick, and the miles of snow outside make it hard to photograph anything. What are you guys working on?

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Car Wardrobe for Barrett Jackson Auction

Hello! I'm back from a lovely few days in Scottsdale Arizona! The sunshine has been so nice to see again. My family and my husband flew out to see the famous Barrett Jackson car auction. Tons of nice cars, rich and trophy wives. My biggest problem going to something like this is finding something to wear. I wanted to dress like myself and still show my love of cars. So I needed to sew an appropriate car wardrobe!

I've made something out of my designed spoonflower print before, but now they have knit fabric. I addaped the Colette Moneta bodice for my t shirt. I made it about 5 inches longer and flare out a little. The entire tshirt fit on one yard of fabric.

The print is scans of 60s ford muscle cars from an ad of the same time. I wore my t shirt with my freddies of pinewood jeans and sven clogs.

                                                                me + 5 million dollar cobra.

On day two I wore the simplicity skirt I made over the summer. Its just a basic pleated skirt, but now with an Alexander Henry muscle car print. I added some white rick rack to the bottom. My favorite part of this outfit was having an excuse to wear my Christmas present, a Kate Spade car gauge clutch! 

   

My favorite outfit was for day 3, Saturday. This is the day they auction off the big items. Cars were going for million+ dollars. Crazy. This Corvette fabric I had in my stash, so the week before we left I got busy and made this simple dress. Its adapted from Simplicity 1419. I added some gingham piping to the neck and waistline, for some interest. I also added some gingham ribbon to the hem. It kind of looks like a checkerboard, adding to the car theme.

On the last day, I wore my Colette sorbetto tank top without the pleat. I used the gingham bias tape again to finish the neckline, armhole, and hem. I added a bow for interest. I wore this with my me-made pants and recently finished red cardigan. 

 

We had a great trip! Have you ever sewn something on theme.  Or specifically for a trip?

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Thanksgiving Dress, McCall's 6687

I made a dress to match my Luxulite acorn necklace. I love it so much, and I don't wear it enough in the Fall so I made a dress to fix that problem.  It's my second version of  McCall's 6687 view c, it was (see my first one here) so easy to make the first time, I whipped this up in no time. 

The only change I made to it was to fix the issue with the skirt. I cut the seams down a whole size and now they fit into their proper place. I had to ease inches last time to get the skirt to line up and the side seams. 

The fabric is a quilt weight cotton from Fabricland, it's a coordinate to a Thanksgiving print I made an apron for display out of. I also used a chinz piping from the home dec department of Fabricland as a belt in the waistline. Sometimes if you can't find the perfect thing you have to think outside of the box! It matches PERFECTLY in the seam btw. I love when that happens, on the first try. 

I wore this dress on Thanksgiving and as you can see it started to snow! My Mom wore the apron I made her, which coordinates to my dress. I confess I even made a necktie for Rockford the dog to match. Cuz I'm that nerdy whatever. 

Anyway Happy Thanksgiving America! 

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