Clothing Sewn in 2012

1. Vintage Modern meets McCall's 6313, 2. Pintucked Corduroy, 3. Citronille Daisy, 4. Brynnberlee Brooke Dress, 5. Farmdale Blossom Skirt, 6. Summer PJs, 7. Bedtime Story PJs, 8. Yellow Sunshine Skirt, 9. Onion 20026, 10. Bunny Tee & Skirt, 11. Lucky Charm tee, 12. Paper Airplanes pj pants & tee, 13. Onion 2002614. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

Crafty Projects of 2012

1. Colors Quiet Book- Cover, 2. Sugar Rush made with Make Life, 3. Turning Twenty made with Yad Sale, 4. Pencil Rolls, 5. Pencils Rolls, 6. Wooden Nativity, 7. Hooded Baby Towel, 8. Arrow of Light Career Arrow, 9. String Art, 10. A grandfather is, 11. Hoo's in the Forest Pencil Roll, 12. Summer Reading Log, 13. Ribbon & Button Bookmark, 14. Chocolate Bunny Blocks, 15. Butterick 4251 Tee Pee, 16. Campfire Cupcakes, 17. Wooden Conversation Hearts, 18. Happy Birthday blocks & presents, 19. Summer Breeze tablerunner, 20. Hometown tablerunner #1

Felt Quiet Book: COLORS

 

For Christmas, I made my niece E* a felt quiet book about colors.  I was inspired by the felt color book from the turnbow family blog and using fabric letters (cut out with my silhouette, my first time cutting fabric with it!) from everyday celebrations, she has a nice tutorial for her colors quiet book.  And I like the idea of using balloons instead of flowers, found here.

 

K* went to JoAnn Fabrics with me one afternoon and we picked out three fabrics for each of the eleven colors.  We were a little worn out from all that coordinating/thinking.  I tried to let my sweet, seven year old pick all the fabrics out with minimal guidance (and picking from what was on sale of course), I think she did pretty good.  The felt for the flowers is from Hobby Lobby.  All the fabric, the buttons (3/4") and gray felt for the book are from JoAnn's.  The font for the color words is Pea Sarah Lynne (124 pt).  It's about 9" square.  The flowers are just over 2" across.  I used heat 'n' bond ultra on the letters and fabric rectangles to adhere them to the felt.

Activity Days: Secret Service

For our activity days activity the week before Christmas, we used this idea from the fickle pickle for secret service.  I pretty much copied what she had typed up, just a few small changes.  Fonts are Miserably Lose and GungsuhChe.

Turning Twenty made with Dear Stella's Yard Sale

 

 

 

Made for my SS T*

Pattern: Turning Twenty by Tricia Cribbs

Fabric: Yard Sale by Dear Stella

It's a fun, bright quilt.  I hope it fits the lime green with pink and blue that she told me liked earlier in the year.

This one was completed in a more timely manner than C*'s, I bought the fabric in Mar. 2012.  Throw in moving and all that, 9 months isn't too bad.

I machine quilted it with straight stitches using the pattern's block layout as a guide for where to stitch the lines. 

 

Thanks J* for holding the quilts up so I could snap some pics of them.

Sugar Rush made with Sweetwater's Make Life

 

Made for my SS C*.

Pattern: Modified Sugar Rush from Camille Roskelley's book Simplify.

Fabric: Make Life by Sweetwater

 

It only took me almost two years from the time I bought the fabric (Jan. 2011) 'til I mailed it off in time for Christmas this year.

I machine quilted it myself with straight stitches, using the layout as a guide for where to stitch the lines.  The quilt has horizontal stitching at the top and bottom and vertical stitching along the strips in the middle. 

 

Thanks J* for holding the quilts up so I could snap some pics of them.

M5205: Santa

Made by my mom: cute, fabric Santa using McCall's 5205.

She made one for herself last year and one for my sister this year.

 

 

Wooden Nativity

 

Wooden Nativity for activity days activity this week.

Idea from learning to be me.

