pintuck tunic with bloomers

The practice sample of diamond pintucks was put to good use yesterday:

The tunic is my own design and the bloomers were made using a pattern from the book, Little Stitches for Little Ones, by Amy Butler (love that book!)

A few people asked if the pintuck fabric was hard to use in a project, and the answer is, nope!  You do the pintucks first and then cut out your pattern piece just as you would on any regular, flat fabric.

 Here's the back:

I nearly lost my head doing those stupid button holes.  I like to think of myself as a fairly competent button-hole-sewer, having done it many times.  But for some reason last night, although I could make perfect button holes on my scrap fabric (every time!), when I tried to do them on the tunic, it wouldn't work.  I had to unpick it like 10 times, and I'm not even exaggerating.  The only reason I did not scream at the top of my lungs and hurl my sewing machine across the room was because I was in public (on Thursday nights I go to a sewing studio class with some friends to work on projects). 

So here I am, at my wits end, when I decide to just turn the tunic in the opposite direction.  And for some reason, that was magic, because the button holes worked.  Can anyone explain this to me?  I am still baffled.

Anyway, as more practice for the blessing dress, I worked on having no exposed seams inside the tunic.  I still have a few things to figure out, but I'm getting closer.

Want to know my favorite part about this outfit?  When Ruby wears it, she will match my mom's kitchenaid cover PERFECTLY!  ;)

audrey's owl

Oscar's little friend, Audrey, has a room decorated with owls and other birds.  Her mom loved these owl pillows at Pottery Barn Kids, but didn't love the price tag or the 3 month back-order wait, so I sewed one up.

It is kind of a combination of both styles - it has the body of the smaller pillow, and the funny long legs of the larger pillow.  The ribbon detail and embroidered chest feathers were my personal touch.  (confession:  I think I like mine better than the PB version!)  The owl is a pretty large size - the floral throw pillow behind it measures 16x16 inches.

Oscar was so sad to see the owl go!  He loves birds, too.  Remember the mobile I made for him?  To this day, he LOVES it.  He points to the birdies every time we walk into his room, and wants to touch them when I lift him out of his crib.  I have plans to enlarge the Spool bird pattern to make a giant one for snuggling.

Update:  Many of you have requested a tutorial for this pillow.  I'm sorry to say I won't do one for this project, because it is a blatant copy-cat.  If I had seen the PB owls and came up with something unique and different, that would be one thing.  But I tried to copy them point by point, which makes me feel icky about doing a tutorial.  Someone out there designed that pillow, and it wasn't me.  Hope you understand!

pintuck practice

I am making a blessing dress for baby Ruby (which may or may not actually be her name.  We started calling her that a while ago, and I think it will stick, but don't hold me to it).

Normally when I start a new project, I just wing it, but a blessing dress is special.  It should have french seams and pretty details and not look like mom made it all willy nilly.  I decided this was going to require some research and practice.

Step one, the research (borrowed from my mother-in-law):

There is a newer version available, but I am digging the retro 1979 copy.  It is chock-full of handy information and diagrams.

Step two, the practice (diamond pintucks):

I used this great Riley Blake print to guide my pintucks, no marking required (love that).  I just folded along the dots and sewed.  I'm sure it will be harder to replicate on a plain, white fabric, but it was great practice anyway.  Plus, now I have a cute piece of pintuck fabric for another dress!

Diamond pintucks are a lot easier than they look.  First you sew all of your pintucks in rows going in one diagonal direction.  Iron them down so the tucks are all going in the same direction.  Then sew all of the rows of pintucks going the other diagonal direction, creating the diamond.   Iron again and you are all done.  It looks pretty special (in my opinion) for not all that much extra work.

a work in progress ... car playmat

Last night before bed, I couldn't get a project out of my mind.  I've been wanting to make a playmat for Oscar to drive his cars on for quite a while.  I even bought the fabric for it last fall, and have been stewing over it ever since.

We had a playmat in the house when I was a kid, and it was awesome.  We played with it all the time!  I was always under the impression that my mom made it for us, but turns out it was made by my Aunt Kathy.  Mom was nice enough to email me some photos:

It had all familiar places on it, like the church, school, bank, etc.  Most importantly, it had a Jack in the Box (my dad worked for the company for many years).

I still have a long way to go, but I thought I'd share some of my sketches for buildings I'm planning for Oscar's playmat.  It will include all the important places, like Grandma and Grandpa's house, daddy's office, our playground, Trader Joe's, In-N-Out, etc.  :)

I also hunted around online for some playmat ideas and came across this very cute and simple tutorial for a portable playmat on the Fiskars Craft blog:

 (photo from Fiskars)

I love the little flaps on the car wash and the shoelace gas pump.  Cute, no?

short order cook

I've become a short order felt food cook the past few days.  It has been several years since the first round of felt food that I made for my niece (those dark photos make me cringe!), and I'm happy to report that I'm ready to re-enter the 12-step-program for felt food addicts.  It really is fun to make!

