Homemade Laundry Soap

Good morning!

I have put my quilt on hold for a little while because I haven't had a lot of free time, but fear not. I will complete it soon.

One thing I have done is tried to be more Eco-friendly. I started getting water delivered to my house instead of buying bottled water. That way I will be putting 150 less plastic bottles into landfills every month. Ouch!

I have also made my own laundry soap. To be fair, this was also an attempt to save money. I have read about it a lot and always thought I should do it, but I never took that first step. Well, on Tuesday I took that step. I bought Borax and Washing Soda at Kroger. I already had some Ivory soap at home that I was planning to use for this same purpose.

I found a dozen different recipes online, but only a couple for powdered laundry soap. I wanted to make powdered because it takes up less space and I didn't want to cook soap. I mean really, who does? The only drawback I saw was some people mentioned the powdered soap being bad for septic systems, which I have. I don't understand that though. It is all the same ingredients. The only difference is that I am dissolving the soap beforehand instead of after. I thought maybe people were using too much powder because that can make it difficult to dissolve. Whatev.. I like to live dangerously so I was making powdered laundry soap.

I took a cheese grater and started grating my Ivory soap into a bowl (I had the smaller bar, prob about 3 oz.). It didn't work out like I wanted. Apparently my soap was a little too moist to grate and it ended up smearing all over the cheese grater. Well, there goes that plan. I guess I am cooking soap after all.

I got out a paring knife and cut the rest of the soap bar into thin slices then put it in a pot with some hot water. I heated the water while stirring with the grater to get all the soap to dissolve (I stirred with the grater to get all the soap off it). Once the soap was dissolved I added 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup washing soda to the water and stirred until it was all dissolved. This all probably took about 10 minutes. Then I realized I didn't have a large sealable container to put the soap into. So I looked everywhere and found a milk jug, but it wasn't going to be enough. I put half my mixture into the milk jug anyway and then added water to finish filling the container. I shook it up to mix and set it aside. My husband brought me a bleach bottle that he had just emptied so I cleaned it out and put the rest of my mixture into it, added water and shook to mix. Done. I now have 2 gallons of laundry soap.

I let it sit for a day and then decided I should try it out on some dirty towels. I shook my milk jug to mix up the soap then measured out about 1/8 - 1/4 cup of soap. Probably closer to 1/4 cup because it was a full load. Now, I read that you can use white vinegar as a fabric softener and this was a guinea pig load. What the heck? I added some vinegar to my load.

The end result? I have clean towels. They smelled clean, but not like soap. Just clean. And I still had that Ahhhh.... Moment when I first pulled them out of the dryer. You know the one. Where you just want to lay all the hot towels on a bed and roll around in them. All in all I would say this was a success. Good thing too because I still have 2 gallons left to use and enough supplies to make about 100 gallons more.

Here's to saving the environment!

Believe it or not I am HERE :)

Hello Everyone!!! I have missed you all :)
I know it has been a really, really (times like a million) long time since I have been here. I have no excuses-at least not any good ones. I think that I let life keep me too busy and unmotivated.

I am not sure if this will be the start of regular posts by me again or not-But I am here now and that's what matters right? My poor sis has tried to keep this thing going on her own for awhile-Sorry sis :(

This past week the boys went back to school. This is always a very sad day for me. They always seem to grow older so much faster when school is in. Here is a picture of my handsome boys on the first day. I am so very lucky to have them in my life :) Hopefully they will not forget their mom once they are all grown up.

We had a really good weekend. My husband went deep fishing with some buds of his, so my babies and I had a nice laid back weekend enjoying each others company. I decided to try to get alittle crafty. It has been so long I wasn't sure if I still had it in me-Just Kidding :) I have a pair of shoes that I have been wanting to redo for awhile now, so I figured why not? I LOVE the wedge on these but I do not like the patent leather look. It reminds me of the shiny Mary Janes I used to wear as a kid.

I went to Wal Mart and bought some cheapo ribbon and pulled out the handy dandy glue gun. I was going to wrap the ribbon around the straps and soon learned that was way too much work. So I just glued the strips of ribbon on the straps and I think it looks a lot better. If I were to change one thing though I would have used a different kind of glue. Using a glue gun on this was a really BIG pain in the booty. I love the way that it turned out so I am not complaining. I thought that I would try to get "fancy" so I made a Korker bow to stick on it. I think that I will make more of these-I just love the way that they look and they are sooo easy to make.

So what do you think? Long Korker bow or short and fluffy? I think that it looks cute both ways but I ended up with neither. My son told the bow was ghetto and my goofy butt listened to him.

I read several different blogs and I found this really easy and amazing recipe for Smores Brownies. I am sorry I can not remember which blog it was.

I used a brownie mix from the store and mixed it up following the directions on the box. Pour half of the mix into a greased pan. Lay graham crackers covering the brownie mix, then chocolate bars (I used chocolate chips) and cover with small marshmallows. Pour remaining half of brownie mix on top and cook according to brownie mix instructions. These are too die for. Make sure to eat them warm because they taste way better that way. This pictures does not capture their complete goodness.

