Sewing for a cause

As we are all affected by this global pandemic, COVID-19, I pray that all of my readers are staying at home, like it has been suggested, so that the spread can be stopped in its tracks.

I am personally blessed that I am a prepper. I know how to cook and bake, keep our pantry stocked (yes even with toilet paper, even though we use mostly cloth), know how to sew, and homeschool my children. Because of this, I have felt very little effect. My friends and acquaintances on Facebook tell their stories and I really feel for them.

This past week, I went through all of my scrap bins and rolls of elastic in my sewing room to aid in the movement of sewing masks for healthcare professionals that are going to be needing extraordinary amounts in the coming weeks. As of this morning, the Governor of Ohio said that they also needed medical foot covers (booties), so I went on a search to find a pattern to start making those, only to be very disappointed. How could there not be precise instructions or even a clearly put together YouTube video for me to follow?

Well, I’m here to tell you that I took that matter into my own hands. Through some light trial and error, I have measurements and uploaded the video I made to my YouTube channel so that others can follow or even adjust to their liking what I am doing.

Here are the basic instructions:

For making masks, please consult the JoAnn Fabrics website. The last time I heard, they are giving fabric kits to make 5 masks at a time.

Life without a sewing machine

Right now I am in a pickle. I have many sewing projects, as well as 2 children who want to learn how to sew, and yet, all I have is my serger and my old White sewing machine that has a mind of it's own. My Singer XL 400 embroidery arm decided to stop right in the middle of a project, so I of course had to send the entire machine (even though the machine could still sew perfectly well) off for repairs. That was almost 4 weeks ago!

After 1 week, I went and dug my old machine out, not remembering what was really wrong with the thing in the first place. I plugged it in, did a few little projects and started Tabitha and Grady on a sewing machine curriculum that I found. Then it happened. The whole reason I about threw the thing out the window years ago. It starts doing zig zags when on the straight stitch, the bobbin threads get all messed up... We have learned to just take a deep breath, turn the machine off, and walk away. It's amazing, when we come back and turn it back on the next day, it works just as it is supposed to, until it decides we have sewn enough for the day.

Anyway, I have had to be very creative with my serger to be able to get most of my children's spring/summer wardrobe at least most of the way done. I used a rolled hem on Tabitha's swimsuit for the year. I have also used the blind hem to get a pillow cover completed.

I am really hoping my machine comes back in since I still have shorts for the boys, 1-2 dresses for Tabitha, and a special nursing dress I came up with for me.

Of course, I had just been ready to start teaching myself zippers. I even found an invisible zipper foot for $0.01 plus $4.95 shipping for my machine on Amazon.

I also found 2 other cool feet I had never heard of before, that I want to try sometime this year. The Daisy foot and the pleater foot look so cool and I've watched many videos on YouTube on how they work. I have many ideas. Ideas and I are dangerous.

Homemaker CD... link

I thought I would share this, since it seems very thorough and thought out. I purchased mine already and am very excited to receive it in the mail. I feel there are some things that I already know how to do, but this may be a really special reference to new and exciting things for me to learn, as well as teach my children.

http://www.wholesomechildhood.com/thehomemakersmentor/

Let's retry this... Homemade Liquid Soap

Over a year ago, I tried making liquid "castile" soap and utterly failed. Why? Probably because I did not follow the directions. I did not want to give up a crock pot, so I tried to do it my way on the stove top. Big mistake! So, here I am again, now that my gallon of Dr. Bronner's is down to the last 16 oz, with a surrendered crock pot and a recipe I made with the soap calculator, so I could use up various bits of my soaping oil stash and the basics are rolled from the original blog post that started this challenge.

I used Silver Firs Farm's basics to make my own recipe. Also, as I said, you must surrender a crock pot for only liquid soap making, since you are using potash (also known as KOH or potassium hydroxide). If everything doesn't go as she says ( have no idea how she says it will be done in 3-4 hours...), be patient. It took from the start, 90+ minutes to get it thick, even with my hand blender, off and on, so I didn't burn the motor up. Then I needed to stir until extremely thick, which was again, on and off for an hour or so, then I stirred every 20-30 minutes on low for 4 hours, then turned it back up to high until bed time, which was 6 hours, stirring every 15 minutes, then turned it off until we got back up this morning and stirred every 15-20 minutes on high for 4 hours. It is finally done! I added the boiling water straight to the crock pot instead of needing to clean another thing. Now I just have to wait until it is dissolved to bottle it in a recycled apple cider jug and cure it for the next 4 weeks. After that, I plan on giving each member of the family their own personal bottle with a scent they want. I will use .5 oz per 16 oz of soap, in case anyone is wondering. I get soap scents from EBay and MMS.

Dissolving...

Beautiful blessings

I thought I would share a beautiful blessing we had yesterday.

