Spring seems to finally be here (although there were temp’s in the 40′s this week, yikes!). Here at city made, spring means Farmer’s Market.
The Saturday downtown FM is one of our favorite events to do. We meet so many great people, have a lot of friends stop by, and get some great feedback on our products.
The market started this weekend, but city made will be there Memorial weekend, Saturday, May 25th.
(Carol here) O.k. So I have been obsessed with divided baskets. Making them, not buying them. I was determined to figure out how to make one. I managed to muddle my way through.
Here is my first attempt. Not too shabby. . .
(Pay no attention to what appears to be some kind of card game in the background!)
Being pleased with the results, I made one for a friend for her baby shower. Along with a few other items.
Here is the basket loaded with baby things.
I made some burp clothes to match.
A couple of these adorable bibs.
I also included a t-shirt form Big Bridge Studios. (I love to give my expecting friends t-shirts designed by my friend Kendra.)
I hope my friend liked her gift. I really enjoyed making it and I can’t wait to keep making divided baskets.
A new member of the family joined us in January. Samuel Henry. He’s adorable, of course. He also inspired us to make some bibs.
We had plenty of shirts from when the boys were little. We decided to use them to create the bib front. Then we used a towel for the back.
This one is an old button down shirt. (I still remember Colin wearing it.)
This one was a brown t-shirt. I added the pocket from the button down in order for them to coordinate. I did sew up the pocket all around so there would be no food dropped in it.
Hopefully Sam-e-o will love them as much as we love him!
Spring is coming…at least we hope. We have definitely been getting the itch to clean and organize. The Spiehs house recently had an “operation closet redo”. I really wanted to utilize the doors in our coat closet and hung a towel bar for scarves and hooks for wall totes. I found a use for some of my beautiful IKEA fabric. I used the totes for all of the girls hats and mittens. Now each girl has their own easily accessible tote.
Each year, for the past four years, we have made the girls Valentine outfits for our annual, ”Cookies and Cocoa” party that our wonderful friend Michele hosts.
In 2010 we made “cupcake” skirts.
This was back when we were just learning how to use the new Serger.
In 2011 we made sweetheart skirts with cute little pockets. We also tried our hand at fabric printing and made matching t-shirts.
2012 was the year of the ruffled petite coat skirts…cringe. These were a little harder than we expected, but we did it!
We also added another little girl that year so we had to make 4!
This year we decided to change it up and make the girls dresses. We had some more sewing experience under our belts and were up for the challenge. These dresses are our favorite…so far.
The dresses were repurposed (yes, back to our roots) from denim shirts we found on clearance at Target! We found the pattern on one of the sewing websites we like to frequent.
Who know what we will come up with next year…maybe the girls will be sewing their own dresses by then.
The Spiehs’ girls have always wanted bean bag chairs. Well, “always for a long time,” as Ava puts it. To be honest I dreaded this project because I thought it would be hard, tedious and boring. However, it was just the opposite. It was pretty fast and easy and very rewarding.
I found three adorable coordinating fabrics to use. Good fabric always makes a project more fun!
We have cute little reading nook at the top of upstairs that became the new home for these bean bag chairs.
Here is our usual model on the bean bag chairs. (All of the other models are in school all day long so it’s up to Caroline…at least she is cute).
She just so happens to be holding the purse that I made her for Christmas as well…good girl.
Carol and I really enjoy making gifts for each other’s kiddos. The girls, and sometimes boys, are very interested in what projects we are working on and love it when we make something for them.
For Christmas this year, Carol made Anna and Lauren this awesome basket organizer. It has inside and outside pockets and came complete with some of their favorite things: pencils, erasers, stickers and tape! The girls love their baskets and always have them loaded up with supplies on their desks.
Carol knows that Caroline loves baby dolls right now so a matching Caroline-Baby doll pj set was a perfect gift. You can tell Caroline is special because Carol even used bias tape on the pajamas….we hate bias tape!
Adorable!
Citymade husband Jeff loves to hunt…
…for the perfect product that is. He has been hunting for the perfect iphone case for months. He has been showing me pictures of various cases over the internet and he really liked a case that he saw on Etsy but it didn’t come with a card pocket, which was one of his requirements. If any of you know Jeff, he is very particular about certain things. He has a very detailed idea of what he wants and will search for months or even years before he finds it. I decided that the only way that he was going to get exactly what he wanted was if I custom-made him a phone case.
I found gray felted wool at Hobby Lobby as well as leather and snaps. Here are some pictures of the finished product.
Jeff really likes his new iphone case…the hunt is over.
One of the busiest and most productive times of the year for citymade is Christmas time. We love putting on Christmas music and sewing for hours at a time. We always say we are going to start making Christmas gifts in July but it usually comes down to a frantic sewing frenzy during Christmas break!
Our first Christmas gift we want to highlight is Caroline’s Tool Set. For some reason, Caroline loves tools…she takes after her mommy I guess. Every time I pull out the tools she has to try them out and “fix dis” as she says. This gift of her own tool set was a no brainer. Of course she needed her own pink tool caddy and tool belt…that is where citymade came in. We even stenciled Caroline’s name onto her tool caddy using fabric paint and freezer paper.
Here she is in action!
I liked Caroline’s pink tool caddy so much that I asked for my own for Christmas. Thanks Jim and Nancy! Now we can carry around our tools in style.
We have had a bit of a lull in our blogging and are hoping to get back into it in 2013, so let’s get started.
We begin this year with an up-cycle. We had old corduroy pants, old tweed (one of our favorite things to re-purpose) and some left over fabric from Christmas gifts (hopefully we will have our Christmas gift round-up soon).
All these turned into some pencil cases, zippy purses and coffee cuffs.
We added small details on the zippies and the coffee cuffs (it was the relaxation of winter break).
Love these little pencil cases. Fun and easy to make.
So, our new year resolution will be to blog more, create more, up-cycle more, sew more. We will see how we do. Until then, Happy New Year!
