Up With People (and sewing)

This weekend was a first for us. Up With People, Brendt's former touring group, was in North Platte, along with a former cast mate of Brendt's, Celiana. Of course, we had to stop in and see the show and catch up with Celiana, whom Brendt had not seen in almost ten years. That being said, we had one small dilemma: the boys. Since Rufus isn't up to date on his kennel cough vaccination (shame on us!) boarding them wasn't an option. We have asked my brother to watch them several times in the last month and a half, so we didn't really want to push our luck asking him again. Brendt was reluctant to leave our boys in the hands of his brother since he already has two larger dogs and a one-year-old. That left one viable option: take them with us! So we packed up the boys and headed to North Platte for our first pet-friendly hotel experience.

Reggie's not too sure about this new experience.

Looks like Rufus digs it tho!

Us with Ciliana.

For those of you who didn't know, my birthday was actually today! Brendt got me a sewing machine! I have been bugging him for months now about wanting one. But that's not all--he actually got up early this morning and surprised me with breakfast in bed before work. Now that's love! And then he did something that he's never done before...he sent me flowers at work! I am definitely going to have to surprise him with a singing telegram for his next birthday...

My birthday present in all its glory!

For my first projects, I bought super cheap fabric at Walmart. I figured no sense in wasting decent fabric when it is going to look like a grade school art project anyhow. I googled easy sewing projects for beginners and came up with my two warm up excersises: a tissue pouch so travel packs don't get demolished in your purse and a pillow slipcover.

My first project! I think the tissue pouch turned out really nice. I am considering sewing pouches for all of my belongings.

My second project! A pillow slip cover. It actually turned out so nice that i really wish I had bought better fabric. How was I to know that I was a sewing prodigy?

I took these shots of the back of the pillow to demonstrate its slip coverishness. Very easy to sew.

Ok, After I made the tissue pouch and pillow cover, I was feeling pretty confident about my sewing prowess. In fact, a wee bit too confident and I did a dumb, dumb thing. I decided I had enough experience to sew my own curtains. I learned a lot about fabric in the process because I made a couple of mistakes. For one, The material I got for the curtains ended up being super thin and transparent. It had looked so thick and luscious on the spool... =( Mistake number two was buying what I thought was a really cool green fabric to add a couple of stripes of color to the curtain.

Turns out the fabric actually had a fade effect going on. Whoops. This called for a quick redesign.

Probably around four hours of work later and here is one finished panel....just three more to go! It doesn't really look that bad, but you can definitely tell it is homemade. Not too bad for my first curtain but I think for my next project I'll stick to pouches. =)