So. . . Exciting news for anyone who makes artwork in illustrator and cuts with Silhouette. Silhouette has a plug-in for that. Now you can cut directly from Illustrator or Corel Draw using Silhouette Connect! It's quite convenient. I spent a total of 20 minutes designing, cutting and ironing Penelope's little heart decal last week. It's a much faster process! Also, the software detects the size of your artwork and sends everything to the cut program in-tact. No resizing necessary. There are a couple of bugs that need to be fixed with the software: no where on the cut settings does it tell me at what position I should adjust the knife (I end up opening the other silhouette application just to get that information or I guess) and there have been a couple of connectivity issues where I have to turn off and on my machine and disconnect and reconnect the USB in order for the software to detect the machine. Annoying? Sometimes. Dealbreaker? No way. This month's promotion, we've been asked to highlight the print and cut feature. I don't like it, to be quite honest. I wasted several hours trying to get my printer and silhouette to play nicely. And all I got out of it was 1 alright fake return address label out of it. Here's the breakdown of my personal experience (please pipe up if you've had a great experience with the print & cut feature! I really hate to dwell on the negative around here):

• 1st sheet: Didn't cut all the way through, even though settings were for "printable foil"- I also discovered that the Silhouette doesn't cut anything outside the registration marks (good to know)
• 2nd sheet: I accidentally printed the cut guides (user error)
• 3rd sheet: Silhouette didn't line up at all with printing. Even with adjusted cut settings, still didn't cut through gold foil paper
• 4th sheet: Registration marks weren't printed all the way by my printer, so cutter didn't detect cuts properly
• 5th sheet: Registration marks and printing came out perfect on kraft sticker paper. Cutting started off right, but then got slightly off as the cutter continued down the page.

My studio has been a disaster zone full of half-completed projects, so there may have been some serious yelling and throwing of paper and craft supplies at that point. The mechanics of the feature were easy enough to figure out without the user manual (although it can help with troubleshooting), but I couldn't trust the precision of either printer or cutter to get anything spot on.  I want pixel perfection! Despite all that negativity, I still love my Silhouette cutter. Why? Because I don't tend to use that feature in my projects. I'm sure I could think up something more clever than return address labels if I ever get out of my creative slump, but knowing how frustrating this whole process has been to get one half-decent label will likely squash anything clever that comes along. I may keep trying to get that perfect recipe of machine harmony to try and get this feature to work together. Until then, I'm going to continue doing my happy dance that I can cut directly from Illustrator for everything else. This month you can get great deals on machines and 30% off all specialty media! Click here for more info. Use code: MELISSA at checkout. Valid through March 31, 2014.

I am a Silhouette affiliate. I wouldn’t blog about their products unless I really loved them. And I do. I receive a portion of sales made with the promotional code MELISSA, so thank you for your support!!

A long-sleeve raglan tee is a favorite wardrobe staple of mine that I've longed to make for the last several months. It took me so long to finally get around to making one for the simple fact that I tried to draft one up on my own and failed miserably. The first one I drafted was too straight-edged (literally, I just drew straight lines) and didn't fit right. The second was too curvy (draped on my dressform) and also didn't look right. All around too baggy or bulky in the wrong spots. So I went for a pattern instead. Shoulda done that from the get-go. WAAAY easier in this case.

I used a rayon/polyester blend double knit for this top. I fell in love with the print a week ago. It reminds me of something art-deco/the matrix (minus that hideous computer green), but I wasn't totally sold on the texture. I tend to steer clear of polyester because I'm so particular about texture. Thankfully, a cycle in the washer and dryer softened it up to perfection.

The Hey June Lane Raglan pattern* I used recommended I sew up an XS based on my waist measurements (although I wonder if those were meant to be bust measurements?). Since the double knit didn't offer a 50% stretch like the pattern recommended, I sized up. I almost wish I would have sized up to the medium for a hoodie-like fit (a little closer to what I had envisioned), but the tighter fit is still very comfortable, and lends itself towards a more polished look.

