Look! I made a thing!

I've always loved crafts, especially cross stitching and sewing. Fortunately for me, everything that involves  a needle and thread takes countless hours to complete (unless I time myself, of course, and sometimes I do). If possible, I could easily spend an entire weekend happily sewing away while the world goes on outside of my room. Unfortunately for me, these types of activities also take an extraordinary amount of time to complete, and having a job does not lend itself well to the creation of endless free time. It does, however, provide the money to buy more craft supplies, but that's another story.

Now that I've started working, I'm determined to use my free time productively. Is productive the right word to use when you use your spare time making toy elephants? I'm not sure. But that's exactly what I spent the last three days doing! I set out to make a stuffed elephant and that is exactly what I did!

Here it is! I got the pattern from a kit that, of all places, I found at the dollar store. For 2.50$ I was willing to give it a try! If you're interested, you can buy the kit at various sites online. It includes six or seven different patterns to make gifts for newborns (note: I didn't buy it for newborns; I bought it specifically for the elephant pattern). A quick Google search for Oh Sew Cute Baby Crafts should bring them up. 

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this on my blog before or not, but I collect elephants. Although I will collect almost anything elephant themed, I am especially interested in plush elephants. I have over a dozen off them scattered around my bedroom. The one I made this weekend wasn't my first attempt at making one myself either. I never posted about it, but I tried my hand at sewing a much larger elephant last fall. Here is a picture of the new elephant and the one from last year. At some point I started a second big elephant (on the left) with different fabric, but it's been lying untouched for months... Oh dear. If I don't get working on them all, I'll have too many works-in-progress going before I know it.

I am really pleased with the result and already have plans to make another one! Now that I have tried the patterns once, I am going to try to adjust some things a bit to see if i can get an even better result (or at least more ease of sewing). I bought some cotton fabric in lovely patterns on Friday and can't wait to use them! I did have enough self control to not use the elephant print fabric to make my elephant project XD

On the topic of sewing, my mum and I hemmed all of my scrub pants this weekend. I might love sewing, but I despise hemming pants. If there is a hell, I am 99% percent certain that is involves hemming pants in some way.

And on the topic of pretty patterns, I bought new night gowns last week. I'm not talking about the night gowns your granny would were either! These are much cuter, and definitely more flattering. I would call them nighties, but to me that word implies some sort of sexiness, and I'm not quite convinced that pajamas that have owls and the words "tweet dreams" on them can be considered sexy. But they definitely are cute!

On a final note, I discovered an excellent way to keep my tracing (aka baking) paper flat when I transfer a pattern from the instruction to my actual fabric. I've been using the Wade figurines I bought this month to keep the paper flat while I trace the sections of the patterns onto the paper. Works like a charm!

That's it - one very non-leg related post. As I have said what feels like the last gazillion posts, my leg is still broken and it's going to continue to hurt for a long time. There's nothing I can do about it. Worrying certainly won't fix it, and I'm going to be spending enough time worrying about it as I try to get through my twelve hour shifts. So I spent this weekend thinking about everything but my leg and doing lots of fun things, like buying fabric and sewing instead. I'm starting to get the hang of what my mum always says: Be kind to yourself!