Flashback Friday: Liz from Simple Simon & Company

It’s time for Flashback Friday! Our guest today is liZ, who is one of the two Elizabeth’s from Simple Simon & Company. liZ has fierce design skills, that never lack on details. Have you seen her Birdcage Hat tutorial? It will make you wish you were one of her daughters. And her PVC lemonade stand? So cute.
 
liZ and Elizabeth also are behind Project Run & Play, the blogger design competition that we all know so well. They come up with unique and fun challenges that push the competitors’ skills and creativity to new limits, and I love to follow along each season!
 
Let’s hear what liZ has to share today – you just might be able to relate!
I couldn’t resist stealing this from her blog – wasn’t she adorable?
This time of year always reminds me of hand making gifts…so naturally when Abby told us about Flashback Friday the first thing I thought of were the gifts of Christmas past…
I’ve always loved giving and receiving handmade gifts.  Recently, most of my handmade gifts have had some contact with a sewing machine…but it hasn’t always been so.
 
Cue Flashback:
It’s like 1990…and there I am in 8th grade Home Ec wearing my MC Hammer pants and crawling around under the sewing tables hooking up the pressure foot cord for sewing machine A to sewing machine B…a joke that never got old…especially when the operator of machine A pressed down on her pedal and machine B sped off.
But on this day as I crawled around a needle found it’s way into my knee…my mother was called…tetnus shots were given…and I was finally kicked out of Home Ec.  (Thank goodness!  When am I ever going to need to know how to cook or sew or do anything domestic???)
Fast forward to Christmas 2004.  My husband and I are driving home from Christmas at my parents house.  The conversation is based around THE WORST gift I’ve ever been given—a sewing machine.  So what if I’m a mom now, like I am ever going to sew…EVER!  Psh.  That will be the day.
Now its the holiday season of 2006…and my mom signs me up to take a quilt blocking class with her.  I don’t know what she’s thinking…but I walk into the fabric store and it’s all over.  The colors, patterns, textures…there are so many possiblibites with all this fabric and I’m hooked.  (Thank you mom for waiting it out, for being patient, and for not killing me in junior high.)  I learn to make all sorts of fun quilt blocks, figure out how to use my machine, and become comfortable with a rotary cutter (something I had been previously afraid of).  All good things but at some point I realize that it isn’t quilts I want to make…it’s clothing for my little girls.  And with that a whole new world opens up for me.  My husband kisses goodbye to the computer desk in the corner and the sewing machine finds itself permanently located in the family room.
Fortunately for me my sister-in-law (whose name is also Elizabeth) shares the same addiction and together we blog about all our sewing and creating adventures over at Simple Simon and Company.  It’s so nice to have someone to share ideas with.  Like I can call her and say I have this idea to make Grace a tunic top with faux fur pockets with some faux fur chaps to match and she’ll say maybe the chaps take it a little too far…and I’ll say…yea maybe…but striped leggings now that would work and she’ll say yes! striped leggings would totally work.  And then we’re on to another idea where she is telling me about these neon things and I’m saying….
 
Anyways…you get the idea.  We love to sew, and paint, and glue, and then sew some more.  As we talked about today it was fun to look back on some of our favorite homemade gifts we’ve blogged about but we couldn’t decide on which one we liked best so we put together a little collage of some of our favorites…
Mostly sewn but some painted and others glued.
And you can find the tutorials for all of them over HERE where we are sharing another flashback story.  (This one about my husband and Yukon Cornelius.)
Thank you Abby for inviting us today.  We’ve had a lot fun putting this together.
-liZ
Simple Simon & Co
 
Thank you for stopping by, liZ! Faux fur chaps, hehe… It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who has to have their ideas reined in from time to time :). Who do YOU call when you need sewing advice?

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