A long overdue thank you!

MANY weeks ago, I got this lovely package from the incredibly talented LiEr at ikat bag with these beautiful bibs, my favorite nursing cover ever, and (knowing that I like to sew) a fleece ball kit to put together for the soon-to-arrive baby Lily.

That Saturday, Emma and I spent some time together deciding how to arrange the ball panels and which ribbons to put where. We pinned everything together and then set it aside to sew up the next day.

Instead of sewing, I spent Sunday evening in the hospital, with Lily arriving shortly before dawn Monday morning. Since said project was full of pins, I was careful to put it in a safe place before leaving.

Or so I thought. If you haven’t already figured out, this was the sewing project I’ve ranted about a few times on this blog. Thankfully Johnny unearthed it during a recent self entertainment episode (so much for putting it in a “safe place”). I have no idea where it was, but thankfully he brought it to me without getting into any of the pins. I was happy to have it back, and we sewed it up into a beautiful fleece ball:

Lily is just starting to show a slight interest in toys, so in the meantime Emma is doing her best to relive her own babyhood:

Thank You, LiEr!

Blog Favorites: Sewing

September is National Sewing Month, so I thought I’d showcase a few of my favorite sewing tutorials - some simple, some challenging, some for hand sewing and others for machine sewing. I’ve linked to shops run by these wonderful bloggers in the cases where I am aware of their existence (if I missed your shop, let me know and I’ll edit this post to include it). When using these tutorials, please follow requests made by bloggers with regards to fair use. Most bloggers restrict their tutorials to personal, non-commercial use. Now, on to the blogs:

• LiEr at ikat bag has a fantastic collection of sewing tutorials for toys, clothing, and hair accessories. You can find the full list in the sidebar on her blog. She also recently opened an etsy shop.
• Get instructions for a sandwich wrap that doubles as a placemat from the Frugal Family Fun Blog. Valerie has a few sewing tutorials, including this apple printed lunch sack and instructions for making a bib from a pair of old jeans.
• Deb from Works in Progress shows how to make a bag from a vintage sheet. I also like the pram bag she made using two pillowcases. She also recently opened a shop – based in New Zealand, but ships worldwide.
• I love this repurposed girls’ ruffle front shirt from Make It and Love It. Ashley has a TON of tutorials for sewing projects – just check her left sidebar. She also has an etsy shop.
• Beth from be the thread has a great two-part tutorial for making adorable onesie dresses here and here. She has a few other sewing tutorials here, and an Art Fire shop.
• Katherine at One Inch World has wonderful sewing tutorials, including several for felt food. Just check her sidebar. I think her ravioli tutorial is especially clever as it is the most efficient way of making felt ravioli that I’ve seen. Many of Katherine’s tutorials can easily be sewn by hand, so you don’t even need a sewing machine.
• Favorite tutorials from homemade by jill include her ruffle shirt, taggie animals, and very adorable quiet book. See her sidebar for more templates and tutorials.

This blog has sewing tutorials for baby wipes, crayon rolls (the giveaway for a crayon roll is open until Friday morning), instructions for repurposing jeans and t-shirts into toddler shorts, a doll bed mattress, a pattern for Christmas stockings, a winter toddler dress, and a princess gown, Also hand-sewing tutorials for princess shoes and patterns for felt food here and here.

Do you have a favorite sewing resource that I’ve missed? Please link up in the comments, I’d love to check it out!

Sew Organized and a Giveaway

Mike surprised me on Labor Day by suggesting we drive to Ikea to pick up this computer workstation I’ve been drooling over for the past couple of years with no intention whatsoever of using it for our computer. Mike says it’s my anniversary and Christmas present – meeting anniversary (this month), not wedding anniversary. Aren’t I lucky to have a husband who celebrates two anniversaries every year? =)

I’m hoping this will be my solution to sewing without having children climb on the table. I can lock the machines in the cabinet by putting a child lock on the doors, and I finally have somewhere to store my fabric, which actually mostly consists of clothing I’ve collected from family members who humor my questionably sane desire to repurpose all old clothing into new things.

I can’t call the cabinet thrifty, but my sewing stash is, and this is the best solution I’ve come up with for having a (child-proof!) sewing corner in a limited-space home (although I lived in a few apartments before moving here that didn’t have space for this corner). I’m especially proud of it because, although Mykel built the main frame for me, I managed to put on and adjust the doors and hinges all by myself – with all three children “helping”.

