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I have made a few of these happy aprons in the past for my mom and sister but always forget to take a picture when I am visiting. Back in November, one of my husband's family members gently reminded me that I had said (when I was in grad school)  that I would create an apron for her too. To my credit, I did finish one. However, at that point I was still testing out patterns and the one I created had really awful measurements... I just decided to give up on it until a) I had the time to dedicate and 2) I had repaired my machine.  As mentioned before, with time on my hands and a working machine, I am able to catch up with a few sewing projects.



In order to work out the "bugs" with the design, I simply traced a plain canvas apron that I usually use for painting (which can be found relatively cheap in the t-shirt embellishment craft aisle in Michael's or Wal-Mart). This was the result!



Believe it or not, this apron is actually pretty simple to make. The most time consuming part (besides pinning) is deciding on what embellishments you would like to add.


Notice the flower from my Crazy Daisy tutorial!

Tutorial for this project coming soon!

During my time off, I upgraded my sewing machine to a Janome DC2011. I can finally finish all of those sewing projects, YAY! One of the sewing projects that has been on hold for *quite* a while was another crayon roll. Directions for this project can be found in a link in my first crayon roll post.



And of course it had to have a matching tote bag to carry the coloring book!

A lot of life changes have occurred in the last 10 months, which collectively have caused a hiatus that was a *bit* longer than I had hoped.

First, I finally finished graduate school at the end of July and had a series of visitors for almost three weeks! Mr. Stout and I had a short time off before jetting off to Europe for a few weeks (a graduation gift from Mr. Stout!). Not to brag, but it was a total dream vacation! I can't wait until we're able to go back.



When we returned, I continued working weekends at the historic site that I had been at during grad school. I also began a second part-time job at another historic site. Shortly thereafter, we got this news:



Yep! I'm expecting!  We've since found out we're having a boy, due in June! Time to clean up the house!

In the fall, I decided to improve my colored pencil skills by taking a course through The Art League, located at The Torpedo Factory. At this time, I began to realize that this secondary part-time job was not working out so well, and so I started interviewing elsewhere.

Mom and Dad came to visit for Christmas. After the new year, I decided to leave the stressful job altogether for the health of myself and the baby. I continued to interview, feeling like I had limited time before my belly became obvious (legally, people can't discriminate but...). I finally heard good news back from one place and began P/T as soon as Mr. Stout and I returned from a much needed vacation back home to San Diego.



I started assisting with research on a project for one job and training for the other. I attended a few professional development opportunities, including a multi-day conference. Then things became very very slow.



I'm now at a point where I'm focused on the little guy's arrival. The baby's room is finished. After cleaning/organizing the rest of my house (exhausting myself half the time), I have now finally found some extra time to finish some sewing projects (and start some new ones!). I will be sharing these throughout the next few weeks, and hopefully sharing a bit of inspiration as well!

I found time to make a new illustration!

I will be back soon, I promise! As this semester draws to a close, I have papers and portfolios that I am trying to complete. Add in the fact that Mr. Stout and I are in the process of moving, and we've got a bit of a crazy situation! My sewing machine and drawing tools are currently packed away... hopefully in about two weeks I'll have some new projects to share!

In the meantime, here is a cell phone picture of the drawing I was working on in the previous post. My sister-in-law has a pastel drawing of her, created when she was about 5 years old. She wanted one of my brother-in-law from about the same time. Using an old Polaroid as a reference, I did my best:



It has been quite a while since I've worked with pastels, and I am not sure if I have used colored pastels prior to this. Most of my experience with pastels has been white, black and gray on neutral paper.

I had this professionally matted and framed. I should have taken a final photo, but we decided to send it off right away to get there in time for his birthday.

Happy Anniversary, Stouts of L.A.! Happy Birthday Brother-in-Law!