The Closet Quilter

Shop Fauna Update

May 18, 2012 in Fabric, Finished Projects, Misc by Lesley | No comments

If you’ve been waiting for a Shop Fauna update, I have updates! The site is live with over 70 Kansas City local shops and more being added every day. The UI is fantastic. I love the flow of browsing the site. Also, Nadine, Shop Fauna’s creator, has been taking wonderful pictures of a lot of the shops so it really is like window shopping! Go check it out.

If you’re a shop owner, you can sign up right on the site. The user side is currently in development, but if you want to be a user, you can sign up for the wait list and we will email you when it’s finished.

Shop Fauna’s mascot is a fawn. We’re all very much in love with the fawn. So I had a swatch of fawn fabric printed from Spoonflower.

I’m probably going to make buttons from the swatch. I made one last night and it turned out well.

You might see Shop Fauna around town. We are sponsoring the West 18th Street Fashion Show and plan to do more with other KC events. Also, follow Shop Fauna on Twitter and like us on Facebook. Nadine posts and tweets a lot of great tips about shopping locally, what’s going on in KC, which shops sign up, etc.

Even if I wasn’t part of building the idea, I would still love it. I’ve had the best time playing with the site and it’s already helped me find mother’s day, father’s day, and birthday gifts. Plus, I’ve bought a few things for myself…

Keep on Truckin’

May 17, 2012 in In Progress Projects, Misc, Quilting by Lesley | 1 comment

I’m back to working on the truck tops. I have one left, but a lot more to do with them to completely finish.

Since it’s going to be hard to find a pillow form that fits the dimensions, I’ll probably have to make my own. I’m planning on buying some filling and then making my own form out of muslin. I want to have a form because if my dad, grandpa, and uncle actually put the pillows in their trucks, they WILL get dirty. I want the case to be able to be taken off and washed. Once I finish the blocks, I still need to applique on the wheels and make them into complete cases. I should have plenty of time to finish before Father’s Day.

My mom sent me a couple of photos yesterday.

Yup, that’s me! I have black olives on my fingers. I’ve always LOVED olives and the best part of eating olives was eating them off of your fingers. They fit so perfectly! I was a weird child… This photo was probably taken at Christmas guessing by my dress color, my curled hair, and being at my grandparents house. I have no idea how old I was. I’m bad at guessing ages.

That’s my sister and my second cousin. I have no idea what event we were together for. I don’t think it was Easter because there would be baskets, we would be dressed up, etc. A birthday is another option, but I have no idea whose birthday. And why are they holding paper bags? Does Robin have two? I’m so confused. Again, I have no idea how old they were. I totally remember that bike though.

More Head Scarves and Ties

May 16, 2012 in Finished Projects, Misc by Lesley | No comments

I spent last night making another retro head scarf and then a longer hair tie.

These are super simple to make and it only takes a fat quarter.

I used a fat quarter for this, but you could probably get by with a fat eighth depending on the width of the tie.

Now that graduation is over, I only have one big thing left in May. One of my best friends is getting married this weekend. After this weekend, I have a bunch of projects in mind that I would like to get started…a lot of them involve some more garment making…

Graduation Weekend: Three Days…One Post

May 15, 2012 in Life, Misc by Lesley | 1 comment

My sister graduated from KU this weekend! We had a lot of family in town for the event. I took a few hours off of work on Thursday afternoon, all of Friday, and half of Monday. On Thursday afternoon, my parents, Grandma Cam, and aunt and uncle from California arrived. My other aunt lives in KC so she was already here. We went to dinner with my sister and her boyfriend at Woodyard BBQ. Everybody LOVED the food. Then we all went our separate ways and my parents, grandma, and I headed back to my house to unload the suburban. It turns out that our garage is too small or the suburban is too tall. The suburban does not clear the roof with the luggage racks on. However, my parents couldn’t park in the street because they would have to move by 7am the next morning. So…at 9:30 at night, my dad and I were outside taking the luggage racks off. We got a few odd looks, but then we parked in the garage for the rest of the weekend!