The fabric pattern is pretty busy – borderline overwhelming – breaking up the print with jersey knit piping around sleeve lines solved the issue.

I winged it with the pouch, and if I were to do it all over again, I'd shorten the top trapezoidal part of the pouch by about an inch and a half.

The pocket does add a little extra weight to my middle section; but I'm so over the moon how this top fits, I couldn't care less. I'm sure if I zipped up the sides tighter it would reduce that visual weight. Or I could simply add a structured jacket overtop, no extra sewing required!

It's been so cold around here, I'm not ready to part with my winter wardrobe just yet. I have plans to make even more early spring transitional pieces in the near future. It's all about comfort, medium/lightweight fabrics, but long sleeves and hemlines to cover the skin from chilly breezes.

I finished the top just in time to throw it on and pick up the kids from school (Felix is loving his preschool, btw!). I felt comfortable, warm and put-together. All three major wins in my book. I will definitely make more of these in the near future.

Outfit details:

• glasses: coastal.com
• earrings: c/o Pamela Susan
• necklace: handmade by my dad
• bracelet: THP
• purse: Basik 855, c/o UmbaBox
• raglan: handmade by me
• denim: Forever 21
• booties: Seychelles

A few simlar raglans, in case you don't want to make your own.

*Pattern courtesy of Hey June. Just a little shout out about her patterns: they're awesome, well drafted, well written and 25% of all patterns sold goes to Christian Care Foundation, an organization that provides care for special needs children in Thailand. This hits close to home since Felix is now technically "special needs". We've been so blessed to have such great resources at our fingertips to help felix and our family grow together. I think it's pretty awesome that there's an organization out there providing supplemental help out there to families that may not have access to the same care that we do.

I've been off my creative game lately. I'll blame it on the fact that life is just getting exponentially busier. I'm not complaining, but making more of an effort to carve out creative time seems to be a must these days. We didn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day like I  had hoped: with a trail of candy leading to a warm breakfast. I did it last year and just loved Penelope's response. This year, it didn't happen. As disappointed as I was in myself for not making it happen, Penelope didn't care. I hope that she'll be surprised and excited when I get around to doing fun things for holidays, but not ever feel entitled if they don't happen just the way she envisions. I think that's a hard balance to strike, especially with the driving force of over-celebrating that Pinterest sometimes brings (anyone read this article that's resurfaced the last few weeks?). This shirt I decorated yesterday would have made for the perfect Valentine's touch LAST MONTH, but it doesn't matter. What matters to me most was her reaction when I gave it to her. It didn't elicit a reaction of "Mommy, I should have worn that for Valentine's.", but "WHAAAT?? Mommy!! Is that for MEEEEEE???". This girl's reactions to even the smallest gestures are the best thing in the world. They remind me why I longed to be a mom in the first place.

• Shirt: Walmart
• Heart design: Me, using Silhouette Iron-on material
• Velvet pants: Walmart
• Shoes: Amazon

I finally got around to sewing this week! I'll be sharing those details with you tomorrow.

I haven't gotten around to sewing this week. I'm going crazy without it! I traced a really cool pattern, now I need to just cut it out and figure out how to do the funky sleeves (more on that hopefully next week).  In the mean time, I got an email from reader Natasha asking what to do with some special yardage she's had stashed away for years. It's a bright double-knit type fabric with polkadots. It's got good drape, but also some structure to it and not a whole lot of stretch (from what I can tell from the pic). I think for this type of knit, a peplum pencil skirt would be really neat. The peplum would have a little extra drape so you could make it a full circle peplum and the layers would fold on top of each other nicely. Depending upon how "sticky" the knit is, you may want to line the under part of the peplum so the two pieces don't get stuck on each other. There's a full skirt pattern from By Hand (I have it, it's a really well designed pattern, but I can't vouch for the pattern itself as I have yet to make it) or DIY your own using this tutorial from a pair and a spare. Not to toot my own horn (but totally tooting my own horn), I think it'd look really cute as a box pleated skirt. I made a knit version of my DIY Kate Spade-Inspired skirt tutorial and I love how it swishes. I'd recommend going about 2-3 inches shorter on the proportion, though. Merrick just posted her own version of a box-pleat skirt tutorial as well. Lastly, I've had my eye on one of the new patterns from the "Just Add Jeans" collection by Pattern Anthology. I love the casual Day Tripper top. The sleeve is just right and the tabs on the sleeves are a fun detail. Break up the bright polka dots with white or chambray colored knit on the hems and the tabs. There you have it! So, I don't intend to replace my sewing posts with these challenges, but that's just how it worked out this week. If I get enough reader requests, I may make it more of a regular thing just on a different day. Contact me using the form above if you have a crafty project that has you stumped or some yardage that you want ideas for! I've been drawing up all sorts of clothing plans the last week, it's been fun to get my sewing brain working again! Hopefully I can sit down at the sewing machine this weekend and do something about the sketches I have piling up!

