Lil' newbie

Please say hello to the newest member of the Blue Cat Creations family.

Isn't she pretty? This is my new sewing machine that I got for my birthday and I am in love.

She is a Viking from Husquvarna, and although I've only had time to try her out a tiny little bit, I love her. She's much nicer to me than my mom's machine is. The stitches run smooth and neat and she makes a wonderful sewing machine sound. It took me a while to figure out the bobbin, but that's because the newbie in this situation is me, not the machine. The machine is already very good at sewing while I'm still figuring things out. 

I'm so excited, I already have a few projects in mind that I'm just itching to try. 

Sorry for the dark pictures, it's getting darker earlier now (the sun sets at 6:30 now and I'm just about ready to enter full hibernation mode). You should probably get very excited about the numerous anecdotes that are sure to come along with this new machine sewing adventure I've just set myself on.

Too much listing not enough doing

Hello there!

So, I'll just be straight with you. The only thing I have made in the last two weeks is a bunny and his scarf isn't finished so I don't have a picture for you. I was going to sew a bunny this afternoon, but instead I cleaned my room, which turned out to be a much better idea. I did work on my Book of Inspiration and Happy Thoughts a little bit, I added pictures and several lists, which brings me nicely to my next topic.

Lists.

If you've been keeping up with me for a while (in which case hello, thank you for your loyalty and continued interest) you will know that I love lists. I love making them, and I love reading lists that other people have made. I have lists of everything: lists of things to do that day, to do in the future, of books to read and books I've read, of music, of movies, of countries I want to visit.

However, it has come to my attention that making lists is definitely my most pronounced form of procrastination. Sure, I have several methods of procrastinating things, I'll go on YouTube or Tumblr for a while (several hours), I'll eat, I'll clean my room, I'll cuddle my cat... The list goes on. However, what I do when I most want to fight off actually doing things is that I will make a list of things that I should be doing. It motivates me to a certain extent because I have a moment of realization where I tell myself "This list is getting too long to justify writing it". So I get up and do things. Other times, and this happens a lot, I write the same list many times. Sometimes in a different order, sometimes copied basically word for word. It's a huge problem and I'm working on doing rather than listing.

I'm telling you all this because I started this post thinking "I'll just write a list of upcoming projects" and then I realized that I never abide by my lists anyway, so I wrote a whole spiel based on that thought instead.

I did have a creative funnel this week though, because I planned my birthday party. I made invitations a few weeks ago to send by mail. I love getting and sending mail, so I thought, why not? Then I planned the menu (and made part of it) and some of the minimal decoration. Let me tell you, stringing up twinkle lights on our back porch is one of the best decisions I've ever made. They look beautiful. I'm hoping my parents will forget to take them down. The only decoration thing I got a picture of were the candles in the Mason jars which were largely inspired by Tumblr but looked really adorable.

On that note, I hope you have a great week and that I will have a more interesting post next time!

My Book

Hello!

The school year is now officially underway, which of course means that my brain is just about bubbling with equations and monomers and the Civil War and the present tense of Spanish verbs. I have never really been overwhelmed by school, because I genuinely like learning and gaining new knowledge. However, this year, we are three weeks in and there are days where I feel like I'm drowning in school-work, which is never good. So, last week, I decided to start a new, on-going project that would have no deadline and would serve no purpose other than to distract me from school and to give me an accessible creative outlet for the days where it all gets to be too much.

This is My Book, or My Book of Inspiration and Happy Thoughts. Basically, it's going to be a compilation of things that make me happy. For the outside cover, I took pages from a book of poetry I bought for $0.75 at the library (if you ever need books for a project, hit up your library they always have books for sale for really, really cheap) and used Mod Podge to glue them to the book's front and back cover. There are a few air bubbles, but really it isn't that bad and the Mod Podge also acts as a varnish so it's all nice and polished. 

For the inside cover I cut out a road map and glued it on to hide the mess of the book pages. 

I found a bunch of pictures that I've liked over the last few months on Tumblr, printed them out and made a collage across the two first few pages.They're pretty and they make me happy, so they fit. Over time I think I'll also add pictures of myself, my friends and family. I'm also going to have poems and quotes written in. The page after this one has the list of my recent music obsession, which I will link you at the end of this. 

If you want a fun, stress-relieving project, I suggest this. It was inspired by my journal for art class (yes, I'm finally taking an art class and it's amazing). You can get an 8.5x11 notebook at a local arts and crafts store for about $10 and everything else is either printed or thrifted, so it really doesn't cost much. The best part is that there are no rules and no deadline, it's basically a visual brain dump. It's a lot of fun. 

I hope you have a great week!

Here is the link to my music love: http://8tracks.com/deadsoulsx/look-how-the-autumn-leaves-fall

I'm back in the game

Hello!

How have you all been this summer?

I know I was gone away for a (really really) long time, but now I'm back and the good news is that I have had time to make a lot of cool things that I'm super excited to share with you guys.

The first is a huge project that I gave myself a stupidly short amount of time to do, but as it was a gift for a (relatively) newborn baby, I had a deadline.

I made a whole baby quilt. In about two weeks.

I didn't think it would be such a huge project (because I'm naive and also because I've never made a quilt before) but boy was I wrong. Wow, this was such a huge thing to get through.

Picking the fabric is obviously the first step and being the unorganized sewer that I am, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted. I knew it was going to be for a girl, so I thought "pink", but then I thought "I don't want to indulge the stereotypes that all presents for girls must be pink, so maybe gray" and then I realized that pink and gray is one of my favorite color combinations and hey, there you go, that's my color scheme. Then my mom and I started looking for fabric, which was a challenge in itself because it's surprisingly difficult to find gray fabric that is cute enough for a baby and pinks that are all in the same tone. Then we found elephants and I was sold, so the official theme for this blanket is pink, gray and elephants.

