About oliver's fancy

I am wife to a patient husband named Ian and stay-at-home mom to a busy little boy named Oliver. When not running around after him, I enjoy dabbling in all sorts of craftiness. I am a self-proclaimed fabric-aholic and proud of it! I have started this blog to document my journey of bettering my sewing/ crafting skills and show off occasional pictures of my little man and superb culinary creations:).

Maritime Shorts Version 2

Posted on August 26, 2013 by oliver's fancy

I have so enjoyed the “selfish sewing” streak that I have been on recently! These shorts are probably my favorite thing I’ve sewed to date. You may be wondering why I am calling these version 2 when you haven’t even seen version 1… well version 1 has yet to be photographed so in this case you get 2 before 1. 🙂

In version 1 (which was my wearable muslin), I made a size 6. They ended up being too small in the waist for my after-baby body. I did a rough guess of how much more I needed in the waistband and decided I would try to combine several different sizes for this second pair of shorts. I began with a size 8 at the bottom of the shorts and graded up to a 12 in the waist. They ended up a perfect fit! I am now in love with sewing shorts for myself because I really struggle with finding clothes to fit my lower body- in order to fit my waist, most things end up being way too big in the legs. I know this problem will go away as the baby weight comes off but it’s nice to have cute things to wear now.

Pattern: Grainline Studios Maritime Shorts. I am falling in love with Grainline Studios! Her patterns are easy to follow and result in super cute garments. (Another pattern review coming soon for her tiny pocket tank.) Also for most of her patterns she has a step-by-step picture tutorial that is very helpful. Not sure I could have inserted the fly zipper without this. Did you catch that? I inserted a real fly!! I love conquering new sewing techniques!

check out my cute photo bomber 🙂

Fabric: Duck cloth found at Hobby Lobby. It was so cute that I couldn’t pass it up. This fabric is a great weight for shorts but is a bit rough on the inside for my super sensitive skin so if I use it for another pair, I will try lining them.

Final comments: The pictures were taken after wearing the shorts all day (and part of a previous one 🙂 ), so they are a bit stretched out looking in the back. The leg is a bit wide with the size 8 so I may take it in a tad if I make another pair, although maybe not because I kinda like the look it gives them. Also these pictures were taken during our recent family vacation to Hilton Head Island, which if you follow me on Instagram you got an overdose of this weekend…highly recommend this beach to anyone in need of a relaxing place to take your children!

Lotta Pillows

Posted on August 15, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Wow, time sure does fly with a newborn and toddler in the house! I am loving every (well almost) minute of it but it doesn’t leave me much time for extracurricular activities. I have been using every spare minute for fun sewing and now have an over-abundance of things to share with you….to find time for photo-shoots, however, is another story. Feel free to follow me on instagram (@brookecrook) for lots of gratuitous baby pics and a glimpse into our everyday lives.

First off on my list of back-to-blogging projects, the promised project from before-baby. I finished up these pillows the week before Eliot was born when I was so tired of being pregnant and wanted a quick, happy project. I have been hoarding this Lotta Jansdotter fabric since it came out because I have never found a project worthy of it. It’s mostly from the Echo line with a few from the Bella line mixed in. Lightbulb moment- new pillows for the living room! Then I can look at my beautiful fabrics every day. 🙂 I made three super quick and easy pillows- one fabric in front, envelope closure on back. I did baste the front fabrics with a piece of white kona cotton to give them more structure. This is the first time I have done that, and I will definitely be doing it with all quilting cotton weight pillows from now on. The extra layer gives just the right weight to the pillow.

The fourth pillow I made a bit more interesting but still easy. Two rows of patchwork squares surrounded by some essex linen in flax.

Our local Modern Quilt Guild had a pillow swap a few months back and my partner made me an adorable pillow using mostly Lotta fabrics. I love the additional pop this pillow gives to the others.

I love looking at my favorite fabrics every day and already bought some Lotta Glimma canvas to re-do the chairs cushions in my adjacent dining room. Hoping to have time to get to that soon except I have in mind an entire room redo so it will be a bit of a larger project that requires more time than I currently have!

Baby Eliot has arrived!

