Crafting for fall

Where has the time gone???!!! Can't believe it's October already.
We have been very busy with school and sports activities. That left little time for sewing. However, while the boys were away this weekend, I squeezed in some crafting time with the girls.

My interchangeable wreath got a new look and our kitchen window some cute decoration.

The girls helped me with the felt leafs for the garland. They had fun sewing the leaves onto pieces of green felt and then cutting all the way around. Towards the end they were also cutting their own leaf shapes as well.

The center of our garland is a wood shape. Late in the summer I had bought oodles of different unfinished shapes and spray painted them with chalk board paint.

Then I used acrylic paint and outlined each of the shapes. They make great gift tags or name tags, too. My girls have one hanging on their lunch boxes, and I write down little messages each day.

Now, I am working on the kid's Halloween costumes. The girls' are almost done. However, Yanic wants to be a Wolverine! Wolverine, as in the ANIMAL! How am I going to pull this one off? Any ideas?

Teacher Valentine - and no progress on WIPs

I guess, I am a "bit" late with this post. There has been too much traveling for work and other things going on lately, that I had no time to do much else.

Yanic, really (!) likes his teacher this year and wanted to make something special for her on Valentine's Day. We (I) had to come up with something that's not girly or cutesy.
For a long time, Super-Room-Mom-Lauranie has been making all these cute welcome signs for her kids' teachers and I decided to use her Ruler-idea. Only, I didn't have any burlap or non-pink/purple felt to use, so we thought about hanging typical teacher items from it. In the short of time the only thing we could come up with is an apple. I know, very creative....
Luckily, over at WeeFolkArt there is this great apple pattern. We doubled the pieces and handstitched them together. I made one apple and Yanic made one. We stuffed them very lightly with fiber fill.

From what I heard, his teacher like it and it's now hanging above her desk.

On the other hand, I am making NO progress on any of the projects I have on my list.

"My Pink Quilt" has been waiting since Christmas to be finished.

These two skirts over the chair have been sitting there since late December without a waist band.

Then there are two faux chenille blankets I am planning to make for the girls' birthday. I am one third done with the first, and it's taking longer than I thought.

And then, there are the birthday dresses, which are still two pieces of yardage...
Wishing there were more hours in a day!

Beginning Beginner Embroidery project

Happy New Year!
We are taking it VERY easy today. Just hanging around, doing "stuff", watching football, whishing for the kids to take a nap..., so I can take one, too.

Just wanted to quickly show how the girls' first embroidery projects turned out. As mentioned in the previous post, I asked them to draw their favorite princess. Anika took that request serious and drew a very pretty Ariel (Unfortunately, it was a little bigger than the hoop, so that the tail did not fit.). Kordula on the other hand, just wanted to be done: so she drew a stick princess. But, I guess, that's okay.

Holding it against a window I transfered their pictures onto cross-stitching fabric with a regular pencil.
I literally showed each of them with two stitches how to do it and off they went. I was bracing myself for lot's of frustration, lost needles (well, they did lose 3 in the process...!), tangled threads and me fixing mistakes. But, except for the lost needles, none of it happened. Both sat for 2+ hours just stitching away. All I had to do is change colors for them and secure the threads in back.
Anika even said at one point: "Mama, this (sewing) makes me so, so happy!" (Aaaaw.)

Later, I will go get wooden hoops to frame their work and hang it in their room. They are already asking to embroider another picture! They had so much fun.

BTW: The purple thing is the bathing suit top and the thing on the left is a fish, not a tail.

I am very proud of how even most of the stitches turned out. I really did not expect that on the first try.

Merry Christmas and some last minute gift ideas

I am wishing everybody a very merry Christmas in peace and harmony!

Are you all done with your shopping and gift making? I just finished a couple of hours ago. So glad, I got it done.
And if you are still looking for a few small things, these are really quick:

First up these super cute miniature deers. Couldn't you just eat them up?! The free pattern can be found here. But, before you start, know that there is quite a bit of handstitching involved and everthing is really tiny to sew.

Then, this cool dude, for the 9-year-old, who acts like a mid-teen right now! (Uggh... ;-)). Over at Obsessively Stitching there are free tutorials for Angry Bird and his entire crew. Try them! It's fun and therapeutic ;-) I stuffed mine half and half with regular fiber fill and cherry pits. This makes it "easier" to toss him around.

And last, but not least: The girls at 4 are more and more asking me to "sew" their own things. First I thought about getting them each a toy sewing machine. However, then I saw all these bad reviews on every single one of them, that I decided against it and opted for stitching kits instead. I made cute bright colored drawstring bags with lots of different trims and Uroma's crochet flowers on front and filled them with stitching fabric, a hoop and lots of embroidery floss.

I think, sometime next week, I will have the girls draw their favorite princess, transfer them onto the fabric and have them outline them with running stitches. When done we can either hang them on the wall as art or use them to make a pillow or bag. I will let you know how it goes.

Until then, enjoy the Holidays!

Ruffle Scarf - a tutorial

Oh, boy, these past two weeks have been crazy. The whole family was down with a vicious stomach virus. It was aweful. I felt like, if I had to clean one more bowl o' puke, I would go insane.
Luckily, everybody is better now.

Here the tutorial I promised ages ago. It's really quick and super easy.
All you need are a 7 inch piece of fleece the width of fabric (usually 60 inches) and four 2 x 12 inch pieces of fleece in a matching/contrasting color.

Step 1: With sizzors cut half inch wide fringes on both ends of your fleece. Mine were about 6 inches long.

