New Years Resolution- Crafts

I tend to get a severe case of craft procrastination (not that I ever, ever procrastinate about anything else! ha!). I like to start a project and then for one reason or another I will not finish it. Either I don’t have all of the materials needed, something goes wrong with it and that frustrates me, or I just get bored… it doesn’t really matter because the fate of the project is usually the same as the others… it gets shoved off somewhere to be “finished later”.

One of my new years resolutions this year was to finish all of my unfinished crafts. I decided that I wanted to hold myself accountable for it and the only real way that I knew how to was to publicly display all of the projects. I thought I knew all that needed to be done going into this, but was surprised to find 2 or 3 projects that I had forgotten about! Here’s everything…

Cross-Stitch:

Noah’s birth/baby sampler

–What’s left to do… I can not find this!! I know I had it when we emptied out the loft (it is with some brown felt, which I also can’t seem to find)… once I do find it, I know that I don’t have too much left to do with this. I’m pretty sure I’m about 75% done with the stitching and then I still have to back-stitch and add Noah’s birth info onto it and frame it. First things first though and that is to find it!!

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Halloween picture

–What’s left to do… too much! I think I have a little over half of the stitching done and then I still have to back-stitch it all to finish it off.

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Knitting:

Blanket for baby girl

–What’s left to do…I have to knit this last ball of yarn and then I want to crochet a border around the whole blanket with a softer white yarn (yeah I know… really technical and really descriptive there, but I was too lazy to go up and get the skein to include in the picture… I will take a picture of the finished blanket).

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Sewing:

Noah’s alphabet and number bean bags w/ bag to hold them

–What’s left to do… I have cut and painted all of the squares for the numbers, I’ve also printed out all of the letters of the alphabet and still have to cut them out to make stencils. I have to cut out the rest of the fabric squares for the alphabets (both lower and uppercase), paint the letters and then sew and fill 60 beanbags. (I’m thinking I may make a separate blog post as a tutorial!)

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Lightly padded camera pouch for my Canon ELPH

–What’s left to do… Add batting to pad it and then sew it into a pouch. This isn’t the ideal choice in fabric, but I wanted something quick and took the first thing I could grab out of my limited stash. I may make another with cuter fabric once all of the other projects are done.

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Belly Bands

–What’s left to do…I have 3 tops cut to size with 2 pinned and ready to sew. I need to cut the last two tops to size, pin the three and then sew, sew, sew.

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Misc craft:

Snowman ornaments

–What’s left to do…mold and paint the “carrot” noses, paint faces and sew a quick fabric hat.

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Memo Boards (set of 4)

–What’s left to do…I have 2 pretty much completed and need to do the other 2 (add batting and fabric to the cork board). To make them a little more stable I’m adding some foam-board to the backs (didn’t realize how flimsy it would be with just the cork).

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Initials – R & M

–What’s left to do… I want to Modge Podge some scrapbook paper onto these and distress the edges a bit. I got them before the kid(s), so it’s just the first initials for Ray and my names, I may or may not add the kids initials later.

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Blue pillow for Noah

–What’s left to do…Nothing! I actually finished this project since starting this post! I had forgotten that I had sewn the pillowcase and found it while cleaning my sewing case. I used fiberfill that I still had here at home (I think I had originally wanted it to be fuller than it turned out), sewed it up and gave it to Noah (Yes, it was ironed before doing any of that – I could not let the wrinkles stay in there!). It is now in his bed and of course his head is resting just below it instead of on it!

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I now have everything that needs to be finished in one bag (with the exception of the snowman ornaments, because they are breakable). I’m hoping that having everything in one place will help me complete more at once (for example – finish all sewing projects  while I have the sewing machine out instead of doing just one sewing project at a time).

I am dedicating a separate page on the blog for this (Open Projects/Crafts), which will be updated as I work on the different projects. I will try to make sure that I also take pictures of them once they are completed! I have told Ray (and myself) that I am not going to allow myself to start anything new until all of these are done (and I’m itching to try some new things, so that is my motivation!).

(FYI – None of these projects were sponsored, I bought all of the materials myself)