Father's Day pics

I'm so bad with holiday's. I'm not sure why. I didn't used to be. I remember planning Mother's Day gatherings and Father's Day gatherings. For the past couple of years all the holidays have caught me by surprise. Heck this year I even forget to tell my Mom Happy Mother's Day on Mother's Day. Mind you she drove back from a trip to Vegas on that day, so when she arrived I just went over and told her that a colony of bee's had made the side of her house home. Not sure why that was more important than Happy Mother's Day.

Lucky for me a couple of days before Father's day I started seeing posts like this one: Manly cakes from Wendy at Wendy's Hat. So I had time to run to the store and buy some fixings. So that my daughter could make her own version (I was visiting with Mom):

My husband doesn't like to smile for pictures.

So this is what happens when you ask him to - He gets silly!

And my husband decided to cook himself a Salisbury steak with French onion gravy and Mash potatoes for Father's day dinner (a Rachael Ray Recipe). He's the cook, he likes to cook, I wouldn't have been able to do any better. For ten years I did the cooking, and one day he said to me he was tired of eating Mexican food, I said fine you cook, because I don't know how to cook anything else. So now he cooks, which is way fine by me!

I hope everyone had a Happy Father's Day especially the Father's.

My Memories Scrapbook Software Giveaway Winner

The winner of the My Memories Scrapbook software is Number 16:

Kimberly - Drama Queens Mum.

Thank you all so very much for helping me get some comments on the post!!!

Cover for Dress Form

I picked my dress form out of a dumpster a long time ago. She was missing her legs, which I fixed quickly I just put her on a stool and she became the perfect height also strong enough to hold the heavy wedding gowns. 

When I picked her up I just figured I would sew her some very tight fitting clothes. Well here we are more than a decade later and she finally has her first outfit.

I took her measurements:

Entered them in Garment Designer:

Brought up a contoured style, and then moved all of my points in to mimic the sloper. I had bought a stretch knit fabric, so I needed no ease.

Printed it out, sewed up my seams on the serger and Voila she has her first outfit!

I need to make a circle pattern piece to cover up the armholes. I'm not going to worry about finding her some legs because I don't think I'm going to find anything stronger than the stool to be able to hold up the heavy wedding dresses.

Wordless Wednesday...Eagle

When we went camping this past weekend we saw a wonderful Eagle or very large Hawk, not sure.

MyMemories Scrapbook Software Review and Giveaway

I started doing the Digital Scrapbook thing about a year ago, I was having problems getting the hang of the kits and templates that were sold at various shops. I finally have a good handle on the Digital Scrapbooking thing. I bring the templates into Photoshop and with the help of many blogs and bloggers tutorials I have really learned how to customize a scrapbook page.

So my first question when downloading the My Memories Scrapbook Software was what are it's limitations. Sure software makes processes go faster but most of the time it limits creativity. I have to say that I didn't feel limited at all.



You can start with a Designer Template (which the program comes with a good range), Design you own or Browse More Content Online (real growing potential):

I've created a few page collections very quickly, I was able to adjust everything on the page easily. Add remove text, edit photos by cropping, rotating or zooming in or zooming out (My Memories words for there functions). I found the zooming in and zooming out when I was looking for a Scaling tool.

Once you create your albums you can choose how to share them:

I exported my examples to Movies.

Here is an album with my daughters pics:

I loved the fact that you can add audio to your albums, Here's another one I did from a Lexi fashion show blog post I did several months back:

I'm really loving this software! Now one of you can also love it for Free, Visit MyMemories.com and choose your favorite digital paper pack or layout, then come back here and leave me a comment with your choice for an entry to win a MyMemories Suite Software package.

For additional entries(leave one comment for each entry):

Subscribe to My Memories Blog 
Like them on Facebook
or Follow then on Twitter

Can't wait and you want to get your hands on the software NOW, Here is a $10 off coupon code STMMMS72702  Coupon code expires June 23, 2011.

Contest will end at Midnight PST Sunday June 19, 2011. Good Luck Everyone!

Mother..Daughter Camping trip

My daughter wanted to go camping for her birthday. We invited a few couples but they weren't able to come, it didn't help that we only gave them a weeks notice. My husband is on the down swing of his life roller coaster, he didn't want to go.

Stephanie and I packed the truck, and went up to Hurkey creek about 40 minutes from our home and spent the night in the open air. It has been a while since we've gone camping. We have all the equipment and this was not the first time I've loaded a vehicle full of girls and went camping. Story/stories for another time.

The first thing we did was set up the tent, we tried to set up the tent. It's kind of hard to set up a tent when the tent bag doesn't have the tent poles! Luckily I had brought the pop up shade and stephanie came up with the idea to attached the tent by it's hooks and strings to the metal frame of the pop up. Ingenues!

Then we did what everyone does when they go camping, we read:

We built a fire:

We had Smores:

Slept on the hard floor and woke up stiff, so we had to go walk it off in the parks 7 mile trail that runs along the creek.

We had a great time! The whole time we were up there all we kept saying is 'why don't we do this more often?' It's only 20 bucks a night, not to far from home and we really don't need much. Probably because we don't plan it! So after my little trade show trip to AZ next week we will be planning a few days in the Woods!

Scripture Bag and Pattern Winner

And the winner of the scripture bag is:

Daisy from http://phillipspost.blogspot.com/  -- Thank you for coming by, I'm still trying to find your email If you see this and haven't heard from me please email me your address - to soniabartondesigns at yahoo dot com and I'll get your bag on it's way to you.

Because there were such low entries for those of you that entered if you would like a PDF pattern emailed to you feel free to email me at the same address as above.

