Playing Catch-up

We've had two recent girl birthday parties that either one or all of us were invited to.  I thought that girly PJ eaters were in order for both occasions, and so I cut out two nearly identical ones.  (The zipper color was the only difference.)  I'm really pleased with this one and think it's one of the cutest I've made so far!  (And I'm amused that for the birthday party which we attended as a family, I finished the PJ eater in the car - stuffing and stitching shut.  Yep, procrastination pays....)  I'm definitely keeping track of who gets PJ eaters now - this are great birthday gifts, but I've got to make sure I don't accidentally give two to the same kid!

And Thing 2 was in love with the dinosaur appliques I made as a baby gift, so I had to make him his own dinosaur appliqued shirt - with more boyish colors, of course! :)  He loves orange, so I thought this batik-like print was perfect for him.  I enlarged the dino drawing until it looked vaguely appropriate (nothing scientific - just eyeballing), then traced it onto Heat-n-Bond Lite and fused it in place.  This is another which has been stitched on with straight-stitching around the edges, and I don't remember putting any Fray-Check on it.  But I've had to wash it four or five times by now, and so far, no fraying is noticeable.  This has already become a favorite!  I can see that I'll have to watch for other fun applique designs!

Teacher birthday/appreciation gift

We have really appreciated Thing 1's teacher this year, so I wanted to give her something for her birthday that would be useful but fun.  Teachers can always use tote bags for their stuff, so I thought that would be a good idea.  And I already knew (from Thing 1) that she loves pink and shoes, among other things.  When I saw the high heels fabric on the Nancy's Notions website, it was a no-brainer!  I used a pink duck cloth from JAF as the outer fabric.

I ordered 1.5 yards, because I didn't figure out exactly what I was going to do before ordering.  Later, I saw the Green Pepper Wave Bag pattern at JAF and bought it, thinking that might be the way to go. However, after mostly finishing the prototype (it's still languishing while I re-evaluate how I want to do the upper trim/handles), I decided that it wasn't going to be what I wanted for the teacher, and I went with a simple and basic tote bag design.  

I measured a good-sized tote bag we had on hand and approximated those measurements for my bag.  That one had an almost full-size pocket on the outside, which I considered using here.  In the end, I couldn't figure out how to do the handles and the upper trim the way I wanted if I put the large pocket on the outside, so instead I added it to the inside.  I did put a small pocket on the outside, sandwiched between the handles.  To make the trim on the upper edge of that pocket, I stitched the outer and lining fabrics RST, then wrapped the lining fabric to the inside - OVER the seam allowance.  This gave me a half inch (IIRC) trim at the upper edge of the pocket.  For the trim at the top of the bag, I cut the lining 1.5 inches taller than the outer fabric, then folded and pressed the lining 0.5 inches under (to hide raw edges), then another 1 inch under.  When I set the lining inside the bag, I tucked the outer fabric into that last fold, pinned it in place, and stitched it down.  I'm really happy with how this turned out.  You can also see that the lining is peeking out on the underside of the handles.  That was the suggestion of a neighbor!  The handles are tubes of duck cloth, pressed flat and edge-stitched on both sides.  I made single-fold "bias" tape to cover the underside of the handles, just for the parts that show (and extending an inch or two past, just in case).

This shows the inside.  If you look at the bottom, you can see a "bellows" pocket to the left (which I'm not entirely happy with - I think I made it a bit big) and a small flat pocket to the right.  You can also see the edge of the large pocket at the top left - that was made from one layer each of lining fabric and duck cloth.  I was thinking that it would be good for separating out papers or something.

I really like how this bag turned out, and I'm going to use the same idea again - hopefully soon for our long-intended library books.  I hope that the teacher really liked it.

Easy drawstring bags

I've been working on some easy drawstring bags lately.  I've done large versions of these before, with vinyl windows, as a way to contain toys.  These were the same idea, but without the window, making them pretty quick and simple.

This was inspired by Thing 1's invitation to a birthday party involving a Pokemon tournament.  I thought it would be good for him to have a pouch of sorts to hold his cards, so that he didn't have to take them in a ziploc bag.  I had Pokemon fabric leftover from his lunch bag, so I pulled it out and used it to make a simple bag.  (IIRC, I cut the pieces 9 inches tall by 7 inches wide.)  This is lined with white muslin or broadcloth - I don't remember which I had on hand - and then a casing was made from extra wide, double fold bias tape (unfolded), and a drawstring from single-fold bias tape (folded in half and stitched).  This works great as long as the kid doesn't have a huge collection of cards.  (Full disclosure - this had plenty of room until Thing 1 came home from the party with double the number of cards he had taken.  So now I've made him another one (no picture yet) with boxed corners and plenty more room!)  This is actually the second one I made - as a gift for one of Thing 2's friends.  The casing/drawstring color was customized to the child's favorites.  Add a pack or two of cards, and your gift is done!

For the Pokemon party Thing 1 was invited to, the birthday boy requested no gifts for himself - instead he wanted donations for the Boy Scouts' April Showers campaign.  I thought that was really neat, but I also wanted him to have something he could keep.  However, I wanted to honor the request and so make his "keepable part" very simple and useful.  I thought that a simple drawstring bag would serve as the gift bag and then be kept for whatever he wanted to store in it.  And since this child LOVES animals - especially snakes and lizards - I thought that some simple appliques would make it more fun.  I went to Google Images and found some coloring pictures of lizards and geckos and those two that I thought would be easy enough to applique.  A little Heat-n-Bond Lite and some straight-stitching around the edges, and voila!