The actual sewing process was not hard so much as time consuming, it's all straight lines but when you have a quilt that's going to be nine squares by eleven, it takes a while. I'm still amazed I didn't mess up in the pattern. I actually based it off a quilt my mom made me when I was a baby. 

The batting was a battle, which I won, but it was all twisted and pulled and didn't fall into place correctly, but the mistake isn't visible so how much of a mistake is it really?

So it turned out kind of massive, and I can't really say the process went smoothly because I did spend a while pulling out stitches and then sewing things back up, but the result was, if I do say so myself, quite nice. I'm very proud of it, but I'm not sure I'll be making another quilt anytime soon. I'd never made one and I wanted to, now I have and I'm good. 

What really matters is that the gift was well-received (which it was) and that it will be put to good use (as you can see by this little cutie, it already has!). I'd say she's pretty happy with it, wouldn't you?

Hope you all had a fantastic summer and I look forward to sharing more projects with you this year!

- Blue Cat

This is but the beginning

Hello!

This summer my goal is to re-decorate and redesign my room. I've lost count of how many times I've planned to do that over the years, but this time the wheels are already set in motion, so I know for sure that some re-decoration will be occurring, and has in fact already begun to occur.

So I went fabric shopping on Friday, which was my long-awaited self-reward for passing my chemistry class. I had projects in mind, just not really fabrics or colors. My general strategy for fabric shopping usually consists of walking in and finding a pattern or color that I like and going from that.

In this case, for the pillowcases, I found the flowers first and the polka-dots second. They went really well together, so I just switched the body and the header fabric for both, so one flower with a polka-dotted end and one polka-dot with a flowered end. 

For those of you wondering, the adorable dinosaur pillowcase I made last year tragically ripped and can no longer be used. I did keep the fabric though because it's so cute. 

So yes, super simple pillowcases. Next and more importantly, I made a huge blanket. 

So this blanket has been on my list of projects to do for a while. It's basically two squares of fabric sewn together, one dark gray fleece and one flowered cotton. Of course, it wasn't that simple to make. The cotton is sold in a thinner width than the fleece so I had to get twice as much of the cotton and piece it together to match the back. Then pinning it was a struggle, a situation that my cats tried to rectify by falling asleep on the fabric. However, the actual sewing was very easy. Straight lines, leaving an opening on one side to turn it right side out and then hand sewing that part shut.

So there you have it, the first wave in the room makeover. I will keep you updated on the progress of this transformation, I have several ideas that's I'm excited to share with you.

Have a fantastic start to summer!

It's that time of year again

Hello!

Yes it is that time of year again, the time where instead of craving Nutella and hot chocolate, I crave smoothies and watermelon. Both of which are significantly healthier, I think you'll agree.

Now when I get home from school, my automatic reflex is to grab the blender, a banana, some frozen strawberries and whatever else I can find that would taste good and make a smoothie. On good days, it takes approximately 2.5 minutes. On bad days (the running into things and tripping over flat surfaces kind of days, you know what I'm talking about) it can take up to 10 minutes cause I forget that yogurt does not make a smoothie liquid enough to be blendable.

Today was a good day.

And today I somehow made a vegan smoothie, which turned out to be the best I've ever made, so I decided to share the recipe with all you good people.

I apologize for the phone picture.

Here are my super accurate fool proof instructions on how to make the most perfect watermelon strawberry banana smoothie.

1. Grab blender. Do not forget to plug it in.

2. Grab watermelon. The kind that is sort of mushy and gross that no one wants to eat works very well. Make a fist. Add the same amount of watermelon as the size of your fist. Maybe a bit more.

3. Add a handful of frozen strawberries. 

4. Add a banana torn into little chunks.

5. Blend. 

6. Put in fridge as you clean up your mess.

7. Find a straw. 

8. Get a stool to reach straw on top shelf. Don't fall off of stool.

9. Add straw to smoothie and sit on porch instead of doing chemistry homework.

10. Enjoy the fact that you are having the best smoothie you've ever made instead of doing your chemistry homework.

For my first ever recipe post, I'd say that went pretty well.

Enjoy your smoothie. 

The blogger to the detective

Every Sherlock needs a Watson and of course, my Benedict Otterbatch needed his as well. The internet has decreed that if Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock BBC) is an otter, then Martin Freeman (John Watson in the same) is a hedgehog. I find this resemblance to be accurate and because the internet's wish is my command, I made a little Hedgejohn Watson to accompany the Otterbatch detective on his adventures. 

Designing a pattern for this little guy was an adventure in itself. I basically meshed a bunch of different animal pattern together, cut a big hole in the back to replace with longer fur and made him a mohawk. 

The scarf is black and white because in Sherlock BBC, John wears a black and white striped shirt, and its become a bit of staple John Watson outfit. 

I'm quite proud of his back fur, it looks enough like spikes that he doesn't look like a weird bear. In my opinion, I mean maybe he does, but I don't think so. 

I love his punk rock hair. 

If you guys want your own little John Watson or Sherlock Holmes, you can head on over to my Etsy shop. However, I suggest you wait for a bit before buying these little guys. I have a few changes in mind and a few deals for you all, so be patient for a few weeks more and you will be pleasantly surprised. However, if you want to buy one now, feel free, I'm not going to stop you!

Have a great week! And a great Easter, if it applies.