As for the giveaway, I’m offering a crayon roll like these to whoever can guess what the first present Mike ever gave me was. If you wish to earn entertainment points, give some ideas as to how he chose your guess of a gift for this girl he was “not dating”, only spending every spare moment with. If you have a preference for crayon roll colors, put that in your comment and I’ll match them if I have those colors in my felt stash.

If nobody guesses correctly, the winner will be chosen randomly – unless someone leaves me a particularly entertaining guess, in which case I reserve the right to subjectively choose them. If more than one person guesses correctly I’ll choose a winner randomly from the correct guesses (unless one correct guess was particularly entertaining, in which case they may win instead).

This giveaway is open worldwide; just expect your prize to take a while to arrive if you live very far away. If you know this story and want to enter the giveaway, make a suggestion as to what it could have been instead (fitting within the limits of my hints).

I’ll give you a few hints: it was very practical, relatively thrifty, very G-rated, and immensely useful. And last I heard, it was in the possession of a graduate student whose name I no longer remember.

This giveaway ends at 9am Eastern time on Friday, September 18th (the actual meeting anniversary).

Baby doll slings

I decided to fit one final sewing project in before my mom left Saturday afternoon. Emma had been asking for one of these for a while, and I’m glad I made one for Johnny too because he thinks it’s really cool to have a baby sling. Made using the same fabric and design as my pouch sling (which Lily spends large portions of the day in).

Also, beautiful newborn photos of Lily taken by my very talented friend Felicia are here.

Baby Wipes

MATERIALS:

• flannel
• scissors
• sewing machine

STEPS:

1) Tear flannel into baby wipe-size pieces

2) Serge or zig zag edges

I’m using these as inserts for Lily’s newborn diapers also (I’ve made one more cover and plan to make a few more). There are various baby wipe solution recipes on the internet, but I use plain water most of the time and my kids never get diaper rash.

The adjustment to three kids is going well, although both Emma and Johnny are sick again this weekend and that makes things a little tougher. I’ve been thoroughly spoilt with Grandma doing all the cooking and taking Emma and Johnny out on long walks in their double stroller. Lily is doing beautifully, only waking twice a night to eat – absolutely wonderful since she is gaining weight just fine.

My first cloth diaper (cover)!

Mike took the kids to the Children’s and Science Discovery Museums in Acton on Saturday and I had a quiet morning at home. It’s amazing how much I can done without two toddlers underfoot! I decided it was the perfect occasion to tackle my fear of sewing cloth diapers. I decided to start off with Shar’s free (for home use) newborn diaper pattern off of The Nappy Network. It’s designed to be a pocket diaper, but I decided to just turn it into a fleece cover instead. I have plenty of prefolds to stuff it with, and covers are slightly easier to sew than pockets.

I had some soft purple fleece left over from making Emma this jacket and some velcro from making crayon rolls, so I didn’t have to purchase any materials for this project.

Here are the pattern pieces with the velcro pinned on:

And here the pieces are sewn together and the elastic has been added:

I was really confused about how to add the elastic (it’s different from adding elastic to, say, shorts) until I found this Youtube video. Hooray for Youtube!

After adding the elastic I turned it right side out and hand-stitched the opening I had left for turning. I was originally going to topstitch it, but I liked the way it looked without the topstitching and so left it that way. Making this took 20 minutes tops after all of my drama over being intimidated by cloth diapers, and I definitely plan to make more! Many thanks to my online friends (especially Ally) for inspiring me to try this project! Now I just need my baby girl to arrive so I can test how well this diaper works!

Crayon roll

I decided to make crayon rolls for my kids after seeing Valerie make a felt crayon wallet for her daughter in this post at the Frugal Family Fun Blog. I’ve admired crayon rolls on many blogs, but I was attracted to the idea of using felt as a material because it’s so easy to sew. My crayon rolls are quite a bit different from Valerie’s crayon wallet, so I’ve included a tutorial. These crayon rolls were super easy to make, and could also be sewn by hand – it would take a little longer but might also look nicer.

MATERIALS:

• 1 9x12 sheet of felt (standard size sold in craft stores)
• 2 3x11 strips of felt
• velcro

  STEPS:

1) Divide each felt strip into eight sections and mark. I used a pen with disappearing ink for this step.

