Sewing Updates...Lots of Sewing Updates

Before I started blogging I was (and still am) an ardent "blog reader", and I remember visiting my favorite blogs and the disappointment I'd feel when there were no new updates. I'd be like; One month and no post? (with one eyebrow raised)  ONE MONTH???

The height of irresponsibility (Nose turned up), don't they know they have faithful readers eagerly waiting to read their posts? What could keep them so busy that they'll do the unthinkable? And I'd continue in my vexing until a new post goes up, then and only then would I forgive them. Lols.

Well today I am in those same shoes, and I have learnt the reason why blogs sometimes go "un-updated" for weeks on end.

Life!

Yes life, you sometimes get so caught up in the activities of your day to day life (I know I did/do) that blogging takes the back burner.

So to my hundreds of readers ( Only about five readers actually contacted me but I am prophesying hundreds and indeed thousands of readers "unto" this blog)...where was I?/ Ah yes, to my hundreds of readers who have missed my posts, I say a big, "I am Sorry" I shall try to do better going forward.

And to show how sorry I am, I'll be posting lots and lots of pictures today and less of words (Lol, the ones above don't count)

And in addition to that, the first person to comment on this post gets a FREE LACE PEPLUM TOP. Yippee. This is technically my first give away so I guess I should put a disclaimer and more deets.

• The top will be made to fit
• Winner will make arrangements for pick-up
• What else? Yeah my favorite, "Terms and Conditions Apply" (Just don't ask me what the terms and conditions are. Lol)

Without further ado, here are the pictures of about a quarter of the clothes I have made since my last post.

Apologies for the quality of some of the pictures...they are a "mismash" of pictures from my phone, Ipod Touch and Camera, some taken in the dead of night! 

Lace top: I made this to attend a wedding...one of those 20minutes rushed sewing that end up turning out great.

Tunic: made this for date night cos I felt like wearing a new dress.

Close up. 

Bridesmaids outfits. Also made my own dress the morning of the wedding...as usual (becoming a bad habit I say!) 

The Maid of Honor dress: This is a two piece dress as the flared part is detachable and can be used as a maxi skirt while the main dress can be worn as a simple straight "less weddingy" dress 

BM 1

BM 2

BM 3

And BM 4

This dress was inspired by the half yard of stripe fabric I had left over from making a jumper for DH. And was made on a Sunday morning before church (I know...chronic). Here's a close up pic taken before service. 

Bright sunlight.

Next up velvet dresses. My sister and her friend wanted to "wow" at the wedding they were attending. And I was given the near impossible task of creating these extra long dresses out of one and a half yards of fabrics each. Whew! Many a sleepless night later, I was able to meet their expectations (I actually cried at one point during the construction of this dress...velvet is a pain to make)

Back view

Full view

Tunic: This was a RTW order so I made several pieces and colors. P.s the back is green like the sash

And the babies weren't left out

Jumpsuit 

Skirt...with a matching top which I didn't get to photograph clearly

But here goes all the same

Tunic...ignore my tired face...I woke up early to make the dress in time for service

Dress with button details

Fooling around with instacollage

Lace top (And yes, the lace top to be given away will be similar to this)

Lace peplum top

Another lace peplum

Beaded jacket

Ankara and lace combo top

Close up of details

Exposed zipper 

Another exposed zipper dress 

Pencil skirt 

Pleated peplum dress with a belt

And finally, random RTW dresses made for a client.

I have a lot more pictures to post but I am already beginning to doubt if MTN will  even "agree" to upload these many pictures

Let me leave you with one final shot of my journey through "Internet Modems"

I searched all over...from MTN to Starcomms to Etisalat, even Airtel (not pictured) and finally realized that they are all the same! So I am back to MTN (far left) at least they give free data. Lol.

Until next time, remain blessed.

Love, Preye

Meal Upgrade: Bread and Eggs

Hello friends, How are you all doing? I am great :D

Now lets talk about breakfast. And specifically the all time classic; Bread and Eggs! I don't know about you but I find the basic omelette with tomatoes and peppers quite boring. So at every installment, I try to switch things up a bit.

So without further ado, Bread and eggs: my way.

For the Bread, I toasted them same way I did Here and cut them in half into triangles.

And now for the eggs; You'll need the following ingredients 

Ingredients:

• 3 Large Eggs (Cant have an omelette without eggs now can we? :D)
• One Small white Onion sliced
• Celery: About two sticks sliced
• I medium carrot, peeled and cut into half inch cubes
• About a quarter of a stick of Leeks, thinly sliced
• One Sausage, diced
• One Clove of Garlic finely chopped
• I Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• I Teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• Salt and Pepper to Taste 

Cooking Instructions

Start with a nonstick pan on medium heat. (also turn on your oven as you will be needing it shortly) Add your vegetable oil and when hot, add the sausages and allow to brown for a few minutes. Add the Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of freshly ground black pepper for some flavor. Once browned, remove the sausages and set aside. Add the sliced onions to the pan and allow to soften, add the rest of the vegetables leaving the garlic for last. Stir continuously and season. Remove from the pan.

Reduce the heat to the lowest and pour your beaten eggs into the pan and top with your vegetables and sausages making sure to spread evenly. Optional: Top with about a table spoon of chopped parsley.

Pop into the preheated oven at medium heat for about 5 minutes and you've got yourself an omelette.

I like to cut min up into pizza style wedges. This recipe serves two and the serving in the picture is actually half of the prepared omelette.

Give this a try, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Until next time, remain blessed.

