Toddler Easter Dress 2011

As I was working in my craft room the Monday before Easter, I came to the realization that I always am sewing for other people or things for the house but actually pretty seldom my own children.  The last time I made anything for Vivian to actually wear, it was for her blessing day which was over a year ago.  So I pulled out some scraps from making Vivian’s bed skirt and made her a little dress (thank goodness little girl dresses use a lot less material than other things).  I love the “butterfly” sleeves on this dress. It made me re-remember that I love  to sew for my children so I’m going to try to do it a little more often.

Halloween Costumes 2010

This years costumes are finally finished!  I’m so excited to show them off!  I know they’re not as amazing as the costumes that some people make but I think they’re pretty cool.

The first costume I decided to make was armor.  It actually took some convincing because my boy wanted to be a prince.  But since I pretty much made a prince costume last year (in a way) I really didn’t want to have to do the same thing again.  So I put on my best sales-woman approach and pulled out our “Narnia” collection book and sited all of the pictures that “The high King Peter” or “Prince Caspian” wear armor.  It worked!  He wanted armor after that.  The funniest thing about the whole scenario is that he still wants to be called “A prince, in armor”.

 

Here he is, looking fierce!

I love his stance!  So tough!

And because I never know when to quit….I also made some other accessories to make his costume more versatile.

Gritting his teeth with determination.

Now for the part that I’ve been waiting for my whole career as a mother!  My little girl’s outfit!  I have been wanting soooo badly to embellish clothing with glitter for years so I went all out and went crazy!  (Some of the material actually came glittered already, which was helpful ;) ).

And here she is, my little Fall Fairy:

I’m so happy she kept the headband I made on.  The trick was to tell her how pretty she looked the second I put it on and push her hands away from trying to take it off.  I’ve had to do that every time I’ve put it on her, but it seems to work. 

Back wing view!

 

Side view of her dress.  I loved the little petals on this pattern…thus why I had to make it when I saw it (besides that it came in 1/2 size….not many patterns this cute do!)  

   This one is just adorable to me!  I love her sweet little face and her pretty blue eyes!

So yes, I went a little crazy, and a little over-board.  But the point is, I’ve also had a LOT of fun. :)

Pleated Pillow Plus…

About 6 weeks ago, my husband came home from work asking me if I was willing to do a little sewing for someone that he worked with who wanted some pillows made.  I thought “pillows?” “they’re a snap!”.  Ha.  Little did I know that the day I started them my machine would decide to break and become totally unusable.  We ended up at the shop twice and then gave up and bought a totally new machine. 

We went with a simple Bernette 66 for Bernina that hopefully will last for years to come.  I really loved the service at the store those ladies were all so nice to me, besides the other perks (such as warranty and free maintenance/cleaning for a year…etc). My machine also came with three classes which I learned some amazing tips from such as: Make sure you thread your machine’s upper thread with the foot down because this sets the tension properly….this is one trick I still need to master.  Also, only turn the side needle-positioner wheel (whatever it’s really called) towards you and  never away as this messes up tension too.  I never knew!  I am sewing better than ever! I’m also thrilled with the foot power that I know have from the courses I took.  I was so excited to start on the pillows that I was supposed to make in this material that I LOVE!  I took the courses before starting and I’m so glad I did.  This was a pretty fun project though a little nerve racking trying to make them perfect for the girl I was making them for :).

Here’s a photo of what they look like in her cute newly-decorated apartment that she sent me.  I also designed the middle pillow myself because she wanted a more embellished pillow but not too crazy.  I love how they turned out!

When we were picking out supplies she also asked my advice on what to do for a flower arrangement.  I was so flattered that anyone would ask my advice on anything…it was a nice feeling.  This was my suggestion for the flowers…she thought of filling the jar with beans which I love and suggested she paint them.  It looks awesome!

