I have had a distraction from both sewing and blogging. That would be our new puppy, Maggie.
She is so sweet, except for those times when she is biting the living daylights out of you! A can with some pinto beans inside is finally setting that craziness to rights. That is about our fifth attempt at calming the puppy chewing and my poor hands are happy that she is responding to it!!
Anyway, I have been sewing some (on the new serger :)), but hate to leave Maggie alone upstairs. Since she isn't housebroken I haven't taken her downstairs where there is carpet. I finally just brought up my sewing machine yesterday and installed it on the dining room table. It is not ideal, but 1. I am getting some great exercise running up and down the stairs because lord knows I need all my little gadgets that are in my sewing room and 2. I am getting some sewing done. Yesterday, I made a draft stopper for an unused door in the kitchen. It must have been the front door at some point since it and not the current front door has a doorbell, but now it is rarely used. It lets in lots of cold air though and I have been meaning to make a stopper, but who wants to make a tube and stuff it with poly-fil? I finally did just that yesterday and the thing works like a charm.
Today, I wanted to tackle a cute project that I had put on pinterest a few weeks ago. Again, this is related to Maggie. Since her arrival, we have been spending lots of time in the floor of our living room. We are not always playing since the cute little thing sleeps a lot, but she likes to sleep on our laps. Therefore, we often have the computer on the ottoman surfing the web or watching shows while she snoozes. I noticed just after an hour or two that the computer gets really hot, so I have been placing it on a board that came with a Melissa and Doug toy that A got for Christmas. It works great and I thought it would be even better as a lap desk. I started the project today and hoped to get it mostly done in the hour before I had to pick S up from school. That would have been the case if I had not messed up :(
After sewing the piping (and cutting excess)I thought that I must have measured wrong because the pillow part did not fit the board part. I had to leave it to pick up the kids, but it was bugging me. When I got home, I picked the seams so that I could lay the board on the fabric and see what had gone wrong. I had also noticed that two of the corners didn't lay right, but didn't know why. Here is what I saw (with the ruined piping on top.)
You see how two corners are diagonals while the other two are squares? I started the project all over again and not until I made the corners again and ALL of them ended on the diagonal did I understand what I had done--not read the directions!! You make the line perpendicular to the RAW edge. Tada. Wow, how my life would be easier if I would be more careful about that kind of thing!! Anyway, 5 hours later, I have a completed, cute lap desk.
I apparently need to work on my hot glue gunning skills, but other than that I am super happy! Yay tutorials of useful things!!