So. . . I was on TV last night. Not for the fun crafty stuff that I do on occasion. But for something far more severe. I've always known that cyberbullying is serious, but now more than ever after becoming a target of a particularly awful flavor: revenge porn.

Full Article Here

Two weeks ago I woke up to several messages and new friend requests on my phone. I'm not a terribly popular person so this struck me as strange. I ignored the friend requests, then looked at messages on facebook. Then on twitter. Then in my email. A few of these messages were from "friendly" strangers informing me about some awful post about me. What is going on? After I replied to an email with, "I'm not clicking on some random link." One stranger spelled it out for me. He replied: "Someone posted nude photos of you online. . . I wanted to alert you ASAP so you could have them removed ASAP." Now I'm thinking, WHAT THE WHAAT?!? I know for a fact I've never been in front of a camera naked, so this was very strange. I finally clicked. I was horrified. Someone stole photos (real photos) from this blog and posted them next to gobs of particularly disgusting naked photos of someone else. If someone didn't know me personally, they would have easily thought it was me before doing a double-take. And then. . . they wrote about things that I would "do" and linked to my personal Facebook profile. This site had a clickable button offering to remove the post, however they wanted hundreds of dollars to do so. Extortion much? They should be the ones paying me for slander and stealing my copyrighted images. This one page alone got over 60,000 hits in less than two weeks. There were tears. Sobs, even. It felt personal and the violation was real. Like the creepy slime from perverted individuals was closing in on me. In my own home. More awful than the piles of messages with gross solicitations or any threat to sully my online reputation these disgusting creeps managed to steal my time. They ruffled enough of my feathers that I lost out on precious family and work time. NOT COOL. Progress is stalled on getting the post removed as the site seems to be registered from an "unfriendly" country that doesn't recognize internet policing. Frustrating. It's unfortunate how common this particular abuse is becoming. So what to do to prevent it? Basically nothing. Although, I'm sure sexting/snap chatting is probably not a good idea. What to do if cyberbullying happens to you?

• Make sure your social media is on lock down. There are loads of configurations for privacy on facebook. I've got mine just about as private as one can get.
• Contact authorities. The FBI handles this kind of issue. Submit a complaint to IC3.gov, it's actually pretty quick and convenient.
• If you're getting emails from creeps, anonymous jerks or friendly strangers; get their IP addresses. You can find that out by searching "view long headers in your email client". Pass those along to the FBI.
• If you're being targeted by an extortion site, NEVER pay. If no one buys into the filth, perhaps we can starve these disgusting sites together.
• Do what you can, but then move on. Don't let it ruin your day or they've essentially won.

Who knows if this issue will get completely resolved. Maybe that post will get filtered down by all the other disgusting porn out there. It'll be a tiny speck inside a drop in the large bucket of the gross underbelly of the internet and I'll never think of it again. My hope is that anyone who has been victimized by cyberbullying in the past, present or future will know they're not alone. There are things we can do about it (although I wish DDOS-ing the website in question were an option). Speak up and don't take crap from bullies! To end on a more inspirational note, I love this antibullying campaign published by the LDS church. It goes beyond religion – in my opinion – and strikes a chord that I think we can all relate to.