Thank you all for you support.

Pinterest....

In my blog reading for the past 6 months or so I had been noticing references to Pinterest. Needless to say I was feeling left out. Here are a few references from The Crafty Mummy I love her Blog. Dreamy Craft rooms, Crafty Bunnies, Modern Quilts.  Now I have to go find out what Skitch is.

So I've solved that problem, I signed up! You can find me here.

So what is it? As far as I can figure it's a wonderful digital inspiration board on the web! You create an account, you create boards you find images on the web and you pin then to your boards. The best and most wonderful thing about it is that you will always remember where the image came from.

When I venture on a new Design project I always do an inspiration board. I can't wait to start using this wonderful tool. So far I have lots of bags on a board:

My baby's 20!

Happy Birthday Stephanie! I've got to say it is a surprise that you have made it this far without any major incidents. Oh wait there have been a few, Leaving college and coming to COD, Going to college, Actually graduating from High School, Destroying the corolla, a couple we'll call interactions with a sheriff (at least you were under 18 and they don't matter anymore). I could go on but you are probably ready to kill with just those few.

Well if you are anything like your mother which we have already determined you seem to be the spitting image of, there will be a lot more!

I love you Shorty!

New LDS Scripture Bag patterns & Giveaway

My little sister Monica (my Muse) puts her scriptures in what ever bag she is carrying to church, her purse, her Tote with teaching supplies or her diaper bag. Needless to say there are all kinds of things in any of those bags that could damage her scriptures.

So a while back I came up with this Scripture bag pattern, for the Standard LDS quad.

I've made a few, and we did it for a sewing group one month. The work great to use when all you want to carry is your scriptures or to put the scripture bag in another bag and keep your scriptures protected, from the lipstick in your purse the crayon's in your teaching tote or the moist stuff sticky stuff that comes in and out of your diaper bag.

When one of my favorite bloggers posted her little one was getting baptized. I wrote to her and asked if I could make her a gift. She was more than happy but her little one had Compact size scriptures. So that motivated me to make the other size patterns for the other size scripture bags.

Here is the Compact Quad pattern for sale on Etsy:

And the Large Print Quad pattern for sale on Etsy:

To win this sample of my Large Print Quad bag, just leave a comment.

I will also be Giving away one of the patterns, so if this bag is not your size, style or color feel free to leave a comment to win a pattern to make your own.

For extra entries feel free to:

Like us on Facebook.
Join us on GFC.
Follow us on Twitter.

This contest will end on Saturday June 11th, at Midnight PST. I will announce the winner that will be chosen by Randam.org on Sunday June 12th.

5 Pattern Drafting Software for Sewing

One of the classes I took in College while I was getting my Degree in Fashion Design was a Software Evaluation class. We worked with 4 pattern drafting software in the class. Garment Designer by Cochenille Design Studio, Fittingly Sew by Knit Craft, Pattern Master Boutique by Wild Ginger Software and Dress Shop Pro by Living Soft. I'm going to add My Label by Bernina to make it a total of 5.

1. Garment Designer - Comes with all Standard Measurements built in, including infants, toddlers, children, juniors, petites, misses, women's and men's so you can design for the whole family it also includes some doll measurements. It thinks in pattern pieces and has all the pattern pieces you would need to create just about any design. You can easily click on the pattern points and bezier curves and do further pattern drafting of your pattern pieces. It has pattern intelligence built in, when you move the front hem it moves the back when you move the underarm point it automatically updates the sleeve cap. I enjoyed working with this program so much I now work for them.

2. Fittingly Sew - It took me a while to get a good fit out of this program. It had a fair amount of style options to choose from. Once I got the hand of it I was able to print out a pattern that worked. It gives you the ability to cut piece into sections and join pieces together so you could really get some weird shapes going on. It didn't have pattern intelligence so you needed to be really careful what pieces you were altering and make sure you went and updated the corresponding pieces.

3. Pattern Master Boutique - This program thinks in Designs. For example the Women's Wardrobe has blouses, dresses, jackets, coats, jumpsuits, pants, sheaths, and skirt Designs for Women. There are 5 individual packages. So the men taking the class had to design an outfit for one of the girls in the class because the college computer labs didn't have the Men's Wardrobe. You choose one of the designs in the category you want. You do have the ability to change the design by changing the neckline, adding darts, choosing different sleeves or collars and adding pockets. It was easy to use I would recommend this software to those that are just starting out with sewing and want to sew basic styles.

4. Dress Shop Pro - The teacher actually excused me from this assignment because no matter how I tweaked my measurements the software would not print out a pattern for me. The teacher and I work for 3 weeks on my measurements and never got a pattern. At least the other programs took the measurements no matter what they were and generated something. Not always perfect but never nothing. There are some reviews that had better results with the program. Like this one from Threads Magazine. There is also this one that has some really good comments.

5. My Label - If I were to ever cheat on my Garment Designer this is on I would try. The only reason I haven't is because of the price and the limited designs when they first came out. I see now on there website that the offer free design styles to add to your software. Why I would cheat on my Garment Designer: It just looks so cool, the 3D model of you, the ability to see the clothes on your figure (this is why the program is limited in styles it takes a long time to program Illustrate and write up each design). You also have the ability to embellish right on the screen, because Bernina does Embroidery software and Embroidery Machines this was the perfect addition to the program. If they ever come out with a Wedding dress Collection, I'm so there.

Wordless Wednesday - Memorial Day Dove's

At Monday's Memorial Day Ceremony, they released White Dove's. I was not in the correct position to be taking pictures of them, but I love this one. You can see the Dove but also the Memorial Wall.