 Here is what I have so far:

 fried eggs, bacon, and a pancake with syrup and a butter pat for breakfast

 a few sandwich fixings for lunch (we need deli meat, pb&j and some nutella stat!)

  and ravioli, green beans (or snow peas, whatev), and a baguette for dinner

much more to come ... my bag of felt is screaming for fruits and veggies.  And beverages.  And pantry items.  (This could take a while.)

This time around I have been trying to hand stitch most of the food, and I really like the look of it over all machine sewn.  I love me a blanket stitch.  :)

I haven't been using patterns for these because, come on, we all know what a fried egg looks like, right?  I'm a cut and sew on a whim type of girl.  If I come up with something ground-breakingly original, I'll be sure to make up a pattern for you.  But there are TONS of free felt food patterns online - great to use or just to give you ideas.  I've rounded up a bunch for you to check out:

Fruits and Veggies:
Orange Slices (and fried eggs) by One Crafty Mumma
Orange Slices by Thinking Mama
Strawberries by Mr. Monkey Suit
Fabric Strawberries by V and Co. (at Moda Bake Shop)
Cherries at Melissa Rambles On
Banana in Peel or Corn in Husk by Just Stuff
Lettuce by One Inch World
Tomatoes/Pumpkins by V and Co.
Tomato Slice by One Inch World
Pea Pods by Mr. Monkey Suit
Cut-apart Carrot and Potato by American Felt and Craft
Carrots by I Make Stuff

Protiens:
Fabric Eggs by Lola Nova
Sushi by Hoogli Art

Desserts:
Birthday Cake by Ikat Bag
Sprinkle Doughnut by Escape Artist
more Doughnuts by Skip to my Lou
Fortune Cookies by CraftSanity
Cherry Pie by American Felt and Craft
Cherry Pie by Martha Stewart
Goofy Grahams by Craft Tutorials
Cupcake at Hoogli Art
Waffle Cone by Hannah Hoosier

Little bit of Everything:
Fabulously Fun Felt Foods on Craftster
Brown Bag Lunch by Skip to my Lou
Sandwich and Bag of Chips by Snazzle Craft
Turkey Dinner for Two by MADE
Corned Beef and Cabbage meal by Ivers

And holy cow, I just found the Felt Food Cook-Along at Helping Little Hands (which includes over 2 dozen ideas)!  Felt food gold.

Also ... a great idea from a commenter named Kourtney on the play kitchen post.  She said:

"Just an idea for the play food thing... I saw Martha do a necklace out of a t-shirt with Queen Latifa a bit ago and I thought it would make cute play food spaghetti. She just took a t-shirt and cut it up into thin strips with a rotary cutter. When the strips were given a tug they rolled up like noodles."

Brilliant idea!  Can't wait to try it.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Oscar's play kitchen (finally!)

I took a break from baby girl things this weekend to finish a long overdue project - Oscar's play kitchen.  I guess I should say mostly finish.   It is definitely functional (and cute!) but seriously lacking accessories and play food.

Ta-dah!  I tried to keep it fairly gender neutral so it will get maximum use.  I like it, and more importantly, Oscar likes it, too.  He has been very busy stirring up sandwich soup in his little pots (like I said, more felt food will be necessary).

Some of my favorite details ...

• painted scrabble tiles to make the checker board back splash
• wooden plaques from Michael's for the gas burners
• the cute little scalloped trim on the control plate and shelf (trim also from Michael's)

I am loving the wooden pots and pans I bought (made by Melissa and Doug). 

I have a confession to make.  I bought MDF for the backing and used it for the oven door as well.  Big mistake!  Oscar has already tried climbing onto the open oven door and the screws started pulling out of the hinges (I really should have seen that one coming).  So I am going to switch out the oven door with a hard wood, and maybe add some extra hinges to make it stronger.

So ... still on the kitchen to-do list:

• reinforce the oven door
• make some accessories: dish towels, an apron, maybe a chef's hat
• make massive amounts of felt food (just because it is fun)
• gather/make a few more decorations - maybe a picture to hang over the sink, perhaps a little garland to hang over the shelf
• decide what to do with the other side (opposite the hooks).  It is currently bare.  I'm considering adding a chalkboard menu.

This kitchen was heavily inspired by the play kitchen found at Vintage Songbird - it is still one of my very favorites out there.

I didn't bother photographing things step by step or providing instructions for this project, because there is already tons of info out there.  If you want to try it yourself, check out the tutorials at Out of the Crayon Box and My Little Gems.

