Christmas Gifts

I've been in a funk since Christmas has come and gone. I spent so much time in down-to-the-wire mode, I'm a little confused and lost now. I pick up a project and wander off to find that thingy I needed... forget what I was looking for and then see something in another room, set down the original project to work on another... find that thingy I was looking for to begin with and wonder what in the world I did with the first project. Anyone else there? I spend all day piddling with things and never get anything done.

Now that the gifts have all been gifted, I can share the handmade goodies that I was working on pre-funk.

For Buggy and my niece and nephew, I made pillows with their name appliqued on the front and a patchwork border. Here is my little niece's (her name is considerably shorter than the other two kids so she got some flowers too):

And on the back a big pocket! For Christmas it had stocking stuffer-y things inside like stickers and candy. But I was thinking it would be good for stashing secret stuff or taking toys and games on a car trip.

And, of course, we needed more manly colors for my nephew:

Plus a super cool button for my favorite T-ball player:

And where are pics of Buggy's pillow? Let's blame it on the funk. (Yeow, I'd better go back and make sure I used an "n" in the other spots)

Here is a fun project, I know I'll be doing some more of these around Mother's Day (don't look Mom). I've never done anything like this and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was.

I took pictures of the girls with a window behind their heads. A little photo editing to bump up the contrast and make them B&W, then I printed photos of each girl on regular paper. I used a sharp craft knife to cut out their heads and used that as a pattern to cut black paper in the shape of cuteness. Double-stick tape is holding it to the parchment colored paper. Originally, the silhouettes were slightly smaller than the 5x7 frames, but I thought it needed a bit more white space to look pleasing to the eye so I shrank their heads to 4x6 size. I also wanted oval frames to give it a more vintage-y feel but didn't realize until the last minute that they are really hard to find.

And now I'd like you all to take a second look at the shape of my youngest daughter's head and send a little sympathy my way.

Fleece Coat

I mentioned that I wanted to make a coat for Buggy and was planning to use fleece. To be honest, I was worried about how it was going to behave. I even felt a little nervous when it was time to put scissors to fabric. But I am happy to report that fleece is wonderful stuff. One of my sewing pet peeves is exposed unravel-y seams, so that made working with fleece especially nice. One place I did have trouble was making a decent button-hole. Its like trying to cut through leather, even with a sharp craft knife. Does anyone have any suggestions to make it easier?

So here is my little model wearing her new coat:

This is the lining she picked:

I let her choose from the section of flannel backed satin because I wanted to add an extra layer of warmth. I hope it isn't overkill combined with the fleece.

And since my model wasn't terribly willing and the first picture is a little blurry, this is what it looks like holding still:

This is Simplicity 2534, which is a girl's size. I traced the size 3 but used the length measurements of the size 5 markings. I made a muslin from an old sheet and it fit her up pretty nicely, I wanted it a bit roomy so it will fit over layers. I don't say this very often about something I've sewn, but... I'm pleased. I think we might even take this out into public without fear of someone saying "Oh, did your mom make that for you". Its not that I'm ashamed that her clothes are handmade, I just don't want it to be immediately obvious. You know?

A Tale of Two Dresses-Part Two

I learned a lot about creating a bodice that fits when using a commercial pattern on the first go round. This time I did not blindly cut the size that Simplicity seems to think will fit a 12 month baby. I took my chubby little cherub's chest measurement and did some measuring of the pattern pieces. A 6 month size seemed the closest so I cut a muslin from an old sheet and slipped it on. It fit quite nicely! I think the only thing I changed was the length of the skirt. While I had the bodice on my babe I measured from the bottom to where I wanted the skirt to fall and used that measurement for the the skirt pieces.

So where is the the hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth? In the tiny sleeves! For some reason I was fixated on having tiny white ribbon on the sleeves and nothing could sway me. Not even the growing pile of discards at my feet. Once I realized my mental health cannot support sewing tiny white ribbon it came together pretty quickly. So I finally got pictures taken and I filched a copy from my on-line preview to show the dress:

Have I had enough? Oh no, I can see the end of my Christmas crafting on the horizon and I have my next sewing project in the works: a fleece coat for Buggy. I've never sewn fleece, so I'll let you know how much gnashing is involved. Plus I think I'll invest in some lovely soft yarn to make myself a scarf. Now there's a project riddled with angst, I normally just skip straight to swearing. But I'm not ready to admit my mental health cannot support knitting. Stay tuned you might learn some new words.