A few weeks ago I saw this fat green caterpillar feasting on my parsley plants in my raised beds. I took him and the parsley he was eating and put it in my daughter's bug house. We forgot about it for 2 days, then remembered that we needed to go check it and feed it. Well, when we got to the bug house, it was starting to turn into a chrysalis! So, this turned into a home school lesson for both my son and daughter. We learned about the life of a butterfly and looked up to see what kind of butterfly it was going to be. We discovered we had a Black Swallowtail! I had always heard of them, but had never seen one in real life, so I was getting really excited too.

Well, a couple weeks past and I decided to bring it in the house to keep a better watch, since we kept forgetting to go out in the sun room to check on it. 2 days later, my daughter came running to me in a panic. The butterfly had just come out of the chrysalis. So we proceeded to take the bug house outside and lifted the door open, so it could climb out and spread it's wings. Here is the beautiful picture I got of it on my hydrangeas.

God is so good to us!

Another new hobby! (Courtesy of Eric)

First of all, yes I know there is an earlier post with the same title... I'm just not feeling creative with words today.

OK, now that that's out of the way, I will tell you how this new hobby started.

As some of you know, I am not cutting my hair anymore. I have been letting it grow for over 1 1/2 years so far and I finally had to teach myself how to trim the ends, because the split ends were getting bad.  Anyway, I have been having more and more difficulty trying to figure out what to do with all this hair, especially since I can't stand to have it in or around my face, it MUST be up or at least half up. I have had Eric braiding my hair (I can't myself since it is so thick), when he has the time, ponytail holder were starting to get tangled in my hair, that I had to start adding a second one and that was becoming very annoying. So, I went searching on the internet to see what other women with long hair do.

I stumbled upon a long hair forum, which led me to all sorts of things, which I have tried before and never worked, so I kept searching and found a product called Flexi8. I liked what I saw, but there was no way I could afford to pay $15+ for 1 hair thing, so I showed it to Eric to see what he said. He told me that we should be able to make them ourselves.

So, now Eric and I share a new hobby, beading.

Here is the first one that we made. I really like it. We have made 2 so far and are planning on making more of different sizes, so Tabitha can wear them too.

Here is the 2nd.

Eric, of course, was the mastermind behind the hair stick piece and I do the beading. I really don't know if there is anything he can't do!

The ladies at the bead shop think that we need to make a bunch of them and sell them at craft shows, since no one has really seen anything like this. We are considering it. With the help of eBay and our creative talents, we are thinking about trying it out at Hartville.

If any of our friends and family are interested in these, let me know. There a million and one possibilities, which makes this hobby twice as fun (also having Eric helping me is awesome too). And they won't cost you more than the materials to make them. The largest size costs about $5 in parts.

Updates

I know I haven't been writing like I want to on my blog. Since summer has begun, I hardly find anytime to do anything I really want. My husband and children come first. Tabitha is doing really well with her school days. We try to get everything done before Grady wakes up, but that is not always possible. Grady is starting to learn numbers, letters and is picking up sign language that Tabitha is learning as her "foriegn language".

For the sign language, I use Signing Time. It give the kids "TV time" once a week while we are on the road to get our weekly milk. Otherwise they do not watch television. Childhood is so short, we feel they need to be using their time to run and play outside with each other (and make friends through the fence, to my dismay).

I am also busy getting our rabbits out for at least 2 hours at a time 2-3 times a day, and keeping their cage clean (every 2 days... 3 rabbits are messy). Since it is so hot lately, they seem to be out more after the sun goes down, because when I get them out during the day all they do is nibble and then plop on their sides and pant. I do sprinle the hose on them sometimes, but they are not too fond of that, though they like running in the sprinkler with the kids.

I am also trying to sew here and there, make soap, crochet, garden, and research more homesteading things, while keeping up with the house chores and making from scratch meals. I am really wondering how wives did everything in the old days, because at the end of they day I am truly worn out. I am blessed when Eric is home on the weekends and helps me out so much, especially with the baking.

Eric seems to love baking and cooking, though I do too, it is he that has inspired me to work on this area. Every weekend we seem to experiment with some new recipe. In the past few months we have made spaghetti, fettucini, and many types of bread.

My newest interest is learning loom sock making. I purchased a loom a couple days ago from Jo-Ann Fabrics (yes, with coupons and discounts, lol - I NEVER buy anything retail, if you know me.) and a ball of sock wool. I have started and gotten 2 rows done, not a lot, but a start. I found wool made in Maine , on Ebay, that I will be making Eric socks from for this winter to help keep him warm and dry, while he goes in and out of houses, making everyones bathroom truly "Luxury".

I have been reading my Bible still every weekday morning. I have a lot of things I would love to write about, but that seems to be on my HUGE to-do list. I keep making note in my notebook, so if I ever get a day to just write and write, I'm sure I'll have many comments left on my Facebook page on that day.

I used to write on my blog after everyone went to bed, but my husband has other plans and expects everyone in the family to go to bed at the same time now, so I am hardly on the computer anymore, except when Grady is taking his afternoon nap on me.

I am truly blessed that I am allowed to stay at home with my children and my husband allows me to dabble in this and that to broaden my horizons.