Getting ready for my first craft fair!

I think no matter how much you do in the way of preparation for your first craft fair, you will never feel really, fully prepared.  Add to that the inevitable kids being sick, you getting sick, and general life goes on despite the urge to sew sew sew and it got a little crazy in my house the past couple of weeks.

My dining room table became sewing central.  It was no longer for dining, it was for sewing...and although it gets like that a lot, usually there's at least some space for the kids to eat.  Not so!  In this case, to their delight, there were many meals in front of the tv.  I knew I was making progress on the amount of product ready for the show when the piles of fabric got smaller, more chairs became available, and the kiddos could start eating at the table again.  That was two days ago. ;)

I'm so excited to offer you a little sneak peek of some of the items I'll be featuring at my very first craft fair, today and tomorrow at St. Luke Church in Ellington, CT.  It's their annual holiday bazaar, tonight, Friday 11/7/14 from 5-8pm, and tomorrow, Saturday 11/8/14 from 9am - 2pm.

Now you all know how much I love bags.  By far, one of my favorite things to make.  I have had so much fun not only sewing new creations, but figuring out how to display them.  I found this kitschy cute coat rack at our local Goodwill and fell in love.  It is absolutely perfect!

'Tis the season for heating pads, because baby...it's cold outside! ;)  I LOVE my heating pads.  Not tooting my own horn here, but I have one that I use for heat and one I keep in the freezer to ice my knee.  It works so well because the rice filling just conforms to your body perfectly.  And if you're heating it up to stay warm or work kinks out of tired muscles, you'll get to enjoy the cozy cinnamon scent.  This is the largest heating pad I make, but there will be two other sizes as well, a mini which is perfect for nail wrap applications (who doesn't love Jamberry?), and a medium, which was designed to be "boo boo buddy" size.

And that's about all I have time for, folks!  Must, must, must go sew some more!  Sew 'til I drop!  And I can't wait to see you tonight or tomorrow at my very first craft fair.  Come be a part of Pumpkin Craft history and say I knew her when! ;)

Crazy Bag Lady

I love bags.  

There.  I said it.  If you know me, it's not really surprising.  Let's just say I had a little love affair with Vera.  And Dooney.  And some :::gasp::: label-less creations. ;)

I'm not a bag snob.  But what I am?  Is a crazy bag lady.  It really all started when I went on a girls trip to Walt Disney World in May.  Just the ladies, as it were.  I wanted to make bags for a few of my friends.  I found a pattern I liked, tweaked it to make it my own, and voila! The first Kat bag was born.

And although super cute...it seemed like a cop out to use licensed character fabric to create my pleated totes.  I felt as though I could push my creativity farther than that.  Because if you can sew, and you've got access to a craft store, you too, can make a licensed character tote.  And then it hit me.  A whole inspired by line.  A bag that looked like Mickey Mouse's pants.  One that looked like Minnie's dress.  A Frozen line.  Any character I could think of, the sky was the limit!

The only problem?  So many ideas!  So little time.  I've been keeping a sewing journal anyway, which is really just random jots of measurements for quilts and other projects I've been working on....mostly so I don't forget what I'm doing....but now it's become the idea journal as well.  A place to write down the thousand myriad thoughts that run through my head throughout the day.

Some days, I just have to laugh at myself, because I don't know if I'll even begin to be able to make everything I dream of, and that's an amazing position to be in.  When the creative juices are flowing so much, that you can't keep up.  I LOVE IT.

So begins my life as a crazy bag lady.  I offer photographic evidence.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I can't wait to see what comes next!

Run, Kat, run!

After completing a 5K this weekend, I got to thinking about the plethora of race shirts I have.  I'm a graphic tee girl.  I swear, I keep trying to grow up and wear real people clothes but it just does not happen.  Okay, it happens sometimes.  But most of the time?  Give me a graphic tee with a cute character, logo, ironic saying, or a combination of all three and I'm happy as a clam.

That being said, I'm not a fan of the boxy cut of unisex tees that you usually receive at races.  It's not my style to have a super high neckline that almost makes me feel like I'm choking.  Ditto that feeling re: turtlenecks.  Soooo not for me.

The 5K I just completed was just for women, therefore the shirts were a more flattering cut.  Now I've been upcyling a whole bunch of graphic tees lately, some that I had, some that were thrifted.  I'd debated using my race tees to make a tee shirt quilt, but I just wasn't feeling it, and...I love graphic tees.  I love NEW graphic tees, but I love not spending a lot of money on them.  So if I already own them and can modify them...even better!  Upcycling at its best.  Cost = free.  Sold.

Here's the tee for my first 5K ever, which was at Disney's Animal Kingdom with my friend Nicole, her brother Kyle, and his then fiance now wife Sarah.  We had a BLAST, so the memories that go with this shirt are wonderful and something that make me smile just looking at it.  I also did this 5K in memory of my mother, since I was determined to prove I could do something I previously thought I never could (run a race).

I've taken inspiration from this blog tutorial right here, and modified it to suit my own needs.  Since both shirts I worked on were larges, I didn't want to do the drawstring neckline, as it would potentially make the shirt too tight and defeat the purpose of getting rid of the high neckline.

I can't really describe enough how much I love this shirt.  Put together Disney and pumpkins, and I'm pretty much in heaven.  So it's thrilling to me that I can wear it again, it's comfortable, and cute!

The second shirt is from my second 5K at our local Y.  I modified it in the same way as the previous tee, creating scalloped edges on the sleeves and bottom, and a new scoop neckline.  I think it looks pretty snazzy.

So there you have it!  My fun upcyle fashions for this weekend.  I absolutely love taking something old and making it into something new!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog, Pumpkin Craft!

With all of the interest in my Etsy shop by the same name, Pumpkin Craft, I thought it was high time to start a blog about all my crafting and artistic adventures.  My Etsy shop gets its name from the childhood nickname my mother gave me.  She always called me her Pumpkin.  I'm an October baby, obsessed with pumpkins, Halloween, and autumn in general, so that nickname fits the bill!

My mother passed unexpectedly when I was thirty...she was still calling me her pumpkin, even then...and I inherited her fabric stash and sewing machines.  Previously?  Terrified of learning how to sew.  Fear of making a mistake, fear of doing something wrong....fear of fear, honestly.

Losing my mother changed my perspective on all of that.  What is the worst thing that could happen to me?  Ripping out stitches and starting all over again?  Learning from my mistakes?  Imagine that!  Sewing has been a huge growth experience for me.  It's given me a creative outlet that as a stay at home mother I had been struggling to find.  I have a BFA in painting, but oil paints and toddlers?  They don't mix.

Sewing was so easy to fit into our lifestyle, so sewing it was.  Determined to learn, my initial efforts were just that...initial efforts.  I am quite proud though of how far I have come, and how much more I can create.

Here are some of my favorite shop items right now that I have had SO much fun making.

I'm a little in love with this Disney Minnie Mouse inspired tote bag.  You can find it here if you fall in love as well. ;)

And just recently, I made a Disney Pop Century inspired tote that is so bright and cheerful, I cannot help but smile when I look at it.

Embrace your inner flower child right here.

I love making these bags and pushing my creative limits to come up with ideas that are not your standard printed character fabric, but fabrics that when you bring them together, evoke a specific theme or memory.  In that way, sewing is a lot like painting.  Color choice, fabric selection, bring it all together...much like putting the binding on a quilt is like framing a painting.

All these artistic and creative endeavors are inextricably linked in my brain, perhaps in yours as well. It's these endeavors that I'll enjoy sharing with you here.