Diaper bag

My friend liked her new diapers-and-wipes case, bib, and burp cloth so much that she asked me to make her a new diaper bag using the same Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric and denim. I was a bit overwhelmed by the project, and made some very interesting mistakes, but I learned a lot and I think it came out looking pretty sharp. This was the first project I've ever made with a zipper, which was very intimidating but not that difficult in the end. The strawberry zipper pull was a last-minute addition, and I think it makes the whole bag! I used Butterick B5005. This pattern did nothing to dispel my dislike of patterns and their jangly directions (in fact it even had some pretty bad typos!), but I was pleased with the overall result: a large diaper bag with lots of pockets.

Baby shower

Two of the moms in our playgroup are having babies very soon. After much debate over the appropriateness of second showers, the other moms and I agreed that we all wanted to give these new babies some gifts, so we decided to have an unofficial joint shower for the two women. Here are the items I was working on up until the last minute. I might have been able to finish them sooner, but before this I was working on a birthday present (another appliqué t-shirt) and I completely RUINED it by poking a hole in the knit right next to the appliqué. Now I've completely scrapped the first idea I had (a lion) and I have to start from scratch. Meanwhile, the birthday was over a week ago. It's a good thing our playgroup doesn't have any more birthdays in the next couple of months or I would be starting a backlog.

New skirt

A new skirt for Omi. I don't know what it is about Fall and corduroy. It just makes me want to make little corduroy skirts. Here's this year's edition, worn at Thanksgiving.

Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff

In this season of a birthday for every weekend, it has been a real trial coming up with different gifts for each child, especially given my limited sewing capabilities. But this tote was quite simple to make and was sized just right for carrying around copies of The House at Pooh Corner and Winnie-the-Pooh. I used Lotta Jansdotter's instructions from Simple Sewing, but made up my own dimensions and added a lining. I definitely see more tote bags in my future.

Lighthouse Tee

My second attempt at appliqué. I really like these little sewing projects that we give as gifts to Little Omi's friends. It's a fun way to use bits of fabric from my stash and to create things for different kids' personalities. Plus, it's really fun to include Little Omi in the making of the project, and it's easier for her to understand that the item is for someone else, unlike going shopping for a toy, which I think can be a bit confusing and bring up some hurt and jealous feelings.

For friends

We are very lucky to be a part of a fantastic play group, with lots of really wonderful kids and their interesting, thoughtful, and often hilarious moms and dads. Over the next month we will be celebrating the birthdays of five of the kids, so I wanted to make some of their gifts myself instead of completely breaking the bank on plastic stuff from China. So there's Little Omi modeling a sweet panda bear scarf, from Aranzi Aronzo's Cute Stuff. Next we (yes, Omi helped!) made these little bean bags. I used double-sided fusible interfacing to make the letters and numbers and then just stitched around them onto the circles to reinforce the glue. The actual bags are circles (I used an old cd to trace onto the fabric) cut with pinking shears, then sewn with wrong sides together. I left a small opening so we could fit a funnel in and fill them with rice (this is the part where Omi helped), then stitched the opening up by machine. Hope our friends will like them!

(Sorry for the awful pics. It was dark outside when I finally finished the bean bags and I couldn't wait for the photo shoot.)

For the love of pockets

After sewing all these bonnets for fun and profit (17 so far, with 8 sold!), I decided to get back to work on a spring dress for Little Omi. The fabric is from Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jump Rope collection, and the pattern is McCall's 5370. Her favorite part of the dress? The pockets, of course. I can't wait to dig half-eaten fig newtons out of there.

Nothing ventured...

Tomorrow I am starting out on a new venture. I will be selling my sunbonnets at our local Farmers' Market. A friend of mine has been kind enough to offer me some space in her booth so I can avoid rental fees while I see if this is for me. I have to say, after sewing 12 bonnets to sell, I'm not really sure if it is for me. I made 6 in one day, and I was beginning to feel like I was losing focus on why I was sewing to begin with. In other words, it felt a lot like work. And with the market opening at 8 am, I'm afraid going in will feel a lot like going to work, too. We'll see. I'm mostly worried about Little Omi and how she will hold up for the 4 hours we'll be there. But, she'll have a playmate, and so will I, so perhaps it will be fun after all...

