a few projects from the past year

I did do some crafting while on my blog hiatus, and today I realized I even took pictures of some of them.I made two great shirts from Simplicity's Built By Wendy pattern #3835. As I remember, they came together pretty easily and the simple gathered neckline is a really nice shape. I got this beautiful fabric at a local fabric shop, Mulberry Silks (sorry, I have no idea what the name of the fabric was or who made it). For this shirt I added the 3/4 length sleeves with the little ties at the ends. Very very cute but for some reason (probably my own error), when I put the shirt on, the sleeves were so tight in the arm that I could barely get it on, much less bend my arm at the elbow. So I ripped it out and added in that massive keyhole that you can see in the picture. Kind of cute but also kind of strange. Although I like that you can see the little dimple in Twin's elbow. awww.

I also made the same shirt (minus the strange tie-sleeves) in a blue linen. It really looks much better when it is ironed.

At Christmas time, I made a framed embroidery piece for Matt. Since getting to know him, I have been introduced to the strange and wonderful world of professional wrestling. He grew up loving it and as a kid spent many hours crashing through coffee tables (and once a wall, so I am told) and creating tin-foil championship belts with his friends. If he were a wrestler, his alter ego would be Cleetus Jones, the Great American Lovebomb. And so I embroidered him a little luchador. Sublime Stitching has a whole set of Lucha Libre patterns. I also bought the Sexy Librarian set of patterns for Twin. I'm thinking she needs some sexy librarian embroidery to hang in her office once she's a full-fledged librarian. She is always saying librarians have an image problem, so that should help with that.