Friday morning, my parents and I woke up early and went to the grocery store to grab everything we needed for feeding people on Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday. Then we got ready to head to Lawrence to Robin’s small Communication Studies graduation. She was the student speaker for this graduation and it was AWESOME! You cannot image how proud I was to see my little sister as the only student seated on stage next to all of the distinguished professors. Her speech was FANTASTIC! I probably would have teared up if I hadn’t been totally focused on keeping my iPhone as still as possible while recording her speech.

Robin’s Graduation Speech

The photos were taken after her speech while she was waiting in line to receive her diploma.

Robin’s Graduation – Receiving Diploma

There was a small reception after the ceremony. We got to meet one of Robin’s favorite teachers.

Sorry about the bad picture. They chose the worst picture-taking room for the reception. She had such great things to say about Robin, which was nice to hear even though we already know how awesome Robin is at everything she does.

We were being a little silly.

Well, I guess Robin is a little silly all of the time. I’m not sure what face she’s making at Dustin, but he seems amused…

There she’s being serious! I don’t think Mom and Dad got pictures with Robin, but Grandma Cam did. Actually, I don’t even know if the other grandparents or any family members got pictures with her. Oops!

After the ceremony, we went our separate ways. Robin, Aunt Cindy, Dustin, and Uncle Donald met Grandma and Grandpa Latham at the Hollywood Casino. The rest of us went home to begin preparing cupcakes, food, etc. for Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was tiring. I was completely wore out by the end of the day and everybody could tell. We woke up early again and immediately began to prepare food again. We cooked all morning and grabbed a quick lunch from Zaina. Then we ventured out and met everybody else at Prydes. After shopping around Prydes, EVERYBODY headed back to my place to hang out before dinner. Robin, Dustin, and Dustin’s parents and sister arrived. We decorated cupcakes, made a guest book, and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.

We had a lot of help decorating cupcakes, which was good!

Luckily, we bought two spreaders from Prydes!

Dustin was in charge of taking pictures. From left to right: Robin, Me, Aunt Jeanne, Diane, Danielle, and Grandma Cam.

I think they turned out really well. It would only be better if we could have found black cupcake liners. The cupcakes were Robin’s idea.

We made a guest book out of 8.5 by 11 inch scrap book paper. We cut the paper in half, punched holes, and tied them all together with two pieces of ribbon.

It’s not the most professional, but it worked. We had people write on any page they wanted.

We stayed up late playing Mexican Train Dominoes and decorating the party room. I slept like a rock.

We had to wake up pretty early on Sunday because the graduation ceremony began at 10:30am and we had to drive to Olathe to meet up with the rest of the party and then struggle with traffic and parking in Lawrence. Of course, there was an accident that set us back a few minutes, but we made it with plenty of time to spare. We watched Robin walk down the hill and into the stadium. We stayed for the entire ceremony and then took off. I was able to get one picture of Robin on my phone right after the ceremony.

Then we headed back to my place and had a little party with even more family! Everybody went home except my parents and my aunt and uncle. My sister begins her job as Account Coordinator at Skyline on Wednesday. Wish her luck! <—-Not that she needs it.

On Monday, my parents and I met up with Aunt Jeanne, Aunt Cindy, and Uncle Donald and we went to tour the Harley Davidson factory. It was a very interesting tour. After eating lunch, the weekend was finally over and everybody went their separate ways.

I was sad to see everybody go. It was a lot of work and I’m still tired from it, but I’d rather have my family and friends around than not.

Congrats to all of the graduates out there!

Retro Head Scarf

May 10, 2012 in Finished Projects, Misc by Lesley | 1 comment

Remember Rosie the Riveter? Remember her hair? It’s tied up in this little do-rag-headband-scarf-bow-thingy. Well, I saw somebody wearing one the other day and I though it looked sooooo cool. I sat down at my sewing machine last night and whipped two out.