 

Basic Supplies:

6"2x2

5" 2x2
2 1/2" 2"furring strip
2x 1-1/2" ball knob
1x 1/2" furniture button
Craft paint: Grey (Americana Neutral Grey)

Peach (Americana Toffee)

Blue (Folk Art Coastal Blue)

White (Apple Barrel White)

Foam brush, sandpaper, hot glue and sisal

 

I wish I would have glued baby Jesus a little higher, but the hot glue was holding quite well, so I just left it after gently trying to pry it off with no success.

 

I don't have a total calculated cost for these yet, but we made 14 sets for about $30, which included a bag of 50 foam brushes and 400 yds of sisal for future use.  We used up almost all of the wood, 2 2x2s and 1 furring strip.  Amazingly, we only needed on bottle of each color of craft paint.  I did divide it up in little containers to help curb excessive paint waste.

 

 

Pintucked Corduroy: Take2

Last year, I made K* a red corduroy skirt with pintucks.  This year, she has another shirt that I thought would look nice if she had a red skirt to go with it, so I went with pintucks on corduroy, same color even, again.  We attended a nativity exhibit last week that she invited her teacher to.  I sewed it up during the day Thursday so she could wear it that night.

 

Corduroy is from JoAnn's and the skirt is based on pinkfig's girly skirt.

Pintuck inspiration from craftiness is not optional.

 

I didn't really get a good picture of her wearing the skirt, but here's my little cutie.

 

And, these two skirts from last year still fit, yay!  I even found a fun medium/bright pink shirt to go with the Christmas Candy skirt.

 

Christmas Candy Skirt

Haven't decided yet how I feel about the slightly more dropped waist this year.  It looks a little better since she's taller than last year.

Penguin Skirt

Wooden Turkeys

I don't have much to share at the moment, but my mom finished up some cute, wooden turkey decor in time for Thanksgiving.

 

 

Fall Clothing Repeat

Luckily, the Fall outfits I made for K* last year still fit {and may next year too} so we got another year's wear out of them, yay!  I'm guessing the Christmas/Winter skirts do too, I know I want to adjust the Christmas one though, will have to pull those out soon.

 

 

 

 

There are so many projects I'd like to do and there's just not time, sometimes it's hard to decide what I really should/want to work on.  I think one of the problems is that I like to work on crafts "in season".  So I come across all sorts of fun, cute ideas for a certain season or holiday, but don't end up with enough time to make what I want before it's time to move on to the next season.  If I could just get on the ball just a little bit ahead of  time.... Oh well, there's always next year, right ;)

Colored Pencil Rolls x 8

Well, I've made EIGHT colored pencil rolls already this month.  I taught a group of ladies how to make them earlier in the month, so I needed some examples in various stages.  I then decided to donate the other two that could be made from the fabric not needed for the samples to a silent auction at church for the youth to raise money for a trip to Nauvoo next summer.  Well, that then lead to being asked if I could make five more pencil rolls. I finished them all up on Wednesday.  So, I think I'm all pencil rolled out for awhile.  I do have one extra from all that pencil roll sewing that will be nice to have on hand as a gift should I need a last minute one.

Made: 2 robots, 1 dino, 3 black floral and 2 pink floral.

Robot and Dino and coordinating solids fabrics from Jo Ann's.
Black floral and solid pinks from Hobbly Lobby.
Pink florals and solid blue from Jo Ann's. I should have taken another picture of the pink floral one, the outside is a darker pink with larger flowers, all the floral prints are from the Heidi Grace collection.  Very cute.

Ribbons from stash.  And if you can believe it, I ran out of light pink thread with 3 1/2 lines left to stitch for the pencil channels/pockets.  Luckily, it was on a black floral one and I was using black for the bobbin thread and was able to use my light pink bobbin for the top thread.  I also used up the last 40" of skinny light pink ribbon. Time to stock up, not like we ever use pink around here....

There is something in each day

 

Covered 3x5 spiral memo books with some scrapbook paper with a printed quote (love ya like a sister is the font) and tied some green raffia around them for our activity day activity later today.