2) Stitch each strip to the sheet of felt and stitch section lines (see photo below for placement.)

 

3) Attach velcro. Emma’s fingers in the above photo show the placement for one hook piece and one loop piece. I sewed a second piece of hook velcro directly behind the hook piece on the side you see in this photo to keep the crayon roll shut. You can either add a second loop piece for this to attach to, or have it attach itself to the felt (my solution). Here is Emma’s finished crayon roll filled with crayons:

And Johnny’s crayon roll rolled up (with crayons inside) – you fold it in half lengthwise first, which makes it more compact and keeps the crayons from falling out:

Both kids like their crayon rolls, although Johnny only uses his properly about half the time and methodically removes and throws each crayon the rest of the time. Emma neatly removes one crayon at a time, colors with it, and carefully replaces it.

From worn-out jeans to toddler shorts

MATERIALS:

• One pair of old jeans
• scissors
• elastic (for waistband)
• thread
• sewing machine (optional, but highly desirable)

Place pattern pieces (or, alternately, an existing pair of shorts to use as a pattern) over jeans, avoiding the more worn-out portions of the garment.

Cut, allowing for seam allowances and the increased/decreased stretchiness of new material if using an existing outfit (the shorts I used were made of a woven material, while the jeans I was cutting up were the stretchy type). I’m keeping the outer seam of the jeans for these shorts, and so I didn’t allow for any seam allowance there.

Make any further adjustments. This pair of shorts was cut to be about an inch longer than the pair used as a pattern. I also made the rise slightly higher in the back and slightly lower in the front as you can see in the photo below. I considered adding pockets, but didn’t really want my son to fill them with anything so I left them off.

Stitch together and photograph the end result (optional). If you look closely, you will see that I am still learning how to properly use the blind hem on my serger, and that I lazily left on the yellow thread even though it didn’t match. That’s the beauty of making play shorts for an 18-month-old out of old clothes – you can practice sewing and be lazy about thread colors.

Johnny liked this pair of shorts first try, but got them seriously dirty, so no photographs of the model in them until I do laundry.

Happiness

I got these adorable baby shoes in the mail this week from my bloggy friend Valerie from the Frugal Family Fun Blog. Valerie and I started our blogs at around the same time, and I’ve loved reading about all of her wonderful ideas. She has amazing recycling craft ideas, and posts a lot of outdoor activities too. I’m so glad I got to meet her (virtually, at least), and I can’t wait to try these shoes on our little baby girl in a couple months - Thank You, Valerie!

In other happy news, Johnny wore THE SHORTS with no complaints yesterday, so that sewing paid off after all. Doesn’t he look handsome?

This is as “still” as I could get him to be for photos – my little 18-month-old climbs, runs, and turns somersaults(!) nearly non-stop these days!

Toddler shorts

I made these shorts for Johnny using my tried-and-true method of “take an existing article of clothing that fits and use that as a pattern”. In this case, I used his swim shorts as a pattern. I think they turned out great, but I’m not sure Johnny agrees. I realized that, apart from his swim trunks, I’ve never made him wear non-knit shorts before, so maybe that’s the problem? Or being photographed too close to bedtime…

Repurposing clothing: How to turn a shirt into toddler shorts

Massachusetts has had a bit of a heat wave this week, and Johnny’s wardrobe was woefully unprepared. I hadn’t taken stock of his summer clothes at all, and discovered AFTER the warm weather arrived that he had one short-sleeved t-shirt that fit, one that was really too small, and a single pair of shorts that I could barely squeeze him into. I had an old t-shirt sitting in my fabric pile, so we took that and improvised it into a pair of knit shorts. It worked really well and was super quick to sew (I kept some of the t-shirt seams and the bottom hem so I was able to skip those steps). I definitely plan to turn more t-shirts into shorts in the future!

MATERIALS:

• Adult t-shirt
• Elastic (for wasteband)
• Thread
• Sewing machine

STEPS:

1. Choose a pair of shorts (pants will work too, just cut the legs shorter) to use as a pattern.
2. Lay over t-shirt and cut, adding seam allowances and extra fabric at the top for adding elastic. Notice that I kept the side seam and bottom hem of this t-shirt – cut down my sewing time for quite a bit and since these are just play shorts I wasn’t looking to make them perfect. You want to copy the backside of the article of clothing, since that piece is typically larger than the front piece. You can trim the front side later.

