We've moved!

Hello there old friends. Looking for new sewing posts? We are sad to say that this blog is in retirement. Allison Jensen #1 is taking a break from this space for the time being. Allison Jensen #2 can be found here, going strong as ever with the quilting posts. Please join her there!

Bow Tied Baby

I've kept going back and forth about what to do for a bow tie....buy one or make one? With my sewing machine piled deep behind other stuff I was leaning towards purchasing but then I had something specific in mind plus I knew it was easy and I could do it. Well, my inward battle ended in making it myself and I'm so glad I did! It's not perfect by any means but I love it. I see many bow ties in the future. Plus the $0.75 price tag on Valentine sale fabric I bought was nice. 

I bought 1/8 yard of cotton fabric and used a little more than half of it. Some tutorials recommend interfacing but I don't think it needs it. Keep it simple: fabric + Velcro = masterpiece. The tutorial I followed from What Does She Do All Day?  (Thanks, Heather) made a slightly larger size bow but I cut mine shorter for a 3 inch finish. Fit the little Mister I made for better.

Catch Up

Here's what I've been working on the last few months!

Most importantly, this little man, who joined us on Thanksgiving Day :)

(quilt is "Dapper Canon" from Camille Roskelley's book Simplify)

I also finished my Quatrefoil quilt in Hello Darling. I'm sending this one to my sister who

 lives in Denver. I hope she and her cute kids have lots of good snuggles with it!

This hot pad was a fun little quilt along with Pen and Paper Patterns.

(The pattern is free on Craftsy!)

I also started a new Scrappy Trip with Gooseberry fabric by Lella Boutique, 

and white contrast, which I am loving.

I still have a lot to catch up on here, but this is progress :)

Christmas Stockings

It's been on my list for 3 years, but I finally made Christmas stockings! 

And, because I'm pregnant and crazy right now, I made a few extras. You know, just in case!

I couldn't find a pattern that I loved completely, so I drew a template on cardstock and used that. Growing up, my mom made us really big, chunky stockings and I loved it that way. I followed the instructions for putting in a lining and cuff on the Cluck Cluck Sew blog (lots of good stuff there). I used fabric from my stash and had fun choosing different scrappy combos. In my mind there are very distinct "boy" and "girl" stockings here, though both my husband and mother say they're all girly. I'm not sorry at all. I mean, if you can't use ric rac at Christmas, when can you!?

It feels great to have these done and to know that maybe, just maybe, 

I won't have to make any more ever again!

"Hello Darling" Pillow

I found a happy surprise this morning as I was looking for printables for our new house. Let me see if I can explain all the connections here. I was on The Small Seed's blog (a wonderful website if you haven't seen it yet, and you can follow them on IG) when I saw that Katie Sabin did a guest post there. A while back, Katie bought a pillow that I made for a fundraiser to make a memory quilt for a young family in our old church ward who lost their Dad. I was so pleased to see my pillow in her adorable room, on one of my favorite sites! It's also a special pillow because the fabric was not out yet ("Hello Darling" by Bonnie and Camille) when I made it, but a special friend on IG sent me a charm pack that she somehow magically got early. I love that pillow, but it does look a lot cuter at Katie's house than it would at mine:)

Here is the photo from Small Seed. (It's the patchwork pillow on the left.)

And by the way, I found that The Small Seed has really great printables, including one from Katie. I printed this one for our new house. I think it's technically a Christmas print, but I like it.

Bee Costume

It's Dress Like A Bee Day at school and my suggestion of black clothes with yellow tape stripes or the black shirt/yellow tutu combo got vetoed.  So, I picked up a yard of yellow fabric and 3 inch ribbon at Walmart (Only like $8 total...hurray!) It took at most 1.5 hours to make which I think is pretty good for a rookie clothing seamstress. Thanks to Living Well Spending Less Tutorial this surprise was a success- taking no time and no tears.

General Conference Book Ring Books

Twice a year our family watches our church worldwide conference. (What is General Conference? Brief explanation here. ) Watching it via internet/roku/tv from the comforts of our home is so great and I try to have one new conference activity for the kids to help them pay attention better. Sometimes a new activity happens, sometimes not, but we have favorites we bring out only for those special conference weekends and repeats are fun too.

Since I haven't been crafting or creating much, this totally counts- I have my new activity done early and ready for Easter Saturday and Sunday- Book Ring Books! I'm so excited and so are the kids. Two weeks seems way too long to wait.

The idea is to have a card for each speaker during the four sessions of conference. When that speaker is talking, the kids will put stickers on the back of the speaker card according to their speaking subject. If he/she speaks about Easter, they put the Easter sticker. If he/she focuses on the topics of prayer and families then those two stickers go on the back of that speaker card. Similar activities like this have really helped my kids listen for the mention of those key words and topics.

How I did it:
I printed off pictures of the first presidency and quorum of the 12 apostles from Rachael's BookNook that she made. Cutting them all the same size to fit nicely in the book rings meant 3.5 inches by 2 5/8 inches.

Then I went through past conferences to count how many other speakers there are so I knew how many other cards to add to the books- In April there are usually 11 other speakers. Since we don't know who from the different auxiliaries or the quorum of the Seventy will be speaking we plan on writing the speakers' names on the front of the colored cards and then applying stickers to the back just like our photo cards. The stickers I just copied and pasted from the gospel pictures from lds.org. Then printed on sticker paper and cut out- ready to go! Enjoy conference!

March 28 & April 4-5, 2015 General Conference