All images by Sarah Wilkes.

UPDATE: I've found a few great resources online talking about this very thing. Read how this woman basically dropped everything to take down an evil sitemaster running several revenge porn sites. Even comedy sites take these kinds of attacks seriously. Utah legislation passed a revenge porn bill, now it's up to the governor to sign off on it. There's not a whole lot government can do about this kind of thing, but raising awareness is a good start. If you want to get legislation to pass a revenge porn bill in your state, speak up about it here.

Watch the segment on Good Morning America for more tips from experts.

Also, Here's another article with a list of things to do if you find yourself in this position.

This is the last of the pieces I made for Alt Summit. And sadly enough, I've barely used my sewing machines for basic mending since mid January. It's time to get my rear in gear and sew some more! I've got a few great ideas for clothes for Penelope and me. Penelope is finally at a point where she's not destroying her clothes, so I'm excited to start sewing for her again. Here was the basic vision that I had for the first day of Alt Summit. It was something simple with the letter lover sweatshirt and skinnies (blogged here), but then kicked up a notch for the evening with a blazer and leather skirt. The outfit pictured below isn't what I actually wore the evening of the event, but it's something I've been doing a lot lately: mixing neutrals. I've been mixing browns and blacks a lot lately. I find that it can be easily done, if browns and blacks are the only "color" introduced into the outfit. It's much harder to mix neutrals (for me at least) when other colors are introduced into the palette. Instead of going for a black leather like I had originally sketched out, I went for an oatmeal/white leather. It breaks up the brick pattern nicely and it's a little more casual. Constructing this skirt after my last leather skirt was a BREEZE. I didn't insert any invisible zippers on leather. The fact that it's mostly ponte knit allows for more wiggle room when moving around. Between the knit and the yoga waistband, I can wear the skirt lower or higher depending upon how I want the overall look to come across. It's nice to have flexible, comfortable pieces in the wardrobe. So I've been meaning to write up this post for some time, but the biggest hang-up has been the tutorial. It's so easy to make your own, I thought I would include a tutorial in the post. Click "read more" below to view the instructions. Outfit Details:

• earrings: c/o Ardor
• necklace: Ann Taylor Loft
• watch: c/o Feral
• bracelets: handmade, gift
• top: Forever 21
• skirt: handmade
• shoes: c/o Sole Society

     

Leather and Knit Tuxedo Skirt Tutorial

Supplies:

• 1 yard ponte knit (heavy knit with 50-65% 4-way stretch, see here)
• garment weight leather (see measurements below for amount)
• bulldog clips, or paper clips
• large paper
• pencil
• ruler
• measuring tape
• regular sewing machine
• universal sewing needle

Take your measurements. Measure the full circumference of your waist, hip and the desired length of your skirt. You'll also want to measure the height distance between your waist and hip. If you're curvy, you may want to take multiple hip measurements. I have basically no hips, so I just took one. Follow the guide above to draft up a basic block on a large piece of butcher paper.

ALL SEAM ALLOWANCES ARE 5/8 IN.