Posted on July 1, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Introducing Mr. Eliot Michael Crook… deciding to make his appearance into the world on June 6 at 2:57 in the afternoon and weighing in at a healthy 9 lbs 6oz! Yes I realize that was 2.5 weeks ago. But you see, I’ve been a bit busy snuggling with this sweetie and his big brother. 🙂 We are all in love over here. Eliot is such a sweet baby, and I am really enjoying the baby stage the second time around. Also really loving NOT being pregnant! FYI if you want more updates feel free to follow me on Instagram where you’ll be bombarded with daily baby cuteness! @brookecrook

My third baby (Bernina) is a bit sad to share her room with a newborn and not get any attention but hopefully she will get some love soon…when this momma starts sleeping through the night again and doesn’t have to nap during nap time. I am starting to get a bit itchy to get back in the sewing groove but so far haven’t been able to work up the energy! Soon, my friends. I can’t stay away for long. 🙂 In the meantime I’ll be back soon to share with you some projects completed right before baby made his appearance. Back to sweet baby snuggles for me now… mmm nothing like the smell of a newborn babe. 🙂

Already loved by his big brother 🙂

Dr. Seuss Toddler Backpack

Posted on May 30, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Checking back in here again to let you know I am still alive and baby is still happily swimming around his little cocoon. 🙂 39 weeks tomorrow and trying to relax and not anticipate his arrival any second…soo hard to do!

Well I hadn’t sewed in over a week because I am just so tired at nap-times that I take naps myself. My poor Bernina was looking so sad and neglected I just had to give her some attention yesterday! A few weeks back I had started a toddler backpack for Oliver using Rae’s pattern and some Dr. Seuss fabric I have been saving for just the right project. I got the outer backpack all finished and there it has been sitting waiting for a lining. Really happy I got to finish it yesterday because Oliver’s old backpack (also Dr. Suess 🙂 ) was a cheap nylon bag, and it is all but in shreds so he really needed a new one.

Thoughts on the pattern and construction:

I used Craft Fuse 808 to interface all the exterior pieces because they are quilting cotton weight. The lining is a medium weight twill fabric. I was worried it wouldn’t be sturdy enough but am happy to report that the interfacing and heavier weight lining combined to make a great sturdy bag! Now about the bag construction itself- This bag pattern is not for the faint of heart! It has quite the involved instructions and takes a bit of time to construct. However, like all of Rae’s patterns, the instructions are well-written and easy to follow- just be prepared to take your time. I am especially impressed with how professional-looking the strap turned out!

I got to use some of my new feet for the bag construction and really liked how easy the piping foot made that section come together. I also looked through the flickr group before making my bag in order to get some ideas and decided to add pockets to each side panel. They were pretty straight-forward and easy to add except that I think the gathered one needs to be just a bit bigger in order to hold his water bottle. Oliver loves his new bag and likes to carry it around one-handed to show people…kinda cool that he’s old enough to appreciate what I make for him now!

Modern Pillow Swap

Posted on May 21, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Just a heads up…there’s going to be a bit of radio silence here over the next few weeks. Baby is on his way soon, and I think my sewing is done for now. I will be taking a bit of a maternity leave to enjoy my time with him, but I’ll be sure to pop in now and then to update you on his arrival and such!

My local chapter of the modern quilt guild decided to do a pillow swap for our May meeting. We each filled out an info sheet with our favorite fabric designers and style and were matched up with a partner. I had a fun time making this pillow for my partner. I follow her on Pinterest, and she pinned this modern herringbone block tutorial a few weeks ago. That gave me the inspiration for her pillow. I made a small sample block to check the sizing and such and then just went for it. On her info sheet, she said that she loved the Cruzin’ fabric line and her colors were gray, white, orange and blue. I used Cruzin’ as my main fabric line and tried to pull the other colors into the block. I really like how it turned out.

Since this was for the quilt guild, the pillow needed to be quilted. I used my walking foot to follow the herringbone lines down the quilt and then quilted 1/4inch on each side of the white border. Loving my walking foot!!

I used the Cruzin’ fabric as the pillow backing and made an easy envelope back. The pillow measures 16″ square. The only sad part is that I don’t get to keep it. 🙂 But my partner did a great job and made me a pillow with Lotta Jansdotter fabrics so I am quite happy to swap for that!

How to Make a Guest Book Wedding Quilt: Part 3 and Finished!

Posted on May 9, 2013 by oliver's fancy

First of all, the giveway continues on through tomorrow night so head over and leave a comment if you haven’t yet to get your name in the hat. I’ve really enjoyed all the comments and new followers I have met this week!

Part 1 of the tutorial: here

Part 2 of the tutorial: here

Final Part: Backing and Quilting

I just did a basic strip piecing for the backing- cutting varying widths of fabrics and sewing them together until it was long enough for a backing
Because this turned out so big (King Size!) I spray basted the quilt and then just did an all-over stipple on my sewing machine.
I traced out the initials and the date with my fabric marker and then hand-embroidered through all layers with perle cotton using a basic embroidery stitch
Binding is machine sewn
And done! Yay! 🙂

Oh I wish you could see the happy dance that I am doing right now! I am so very, very happy to have this quilt finished. Part of me thought I could never get it done, but I was wrong- due in main part to the amazingness of my new Bernina. I never could have quilted this thing on my old Singer.