Have a great rest of the week!! And hip hip HOORAYYY this weekend is a 3-day one!

Lesley =)

Almost finished!

Afternoon everyone! I made a promise and now I am here to deliver. I feel bad writing a tutorial now that I have realized just how many mistakes I have made on this quilt. If you look really closely you will probably see some. I thought about selling this quilt once it was finished, but I don't know that I can accept money for what I think is a sub-par quilt. I guess I will keep it and add it to my vast collection of blankets. My husband says you can never have too many blankets, but I have to disagree. If the whole world froze over and I loaned out blankets to all my neighbors I would still have enough cover all my beds three times over.

Enough of that. On to Step three-ish.

Last I left you we had just finished our four squares.

Now we cut 8 1/2" rectangles from our 2" strips of white and sew them to the tops of our four squares. Once that is done we press them open. I always press to the side without seams which in this case is the white. Normally you would press toward the darker fabric. After you press them you trim them so they are all square (or rectangle).

Then you sew them all into one long strip and press. You want to trim the strip to make sure it is straight. To save time and trouble I folded my strip over twice, lining up my seams, and trimmed each side.

Next you sew two of your 2" white strips together on the short side so you have one REALLY long 2" wide strip. You will need to do this two more times so you have six long 2" wide strips. Sew one strip to each side of your four square strip.

I started one strip from the opposite end of the other so the small seams in the white strips do not line up.

Press, trim your ends, and sew the other four square strips to your white strips. Pay close attention that all your squares are going the right direction. Press.

Then you sew one 4" wide strip to the top and one to the bottom (And again, press). You should be left with four 4" wide strips. Sew two to each other to make two really long 4" strips. Then sew those to the sides. I alternated ends again so the seams in the white fabric don't line up with each other. Your quilt top is finished!

Now comes the fun part. The sandwiching, quilting, and binding step. I am being sarcastic. The quilting part is the part I hate most. You will see why when you get to that step. I have started the final step but I won't be able to finish for awhile so don't hate me if it takes a couple of weeks to finish this up.
In the meantime you can play a riveting game of "Spot the Mistakes".

Forgetfulness

I'm sorry guys. I have completed the next step on the quilt I am working on and even started on the step after that but I can't seem to remember my camera so I can blog about it. Again, I'm sorry. I even started ANOTHER quilt (because I have a serious problem that I should probably seek counseling for) that I took pictures of. And then yesterday I started ANOTHER project. Fortunately the third project has nothing to do with quilting or sewing.

I make a promise to our 11 followers that "I, Carey, do solemnly swear that I will bring my camera to work this week so I can upload the photos and share my project progress with anyone who cares to read this blog". For reals.

Quilting Tutorial Part 2

Hey everyone! Welcome to part two of my quilting tutorial. This is the part where we get to sewin'. When I left off last time we had a whole bunch of 4 1/2" strips of blue, green, and tan fabrics.

Just a small side note - I changed up the size of my quilt a little bit. I decided to do more of an over sized snuggle quilt instead of a twin sized one. That makes the quilt I am working on five squares by six squares (64" x 73") instead of five by seven. So, I will have five squares left over in the end. Who knows, maybe I will make a matching tote.

P2 Step 1 - Match up the green strips with the blue and tan strips until they are all matched. Then sew them together on the long side. Make sure you are using 1/4" seam allowance. Once you have them all sewn together press them open to the blue/tan side. This means you iron them with the blue/tan side up then press the fabrics open.

Now that you have the seams pressed open cut your 4 1/2" rectangles. You should be able to cut nine rectangles from each sewn strip of fabric. I cut 52 blue/green rectangles and 30 brown/green ones. If you are sticking with the original size quilt then you will need 59 blue/green rectangles and 35 brown/green ones. You should still have your two extra blue squares and two extra green squares. We aren't ready to use those yet.

Match up the rctangles as shown and sew together (remember your 1/4" seam allowance). You will have more blue/green rectangles than brown/green ones. Just set those aside. DO NOT sew them together.

Once you have all your squares sewn together you will need to press them open. It doesn't matter which way you press them. I like to be consistent and press them all the same way. Once you have them all pressed open then you need to square them up. Thankfully this quilt isn't really complicated so it won't make a huge difference if your squares aren't exactly 8 1/2" square. Just make sure that they are all equal and square. For example, if you smallest square ends up being 8 1/4" then make them all 8 1/4" square.

If you remember from last time I haven't cut my background fabric yet. I laid out a few pieces to get an idea of what my quilt is looking like so far. I decided to make my strips a little wider than the inch thick I thought originally.

I am going to go 1 1/2" wide instead so I need to cut 2" strips from my background fabric after cutting my 4" border fabric. One small problem? I don't have enough background fabric. I should have purchased 1 3/4 yards instead of 1 1/2 yards. I guess I would have had enough if I would quit changing my mind. Oh well, I cut what I had. I cut 6 - 4" strips (or 7 if you stick with the twin size), and I need 17 - 2" strips (or 21) cut into 8 1/2" rectangles.

I will start sewing with what I have and go back to Joann's sometime this week to pick up the remaining background fabric.

Next up we start piecing our quilt top together and sewing.