Step 2: With your sewing machine ruffle the four small fleece pieces until each of them is 7 inches long.

Step 3: Sew two ruffles on each end of the scarf as seen on the pictures. All done!
This size will fit kids as well as adults. Enjoy!

Hopefully, I will be back soon with some of the things I have made for Christmas. I couple of things still have to be finished. Hoping for some Me-time tomorrow.

The "Anika Skirt" in (almost) Mass Production

Phew! Halloween is over! The kids really had fun this year and were very disappointed when it was time to stop trick-or-treating after almost two hours. I don't think we ever collected this much candy at Halloween before: almost 15 pounds between the three of them.

Now, only a little over 7 weeks and it will already be Christmas! Eeeek.

A (long) while ago I bought quite a bit of AH's velveteen print from the Innocent Crush line (on sale, of course) in order to make comfy coats for the girls. The coats are WIPs, but after cutting all the pattern pieces, I had quite a bit left over and decided to make matching "Anika skirts" for the girls.

And after that, I still had a lot left over....
Over the next few weeks there will be birthday parties the girls are invited to and I decided to make the same skirt for all the birthday girls: 3.

All five girls go to the same school and are about the same age. I am thinking, it would be so cool, if by chance all five of them show up in the same outfit one of these days.... :D

Also, Vivi and Franzi are twins, too. Two sets of twins in the same outfit ?! Oh, so cute... Okay, I am getting carried away.
The light blue accent fabrics are baby corduroy. That combined with the velveteen make these ultra-cuddly and warm. Perfect for Fall.

Now, I just have to find the time to finish the coats. I can't wait to show them off. I think (hope) they will be super cute.
But, first I have to fill some custom orders, I received. Yeah!

Back to school! Yeah!!!

Today is the kids' first day of school. 12 long weeks of summer are over. It seems the weather knew exactly what day it was, 'cause we went from almost 100 degrees on Friday and Saturday down to barely 70 today.

Here are some back to school things I made for the kids (Caution: picture overload!).

First a new set of dresses for the girls in simple pillow-case-dress-style.

The bottom is made from several different cotton laces, hand-dyed "apple green". After I had made my orange lace skirt earlier this summer, the girls have been bugging me to have one, too. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with the patience to sew together enough lace for two skirts, so I opted for this alternative. The girls like it nonetheless.

I little lace detail on top.

And matching hairclips made from leftover lace pieces.

Next: new pyjamas for everybody. These are the first nightgowns the girls have ever had. And they are in love with them! I used this tutorial for them. It's super easy and quick. For the fabric I chose a very light and soft jersey and left-over flannel for the bias tape.

 Even Yanic scored a pair of PJ-pants from the same fabric. Cute, to have all three of them matching, huh?! :D

A (long) while ago I bookmarked this awesome tutorial and just thought of it again last Friday when I was going through Yanic's closet. Perfect timing, since many of his shorts are just way toooo short now.

 I think this bottle holder will be perfect for soccer practice, since it will hold the water bottle and a snack and his phone.
Wanna know somethin'?! This bag was made from a pair of long pants, which turned shorts two years ago and are now a bag! What a life for some plain ol' cargo pants.... ;-)

Last thing, I want to show you today, does not score very high on the creativity scale. However, it's a slightly different approach to personalizing, so I wanted to at least post one picture of it. This is a simple, cheapo 1$ pencil case from Walmart with a picture collage on the back. I created the collage on the computer. I chose a pic of Yanic and logos of some of the teams he plays for. In the center is his name, school and grade. I printed it onto fabric and then simply sewed it to the back side of the pencil case.

Wow, that was a lot! Next post will be shorter! Promise!

Teacher Gifts - Cookies in a Jar

Instead of putting the burden of making gifts for Yanic's teachers all on myself, I decided to look for something that he could get involved with, too. And I found the perfect solution: Cookies in a Jar.

I found this really great tutorial and recipe on Bakerella's blog. I adapted it to the season and used red and green M&M's and did not add the chopped nuts. Initially, because I personally do not like nuts, but in the end it turned out they would not have fit into the jars anyway.

I had Yanic measuring and filling the jars. He had a blast. I mean, which kid doesn't like playing with food and making a mess at the same time?! ;-)

We will start passing them out tomorrow. Hope all his teachers will like them.

Also, this past weekend the kids saw Santa at the Mall and got their picture taken with him. I only mention this because I need to share what the girls told him they wanted for Christmas!
Anika: Candy and a yellow duck.
Kordula: Candy and a pink duck.
Who's kids are these???!!! Well, I guess, I will be making ducks next....

Have a happy week, everybody.

New Hair Pretties

I have been working on some new clips and headbands with fabric flowers. These are made from eight fabric circles folded twice - four bigger and four slightly smaller. I, then, stitched those to a felt circle and added some heart-shaped beads in the center.

Whether, you want to attach them to clips or headbands, the easiest way is to hot glue them on and cover the bottom with a second felt circle. This way it will nice and polished (Okay, but only if your circles are not as sloppy as mine.).

The flowers can be made from almost any kind of fabric. This time I used jersey knit and regular cotton.

Now, something, that only Hockey Moms can appreciate... ;-) Meet my new companion on game days: the Stadium Cushion in Team colors.

I am hoping for no more aching bum, from sitting on freezing cold metal benches! This is a simple fleece cover for a 10 inch square piece of foam with my son's number appliqued. The applique is a two-layer felt cutout.

It's pretty comfy....;-)