Trace the pattern piece again. Add about 1/2 inch to the top of the waist for the back and substract a 1/2 inch below the waist for the front. This will reduce any crack, but it's optional if you're making it high-waisted. Cut 1 1/2 inches from the flat fold side of the back pattern piece. Cut 2 1/2 inches from the flat fold side of the front pattern piece. This will allow for the tuxedo strips. Cut tuxedo strips and your waistband according to the measurement guidelines above. Cut 1 front and back piece on a fold. Match up the grain so that the stretch happens horizontally. Clip your leather strips to your front piece, right sides together and straight stitch with the longest stitch length (7.0 is what my machine does). Use a walking foot or a Teflon foot and face the leather down toward the feed dogs so the fabric is facing up. With a press cloth on top of the right side of your fabric and NO STEAM on your iron, lightly press the seam allowance to the ponte knit side. Topstitch down the knit side. Clip front of the skirt to the back of the skirt, right sides together. The front will pucker, so make sure that those pieces are firmly placed together. Sew with a straight stitch at the longest stitch length. Press with a press cloth (or any cotton fabric will do) and topstitch. Fold waistband right sides together and straight stitch. You will use a shorter stitch length here. Fold wrong sides together and press with an iron. Flip waistband so the fold is facing down and pin the two pieces together (use clips for leather). Zig zag stitch or use an overlock stitch along the waist to allow the material to stretch without breaking threads. Turn right side out and press seam allowance down. Fold the hem up to the desired length and stitch the fabric together. You can blind stitch by hand or by machine (hand is sometimes faster), then use heat 'n bond or a hem tape to hem the leather portions of the skirt. BOOM DONE. If you like this tutorial, subscribe! Follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitteror RSS.

This tutorial/freebie is free for personal use and should not be distributed/republished without my consent. Altering any files is NOT ALLOWED. If you would like to use this freebie for commercial purposes, please email me. Thanks!

 

This post is inspired by a note I saw on Instagram yesterday. I thought I'd get all paper crafty and bust out my fancy decorative papers for a quick printable DIY. Let's make notes telling our visitors to knock cute today. You can get fancypants with decorative paper, or go plain jane and simply print on the paper you've got on hand. Simply print, cut and (if applicable) fill in the blank! There's a fill-in-the-blank version for any other need you may have. We had a doorbell busted sign on our front door for about 3 months, then Chris discovered that fixing the doorbell wasn't as complicated as he had once thought. 5 minutes later, the sign was gone. I used an ombre paper and 6 inch Lucky 8 punch* to make my sign just a tad cuter. And as luck would have it, it nested perfectly inside my coffee filter wreath. Side note, the coffee filter wreath has done remarkably well considering it gets wet everytime we get rain or snow. Color me impressed! And the No Solicitors sticker has been doing its job as well. Lucky us! Click the below link to download the printable knock sign. And hey! If you like this printable, subscribe! Follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter or RSS. Thanks for stopping by!

This tutorial/freebie is free for personal use and should not be distributed/republished without my consent. Altering any files is NOT ALLOWED. If you would like to use this freebie for commercial purposes, please email me. Thanks!

*Products provided by We R Memory Keepers. Printable, images and thoughts are all my own.   

Saturdays are our food crawl days. They've been for the last three weeks, at least. We spend the whole day either eating out or eating the most delicious, tasty treats we can possibly come up with. After a short conversation with Chris about his mom's love for chicken and rice, he said, "Now you're making me crave rice pudding!" You know the beauty of rice pudding? You can make it just about any time, since it's likely you'll have all the ingredients on hand. We had all of them, plus a few extras that made our Saturday foodie experience phenomenal. Toasted marshmallow Torani syrup. Mmm! Mmm! So delicious! I used a recipe from AllRecipes.com, but made a few exceptions. Since I was using a sugary flavored syrup instead of an extract, I used less sugar. I also opted for a 1/2 cup of cream instead of milk in the last step. It's the perfect amount of creamy and sweet, in my opinion.

 Toasted Marshmallow Rice Pudding

Serves about 4 | Adapted from All Recipes

• 3/4 cup white uncooked rice
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoon Torani Toasted Marshmallow Flavoring (or any flavoring)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup cream

Boil 1 1/2 cups water in a small saucepan. Stir in rice, reduce to medium and cover for 20 minutes. In a clean medium saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups cooked rice with the milk, sugar and salt. Cook uncovered over medium heat for 15-20 minutes (it was 20 minutes at our house). Stir in egg, butter, flavoring and cream and cook for another 2-5 minutes. Remove from heat. Scoop pudding into an airtight container and cool in the refrigerator (if you like your pudding cold like I do). Allow 1 hour to set up. Serve with sliced strawberries.   I hope you enjoy this twist on a classic comfort food recipe as much as I do! Mmm!