More plushies....

One of Thing 2's friends was really into Angry Birds last year, and I was intending to make him a stuffed Angry Bird for his birthday....but his mom said he's not really into Angry Birds anymore.  Darn fickle kids!  Now he's into Mario Bros.  Okay, time to check out Google!  Because she also said that he has plenty of books and games, and he's not really into superheroes or normal boy stuff like that, and even they were having a hard time figuring out what to get him!  Not helpful....and unfortunately, there were no patterns online to sew anything easily recognizable from the Mario Bros universe.  (Lots of crochet patterns available, but I wasn't going to crochet for the kid.)  So I settled for some humorous but possibly lesser known creatures, and I'm just hoping he'll recognize them.

First up is Boo.  I used a free tutorial I found online, and I actually followed it pretty closely.  The only changes I made were to use fleece instead of felt for the body (to make it softer) and to sew the facial features on instead of gluing them.  I think it turned out pretty nice!

I also made him a Luma - this one is green because that's his favorite color, but I did check to be sure that they come in green before I did that.  I know, I'm a nerd.  I used this tutorial with no changes.  And while I was on Skype with my brother (a total nerd!), I held this up, and he immediately said, "It's Luma from Mario Bros!"  So I felt very satisfied that it was recognizable. :)

I hope that Thing 2's friend likes these....

Another Pajama Eater

Thing 2 has another birthday party coming up, so I thought another Pajama Eater was in order!  This one is pretty much just like the last ones - well, except for the color scheme, obviously!  This particular friend loves green, so I thought a green solid flannel and then lizards on green camo was appropriate for him.  The only change I made from the last time was to round the corners of the body slightly, as per a friend's suggestion.  It doesn't make much difference, and I haven't decided which I like better.  

It's awfully cute, and I love the fact that my DH just starts laughing every time I show him one.  He thinks they're hilarious!  (Well, they are!)

The Neighborhood Phantom Strikes Again

We had never heard of the "Neighborhood Phantom" or being "Boo-ed" before last year.  We were "ghosted" by someone in the neighborhood, and we had a blast passing it on.  So this year, we wanted to do it again!  I didn't want to buy gift bags - I try to be eco-friendly occasionally, right? - and there was no need, given my fabric stash.  I had made these last year, as well, though I apparently never blogged about them.  These are made the same way as the "green" party bags I made over the summer, although these are self-lined.  These were cut out last year, so yesterday I pulled them off the shelf and finished them up, in time for the ghost assignment last night. ;)  I made eight total - four of each fabric.  So now we have next year's bags all ready.

Pajama Eaters!

So once upon a time, I have no idea how long ago, I saw this cool pattern/tutorial for stuffed "monsters" with storage space inside them.  The pattern is Pajama Eaters, from Sew Fearless.  At the time I first saw it, the pattern was a free download, but it is now only offered for sale.  (I downloaded it back when it was free.)

Much time has passed, and I recently ran across the pattern while trying to organize my downloaded sewing patterns in one main folder.  And it reminded me that I'd always thought the pattern was really cool, and clearly I needed to make it now!  Well, Thing 2 was invited to a birthday party for a set of twins, so I thought this would be perfect.  The idea is that a child can put clean pajamas into the mouth of the creature in the morning, then take them out at night.  Well, I don't know about anyone else's child, but my children would see this as perfect storage for treasured toys!  However, they also love squishy, huggable creatures, so I decided to go ahead and make them as gifts.

Like I said, the pattern is now only offered for sale, but there's still a great tutorial to take you through it.  (And yes, you could probably easily draft the pieces yourself, though why reinvent the wheel?)  The little boy's favorite colors are red and black, and I don't know the girl's favorites, but I figured purple and a little pink should be safe, right?  The boy creature is all flannel, as I had a great mottled red flannel in stash.  The girl creature is cotton woven for the purple body and flannel for the mouth and foot/inside contrasts.  The best part?  Except for one of the zippers, everything is stash!  Hooray! A great gift, and it's practically free*!

And this is definitely a hit with kids.  While the birthday party hasn't happened yet, Thing 2 approved both the creatures, and he definitely wants one for himself!  I'm thinking he might need a frog or a ninja, inspired by Jaimee at Craft, Interrupted.  Then I'll have to figure out what modifications to make for Thing 1....maybe I can come up with a penguin....

