Quiet Book for S.

The making of this activity book started with a string of texts...

Lisa: Do you want to make another activity book? My friend T is looking for one for her son S that would be a little older and have things like doing up zippers and tying shoes. 

Jess: Ya, no! I don't think I want to make another one. But tell her there are tonnes of ideas on Pinterest and I did blog about R's. (Side note: First activity book link here)

Lisa: She saw the blog which is why she asked.

Jess: Kids do love them, R plays with hers all the time! But it's so annoying to make, it takes forever,  and can get expensive if you have to buy all the fabric and bits and bobs. 

Jess: How about I will see what I have downstairs already and maybe do a few pages for her and then she can flush out the rest?

Jess: I realize that I just went from no to yes...

Please notice that I didn't participate in the last part of that conversation. I'll let Jess take the story from here :) 

~Lisa

OK, so sometimes I can be a bit soft... or maybe I was just hankering for a project to do. The first quiet activity book I made was for a 2 year old and this one is for a 4 year old.

Like I said in the texts, I just kind of scrounged up some stuff from my craft supplies. I did buy a few sheets of bright coloured felt but the rest of this stuff I had on hand. Make do with what you have!

The first page here is a "racetrack". There are little "cars" inside each one, and he can "drive" the "cars" around the road maze "racetrack".

I sewed the fabric on the page using a straight stich and created paths into it, making a little maze. Then I put two beads in each maze and zig-zagged the edges down.  

Using felt I cut out the black shoe bottoms and the orange shoe tops. Then cut little holes in the orange shoe tops for the laces. I sewed this down with a straight stich and then threaded the string laces in the shoes. Practice tying shoes, fisherman knots, or whatever.

The flower pot page is started with green stems, sewn down with a narrow zig-zag. Then the pot is sewn on 3 sides, making a little pocket for all the flowers. The flowers are cut from colourful fabric scraps that I ironed interfacing to, this adds structure to the blooms and makes sure the edges don't fray. I made about 12 flowers and tucked them into the flower pot pocket. I sewed a button or two on each stem to attach the flowers.

The letters are cut out of blue felt. I put a small piece of Velcro on the back of each letter and on each space. Spell your name or practice other words. I cut out spare letters too, and put them all in the little zipper pouch. I even including the letters for his sisters' name, I cut those out in red.

This page is about counting and basic math. Just string some beads on yarn and then sew the ends of the yarn down to the page. Count 1 to 10 on the beads or add and subtract the numbers.

Tic-Tac-Toe! I created the playing grid by sewing thin pieces of felt to the page. I cut out squares of felt for the playing pieces and sewed an "x" on the blue ones and an "o" on the orange ones. I made 5 game pieces for each player.

Here is matching. The playing pieces are, again, cut out of felt. I sewed the shapes on the page with a simple straight stich. I attached Velcro to the back of each shape and to the space on the board.

This clock is a fun mix of digital numbers on an analog face. Cut small blocks of felt to make each number. Attach them to the clock face circle. The hands are also cut out of felt. The hands have to be free to rotate, so I cut a slit in the clock face and in the hands, then threaded some string up through all layers and slipped on an anchoring bead and then threaded it back down through all the slits. The string is attached to the back of the clock face securing the hands to the face but allowing them to rotate freely.

The book cover is made of denim and each page is sewn down along the spine of the book.

It is a time consuming project but it makes a great gift and offers hours of quiet activity to a kid. Enjoy it S!

~Jess

Chenille Quilt

Each new baby needs their own special quilt.

I had the opportunity to make a quilt for my dear friends' baby girl.

This is quilt is very special because of the back...a chenille quilt! 

To begin, make the top anyway you like, there are so many options. I found a mix of purples and yellows perfect for a baby girl. The top is 4 patch and fences, but do whatever you want.

Then pick some coordinating fabric for the chenille back, I picked 4 different flannels, all with similar colours.  Making a chenille quilt can be a good option if you have lots of fabric and no batting. This kind of quilt gets its warmth and fluff from the many layers of fabric, not from batting. Now layer the quilt top, right side up, and then 4 layers of backing fabric, all right side down. You kind of make a quilt layer cake. When all your layers are stacked and secured with pins you can start to sew.

 The important thing with this quilt is to sew on the diagonal/bias, it is a must! We are going to make a whole lot of cuts and if you sew diagonal lines it will become soft and fluffy, but if you sew straight lines (parallel or perpendicular to the selvage) it will become a mess of fraying threads. Sew a diagonal line through all the layers about every half inch or so.

This takes a lot of time and patience, oh, and a lot of thread. Before you get going, wind up a few bobbins, it will make your life a bit easier to have them already prepared. Then just sew, sew, sew!

Once all the lines are done, stop and admire your work. Nicely done!

Now grab your sharp scissors and flip the quilt over, we are going to start making this quilt into a chenille quilt.

Cut through the troughs. It will feel weird to cut up a project you have been working on for hours, but trust me, and try to ignore your sweaty palms. I cut through 3 of my 4 layers of backing. This leaves the quilt top and one complete layer of flannel intact, and provides 3 layers of softness.

See here on the backing...3 cut layers and one intact layer.

Keep it up, you have to cut through each trough, and your hand will ache and your mind will be numb, but it will be worth it!

Gorgeous! So cuddly for baby.

Now attach your binding.

Once it is all done, put the quilt in the wash. Yep, a quick wash or a simple rinse and spin. Then put it in the dryer. This will help to fray the cut edges just a bit and it will make it super soft. A chenille blanket is perfect for a baby, the more you wash and dry it the softer it gets. So no need to worry about spit up or spills, it just washes off and makes an even nicer quilt in the end.

Here it is, put to good use, in baby J's nursery!

