Food for the Easter bunny

This is heading to Clementine and Oscar. I hope it makes it for Easter. The large carrots are from a tutorial on Claire’s craftroom. The small carrots are barrettes that I made up myself.

Bag of Plague

I needed a bag for all the bean bag frogs that I’m sending cousin Blake for Passover. I used the hobo bag pattern from Made. I used steam-2-seam to appliqué the frog on the bag.
I also made a clear frog so Blake can see the “frog guts”

Plague of Frogs

For Passover I am sending a set of bean bag frogs to my  Jewish nephew. The plague of frogs was one of the 10 plagues on Egypt named in the Passover Seder.  
Supplies needed:
quilting fabric (I bought a roll of fat eighths in green and used some old fat quarters from my stash)
Green thread
stuffing
rice or lentils
fabric paint (for the eyes)
Frog template
sewing machine and scissors

I cut two pieces of coordinating fabric for each frog. I lined them up and traced the template. Be sure to place the template against a fold so you have a whole frog when you finish cutting
  


Put the two frogs right side to right side and pin together. I sewed with a seam allowance of the width of the pressure foot. Don’t forget to leave a hole so you can turn your frog inside out.


Before you turn the frog inside out clip your curves (don’t cut the seams)

Turn it inside out

Make a whole bunch
    
I stuffed the arms and legs with stuffing and then top stitched them to separate the body and arms. Basically, gave them joints. I also stitched the hands and feet to give the feet digits. Then I filled the body with Lentils and sewed the body shut.
  Lastly I dipped the eraser of a pencil into black fabric paint and gave each frog eyes.

Play Kitchen Challenge – Planning & Supplies

Cameron and Asher are getting to the age were they are imitating us. Since Haley and I both enjoy cooking, we have been giving the boys lots of pretend food to play with. We decided to make play kitchens for them rather than purchasing. We wanted something unique and awesome. After a lot of internet searches we found one that we really liked.

I found this one on the Ikea Hacker blog. We both really liked it and figured with a manlier color pallete we could make it work. It uses the Vika Furusund. We have an Ikea 15 minutes away so we planned to go on a Saturday (with the husbands watching the boys) to pick it up as well as a couple of accessories. We wandered the isles for well over an hour picking out drawer pulls, magnetic knife racks and coasters for burners but we never found the shelves. We did a search on their computer to find it and came up with nothing. Then we search on a friend’s iPhone. It showed up on the Ikea website but wasn’t sold at our location and also wasn’t sold online.

Well, crap.

So we took a look at the dimension and decided it was a little small anyways. We looked at some other sets of shelves but weren’t really inspired. So we scrapped that idea and went home to draw up some plans. 

Out came the graph paper. As a lover of geometry I got really excited about making a plan from scratch.

We kept the basic unit but instead of having the fridge under the sink we made that a plain cabinet and added a taller fridge to the left of the oven with a microwave on top. Our last stop of the day was Lowes. We needed some wood and hinges to round out our supplies.

Here is what we each bought for the project:

• a 4’X8’X3/4’ particle board
• half a sheet of a 4’X8’X1/2’ particle board
• 8 hinges
• a poster board sized piece of plexiglass
• a small stainless steel bowl with an 8 inch diameter
• lazy susan base (for the microwave)
• Handles: 2 large, 2 small
• PANNÅcoasters
• ASKERmagnetic knife rack
• Plain wooden knobs for oven switches
• 2 small tap lights for the microwave and oven
• Hinges to hold the oven open

Next Saturday we start cutting and sanding.

Hippie Baby Shirt

My friend’s baby, Landon, just turned one. I wanted to make her something special for his birthday. Nicole is awesome and a little crunchy. So I made this awesome Tree hugger onesie.

I started with a freezer paper stencil of a tree. Then I added felt leaves in four different colors with two stitches in the center of each leaf. I had a real hard time giving this one away. I might have to make a second one for my little boy.