I have had the backing and top finished for a while and have been putting off quilting it because I was not sure how I was going to get the king-size quilt through a regular sewing machine. I am not going to say it was the easiest thing in the world but it was possible. I have a list of projects that need to be completed before baby comes and this was number one on the list so I just determined that this week would be the week that I finished it.

Monday, I spray basted the quilt (quite a job with a quilt this big!) and then added a few pins to give a little additional support. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday quilting both during nap time and at night. I think it took me a total of about 5 hours to machine quilt. I decided to stipple the quilt because I liked how it turned out on the last quilt I did, and, for me, it’s a lot faster than any other method. I’m not gonna lie- those middle sections of the quilt were tough! All that extra material bunched up in the harp space was a bit of a pain. However, all things considered, it was easier than I had anticipated it being. Then I did some hand quilting in the very middle of the quilt with the initials of the married couple and their wedding date. (Yeah notice how it’s almost exactly a year ago…lol).

Today it was binding time. I was way too tired at this point to even think about making 12 yards of bias tape myself. Thankfully, my local Hobby Lobby had exactly the amount I needed in a gray color almost perfectly matching the Kona gray in the quilt. I also decided to machine stitch the binding on for time and energy reasons. I used my walking foot for the first time and really like how it keeps the bias tape nice and even!

And now the grand ta-da…all finished at last! I really like how the finished project turned out. The stipple quilting is the perfect accent without taking away from the signatures. I would totally recommend doing this for a great wedding keepsake- just do better math that I did and don’t make it quite so large (It is almost exactly the size of my 8×10 rug!)! Sorry for the lack of amazing pictures. If someone has any great ideas of how to photograph a king size quilt feel free to pass that info on to me! Plus I am just too exhausted at this point to attempt a cool photoshoot. If you need me this weekend, I will most likely have my 36 week preggers body on the couch recovering from my quilting marathon!

Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day: Closed

Posted on May 6, 2013 by oliver's fancy

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Update: this giveaway is now closed. Winner is kristinorth who loves Ann Kelle fabric. Congrats Kristi! I have sent you an email letting you know that you have won and Cheryl will be contacting you soon to send you your free patterns! Thanks everyone for participating!!

It’s that time of year again…giveaway day at Sew, Mama, Sew. I have decided that this is the perfect time for me to host my first giveaway! Cheryl from Meadow Mist Designs has graciously allowed me to give away 2 of her new quilt patterns- Charming and The Quilt in the Hat- to one lucky winner!
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Brooke and I am a stay-at-home mom to one very precocious toddler named Oliver and a soon-to-be announced baby boy #2 (only 4.5 more weeks left!) I have a small etsy shop where I have fun selling appliquéd onesies and embroidery hoop art in order to help fund my fabric obsession. As a special treat for all of my new visitors, I am offering 15% off anything in the shop through Saturday with the code sewmamasew. I also enjoy making clothes for my son, attempting clothes for myself, modern quilting, and various other sewing and craft projects that catch my fancy. Feel free to look around a bit while you are here. 🙂

All you need to do to enter is to leave a comment on this post. If you need a prompt, tell me your current favorite fabric line or designer.

Additional entries: leave a separate comment for each in order to be counted correctly.

Follow my blog and leave a comment telling me that you do so (also I’m looking for an alternative to Google Reader to feel free to let me know your new fave Reader site!)
Like Oliver’s Fancy on Facebook and leave a comment telling me you do so

International entries are welcome as these are PDF patterns and will be emailed to the winner. Make sure you have your email is included in your comment profile so I have a way to contact you. Giveaway begins Monday, May 6th and ends Friday, May 10th at 5pm PST. Winner will be chosen at random and announced on this post on Saturday, May 11th. Winner will be emailed his or her patterns by Sunday, May 12th.

Sewing Room Remodel

Posted on May 4, 2013 by oliver's fancy

For quite a while now, we (especially the hubs) have been wanting to redo my craft room. The room had had random plastic organizers and such added to it until it was quite cluttered looking, and my hubby hates clutter! On a recent Ikea trip, we picked up a solid oak tabletop from the as-is section for super cheap and decided that I could use that as a sewing/cutting table. I am super excited about this because I really wanted a long table where I could have both my sewing machine and serger set up- therefore hopefully actually using my serger.

My wonderful husband had the brilliant idea that the best way to organize was to take everything out of the room and then only put back select items so that the room would not get cluttered again. In addition to the Ikea tabletop, we picked up an Ikea Expedit unit from a local store that was closing and selling their furnishings. Perfect timing for the room redo!

I am loving my new room! I really like the open layout and lack of clutter now. FYI most of my fabric stash is in the closet which I “forgot” to open and take a picture of… oops. I have a shelving unit in the closet filled with plastic tubs in which the fabric (up to a yard) is organized by color. The yardage and my sewing books and patterns are in the expedit unit. The blue bookshelf holds all my etsy shop supplies- onesies and hoop fabrics.

