Quilt labels

One 'crafty' thing I've been up to lately is making labels for quilts. These two are my most recent finishes. It will take me a while to go through all the quilts that need them!

March is national craft month

So I'm going to try to post a lot this month. Some will be projects I do with my kiddo and others will be things I am working on.

Tonight we made a book. I had picked up these chipboard books at Michaels on clearance (I think I paid $.50) and put them away, not really sure what we would do with them. We had been talking about bees today (we saw some today even though it's really early), so I thought we'd make a book about bees.

I pulled out our Childcraft encyclopedia volume about bugs. We read the section about bees and I chose some easy facts about bees to include (things a three year old could understand). I wrote them on the back of the pages and Samantha drew pictures of bees on the fronts.
It took us about 20 minutes and I'm sure we will read it over and over again.

Halloween dresses? In February?

Does that make me too early or too late?

Something else from the unblogged fall sewing projects are these adorable candy corn dresses that I made.


(apologies for the wrinkles)

I saw an image of a dress like this on Pinterest, looked at the sellers etsy store and decided I could make it myself. I googled for a basic tutorial and used this one. I adjusted it to have three sections and cut each section out individually and sewed them together. I used bias tape around the armholes and made a simple casing for the ribbon at the top.



For Ellie's dress I made a rough pattern from a dress we already owned. However it came out too tight in the armholes because I failed to add extra fabric for the ribbon casing. It was super easy to trace a simple shape like a dress and make my own pattern so I will surely be doing it again!

Perhaps they need some cute springy matching dresses?

Skirts for the girls

As one of my first Kids Clothing Week items of business, I whipped up some skirts for my girls.


I made these very simply. I measured each girl's waist and doubled it for the width of the skirt. Measured them waist to knee and added 2 inches for the hem and waistband.



I whacked a bunch of them out from stash fabric and batch sewed them up. Ironed the hems and sewed them first then did the waistbands.



I found it to be super quick to do a bunch of these at once. I used one inch elastic in Samantha's skirts and 3/4 or half in Ellie's (whatever I had on hand).



I have lots more fabric set aside to make more things for them - dresses and skirts.



I couldn't resist this cowgirl fabric since we live in Cowtown! :)


See more of the skirts (including Ellie's which mostly match Samantha's and are not pictured here) in my flickr set:

Dressing my kids

So I posted a while back about planning to make some clothes for my kids during Kids Clothing Week back in October. While I still need to post all the things I made then, I wanted to show these off first. I bought these plain long sleeved onesies (that were not white! Miracle find!) with the intention of embroidering patches for them. My sister-in-law had done something similar for my nephew, and it was adorable. I began by choosing some patterns from my Sublime Stitching collection (confession: I have all the books and about 1/4 of the available iron-on transfers), and some from Doodle Stitching. (if you embroider, this book is a must-have!).
I combed through them looking for cute but not cutesie designs. I had four onesies for each babe, and I wanted to use as many as possible. I also tried to 'coordinate' the designs/colors I chose with the colors of the onesies. I also took into account our interests - hubby used to play the drums so I had to go with the drum design.


Both the drum and the rocket ship are Sublime Stitching designs.



I wanted something to coordinate withe Ellie's brown onesie, so I had to use the adorable hedgehog. (Hedgehog is Sublime Stitching and birds from Doodle Stitching)



These two are my favorites - both from Doodle Stitching. I just love that cow!

Instead of embroidering directly onto the onesies (which I worried about because of the potential of stretching), I embroidered onto plain Kona cotton. I was planning to back each with interfacing, but decided to try folding the extra material behind the design and ironing it flat. It worked! I've found that interfacing can wrinkle when washed repeatedly, so I thought this might be a better fix. It has held up just fine.

I'm already trying to find some cute, plain, non white onesies to stitch up for summer!

Handmade Holiday Madness

We're still alive - just buried under the millions of projects and gifts I'm trying to finish for Christmas. Most of which I can't share here until they are gifted! I've got a few household projects that I can share, I just need to take pictures of them. But for now, Ben's Christmas vest. It is adorable. I am convinced that there is nothing cuter than little boys in knitted vests. I'm very glad this pattern goes up to a size 6! :)


Also, in the spirit of handmade, a question. If you are making handmade gifts for your family and friends, do you also feel compelled to also buy them something? So often I am stuck thinking that what I made isn't 'enough.' Thoughts?

Shop Handmade for the Holidays

This holiday season I encourage you to support small businesses and buy handmade whenever you can!

I am offering free shipping in my etsy store until Monday evening. Mommysew I love making custom orders, so please do not hesitate to contact me!

Some of my other favorite etsy sellers are:
Pegged (Seriously how cute are some of these dolls?)
Loopsies (I have dreams of a quilt or something with all of these embroideries)
Hip to Piece Squares
Wee Little Stitches
Sarah Jane Studios
YarnMiracle
Kaya's Kloset (I have several pairs of her shoes for my kiddos)
LucyJane Studios (I LOVE this bag!)

Happy Shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving

From our three little turkeys!

Turkey shirt idea found via pinterest - original link is here.

A little cross-stitch

Many many moons ago counted cross-stitch was my craft. I made many items for myself and my family. We have cross-stitched ornaments, framed pictures, bookmarks, etc. I love the preciseness of cross-stitch. The way each x has a certain color, a certain place. It it very meditative for me. And super easy, assuming you can count! I'll try to dig up some older things to photograph sometime, but today I have three mini stitches to share.



I used this awesome pattern to make a decoration for the babies' room. (I have a woodland animal theme - I'll share more pictures soon!). They were little, cute, quick and very satisfying. I actually made the owl twice - once for us and once for my niece's new room.

I'm very tempted to make her tesselations pattern for my math loving husband sometime, but I do have some cross-stitch birth announcements to finish for my kiddos first.

Farm animal puppets

For Samantha's gift this year I wanted to make something that went along with the farm theme. I'm not sure how I found these through my googling, but they turned out to be exactly what I wanted!


I used a tutorial from here. It was great! A good bit of cutting and organizing all the pieces, but well worth it. I printed each page, and cut out all the pieces. Then I got 10 ziplocs, and divided the pieces for each animal into them. I also used one ziploc for pieces shared by more than one animal.



Then I gathered my felt, and got busy pinning and cutting. I put all the pieces back into their baggie as I cut them out. When I was ready to sew I gathered all the pieces that would need to be sewn with a particular color thread, and sewed them on. Then I went to the next color. This helped me to not have to change my thread and bobbin a million times.



They were really easy to assemble with my baggie method. And I think they turned out pretty cute. Samantha doesn't seem very into them right now, but she usually picks things up weeks later and they become her new favorite thing, so my fingers are crossed!