T-Shirt Tutu

Every little girl needs a tutu....or two!

I made this t-shirt tutu dress for a little friend celebrating her Italian heritage.

 Here's is an easy way to sew a t-shirt tutu dress perfect for any event or even just playing dress up. 

Start with a t-shirt to fit your little girl and some tulle in your chosen colours. I picked a 2T toddler shirt in white and one meter of each green, red, and white tulle. 

Measure where you want the "waist" of the skirt to start and put a mark there. I marked at 5 inches from the bottom with a pin.

Now to make the tutu skirt, just measure how long you want the layers to be, making the underskirts longer than those on top. 

I cut the green at 15 inches. 

The white at 12 inches.

And the red at 9 inches. 

Now there are many ways to make the ruffles in the tulle for the skirt, you can do a long basting stitch and gather it together, or you can used a "ruffler" foot on your sewing machine, or you can do the easy way like I did. Just find the middle of the tulle and pin it to the middle of the t-shirt. Then pin each side of the tulle to each side of the shirt. 

Now you can find the middle of that section of tulle and pin it to the shirt in the middle of those pins. 

See how it's starting to ruffle up and look like a tutu skirt?

Now just sew it the t-shirt using a simple straight stitch. Sorry, I didn't capture an image of the green getting sewed on, but here is the same thing repeated with the white layer. 

Now you have two layers on, just repeat with the red. Pin in place and sew the ruffles down. 

I know you're not supposed to sew over pins, but sometimes I'm wild like that. If you are going to rebel like I did and sew over them, just go slow and be careful, it's not worth losing an eye over!

Now you have a puffed-out-fully-layered-and-ruffled-up tutu skirt sewed to the t-shirt!

Cute hey? Now you can add some additional flare...

A red ribbon bow in the middle and some tulle puffs on the sleeves. 

Maxi dress

With maxi dresses being so "on trend" now, I thought I should jump on the bandwagon, but I wasn't quite willing to pay the store prices. Soooooo, I'll just make one!

It started with a trip to the fabric store where Jess and I ended up buying way too much fabric. You'd think that we'd have it figured out by now, but we usually go there with only a vague idea in mind so we always err on the side of too much fabric than not enough. Which usually means we have lots left over. Good thing Mom has agreed that we can store all fabric at her house :) We bought a few different options that day, and I chose to start with this striped one. It's pushing me out of my comfort zone for sure.

The fabric is completely man-made (not a natural fibre in it!) and is the magic kind that will travel well as it's resistant to wrinkling. It has a good amount of stretch to it, so I used a stretch stitch on the sewing machine. It does two stitches forward and one back, so that when you pull on the fabric it doesn't break the thread. It does take a lot of thread to sew this way (so take that into consideration when purchasing notions) and is horrible! if you need to rip stitches out.

This was a bit of a "Project Runway" experiment in that I wasn't working from a pattern. The original plan was to basically make a tank-top dress, but as we were draping the fabric it looked pretty good with a cowl neckline and then we thought it should have the diagonal skirt. Already we were way off the "long tank" idea and we hadn't even started! But I still used a t-shirt I have as the starting point for size. Folded the fabric, folded the shirt, and did a best-guess cut around the outside for the back of the shirt.

For the front, I draped it about where I wanted the cowl to be with the salvage edge, held it at the point of the inside of the shoulder seam (where the neckline would start to fall) and laid that on the back already cut out. Pinned it together along the shoulder seams and stretched it out along the waistline so those would be the same front and back. I cut it out and sewed it together while it was still pinned.

You can see here that I needed to take in a lot in the side seams. I guessed too generously!

I wanted the dress to have the waistline up at my actual waist, so I needed to cut off about 5 inches of material off the bottom to shorten it up. Again, I didn't consider this part when I was originally cutting the top. Good thing we did buy all the extra material!

Since I had used the salvage edge for the front of the neckline, I only needed to do a small fold-over along the back of the neck to make that a smooth edge.

For the skirt, I used one that I already had as a guide. I wanted it to be as wide as the current skirt at the bottom, so I laid it out on the material and measured 42 inches up from there for the length. This was more than ample as I'm no where near that tall, but I knew I would need some extra for the seam allowance at the waist and would hate to end up with a skirt that's too short. Once I had the one side of the skirt cut out, I just folded it in half so I could match up the angle for cutting along the top.

To cut the second skirt piece, I just overlaid the first one over the second so that I would be sure to match up the angle on the lines. Pinned it, cut it and sewed it.

You can see that I had a lot of skirt as I look like the "after" picture for a weigh loss ad, though I'm not quite there yet :)

Since I had so much skirt, I used several small tucks to get it to match the size of the top.

And.... it ends up that I have a giant sack with no shape to it.

I took it in by 2 inches on each side. Basically eased it in from the arm hole down to the hips.

I'm not sure you can quite see it in this picture unless you can zoom in, but there are several lines of sewing there as I make my various attempts at getting this to fit.

Then Jess suggested that it looked more finished with sleeves, so time to add those. I used more tucks along the top of the sleeve to ease that fabric in and to have it match the skirt.

Once it was all done was when I was able to cut it off to the final length. I cut it at 37 inches. You can see from the image that I didn't end up with a straight hemline even though I had cut them the same along both sides. When I asked Mom about this later, she said it can happen when using a stretch stitch if you don't sew the two seams the same way (i.e. start sewing both seams at the waistline). Something to keep in mind!

And tada! Finally finished. It took much longer than anticipated as I had to do so many adjustments. I would guess 12-14 hours total.

I took a self-portrait in my back yard so you don't just see the finished product in the basement.

When I see it now, it looks more formal (can you say that about a striped maxi dress made of stretch fabric?) than I had originally envisioned, so time to experiment with the other fabric I bought!
~Lisa