 

We are going to be talking about "before you speak THINK" and how our speech reflects the kind of person we are.  Along with that, being grateful with a challenge to write something they are grateful for every day for the rest of the year.  I printed off this handout here for the girls to put somewhere to remind themselves to think about the things they say each day.  We will also give each of the girls a few note cards to write thank you notes throughout the month.  If there's time leftover, we'll play some sort of Article of Faith game.

 

"There is something in each day that can bring gratitude and joy if only we will see and appreciate it" is from Dieter F. Uchtdorf's Of Regrets and Resolutions.

 

 

Rapunzel's Hair

 

Storybook day at school this year.

It was even cool enough to need long sleeves, which K* was not happy about until I pointed out that in the movie Tangled she actually has thin long sleeves.  Then it was all good.

We are going with the same costumes as last year at this point.  I wanted to make Strawberry Shortcake several weeks ago, but K* wanted to wear Rapunzel, so I said okay.  Glad she likes it so much though.  Then on Thursday, she asked me about Strawberry Shortcake and then there is a discussion about her telling me she wanted to wear Rapunzel so I didn't make Strawberry Shortcake that ended with me buying some fabric online that I hope comes in time for me to meet the Halloween deadline, thought it's not looking likely.  Had I not already wanted to make Strawberry Shortcake, or if she had asked to be something else, I probably would have told her she was out of luck.  But then again, she's my real life doll, my only girl and how many more Halloween costumes will I really get to sew for my kids. 

 

Anyway, last year I never posted the back of Rapunzel's hair where the long braid meets the headband part and a comment was left asking about it, so here it is.  If you want to read last year's post, Rapunzel {and her hair} there's more details there about it all.  Please feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to remember what I did last year.

 

Vintage Modern meets McCall's 6313

 

Fabric: Vintage Modern melon wish, cream vintage and sky dots

Pattern: McCall's 6313 size 6 

I shorted the skirt part by an 1 1/2" or so and made the bottom band a ruffle

Kinder Kouture Clothing provided some inspiration for this, she sews such beautiful things.  Her aqua Dahlia, pink Dahlia and aqua Daphne dresses are so pretty.

 

I started sewing this top as part of the Kids Clothes Week Challenge, but wasn't able to finish it last week and finished it up yesterday.  The pattern is pretty easy, I just didn't have the time to finish it up as quickly as I wanted.  Then this morning, I snapped some quick pictures on our way to school.  It was actually supposed to be a dress, but when ordering fabric online I shorted myself on the white floral print (my brain must have been asleep as I have no explanation as to why I didn't order enough), and so it became a top.  Maybe she'll get more wear out of it as a top, at least that's what I'm telling myself.

  

 

 

 

Halloween Decor 2012

 

 

This is the extent of our Halloween decor this year.  These two things.

And the occasional plastic spider ring.

 

 There is a bin fairly accessible in the storage unit marked Fall/Halloween, but I've decided for now to leave it alone.  Maybe it's 'cause I'd have to pack it up to the third floor and back down and then over to the storage unit again.  Or maybe because it's nice to be simple once in awhile.   I know I'll be getting into the Christmas bin though.   It will be interesting to dejunk after not using so many of our things for so many months when we unpack in the Spring. I am missing some of my recipes & recipe books that were packed up.  You have to understand that when we first started packing up our house we hadn't decided to build a house for sure and thought we might be into a house in just two or three months.  So I am very grateful for all the things I do have access to.  Having access to my sewing stuff is a big one.  And friends who let me borrow mod podge so I don't have to buy another jar of it.

 

Right now I am weeding vinyl to make about 15 of the framed happy haunting craft for a craft group tonight.  We are also going to sew hooded towels.  It's fun to be creative with friends.

Activity Days: Conference Journals

For an activity days activity the week before General Conference, we made these conference journals out of composition notebooks decorated with paper glued on  the fronts and backs, some quotes glued onto the first few pages and apostle tabs.  Found the idea at Cinneberry Suite.  I made these two for my kids and they did use them to write things from conference in them.  I think they turned out rather cute myself.  I was a little surprised though that the activity days girls were not into any pink at all on their scrapbook paper.  I thought most of it was "cool" looking paper, not babyish at all.  Now I know.