Love, Preye

Brooch Marathon

Hi everyone, I know its been a gazillion days since I last posted. Activity level has been high and I kept waiting for things to slow down a bit so I could update the blog...Alas that never happened...or is yet to happen; so I'll just take it one day at a time and maybe one day in the not too far future I'll catch up with my line-up of posts.

So first post for today...brooches! Lots of brooches.

Brooches glam up an outfit, add a splash of color to an otherwise dull ensemble and in some cases can serve as an identifier when worn by a group of people. They are cute and bright...but after making over 100 of them over a cumulative three day period, I can think of some other words to describe them...words I will desist from speaking out loud. lols

Anyways, here are a few pictures I took of the brooches before delivering them.

A Rose with leafs

Lace Bow

Kind of a Bow

A Flower

And More 

All packaged and ready for delivery.

Apologies for the sideways pictures. My laptop seems to have a mind of its own today.

I hope I don't get to use my glue gun anytime too soon because my fingers need some time to recover from the burns. whew!

Nonetheless this was an interesting experience, I learnt a bit more patience, and got a sneak preview into the world of "manufacturing" (term used lightly) and assembly line processing.

Until next time, stay blessed.

Love, Preye

The Christmas Meal

Hi All,

I just realized I never got around to posting what we had for Christmas...so here goes.

Asian Glazed Roast Pork. Garnished with chopped Parsley

Roasted Irish Potatoes with Mint and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Roast Fish Fillet...With Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Parsley and Butter. Yum!!!

Ice Cubes made out of freshly juiced pineapples and lemons

Cocktail: Pineapple, Pineapple Punch and Red Grapes

Ready to Serve

 

Seafood Gratin: Fish, Shrimps, Carrots, Spring Onions, Dark Soy, Garlic, Heavy Cream...etc.

Apple and Cucumber Salad dressed with freshly squeezed lemon juice, chopped mint,  salt and black pepper

Roasted Honey Glazed Chicken

Beef Sauce: Minced Beef, Bacon, Chipolatas, Capsicum, Dark soy, etc

Beet root and Feta Salad. Dressed with Pineapple chutney, Balsamic Vinegar and Mayonnaise

And Garnished with parsley and toasted peanuts

Oh and there was some cous cous (Far Left) for some added starch.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I guess this will be one of my longest posts :D.

After the chaos of Christmas cooking I decided to lay low on New Years and didn't entertain any guests. I also did minimal cooking...only roasted a chicken. I should have a picture or two somewhere...will update when I locate em.

Until next time, God bless you.

Love, Preye.

Sewing Update: Pillows

Hi People!

A couple of weeks to Christmas a friend commissioned some throw pillows and after a few days of back and forth pinging (via Blackberry Messenger) we finally settled on the fabric and styles she wanted for her pillows (Well she picked just one style and I just flowed with the rest).

And here are the results (Pictures were taken at night so apologies for the less than stellar quality)

Pillow One: I call this one The butterfly pillow.

I worked with a black fabric for the base and used her chosen fabric for the butterfly effect with the aid of a big black belt buckle...I like the sound of that :D...The Big Black Belt Buckle Butterfly Pillow.

Ok moving on. Next is The Ruffle Pillow with button accents.

This one kind of reminds me of Cultural Dances in Secondary School...we'd tie little wrappers around our waists and shake our bums to beautiful traditional lyrics. Yeah, Beyonce copied that booty shake from moi :P

Zipper

Next up, The Cool Dude. After the dancing lady above, I wanted something a bit more masculine to balance things up and The Cool Dude was born.

Bow-tie effect with a silver buckle

And last but not least, the most time consuming of them all (And the only style she chose herself), The Pinwheel Pillow...

If you recall I made this for my home sometime last year and blogged about it in this post. And if you also recall, we had a little incident with over-stuffing. Well, lesson learnt and applied :D.

I used an invisible zipper for this one as well

Here are the pillows together.

And here are a few construction pictures.

Prior to stuffing

Fully Interfaced

I used a regular zipper for this one since the ruffles covered it completely

And that brings us to the end of project "Throw-pillows"

Until next time, Stay Strong and be blessed.

Love, Preye

Sewing Update: Checkered

Happy New Year!

And welcome to 2014...Our year of unusual strength.

I am not much into resolutions but as far as targets go, I have loads of them and I'll get into them in a bit.

But before that; a proper wrap up of 2013. I have quite a line up of projects I haven't posted from last year so I'll get right into them.

First off, The checkered dress!

I made this dress the week of Christmas..the Saturday before Christmas I think. I actually started out the day with a project for myself but the client (who was very persistent) wanted her dress and wanted it NOW. Since she was a first time customer I decided to oblige and leave the twenty-something other pending projects originally scheduled before hers. 

She is pretty conservative so the target for this project was to create a style out of the two fabrics she provided that would still stay true to her tastes. We had the basics down as she wanted pleats...so I decided to play around a bit and eventually ended up with the checkered details...and I knew I had struck gold :D

I started out with the belt detail then had a little glitch with the original sleeve I inserted which resulted in my having to redo the sleeves. So I figured the patchwork could make it to the sleeves as well. At the last minute, I decided on the Tulip variation for some added pizzazz.

I also piped the bottom of the dress with the black fabric...all in the little details people.

Here is a close up of the belt.

This project took a lot longer than expected but turned out great. And save a slight issue with depth of the back neckline; the client loved the dress.

Sadly, my dress which I had planned on making that faithful Saturday lies there unfinished and awaiting the day I'll have a break from sewing for others :D

Until next time, God bless you.

Love, Preye.