I'll deal with my procrastination problem later

This week I had a lot of chores to do, like taking all our income tax information to the accountant, making an appointment for a haircut, calling a tree trimmer to remove a branch left over from the ice storm, and packing for our upcoming trip to visit Aunt Sassy. So of course I decided it would be a good week to build Little Omi a cardboard kitchen. Needless to say, the kitchen was completed long before the chores (in fact right now I'm still not packed and we're leaving tomorrow).

I used these instructions, which cost a very reasonable $7, although I see the price has gone up to $8 recently. We were lucky enough to find a really huge double-walled box behind the new Circuit City and all of the pieces came from it. I had to make some minor adjustments so that we could fit Little Omi's new stove top on the stove side, but it worked out pretty well. I'm waiting to add the sink. Right now the counter space seems too valuable; Little Omi likes to make omelets and bake muffins and she needs room to crack eggs and fill muffin tins.

Of course no new kitchen would be complete without a nice oven mitt. This photo shows the sweet Amy Butler fabric that was also used for the curtain above. (Thanks so much to L for introducing me to Quiltworks, my new favorite local fabric shop!)

While we were at it, we may as well make some little napkins to go with the tea set. Grandma had the bright idea of fringing the edges, which gave them that little something extra, I think.

Artsy smock

Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing is the just the gift that just keeps on giving.* This week I made the Swing Swing Smock, however I used a vinyl tablecloth and made it a nice waterproof apron for Little Omi to wear while she does water play. I just love Amy's zigzag method for applying bias binding. What a snap!

*I just found out that Amy is working on a SECOND book! Hooray!

At and coke

I finally came across the perfect fabric and ribbon to match Little Omi's coat and sewed this sweet Amy Karol bonnet, which I bought way back when. The pattern is just right—not too fancy, but with just enough little details, like the slightest of gathers on the back and the lovely ribbon, to make this a real stand-out project. I was afraid spring would come before I would get a chance to make this, but as luck would have it, the weather's been very cold the past few days so Little Omi has already had a chance to wear it out of the house.

"At" and "coke" are what Little Omi calls her hat and coat. When we are getting bundled up to leave the house, she chants "at and coke, at and coke, at and coke" until we are ready to go.

Sweet wee bathrobe?

After my initial success sewing the sweet wee jacket and woodland elf hat from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing, I decided to make another set for a friend of Little Omi's 2nd birthday. I wandered around the fabric store for hours, trying to find just the right fleece to match this girl's personality and sense of style, and ended up picking out a really fuzzy hot pink number and some orange to contrast on the hat. Well, the hat turned out as cute as can be (and I totally failed to photograph it before giving it away! Drat!), but the jacket was a different story. I scaled it up from the pattern and when I was finished (yes, finished meticulously hand-sewing the bias binding around the neck) I tried it on Little Omi to see how it fit. Well, I'm not sure if it's the color or the fuzziness of the fleece, but it turned out looking more like a tiny bathrobe than a cute jacket. So, I've still got it. I just couldn't bring myself to give it to this kid. And as it turns out, she already had a jacket that matched the hat perfectly, so thanks for that bit of providence.

Whipped up

I made this felt mat as a gift for my mom's birthday using strips of a felted sweater sewn together in a rag-rug sort of style. I started out trying to make a little bowl, but that project went nowhere, so I decided to try a flat mat. The most satisfying part was ironing it when I was done. It had been puckering a bit in the center, but it ironed flat in about 2 seconds. Would that every project could be rescued by a quick steam press at the end!

A very small diaper

Little Omi has started displaying mothering tendencies by carrying her dolls around and patting them reassuringly on the behind and trying to feed them at the dinner table. I decided that it's never too early to teach a kid how to put a diaper on a baby, so I made a little cloth diaper for her Miffy doll.

This is my first attempt at sewing doll clothes. And as Tim Gunn says, good clothes are nothing without good undergarments, so I guess it's a good thing I started with the basics.

Here's Miffy modeling her new diaper. Why is she also wearing a hat and mittens, you ask? Well, you and I know that they come off, but Little Omi doesn't know that yet, so for now let's just keep it between us, k?



And here's our model seconds later, naked as a jay bird (except for the hat and mittens, keeping her hands and head nice and toasty). Well, we did already know Little Omi was a pro at taking diapers off. I guess it'll be awhile before she's into the whole diapering thing. But when she is, she has her own diaper bag to store it in!