I love it!!!

i heart clementine

I have recently gotten really into freezer paper stenciling. It is really easy and the results are amazing. Here are a couple that I have made in the past. The patterns came from stencilry.org. They have a really large gallery of stencils for personal use.

I wanted to make a fun shirt for my cousin Gabriela. It’s her freshman year in college and I like to send her sporadic packages. For her spring break she is going to see our niece, Clementine,  in her first preschool performance. I decided to make a “i heart Clementine” shirt with a heart and clementine orange shape instead of words. This is the first stencil pattern that I have come up with completely on my own. I know that it’s just an oval for the clementine but I drew out that oval 10 times before I was satisfied with the size and shape. I also found some inspiration in the i heart milk pants by dana at Made. I just got my sewing machine back from it’s tune up and I’ve been looking for any excuse to use it. The heart was made by a reverse applique. The “i” and the clementine shape were made with freezer paper stencils and then I added a felt stem and embroidered some french knots for the dimples in the clementine.
I really like the way that it came out. the Clementine is adorable. Though I know everyone that doesn’t know Clementine is going to be “I love oranges?” She can just say what a great source of vitamin C they are.

Asher’s Organic Eggs

There is an adorable tutorial on Shelly Inspired to make your own egg carton with paper mache eggs. She inspired me to make my own half dozen for Asher.

I did a few things differently. Haley has an embroidery machine so we made a cute label for the carton.
I also made the hinge differently. Instead of having a longer piece of felt for the back piece mine lid is the same depth all the way around. I held the top and bottom adjacent and stitched them together.

Haley also has some crackle paint so we made a couple of “bad” eggs

  Thanks Shelly for your awesome tutorial. It was so much fun to make and my son loves playing with them.

iDye Review

I recent did a little dyeing. I had a bunch of 5 packs of boring white onesies and wanted to have some cooler colors for stenciling. I did some in green and orange. I used iDye by jaquard. I did the green first and was so happy with the color and the process then I did the Orange and had a completely different experience.

 

This picture may look from the 70s but the is really the color that I got.  BORING! Wondering went wrong? I thought I bought the same kind of dye that I bought the last time but it was not iDye, it was iDye Poly. This made a couple of differences. The cotton didn’t pick up a lot of color but the Polyester thread and the tags and the snaps all took on color. They are completely white on the green set. The worst part about the iDye Poly is that it stunk. I mean really really badly. I could smell it on the second floor through a closed door. We had to open all the windows in the house. So I went back to the store and bought the same color in the iDye and got this awesome color.

I love the new color but I’ve washed them 5 times and they are still bleeding color. I need some suggestions on how to get the color to set.

St. Patrick’s Day Package

This one is off to Clementine and Oscar. Stenciled Tee for Oscar, Hair clips for Clementine and Homemade stitches to share.

Lucky Hair clips

I wanted to send something to my sister’s kids in March so I made these cute Hair clips for Clementine and a Lucky shirt for Oscar. These clips were really simple and only took about an hour to make. (An hour with an awake toddler to distract me)

Here is what you will need to make your own

• Scraps of felt in kelly green, dark green and white.
  
• green embroidery floss
  
• 2 Contour clips
  
• scissors
  
• needle
  
• Scrap of paper

	On a scrap of paper, trace around the contour clip leave a boarder of about 1/4th an inch this will be your pattern for the white and dark green felt. Cut 2 shapes form both colors.
	Cut 6 hearts from the kelly green felt. The hearts should be about the size and shape of the hearts on a deck of cards.
	Once you have cut all your pieces out you are ready to sew your lucky clovers on.
	I sewed a plus sign with 3 stitches for each heart shaped leaf and 3 stitches for the stem. Do the same thing on the other piece of white felt. Be sure to do the mirror image of the first clip or else it will be upside down when worn.
	Cut a small slit in the dark green felt to insert the center part of the contour clip as shown. You will fasten in place by sewing through the circle at the triangle tip

        Next sew the top and bottom together and wear or give to a very lucky friend.