Felt Choosing Cubes

(This past 3 months!) I’ve been subbing for the Primary Chorister.  I made these little cubes to try to motivate the children in Primary to #1 be quite so I would pick them #2 have reasons/variations to repeat a song and #3 because felt does not get destroyed as fast as paper does  and #4 it’s a sneaky way to teach musical terms. 

You could use these cubes for other motivation, such as which chore to pick for the day or what kind of activity to do when your children are arguing…there are so many possibilities!

The kids LOVE it when I pull these out!  So glad I came up with them!

Here are some of the different things I put on them:

Red:

Leave out a word

crescendo (grow louder)

decrescendo (grow softer)

fermata (hold a note)

rall.  (slow down)

accelerando (speed up)

Yellow:

Staccato (short and bouncy)

Largo (smooth)

Legato (slow)

Forte (loud)

piano (soft)

allegro (fast)

Blue:

Boys only

Girls only

Right side (of room)

Left side (of room)

No teachers

Hum

Grey Ruffled Dress…

In July we had a wedding up in Utah to attend for my cousin.  I needed something to wear that would fit me, be cool in the heat, and be appropriate for a wedding. 

After spending some time looking at dresses and not really fitting anything (my post-pregnancy body is a little more "hippy" than usual) I decided to try my hand at making my own dress. I pulled out one of my favorite patterns that I tried and never was happy with the results. Then I headed to Wal-Mart (The only store with fabric that was open within a 10-mile radius) and picked up a remnant of some grey cotton material that had some stretch to it.

I decided to add a ruffle to it as a lot of dresses right now have ruffles and little fun feminine details and I wanted to be special too (besides the fact that the ruffle made the dress a little more modest was a bonus).

 

Here I am at the wedding…

It turned out pretty nice I think.  After the wedding my sister sent me a link to this dress to show me how similar they are.  It only cost me about $5 to make this dress… that’s a little better than $130 don’t you think so?

Baby Girl Blessing Dress

As it turns out there is a nice learning curve to sewing.  When I made this dress I had never been very successful  making anything wearable before.  According to my friend that I gave it to it has received more complements than all of her daughters other dresses.  I thought that making Vivian’s blessing dress would be a difficult undertaking but it actually only took me about two days: one to cut and sew most of it and the second day for the finishing touches.

Here’s Vivian sitting on Grandma’s sofa on her blessing day.  I really love the ivory brocade satin that I found and the gorgeous Venetian lace that I found to trim it with.  I also got creative and made a pleated bow for her head since the bonnet  seemed a little overpowering for her little sweet face.

   

Here she is with her daddy ready to go get blessed.      

 

It’s a little difficult to see the bow detail because of the lack of contrast but I’ll make another in color at a later date and do a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Here’s a pretty fuzzy though cute picture of her big brother trying to kiss her!

Gold-Leafed Pillow

I’ve been wanting to make a pillow to match my curtains for a long time.  When I first move to the village I hated the 12' wide x 6' long windows so I put in curtains everywhere to get a little privacy.   I couldn’t find anything in my price range that even remotely looked good so I decided to dye some broadcloth.  It wasn’t as deep as I would have liked but it was adequate which is what I needed (and will need for another 6 months or so).  Anyway I planned on making a pillow in the curtain color to contrast with my bedding but never got around to it.  I wanted to bead it at first but after trying iron-on appliqué with the Halloween Costumes that I made this last year, I thought it would be really fun to appliqué leaves on a pillow for my room.  Luckily, while I was watching Martha one day, she did a reverse appliqué pillow with the perfect template!  I didn’t use her method, but I used her template and I love it!!!

 

I did it with the leftover scraps of gold lame that I had ironed onto iron-on webbing and then I ironed them on and then sewed them on (as the adhesive does not adhere long to lame).  I used a matching thread to the pillow which I think gave it a lot of depth. Personally, I think it’s gorgeous!

Here it is on my chic bed in our lit’ ol’ apartment.

Felt Roll-Up Kitchen

Around Christmas time I became intrigued with the idea of making felt food so I searched the internet like crazy for ideas (only to find shortly after that my mom was gifting fake food for Christmas).  In my searching I found this blog called Balancing Everything with a darling pattern for a felt roll-up kitchen!