Cinnamon-errific

Have you ever wandered through the Christmas section of a store and smelled a terrific cinnamon smell? And followed your nose to a display of little mesh sacks with half a dozen scented pine cones, for which they are charging $4.99?

I love that smell, but I'm just too cheap to plunk down that kind of money. So when I saw the craft in this post, I was excited to try it. And we even had the ingredients on hand, not that there's a lot, just cinnamon and applesauce.

Last night Buggy and I made these and I got that smell I'm after:

I strung them on a ribbon to make a garland decoration but the hearts (with two holes) are the only thing that hangs facing outward when the ribbon is suspended (er, duh). I'm just too OCD to hang it up like that so I'll get another little .50 cent jar of cinnamon for another batch. I think the little guys with one hole (I can hear you snickering) will turn into ornaments to hang on the tree or tie onto a gift:

A Tale of Two Dresses-Part 1

I'm missing some chromosomes. Specifically the ones dealing with girly stuff like making a pleasing hair-do, accessorizing, and matching colors. I'm never sure if I look put together and I'm afraid this extends to dressing my little girls too. So with this in mind I decided to make a different dress for each girl from the same fabric which I pilfered from my Mom's stash. This way, I reasoned, they would be sure to match when they have their picture taken together. What could be easier? Bah!

I don't usually sew from a pattern so I foolishly bought a pattern for each girl in the size they wear when we buy off the rack. I started with Buggy's and even went down a size, because she is such a slim girl, and made a 3. The half-finished dress hung on her like a tater sack, there was so much extra fabric at the sides and the v-neck was positively indecent. I looked around for ideas and Lier fortuitously posted about slopers around the time I was freaking out. (I left a comment and she visited my blog and left me a comment, eeeeee; what a classy lady!) But that's a whole new skill set, which I intend to learn, and this project needed help NOW since I intended to have the girls photographed around the time my baby turned one ( 2 weeks ago, whoops). So I hauled out a set of sewing encyclopedias I found at a garage sale last summer and opened the Sewing for Children book.

It had several good suggestions, like not using interfacing on kids' clothes, so that step was skipped and the dress looks fine to me. They also suggested buying a pattern in the size that fits your child's chest measurement and slashing the pattern to lengthen it where necessary. So for Buggy, I need a 12 mo. size baby pattern (I swear I feed her)! Luckily, I had the pattern for my baby's dress, so I traced a bodice from that and added the details I liked from the girl's pattern, like the shaped v-neck. I used the girl's pattern as a guide for the length of the bodice and made a muslin from this:

It was a little snug across the shoulders so I slashed the armscye and moved it over about a 1/4 inch on the front and back pieces (purple arrows) and lengthened the bodice a little more (blue arrows) as Buggy is quite long waisted:

Here is the (almost) finished dress:

You can see in the pic that it really wouldn't have hurt to make the dress a little smaller in the chest. The underskirt was not part of the pattern but the pilfered material is thin so it needed an extra layer and this was my solution. I used a piece of white sheet (I should do a post on all the places I've used that sheet) to make a flared skirt and attached a strip of eyelet trim to the bottom.

Stay tuned for Part 2, the baby's dress, which I am feverishly working on now.

Have questions or want more detailed info about how I altered the commercial pattern? Leave a comment or, if you're shy about everybody seeing your question, shoot me an e-mail.

Thanksgiving Linens

I don't do much entertaining, when I do its normally of the paper plate variety. But for this Thanksgiving I've invited family for dinner and I wanted to be able to set a festive table. According to Martha's checklist I should be ironing my linens in preparation for the holiday, but I'm sure that's just a suggestion. Why would I do that when I could stay up half the night sewing napkins and a tablecloth?

And why not take the time for photos while I'm at it so I can show all of you? First, I should say that this is a story of making do with what I had on hand. I had some flour sack dish towels that I had purchased that were NOT high quality and I do NOT suggest that you also try this with cheap-o dish towels because they were a nightmare to sew.