Prairie Dress (an Itty Bitty variation)

I made another Itty Bitty Dress in the newborn size last night, switching things up a bit.  I changed the straps to button instead of tie, and added a tie-back ribbon waist and some cute hand appliqued pockets.

The final result looks borderline "Little House on the Prairie" to me, which typically isn't my style, but I like that there is not a stitch of pink on the whole dress.

Now that I'm looking at these photos, I think the polka dot ribbon is a bit too much ... it would have looked better with a plain cream ribbon.  Alas, I did not have any plain cream ribbon last night and I am not one who can leave a project unfinished and just go to bed.  :)  I should learn to have more patience!

My very favorite detail is the pockets.  I ironed Wonder Under to a piece of the fabric print and cut out a few of the flowers.  Then I appliqued the flowers to the pockets by hand using a blanket stitch.

 The fabric is called "Maggie's Dress" and comes from American Jane's discontinued Recess collection.

Itty Bitty Dress

Here's a project that has been on my to-do list for over two years:

The Itty Bitty Dress!  It is a free pattern from Made by Rae, and as soon as I saw this fabric I knew I wanted to use it for a little dress.

I increased the pattern size a little, so this will probably fit baby girl around 3-6 months.  It was so fast and easy though, I think I'll have to make the newborn size as well (maybe for her first Sunday debut?).

Isn't it sweet?

Jared came home from work and said, "Hey, that actually looks good!"  Whatever that is supposed to mean.  :)  He was really pleased that I used the new serger on it.

By the way, I think I have a favorite new fabric designer.  After a big fabric shopping trip last week I was looking through my bounty and noticed that every last yard of fabric I bought (even the flannel) was a Riley Blake design.  This particular print is part of the Summer Song collection, and I LOVE the Wheels collection for boys.

Also, I think that Made by Rae's patterns are kind of fabulous, and you should check them out.  I can't wait to try out the Baby Tights, and am going to buy the Toddler Backpack pattern to make a sweet bag for Oscar.

ooh, baby - a brother!

A Brother serger, that is!  Jared surprised me with one for my birthday.  I've been dreaming about owning one, and even mentioned it to him in passing, but he had no idea what I was talking about.  What a sweet guy to do some research and pick out a machine all by himself!

There is something about having 12,000 yards of thread hooked into one machine that makes me feel strangely powerful.  The knife is fun too.  My floor is a mess!  There are likely a lot of serger-ific projects coming this way soon.

glueing fabric to my walls (and a book wreath)

I saw a book wreath by Living with Lindsay a while back and thought it was pretty dang cute.  So I made one.  And then I hung it up on the sad, white walls of my apartment and was a little disappointed: 

That's a lot of white on white - we're not allowed to paint.  Sometimes apartment dwelling sucks.  When I finally own a house, the walls are going to have color!

I didn't want my pretty wreath to go to waste though, so I tried something a little daring and pasted fabric to my wall! (click on the link for instructions and the cornstarch paste recipe).  Ok, so it isn't really daring.  It is actually very apartment-friendly, because the fabric will just peel off when it is time to come down (I can even wash the fabric and re-use it!).  A little color goes a long way, don't you think?

It was so much fun I have been looking for other places to paste fabric.  Like this little peekaboo of color I added to the peephole on our front door:  

I still have about a quart of cornstarch paste left over.  This could get dangerous.

Dana's Rollie Pollies

I feel like asking, "ever heard of MADE?" is kind of on the same scale as asking, "ever heard of the internet?"
so I'm going to assume you already know all about the fabulous Dana and her mad sewing skills.  Last week I sewed one of her Rollie Pollies (pattern available here) and I am hooked!  I already have plans to make the larger size.

The small size is the perfect pouf for an 18 month old, but I think Oscar would enjoy the big one for ultimate lounging.

(p.s. the fabric is P Kaufmann Indoor/Outdoor Soho Pool found at Fabric.com)

Happy Easter!

Have you finished your Easter crafting?  I'm just getting started this afternoon (so typical).

Last year I made Oscar this bunny Easter Bucket and posted about it here.  Despite getting SO much use out of it as a 6-month-old, I thought he could use it again this year.  :)

On today's agenda, I'll be making a few bunny finger puppets using the tutorial at the Purl Bee.  They are too cute to pass up.

(image from The Purl Bee)

I also plan to make one of Dana's peep buntings with the tutorial found on MADE.  First of all, I think this is genius.  Second, my birthday falls on Easter this year, and I am one almost 27-year-old who still loves her peeps.  It will be doubly festive.  That's my kind of festive.

 (image from MADE)

Happy Easter, everyone!