I'm going to remember this for the future - muslin or thrifted sheets for the bag, to keep it low-cost and lightweight, and a simple applique or two to snazz it up a bit.  For this one, I think I had made my own bias tape for the casing, but used premade for the drawstring.  Oh, and when I make single-fold tape for the casing or double-fold tape for the drawstring, I often cut it on the straight grain, because it doesn't need that bias stretch.  Just whatever is quicker/easier.

Easy gifts (like for teachers!)

Apparently I only blogged about these in passing this past Christmas, but with the end of school approaching, it might be a good idea to revisit them.  I made a bunch of key fobs as teacher gifts this year.  Well, and for friends and family, too, but the main impetus was for teacher gifts.  Most of the online tutorials I saw were for ribbon and webbing, but I used Sew4Home's tutorial, as I wanted to use just fabric.  The teacher key fobs were all made from fabric specifically bought for this purpose, and then the other key fobs used leftover fabric from other projects.  I really liked how finished these look with the piping.  They were easy to do, fairly cheap, and fairly quick.  And now the recipients won't have an easy time losing their keys!

Hanging towels have been a mainstay for me for the last couple of years.  I haven't blogged about them much, but believe me, I have made a crap-ton of them!  Just before Christmas, I stitched up seventy-plus towels - yikes!  But what can I say?  They're easy, fairly quick, not terribly expensive, easily personalized, and so totally useful!  In other words, the perfect gift!  Two Christmases ago, I gave all the teachers two hanging towels in their Christmas gifts.  This past year, I gave them to the new teachers on our list.  And about a month ago, the assistant principal at the school caught me (at parent-teacher conferences, amusingly enough!) to ask if I'd be willing to make her some more.  It seems that she highly values her hanging towels and wanted some more for her house. Of course, I agreed.  So here are the latest hanging towels to come out of my sewing room.  I love making them assembly-line style - in a couple of days (well, ONE day if you don't waste a lot of time!), you can get through a ton of towels and then have a bunch around for future gifting needs.  Hmmm....maybe I should double-check my current gifting stash....

A baby gift!

Oh, this one was so much fun!  A former student and her husband were expecting a baby, and I'm told they wanted a dinosaur-themed nursery.  Unfortunately for them, it was apparently impossible to find girly dinosaur baby stuff.  And this, my friends, is why we sew!

Enter the stash....The dinosaurs on blue flannel in the background was a Black Friday purchase from a few years ago.  If I remember right, it was long enough ago that I intended it for toddler bedding.  Oops!  Well, now part of it became a crib sheet.  The dino flannel to the left was a thrift store find, and now it's a pack-n-play sheet (I stalked the baby registry to verify that they had or intended to purchase both a crib and a pack-n-play.)  Then the onesies were the really fun part. :)

People always give new parents newborn or 0-3 month clothing, so I figured that something a little bigger was a better plan.  I bought a three pack of plain white, short-sleeved onesies (Child of Mine brand - I think that's Carter's brand for Wal-Mart) in 3-6 month size.  Then I searched the internet for uncomplicated pictures of dinosaurs.  If I remember correctly, my google search was "free dinosaur stencil" - and I found these, which had been used for freezer paper stenciling on an art smock.  Awesome!  The blue and purple mottled prints were leftovers from the Christmas stockings I made for my sister-in-law and niece, and the pink is a fat quarter I found at JAF.

After printing out the patterns in several different sizes (this was totally not methodical - more trial and error), I traced the shapes onto the paper side of Heat-n-Bond Lite and then fused the adhesive to the fabric.  (Make sure to fuse it to the WRONG side of the fabric - I wasn't thinking and screwed up my first applique.)  Next, I cut out the shapes and then fused them to the onesies.  I wasn't sure whether I could get away without stitching them in place, but after consulting my online sewing group, I decided it would be better to stitch them down.  I didn't want to do satin-stitching on these, so instead I simply stitched a line around the shape, just inside the edges.  I also applied Fray-Check to the raw edges, just in case....I think these are hilariously cute, and I'm definitely going to make more in the future!

A little wall art for my sewing room

When we repainted my sewing room and added fabric shelves, I planned to make sampler quilts using the wall colors and hang them on the walls.  Yeah, well, didn't get there yet.  (I do have four large quilt blocks ready to become a wall hanging, but it's obviously not ready yet.)  So when I saw the sewing silhouettes tutorial, I thought it would be great to go in the room!  Not to mention that it was much more likely to happen quickly....I chose a darkish mossy green and dark purple, as those are 2 of the 3 wall colors in the room.  And then I went to town!  

I started by painting the edges and part of the fronts - just enough that color would show around the edges of the background papers.  After that, I followed the tutorial pretty closely.  I did print the shapes out, cut them, and then trace them onto dark purple cardstock.  If you wanted black silhouettes, it would make it simpler to just print them onto cardstock.  I used cardstock as I felt it would be a little more sturdy than regular scrapbook paper.

I'm really happy with how these turned out!  They just need hangers on the back, and then I have to decide where to hang them!  And one of these days, I need to finish the first wall hanging....

Some more Emmy dresses!

I've had fun making these Emmy dresses for my niece, and since the Valentine's Day dress was a hit, I thought it would be fun to continue the holiday trend.  When I was in central Illinois last month for a concert, of course I had to go check out my old fabric stores!  I found the St. Patrick's Day hearts woven fabric at HF there, and the green interlock and ribbing came from my stash.  I had found the giraffe print as a remnant at JAF awhile back, and I had to buy it - my sister-in-law originally planned a giraffe-themed nursery, so I thought it would be perfect.  The brown interlock and ribbing was also purchased at JAF.

Nothing new to say about construction - these are both size 18 months, and the only difference from previous iterations was using a woven fabric for the skirt part (which is also an option listed in the pattern).  I think they turned out very cute!  (And, yes, I'm just behind in blogging - they really did get to my niece before St. Patrick's Day.)