T-shirt quilt

So I have this friend who was a grad student with me, and she was incredibly awesome when I was working on my thesis - going out to different campus libraries and copying articles that I needed but couldn't get electronically, then scanning them and emailing them to me.  She also provided lots of moral support through the whole process.  So when she asked if I'd be willing to make her a quilt using her large University of Illinois T-shirt collection, I was happy to agree.

The day after my thesis defense, we celebrated by laying out the T-shirt collection on the living room floor in her apartment.  It's been well over a year (April 2011), so I don't remember exactly, but I want to say that she started with 30-some T-shirts that she wanted to use.  As we continued to lay out the collection, she kept going back to her room and pulling out more T-shirts to add.  Once we realized that there were enough orange T-shirts to potentially form a large "I" in the middle of the quilt, we realized that we needed to have an odd number of both rows and columns.  She continued to bring out T-shirts until we eventually ended up with 49 - a 7x7 arrangement.  My best decision was to use my digital camera to make a record of how she wanted the shirts arranged.

That day, we went to JAF to buy interfacing (an essential ingredient from what I'd read online) and sashing fabric.  I can't remember exactly what kind of interfacing I chose, but it was a woven lightweight fusible - either the cheapest or second cheapest available.  I had solicited advice from sewing friends online, who said that woven vs. knit didn't matter - just to buy whichever was on sale.  This seemed  to work out well for me.  (Keep in mind that if you use knit interfacing, you need to put the direction of stretch perpendicular to the direction of stretch in the T-shirt - otherwise it won't be stabilized.)  The navy cotton for the sashing was Kona cotton, I believe.

I think I waited a few months before even starting to work on it.  Then I cut the fronts from backs on the T-shirts in preparation for applying interfacing, and then I abandoned it again.  This summer, I pulled it out again, prompted by the 1-year anniversary.  I fused interfacing onto the backs of all T-shirt fronts, then measured the smallest T-shirts to find the largest square I can cut from all the shirts.  I wanted to keep this relatively simple, since it's my first T-shirt quilt and there are a large number of shirts - this is why I wanted them all the same size.  I cut the shirt blocks all 13 inches by 13 inches.  (A few shirt designs would have been totally ruined at that size, so those were left intact to be used as appliques on plain blocks once the sashing was sewn in place.)  That was where I left it for another few months.

Once I decided it was time to get to work, I laid out the blocks according to my original pictures, and I took more pictures to send to my friend to be sure that she still liked the layout.  There was some back and forth to get it to her final approval, and then I was ready to go.  The sashing was cut the length of the fabric by 3 inches wide, in order to have a finished 2 inch width (I'm using 0.5 inch seam allowances).  I sewed horizontal sashing to the blocks and sewed the blocks into columns.  Then I sewed vertical sashing to the columns and sewed the columns together.  I appliqued the large designs onto the plain blocks before the quilt was completely assembled, to help make it easier to maneuver the quilt in the sewing machine.  Once all the blocks were together, I ran a quick line of stay-stitching around the entire top, 0.25 inches from the edge.  This was just to help keep anything from stretching during handling.

I knew that the quilt was enormous - 7 blocks wide by 7 blocks long, at 12 inches finished sides on each block, plus the sashing - but it wasn't until I put the quilt top over my queen-sized bed that I realized just how huge it was!  My poor bed looks barely larger than a twin under this quilt top!

So then I also laid it out on the hard floor (after sweeping!) for a better look.  I'm really so pleased with this quilt top.  I think it looks great, and as it turns out, my friend loves it!  (I was in town last weekend and showed it to her.  She was so surprised, as she'd had no idea I'd finally started working on it!)  I did talk her into adding borders - we'd not made a decision on that last year, instead deciding to wait and see what we thought after the top was put together.  But I think it needs borders for a more finished look, and the online sewing buddies from whom I solicited opinions agreed.  (They also felt it would help keep the T-shirt edges from potentially stretching out, despite the interfacing.)  There is just barely enough of the navy Kona cotton, I think, so I'm going to make the borders the same finished width as the sashing, and it's going to look great.  No decision has been made yet on the backing, but we'll go see what's available when she's here next month for a scavenger hunt/trivia challenge at the zoo. :)

Toy sacks!

