Swing Machine

Projects #2 & #4 in '50 in 2008' challenge - Polka Dot Lovelies Apron & Coordinating Recipe Book

I got a call from Lonny on my was to Target saying she and Bray were dancing and swinging with her new birthday apron on. I could hear Bray in the background saying, "Mommy let's dance in my room!"

Though opened a day early, the presents went over well.

Project #4 - The FOOD book

For Christmas I gave my sister a subscription to 'Everyday Food' because she kept asking me for easy good recipes to make. Then came the problem of what to do with the recipes they enjoyed, without having to keep the whole magazine.

Crafty sister to the rescue!

Initially I planned to get a recipe box…more specifically the Martha Stewart recipe box at Macy's. I figured it would probably fit her food magazine's pages, but I couldn't find it in store.

After secondary plans of creating a custom box were squashed by too small fits, I decided book form was necessary and confidently strode over to Michael's scrapbook section…only to be sorely disappointed. Albums only held 4x6 pictures and the scrapbooks were square, meaning awkward placement or unslightly white spaces.

Almost discouraged and planning to get my sister a 10 cent two pocket folder at the grocery store, I did one last sweep of the aisles. As I dodged crazy scrapbooking mothers with even crazier kids picking out colorful papers and Disney Princess stickers, I spotted a glint of white and gold out of the corner of my eye. Above eye level were a couple ugly and plain white, small rectangular scrapbooks. Scrapbooks meant for holding a 5x7 image (coincidentally the size of an 'Everyday Food' page) and the capacity to be added to unlimitedly!

I snapped that baby up and searched wildly for refill pages to no avail. Thank goodness for Amazon, right? Or else my poor sister may have been stuck with a recipe book that held 10 recipes, and what use would that have been?

I managed to create a cover that would not impede the addition of extra pages. Basically each cover has it's own slipcase that is secured by elastics on the spine edge. This was a feat in itself (I also fashioned some simple tabbed dividers, but that was nothing in comparison).

But in the past few days, I've been reminded that I enjoy working out construction of things. Which is probably why I rarely use patterns…well, that and I tend not to like to take the time to unfold patterns.

At work this week I was designing some software packaging for a client at work and relished in creating a flat die for the 3 dimensional shape in my head. I'm always surprised at how accurate things turn out when the 2D object is cut, folded, glued, folded into the 3D object floating around my mind. Though I must admit, I did leave out a few flaps on my first package that left some edges unconnected.

Perhaps I should start designing my own patterns. I mean, I do that more often than not when I sew, but in knitting I'm too scared. I don't have enough experience creating knitted things to feel confident even trying.