Of course I had to add my own little touches which I did by embroidering the coils on the burners and adding words to the knobs and putting in a drain (what’s a sink without a drain?)

 

Here it is in all it’s embroidered glory!

 

It’s such a great idea and is totally portable so Christian can play with it on practically any flat surface and at the end of the day it rolls up for easy cleaning!

Most importantly, Christian Loves it!  

Noah’s Ark Play Mat

One day in December when I was searching around the internet insanely finding more projects to try.  I found this darling pattern for a Noah’s Ark Play Mat at  www.freepatterns.com to make out of a blanket with some felt pieces and then some felt finger puppets to go along with it.  I of course was a little disappointed that there actually was no Noah included (or his wife either) so I made my own pattern up for both of them and then when I found some awesome striped chenille pipe cleaners I decided to make my own pattern for the tiger as well.  I also took this pattern to the next level by sewing everything rather than gluing it as it says to in the instructions.  It would have taken a lot less time if I had glued. I made two of them, one for my niece who just became a big sister and one for my son who just became a big brother. It is much more durable than it would be if glued and hopefully will provide hours and hours of fun play for both of them and maybe their siblings too.

  

Here’s the ark.  If you look at the pattern, I changed pretty much everything about the color scheme but I like mine better.

 

Here are the finger puppets.  Very colorful I must say.

Here’s everything together.  I really think they turned out cute!

Soccer Bag Tutorial

As my little boy was leaving his soccer class a week ago, he wouldn’t stop kicking the ball…even though we had already reached the parking lot…thank goodness for my blood curdling scream that stopped him in his tracks right as a huge black truck was coming along.  Yikes!  He cried and cried that I had scared him but I told him he scared me much worse.  So for a few days I pondered on what I could do to stop him from kicking the ball once practice is over and eureka! I found the solution when I went into the fabric store and found this cute print in his favorite color that just happens to match his soccer shirt.  So I decided to make him a soccer ball bag.  It fits up to full size soccer balls so he will hopefully get many years of use out of it.

                                 

Materials needed:

• two 15x20  piece of Fabric
  
• 4 yards nylon rope/drawstring
  
• 6 inches nylon webbing
  
• thread
  
• sewing machine

Instructions:

1. Cut fabric to 15x20 pieces
   
2. Roll top edge 1/4 inch on both pieces and press. 
   
3. Sew seam.
   
4. On top sides of both pieces roll edges down 5 inches and iron (don’t worry about triangular edge at end of 5 inches.  This will not show in finished product). 
   
5. Sew seam.
   
6. To make casing for drawstring (on wrong side) fold over upper edge one inch (1”) and press. 
   
7. Then sew over seam from rolled edge.
   
8. Cut webbing into 3” pieces. Fold each piece in half.  Pin to lower sides of one of the fabric pieces (wrong side)about 5/8 inch from the lower edge. 
   
9. Sew securely in place.
   
10. With wrong sides together, pin both pieces of fabric together on sides and lower edge.
    
11. Sew seam about 1/4 around (for extra security add a zigzag stitch around too). 
    
12. Trim bottom corners.
    
13. Pull inside out (use bone folder to poke out corners).
    
14. Cut nylon rope/drawstring into Two 2 yard pieces.  On one side thread rope  up through webbing from bottom moving up and through one side of the casing over through the other side of the casing and back down to meet other end of rope and then tie end.one side should look like this when completed…
    
15. Repeat on other side.  Both sides view when complete. Trim ends to match.
    
16. Congratulations you’ve got a soccer bag!

Practical gift for a guy…

So I’ve made my husband something that I think he will really be pleased with…a car organizer.  He goes crazy when things get unorganized and since we’re going to have two kids soon I figured our car may start being more chaotic so this is one of the gifts I’m giving him for Christmas this year.  I took a picture so that he’d figure out what it is!  I hope he likes it!