3. Repeat on the other side of the t-shirt. You can actually use the first piece you cut as a pattern (Preferable - I didn’t do this, and then I had to trim the two pieces to make them identical).

4. Trim the top front of the shorts a little – you normally want the backside of shorts to be higher than the front.

5. You can see in this photo how the back of shorts (right side of the photo) is taller than the front (left side of Image 4). You may want to trim some of the front edge (left side of Image 4) off as well, to prevent fabric bunching in the front (you need less in the front since in the back it is stretching over your child’s bum). If you do trim the left side, be sure to re-cut the little bit on the bottom left to match the backside.

6. Sew the side seams of Image 4 (done in the photo). I used a zig-zag stitch since this is a knit fabric and the stitching needs to have some give.

7. Open the shorts out the way they were in Image 3, but with the seams on the outside of the fabric. Stitch the crotch seam, again using a zig-zag stitch

8. Cut a length of elastic to fit your child’s waist.

9. Stitch down the top of the shorts, leaving an opening to insert elastic

10. Thread elastic through shorts. If you don’t have a elastic threading tool (not sure what the formal name for that thing is), attaching a safety pin to one end of the elastic works pretty well.

11. Stitch together the ends of the elastic, making sure that the elastic isn’t twisted within the band

12. Finish stitching the waist.

13. Put the shorts on your child and send them out to play.

Johnny loves his new shorts, although he doesn’t share his sister’s zest for modeling.

Blog Favorites: Sewing Projects

Some favorite tutorials:

• Easy and stylish spring tote tutorial from homemade by jill. While you’re there, check out her gorgeous WIP quiet time book, as well as her tutorials for taggie animals and a wipe-clean vinyl bib.
• Discover the many possibilities of foam by exploring these gorgeous creations from Ikat Bag – creations range from a children’s sofa to dirt (very cool dirt, I might add)!
• Very cute and simple headband tutorial from vermillion rules.
• Great ideas of ways to recycle/upcycle baby tights from Filth Wizardry.
• Easy hooded bath towel from Make and Takes.
• Make a felt armchair for your child’s dollhouse using this tutorial from One Inch World.
• Toy gathering bucket from Sew, Mama, Sew!

Skirts

As I mentioned in this post, my goal for April is to make some maternity clothes. Here’s my first attempt, made using this tutorial.

The hem is straight, even though it doesn’t look it in the photo. The tutorial was easy to follow, and it fits great even though I was stuck with 2” elastic (all my fabric store carries) instead of the recommended 3”.

There was just enough fabric left to make Emma a matching skirt, which she was more than happy to model :)

Blog Favorites: Easter Crafts

Crafts to make with your tot:

• Make a textured Easter egg using pom poms, buttons, scissors, glue, and construction paper in this craft from No Time for Flash Cards.
• More Mom Time shows how to make cute wibbly, wobbly egg friends using plastic eggs, Play-doh, googly eyes, craft foam, and glue. Also, check out her educational letter matching eggs post – all you need for this one is paper, scissors, and a pen.
• Looking for Easter card ideas? Try these handprint bunnies from Just For Fun!
• Lucky Me! shares how to make a pretty Egg Sun Catchers using card stock, contact paper, tissue paper, a hole punch, and cording or yarn.
• Dollar Store Crafts shares how to make animal masks for your Easter eggs using pipecleaners, googly eyes, cardstock, and glue.

Crafts to put in Easter baskets:

• Tired of plastic Easter eggs? Check out this fill-able fabric Easter egg tutorial from One Inch World!
• Craftpad has a tutorial for adorable, Easter-themed felt finger puppets.
• For bookworms, check out these felt paperclip bunny bookmarks from LollyChops. While you’re there, be sure to admire the gorgeous dyed eggs she creates using painter’s tape, freezer paper, scrapbooking punches, and – of course – eggs and dye.

Still need something to use as an Easter basket? I like this tutorial for a felt spring basket from maya*made.

Finally, be sure to check out Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile’s list of 75 children’s Easter books!

Pouch sling!

