First costume done!!

Well, mostly. I need to find socks...I might go with white socks instead of yellow. What do you guys think?

Bug is going to be Charlie Brown.



Here's his shirt (front and back):



I bought fabric that didn't need to be hemmed and I also got fusing paper so I could just iron on the squiggle. I cut out the pattern and ironed it and the whole thing took 15 minutes. That's the kind of project I love!


I might make a second one to post in the shop since I bought a back up shirt (on sale at Children's Place) in case this ended up being a more difficult project.

As for the rest of the outfit, he already has a pair of brown shorts and brown shoes. So, like I said, we just need the socks.

Next up is Monkey's Snoopy costume. My plan is to make a pair of white flannel pants (an easy project) and use a white hoodie to make the Snoopy ears and body. Hopefully it works out.

After that it's two dresses for my sister and me (Sally and Lucy) and a striped red shirt for my brother-in-law (Linus). The dresses are the big question. I don't sew with a pattern very often. Cross your fingers!

Bag Lady

I went to the beach and it rained for two days so I stayed in and made 10 bags and a blanket and two pillows. I only have photos of 9 of the bags, the rest will follow. The first six are for my mom's coworkers and the last three are for my Aunt's friends.

Ikea fabric. LOVE it.

Dachsund fabric on the inside since the recipient loves her dachsunds.

More Ikea fabric. Love it even more!

Born on the fourth of July. Red White and Blue without being so patriotic.

Stitches

I have a project. Dishtowels. With fruit. Fruit animals. Amazing, right? Megan's friend drew this Mooberry and I sewed it onto a towel:

It's a strawberry/cow. A science experiment gone wrong. I love it, although my next, sellable version will have a few adjustments. And after the Mooberry came the Quackpear:

It's a duck/pear. I do love this one. So much.




In other news, I made these hankies for Annie's Grandma for her birthday:




It was a new thing for me, Annie helped me find the stitch for the flowers online then I put them together. I ended up browsing through free fonts for the numbers and initials since my first attempts with my own handwriting failed miserably. I really love how they turned out though, much more delicate and they look more cohesive than my first attempts. Anyway, there you go.

Dinosaurs!

My mom made me and my siblings giant stuffed dinosaurs when we were younger. That means she made them out of crazy awesome early 80s fabric. My sister had a purple print triceratops and my brothers had a green and a brown stegosaurus. I had a giant pink paisley brontosaurus. I named it Dino ("deeno" like on The Flintstones) and it slept in the bed with me. By giant I mean it took up half of my bed. It's about as long as I am tall now (5'3").

So my mom found these dinosaurs tucked away and brought them out of hiding for my nephews to play with. My older nephew thought they were amazing and plays with them constantly when we are at Grandma's house. I found the book she got the patterns from and decided to make my nephews their own smaller versions. I tried to pick fabric that reminded me of the cool vintage patterns my mom used, but I had to use a lot of red because it's my nephew's favorite color. Here's how they turned out:

No button eyes for this bronto - didn't want the 2 year old to chew them off.

Had to off set the flower pattern with some masculine stripes. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

I think the stegosaurus is my favorite. I am in love with that fabric. I would marry it if it were a man.

A patchwork bronto for Monkey. It had so much red on it. I hadn't planned on making two brontosaurus' otherwise I would have bought more fabric. They were just so much easier to sew and finish and I was on a time crunch. He could care less that it's such a jumble of fabrics (the other side is the paisley print, the under side is the stripe and the tail is the blue swirly dots). He just loves that it's his.

Mind Your Manners Hankies

I posted these items of awesomeness on Etsy:

I'm kind of in love with them myself. I made them for my brother-in-law and he already wants 12 more. haha. He's not getting 12 more, but he'll get more for sure. I already have one order in from a friend and one set to make for a giveaway winner on the blogject.

Braided Headbands

These were kind of difficult to photograph, but I'm sure you all get the idea. Braided headbands. I used scraps of leftover fabric from all my previous projects and braided them and sewed them to a small piece of wide elastic to give them stretch. They are unbelievably cute when they are on a real person and not a fuzzy fake head.

Pillowcases

The nephews and niece are getting character pillowcases this year. They are always so expensive and the two youngest boys have been fighting over the one Thomas pillowcase they have so new cases were in order.

Obviously for my niece. Ariel is her favorite and she has some Ariel sheets already, though this won't match them exactly. The colors will also go nicely with her princess sheets and her HSM sheets (she's in love with Troy).