The first thing I did with mine was give them a bath in strong tea to knock down the bright white color so people wouldn't feel shy about wiping their greasy lips on them:

I cut the dishtowels in half and they were really a little smaller than what I had in mind. When making these I suggest that you start with fabric that you can cut enough 20-inch (at least) squares to make the desired number of napkins.

So then I cut 3 1/2 inch strips from my tablecloth fabric and cut the strips into sections the width of my napkins. One long side of each strip was pressed 1/4 inch toward the wrong-side of the fabric:

Oh, look how nicely my iron burn is healing (ick, sorry)

Then I stacked them up in this order:
-napkin (right-side up)

-trim (right-side up with the un-pressed edge lined up with short side of napkin)

-trim (wrong-side up and with the un-pressed edge at top also)

-napkin (wrong-side up)

I folded each over a little to give a sort of cut-away view:

Sew around the perimeter with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. At the corners, leave the needle in the down position and pivot the fabric to make sharp corners. Leave yourself a 3 inch hole to turn. Clip the excess fabric at corners, turn right-side out and use some sort of poker-thingy to gently push the corners out. If you lined all the pieces up right it should look like this when turned and pressed:

Topstitch around very close to the edge. Remember that pressed edge? Topstitch along the pressed edge of the trim also making sure to catch the pressed edge on the other side:

Here is my finished set. One for each adult plus a miniature for Buggy so she feels special too:

All that cutting of strips left my tablecloth a little too short (oops) so I cut some strips of dark brown fabric for a border. It ended up giving it a nicer finished edge. Yay for happy accidents. And here is the squash I was thinking of using for a centerpiece:

Hmm, you're probably right. It would be hard to have a conversation around that thing. But what, I ask you, should I do with a 50 pound squash? This is actually what I was thinking of using:


Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours.

A Grown-up Cake

Today is my sweet SIL's birthday and I was flattered when her equally sweet SOP asked me to make her cake. It was fun to plan a cake for a grown-up, I hope she likes it. He (SOP) asked for a chocolate cake but I forgot to ask what kind of filling so I tried Chocolate Ganache. The leftovers were yummy so I think it will be tasty with the cake. As a member of the Church of Chocolate, I firmly believe there is no such thing as too much chocolate; lets hope they are also Believers.



I've read a few posts lately on other blogs in which people discussed "Why I blog" and it got me thinking about 'Why I blog'. Not just to trick you into thinking that I'm ever-so clever and so you must buy stuff from my Etsy shop (in the event that I ever open it), that is one reason, but I think the biggest reason is to share knowledge. I love it when I stumble across a trick or crafty goody that makes me go 'Ooooh, what an excellent idea'. So in that spirit I offer the things I learned on this cake:

I tried the flower nail method when baking the cake. That is, I put a flower nail in the center of the cake pans and poured the batter around it before putting them in the oven. This is supposed to help the inside bake at the same rate as the outer part nearest the pan edge. There was a small dome to cut off but I don't think quite as much as if I'd left them out. Probably Bake-Even strips are still the way to go.

I also learned that it is a pain in the keister to pipe chocolate ganache in a chilly house. I knew I wanted the color scheme to be white, pink and brown, but when I tried tinting the white frosting with brown gel food coloring it just looked like... well, poop (literally, even Mr. SimpleHeart saw it lurking in a bowl and said "what the *@#^ is that"). So I had the bright idea I would use the leftover ganache, but it kept hardening in the tip so that I had to hold it over simmering water for a minute to soften it enough to pipe. The first try looked so awful I put the cake in the fridge to cool the chocolate enough that I could pick it off with a toothpick. Then out came an off-set spatula and a cup of hot water so I could give the cake a shave and start over. grrr. Probably a technique best saved for milder weather.

Speaking of ganache, I didn't have cream on hand so I made it with evaporated milk. I used about 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/4 cup milk and that worked great!

This was my first try doing corelli lace and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I've tried it before on a practice board and it looked, um, wrong. Then I read somewhere that its like drawing a bunch of cursive r's and s's together and I said "ah-hah". It totally helped to envision that while I was squiggling.


I made sweet SIL an apron for her birthday. I cruised the Anthro site for ideas and made her a knock-off of a cute one I saw. I took a pic of me wearing it but... bleh. We'll have to see if she'll send us some cute shots of her wearing it so I can show you.