I’ve wanted to make a pouch sling for a while, but I was too lazy to get my act together and figure out the steps that don’t get written into the free online tutorials I’ve seen. So I jumped at the chance to test out this pattern, and I have to say I’m pleased with the results!

I followed the pattern exactly, apart from adding topstitching. Aside from the sloppiness/awkward thread color of said topstitching (I shouldn’t try to sew with a 15-month-old on my lap) I’m very happy with the results. The instructions were super easy to follow, and I hope to make more of these for friends and family!

You can order the pattern for $5 from the loveseptember etsy shop. If you don’t sew, she sells ready-made pouch slings. There is even a pouch sling gift certificate where the recipient gets to choose their own pouch sling, which is then custom-made to fit them perfectly!

Penguin puppets!

These puppets are based off of this free pattern. I printed the pattern half-size so that it would fit tiny toddler hands, and then made a few minor changes (I shortened the white part and made the main body a bit thinner). They were super easy to put together – I hand-stitched the eyes and beak, and then used my sewing machine to finish the rest super quickly.  You could even glue on the eyes, nose, and white body – but only if your children don’t try to pull any glued objects apart the way mine do.

I’m not sure if it’s because of my changes or because I used pink and blue felt instead of black (Emma’s request), but these wound up looking like a cross between penguins and snowmen to me…what do you think?

Thankfully, their lack of authenticity doesn’t make my children love them any less.

Blog favorites

Lucky Me! has a tutorial for making adorable bottle snowmen using yogurt smoothie (or juice) bottles, quilt batting, felt, and a few other craft odds and ends. I feel like my kids are a little young for all the small pieces this craft requires, but it’s an idea I’ll save for when they stop putting so many things in their mouths

Need a Valentine’s Day gift for your toddler? Try making these cute, simple felt heart-shaped cookies from Chasing Cheerios.

This felt snowflake building activity from My Montessori Journey combines two of my favorite things: felt and geometric shapes.

Princess shoes

Emma has been asking for princess shoes for a very long time, so I decided to make her some.

MATERIALS:

• plastic canvas
• felt
• embroidery floss
• scissors
• thread

Here are the pieces (minus the decorative flower). I just traced her foot to make the pattern for the soles, and then stretched fabric over the top of her foot to figure out size/shape for that piece.

I got the idea of using plastic canvas for the soles after seeing this adorable dollhouse tutorial from UK Lass in the US.

I stitched everything together by hand using a blanket stitch. Here are the finished shoes:

And again on Emma’s feet:

If I were to make these again, I would make the top panel fit more snugly, and I would probably stitch two layers of felt together for the top panel to make it more durable. A closed-toe version is another option, but Emma definitely had open-toe shoes in mind when she was talking about princess shoes, so that’s what we made!

Handmade doll bed

This doll bed was Emma's Christmas present. It was very simple to make, and she loves it.

The blanket is two pieces of fleece (scraps from clothing I've made her which you may recognize if you've followed this blog for a while) tied together. Just cut out each corner, cut the edges into strips, and tie. Don't pull too hard while tying, since fleece stretches out and stops looking nice under stress.
The bed frame is the lid of the large shoebox that Mike's winter boots came in. I covered it in wrapping paper, but I might recover it with fabric if the wrapping paper rips (so far, so good).

I traced around the lid and added a seam allowance to make the mattress. The mattress is stuffed with two layers of quilt batting. I top-stitched around the edges, mainly to avoid hand-sewing where I had added the quilt batting. The pillow is made out of the same fabric (a remnant a friend gave me that they had left over from making a baby blanket), also top-stitched around the edges for the same reason as the mattress.

Here is the finished bed. I made the entire gift in under one hour, start to finish.
Emma loves her baby's new bed.

Work in progress

I decided to make matching family stockings this year. I made a pattern I'm happy with and cut them out, but I'm stuck figuribg out decorations. Any suggestions? I'm considering names (probably cut out of felt and sewn on), but haven't been able to free-draw them so they look nice and haven't found an online source. Any recommendations for nice-looking block letters? Any picture suggestions? I'd like these stockings to last, so I want the end result to look nice...
Here's the pattern I made, just in case anyone's curious. The extra fabric in the picture above is going to be sewn in half to make a stocking hanger. You can use the pattern to make your own stockings, or cut it out of some cereal boxes to make a this scrap paper stocking from no time for flash cards.