J and H share a room and there are very few character fabrics that they would both enjoy so I didn't even try to coordinate or match. Plus, this Transformers fabric was awesome and perfect for an almost 7-year-old.

The two oldest share a room and The Simpsons seemed like the safest bet. I'm sure N will say thank you then pretend it's a lame gift and then secretly enjoy using this pillow case for years to come. K may do the same thing, who knows with preteens, really?

Thomas. There's a lot of Thomas in this house. My favorite part about this fabric is that it's got that denim print as a background. That helps it blend in more with the boys' room, which is brick red and beige.

All of them folded up on the table. I was pretty happy with how they all turned out, though I had a harder time with the Thomas fabric and getting those cases to come out straight and even. As long as the pillow fits, right?

Flowers

Another unexpected project came about when I got into making fabric buttons. I made three preliminary buttons just because I was excited to make them, then I had to figure out what to do with them. I decided to try making some fabric flowers and I used the buttons for the center. Then I added ribbon so they could be used as a headband or tied around a ponytail or a little girl's waist as a belt.

Here's my first ever attempt:

(Notice my awesome fake head. She holds my hat and sits on top of my bookshelf, but she is also quite useful for this purpose...and my nephew escaped having to model the flowers.)

I was very happy with how cute it turned out (the construction is not so clean, but no one can see that so oh well).

Next, I made this one:


I got more creative with this one because I was trying to make good use of the scrap materials we had around and I wanted it to be purple. I love the mix of stripes and gingham and the blue and brown really help the purple to stand out. I'm not entirely sure I want to give this away, but I'm a little too old to pull of this particular style. haha.

I also made one out of some left over Little Mermaid fabric and some pink flannel. It turned out super cute, but I don't have a photo yet.

Pink Purse

I made a purse for my niece. I sewed the straps incorrectly, but she won't notice the difference. I love how it turned out. It's a floppy, pleated purse with a polka dot liner.




I used this pattern.

Zizi Blankie for Bug

I will post pictures soon, but today I made a Zizi Blankie for my youngest nephew.

I made a quilt for Monkey when he was born and of course my sister says I have to make one for all her kids.

Monkey's was a bit more detailed because there was a lot more embroidery done (I just couldn't get in the mood to sit and embroider this time around - although losing my job helped me do the stuff I did finish for Bug). Monkey's had...well, monkeys on it and was orange, yellow, blue and green. The back side was all fuzzy green.

Bug's quilt has rockets and a space ship on it and is blue, green and brown with fuzzy blue/green/brown striped fabric on the back. I tried to pick fabrics that were appropriate (jungle looking ones for Monkey's and space-y looking ones for Bug's) and the colors i chose match the blankets my mom crocheted for them.

Monkey named it the Zizi Blankie but he pretty much names everything I make him along those same lines but I have since made him a more grown up blanket (the cars blanket with the Mater pillow) and I'm sure I'll probably do the same for Bug when he gets older.

Gogo and Blinky

I was going to make handmade dolls for my nephews (ages 3 and 10 months) and my sister asked me to try and model them after the Ugly dolls that are in stores right now. This was probably my favorite project. I drew a couple free style patterns to figure out what shapes I wanted and just got to work. The hardest part was figuring out the best way to make the eyes. The easiest part was the fact that because they are Ugly dolls, I could look over any imperfections. In fact, the imperfections make them cuter I think. My nephews loved them, especially the oldest. He immediately gave his doll a big hug and took him on a trip in the car where he named it Gogo then went on to say, "Oh Gogo, I love you." Blinky was named by my BIL, I think it goes well with Gogo. Monkey made sure to tell everyone that Gogo only has one eye. I love that kid. (Sorry, the pictures are backwards, but they are all there.)

Gogo

Blinky was the first, and therefore a little lopsided, but he's supposed to be "ugly," right?

Pre-stuffed Blinky.

Misc Projects

Just some of the other things I've made these past couple of weeks.

my first stocking. not too shabby for free hand cutting. I found the owl fabric in the remnant bin at JoAnns for less than a $1 and had the blue fabric on hand.
Matching travel/car pillows for Miri and Mike who will be driving to Texas in the next couple of days.
A blanket for Whitney. My favorite part of this fabric is that it says "dot tree" like that is supposed to mean something. I don't get it, but think it's hilarious and a cute pattern (and it matches Whitney's things).