New whales!
I recently made a few more color variations of the whale fabric design and ordered them up over at Spoonflower on the organic knit (by far my favorite of their substrates). Spoonflower is a company that prints digital fabric on demand, so you can upload any image and get it printed onto fabric.
Cute-cute, right? OK so I’m biased. ANYWAY.
This aqua and green whale print will become a knit dress for Clementine, but I think it could also turn into a great little gift set for a baby boy.
The navy background is just a color swap-aroo from the original whale print (featured in this post). Both are now available for…
Just in time
I managed to get the buttons and button loops sewn onto the holiday dress I made for Clementine, just in time for Christmas. You may remember that this one was part of the List O’Despair.
She rocked it of course.
The rainbow Baby Legs helped.
I did NOT get a matching one for Elliot finished as I had hoped. Nope-nope. But he had a nice blue dress shirt that matched his new accordion nicely (although he insists on calling it a “RE-cordion”), so now I can use the extra red material for something else festive next year!
This was SUCH a fun year for opening Christmas presents. Both kids “got it” and were excited about absolutely everything, even the small stuff. I’m so…
Overcoming Christmas-Craft-Related Despair
I’m a procrastinator. It’s part laziness, part space-cadet-ness. I wish I could get extra points for an Energetic Response when I realize something should have been done 15 minutes ago, but for some reason that never happens. We moved twice this year, and last spring when my mom started calling a month before we were supposed to load up the truck to ask if I had started packing any boxes yet, I just laughed. “Mom,” I told her, “I always do this. It will get done, just all at the last minute.” Why on earth would I be packing boxes? (and surely she could still remember my senior year of high school, and the violin concerto I began practicing at home just days before I…
Shop handmade for the holidays with Made By Rae sellers!
It’s not too late to shop online for the holidays (or heck, for yourself)! I’ve been working on updating my Made By Rae sellers lists (they’re listed below) so I thought I’d showcase a few of the great items available from the talented group of indie crafters who are licensed to sell things with my patterns! From time to time I get requests for ready-made items from one of my patterns, and since I don’t have time to sew them up myself, I always send people over to the sellers lists. Supporting these shops is a great way to give handmade, especially if you don’t have time to sew it yourself!
1. Toddler Airplane Backpack by Zaaberry 2. Tutti Frutti…
A different kind of craft
When we were out in Seattle a couple weeks ago it dawned on me that my dad is a crafter too…just a different kind. I really wanted do a blog post about him and share his amazing craft with everyone!
This is my dad, Marv. He used to be a research chemist, but now he’s retired. Since the time I can remember he has always had more hobbies than I can keep track of. Trains, trees, birds, drawing, piano, classical music, seashells, sailing, racketball, running. When you start to go through the list, it’s really an impressive amount of interests for one person. About eight years ago he picked up a new, pretty amazing hobby: violin-making!
See that thing in his hand? That’s his most…
My recent appearances elsewhere in Craftblogland
With all the travel our family has been doing lately, I completely forgot to tell you about a couple of other blogs I’ve recently been featured on. First, Prudent Baby featured my Cheater Quilt Bind-off Tutorial as part of a Quilting Series in November:
{a sampling of great projects from Prudent Baby}
If you’ve never been to Prudent Baby, it’s definitely worth a look. TONS of great tutorials and projects over there! I feel like every time I’m there I get “lost” for hours, do you know what I’m talking about?
I also recently wrote a post…
Christmas is coming!
Just in time to help you put the finishing touches on your Christmas list…
Made By Rae gift certificates!
Easy to order using our Gift Certificate Order Form, we send a Paypal invoice, and then email you a printable (and personalized!) PDF gift certificate upon receipt of payment. You can then print it out and put it in a card or forward it directly to the recipient. The gift certificates can be purchased right here for any dollar amount over $10.

Handmade Kids Wardrobe Class – January and February 2012
For those of you who are local and are interested in taking our Handmade Wardrobe for Kids class, Karen and I will be teaching the course again next January and…
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen from an airplane?
I think this might be it for me so far: Mt Rainier, Mt Hood (I think? off to the far right in the second pic?), and Mt St Helens, all peaking out from the clouds on our flight from Seattle Monday afternoon. Breathtaking!
Christmas Craft: Potato Stamp Wrapping Paper
Around here I am always looking for fun things to do with Elliot while Clementine naps. Once in a blue moon he’ll fall asleep during his “quiet time” but usually he pops up after about 10 minutes of reading books by himself or puttering around in the living room — they share a bedroom so he takes his quiet time on the couch downstairs — and wants to be entertained. And I’m like “seriously you are done ALREADY?” but I keep my mouth shut and then try to remember how much I will miss him when he moves out of the house.
My children are very different; Clementine will play by herself, alone, unprompted, for long beautiful periods of time. Elliot is a more…
Knitting, my holiday hobby
One complaint — perhaps the only complaint — I have with sewing is that it doesn’t exactly lend itself to holiday socializing. You can’t really put your machine in the living room when the whole family is over and chug away at projects while everyone else talks and eats chocolate covered pretzels. For one thing, if I try and talk too much while I’m sewing I usually mess something up. For another thing, the chocolate always ends up all over my project. And then there’s the issue of machine volume, which for some machines (like my serger) is enough to put everyone off conversation altogether.
We go up north every fall with a bunch of Mr Rae’s friends and their spouses and families and each…
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I offer licenses for handmade sellers who would like to sell items made with my patterns on a small scale. To see all of the available licenses, visit the 