I was going to title this "More toy sacks" but then I discovered that I apparently never blogged about the previous iterations I've made.  I blogged once two years ago about starting my first set, but I never apparently showed pictures of the final versions!  How remiss of me!  Anyway, I found a tutorial awhile ago for Peek-a-Boo Toy Sacks.  The idea is that you have a sack for storing toys, one that children can easily use, and it has a vinyl window so you can see what's inside without dumping out all the toys first.  Genius!

Anyway, I had made a few of these for the Things for storing their toys, and I'd even given one or two away.  That was about it, until I was hit last year by the realization that there were going to be a LOT of birthday parties in Thing 2's future.  So I had started brainstorming fun gifts that I could sew for Thing 2 to give.  I did a few Art on the Go kits, and I made a couple of superhero capes.  And then I suddenly remembered the Peek-a-Boo Toy Sacks.  It seemed like a good idea to give one with a few cars inside, so I made one from Matchbox fabric (in the stash for a long time) and had Thing 2 pick out 6 Hot Wheels cars (the birthday boy was turning 6).  Well, that was a hit with his mom!  She wrote an addendum to his thank-you note to specifically say how great the bag was and how cool it was that I'd made it.  And, you know, that's about all the encouragement I needed!  I think I had made up 4 or 5 in the spring - I gave one of each print to Thing 2 for his toys (which definitely need help!) and then used the others as gifts.  

Now he's been invited to the first birthday party of the new school year, and when I asked the mom what the birthday boy liked, she said race cars and anything NASCAR.  Which reminded me that I had some NASCAR fabric in the stash once upon a time....I couldn't remember if it was a lot or down to scraps, but I went hunting and found probably two yards in there.  So I promptly cut out four bags - I used leftover red cotton to line two and muslin to line the other two.  The red bags got red for casing and ties, but I used black cotton scraps for the muslin bags.  One for this weekend's party, one for Thing 2, and two for stash!  I think I'll be getting some more broadcloth to make some more up soon....

Something for ME!

I admit, I usually go to grocery stores that offer free plastic bags, which I then use as trash can liners (all of our trash cans except the big one in the kitchen can take the grocery bags), dog poop bags, and occasionally lightweight packing material (I'd rather use something free than pay for packing peanuts, which really I'm not that fond of, anyway).  And if we build up an excess, then we take them back for recycling the next time we go to the grocery store.

But I sort of have an uneasy truce with plastic grocery bags, and I've started going to Aldi at least every other week, and Aldi doesn't offer free bags.  Now, I can usually snag a box or two from when they unpack their items, and I often keep a stash of bags in the trunk to reuse for that very purpose.  But I've seen all these cloth reusable bags across blogs, and I really wanted to have some for myself.  Especially after I made the wine labels bags for my friend's birthday.

So I was digging through the stash for other reasons, when I ran across this great pear print.  It's got to be five or more years old, and I don't even know why I bought it in the first place.  But it reminded me that I had decided to turn it into cloth grocery sacks.  After I made my friend's bags, I had decided that broadcloth would be a better lining than another cotton print - still sturdy, but definitely lighter weight.  And I had bought some "vineyard" cotton broadcloth when JAF had it half off a few months ago.  Sewing ADD kicked in, and I just had to sew these now!

If I remember right, each bag takes about 2/3 yard each of main and lining fabrics.  So I was able to get two bags out of the pear print.  I also managed to screw up my cutting more than once, which necessitated a seam down the middle of one of the outer pieces, one bag being more narrow than the other, and center seams in the lining of both bags.  Oops!  Guess I should stop cutting when it gets late....But the final products look great!

And this shows the lining fabric a bit.  It doesn't exactly match by any stretch, but I think it looks pretty good together.  I'm happy with them.  And I can't wait for the next time I go to Aldi!  (Or Shop-n-Save, which offers free plastic bags but is all self-bagged, making it easy to use your own if you'd like....)  And I think I'm going to make some wine labels bags for myself, but use broadcloth for the lining....

PSA: Don't forget to run your cloth bags through the wash on a regular basis - you don't want any nasty bacteria growing in there!  I plan to throw these in the wash with my cleaning rags, which get washed and rinsed on warm and dried on warm or hot.  (Otherwise, I'm a wash cool, tumble dry low kind of girl....)