Flashback to Flashback Friday

Last Friday I promised to post a picture of the Sunbonnet Sue quilt my grandmother made using appliqués her grandmother had made. This was the best I could do, unfortunately there's a whole row not showing here. Still, I like how this photo shows off the exquisite hand quilting my grandma did. Something to strive for!

This one is my favorite:



Check my Flickr page for more close-ups.

Let it go, Indy.

After much hemming and hawing, Googling, brainstorming, and 2 trips to the fabric store to look at patterns, I have decided to give up on sewing Little Omi's Halloween costume myself this year. I made it official on Monday by purchasing this zebra costume at Old Navy. At $14.50 I could hardly turn it down, considering the fabric alone for a costume would cost more than that. It did break my heart just a little, though. See, this year Halloween falls on a Wednesday, which means it will be on a library story time day and Little Omi would actually have someplace to wear her costume. Plus, I dreamt up the best idea I've ever had for a Halloween costume and it even has a literary theme: The Very Hungry Caterpillar! I just don't have the sewing experience to figure out exactly how it would work, though. If anyone out there has made this costume, please let me know how you did it! I won't give up entirely, however. There's always next year, when Little Omi might actually go trick-or-treating.

Autumn = corduroy

I *h e a r t* corduroy. I just picked up a couple of yards of this lovely chocolate brown mini-wale on sale at our local Hancock's and immediately starting thinking smocks, bonnets, and skirts. This is the first skirt I've ever made. I used bits of this tutorial, but drastically reduced the amount of fabric for the width since I was using a heavier fabric. The trim on the bottom is from one of the Civil War-era reproduction fat quarters I received a while back. I like sewing for Little Omi because the clothes are so small, they're almost like little mock-ups of bigger sizes—so if you totally screw something up, the disaster is on a smaller scale, too.

Sunbonnet #4

I finished another sunbonnet today, from some fabric I bought on our recent trip to Chickasha. This one will be a gift for our friend M, who we have been spending lots of good times with lately. Little Omi even had her first conversation with Little Miss M. It went like this:

Little Miss M: (pointing to Sonic cup in Little Omi's hands) Ice?
Little Omi: Ice.

We hope she likes it!

While she naps

We have really experienced a peak in sewing productivity around here. Yesterday I managed to start and finish the sweet wee jacket and woodland elf hat from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing. We're talking starting with purchasing the material in the morning, to sewing the flower onto the hat around 2 a.m. but I'm still counting that as one day. Of course none of this could be achieved without the help of a sleepy Little Omi, who suddenly decided a few days ago that she would like to sleep in her very own bed at night and for naps! (OK, maybe we gave her an incentive by removing the crib rail and attaching the guard rail and calling it her "bed" instead of "the crib.") I don't know what it is, but she seems to sleep better alone in her little bed than in our big bed. I'm not questioning it, though, instead I'm celebrating and enjoying my new-found bit of time to myself in the afternoons.

I used to watch Big Omi completely mesmerized by his computer in the evenings and think, "What could possibly be that interesting?" And then I discovered craft blogs and all the wonderful women out there sharing their experiences as mothers and crafters and cooks and artists and writers. The very first blog I ever read is called While She Naps. I literally stumbled onto it after Googling "teddy bear pattern" and spent the next few evenings completely engrossed in the world of Abby Glassenberg and her evolution from soft toy maker to soft sculpture artist. After that it was all over for me. I was glued to the computer every night, just like Big Omi, catching up on all my favorite blogs and discovering new ones. Thanks, Abby!

Bend the rules

I picked up a copy of Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing a few weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to try out any of the patterns until now. This little turtle is my second attempt at making soft toys, and let me just say, I don't think I'm quite up to a third attempt just yet. I think I need to gain a bit more patience before I give it another go. Plus, I'm very bad at following written instructions. I grew up on Lego instructions, which are in my book the pinnacle of all instructions, and so I appreciate well-thought-out and very clear directions. For some reason, whenever I'm reading written instructions and I don't understand something, I automatically assume they are wrong, and then I plow ahead doing what I think is right. This often ends in disaster, or at least having to go back and really concentrate on each sentence to figure out what it means.

Overall, I love the book. The projects are all really cute and snappy. Just don't try to learn how to tie a French knot from the poorly-drawn picture at 12:45 a.m. while your husband is trying to soothe your baby back to sleep!