I had gift wrap and a present stash stored in this room, but we were able to find other storage spaces in the house for that stuff. I also got rid of some clutter and junk I didn’t need- sold my super old Singer on craigslist. Woot! I am still on the lookout for a cool chair and a shelving unit to put under the left side of the table. I also have this blank wall waiting for some sewing-related decor and hopefully some more mini-quilts. So still some work to be done but a happy place to create in the meantime.

This rug has special significance because learning how to make these rugs was what sparked my interest in re-entering the crafting world… and the rest is history 🙂

Kid’s Clothes Week Wrap-Up

Posted on April 30, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Day 4

At least one part of his body always seems to be in motion!

As I was debating what tee to make Thursday, I realized that Oliver “needed” a birthday shirt for his 2nd birthday on Friday. I had a super soft brown thrifted women’s XL shirt that I was saving for an appliqued tee and decided to use that for my shirt base. Once again, I used the trusty flashback skinny tee pattern. Since this was my 4th flashback tee, it came together super fast. I am really interested to notice how the different knit fabrics look different with the same size pattern- because this was really stretchy and soft material, it fits quite a bit bigger than his other shirts.

I spent forever trying to decide what kind of birthday applique I wanted to use. In the end, I spelled out TWO on his shirt because now it’s a shirt he can wear the entire year, not just on his birthday. It would have been easier if I had found a font I liked and traced the letters, but I can never do things the easy way so I free-handed the letters and took quite a while getting them just right. I used heat n bond lite to applique the letters to the tee and sewed around them for added security. I really like how this turned out! Of course Oliver did not cooperate super well for our mini-photoshoot but I have a few useable shots for you.

enjoying his yummy birthday cake 🙂

Day 5: Oliver’s birthday. I had planned to do a little sewing during his nap but after making his cake and playing with him all morning, I was too wiped out to sew and ended up napping myself. Oh well. We had a really fun day together and doesn’t that cake look good!? My car loving little man thought it was great.

Day 6-7: Had a reaction to something I ate on Friday night and had horrific indigestion/heartburn for 2 straight days….meaning no sewing or anything else for that matter. 😦 Getting ready to get this little brother out into the world so my body can go back to normal- only 5.5 more weeks!

Day 8:

I really wanted to complete a pair of shoes for the baby during KCW so I decided it could last one more day in order for me to meet my goal. I was going to use the shoe pattern from Handmade Beginnings, but found this adorable tutorial for TOMS and decided I must try it out using my leftover red denim from the boys’ pants. These took forever! I enlarged the pattern to where it should have been a size 6-9 months, but they ended up so tiny I don’t know if they’ll even fit a newborn. Fingers crossed this baby doesn’t have the gargantuan feet his older brother has! I know I’m a bit slow now with my pregnancy brain, but I really did not like this tutorial. I found it hard to follow, and she left out some details that would have been helpful. I also don’t like how it ends up with exposed seams in the inside of the shoe. Seems uncomfortable for a baby. I had to do lots of seam ripping with these shoes because I made so many mistakes, and in the end, I still ended up with 2 left feet. Oh well. Hopefully they’ll fit the little man for a few days at least so I can get some cute pictures. And maybe, I’m just super slow these days and the rest of y’all will have no problems following this tutorial! Let me know if you do try it!

And that wraps up another KCW… Total of 4 tees, 1 dress shirt, 1 pair of quick change trousers, and 1 pair of baby toms. Not too bad of a list in my opinion.

Kid’s Clothes Week Day 3: Another Flashback Tee

Posted on April 24, 2013 by oliver's fancy

Day 3:

Finished Dress Shirt from Day 2: hemmed sleeves and finished off all side seams
Blue Stripe Flashback Tee completed

Sure hope you are not tired of seeing these flashback skinny tees because I am most definitely not tired of making them. 🙂 We have been so blessed to have quite a few clothes passed down to us from various people, but as I was going through Oliver’s summer wardrobe, he really does need some dressier tees and dress shirts so that’s what I am focusing on this KCW.

This blue stripe tee is one of my faves so far. It’s from an old tank top that I picked up at a thrift store a while back in order to have practice knits. It’s a nice thick jersey material but super stretchy, so it definitely was the hardest knit I’ve worked with yet. I had barely enough fabric to make this tee…had to do some creative layout and cutting to get my shirt.

Thankfully I was able to use the existing hem for the bottom of the shirt and only had to hem the sleeves. Also because this is super stretchy, I could use the fabric itself for the neck binding, and it fits over Oliver’s head! I was debating on adding a pocket to the tee but as I was cutting the pocket out, nap time ended so I decided that was my sign to be done with the tee. 🙂 Tomorrow my goal is to attempt a polo refashion. Wish me luck!