5 Dec 2010

Embroidered Baby Outfit

This idea came from my sister who asked me to embroider a onsie for her son. I liked the finished product so much that I wanted to make one for our new one on the way.

I had a good look around to find a onsie that was plain white, and was happy when I found this one. The crossover means that the top bit can be embroidered but that the back of it wouldn't aggravate bubs skin. The one I used was from Cotton On Kids. If you can't find one like this then it's just a matter of covering the back of the embroidery with some soft fusing.

It took a while to get it all positioned, especially with the domes getting in the way, but worth spending the time to get it right. If I did it again I would probably make the lettering a bit smaller as the onsie is so small to start with.

Hopefully this can be worn by other babies from the family, and hopefully my baby is small enough to fit into it! (edited to add: He wasn't!)


8 Nov 2010

Quiet Book - the book so far

I thought I'd add some pics of the book up to now, especially as I finally got the cover done and the rings to hold the pages in place.


And one of my munchkin actually playing with it - yay!



Quiet book - page 6: Apple tree

This was another one that I saw on a different blog, but of course I can't remember which one. This page requires the apples to be taken off the tree and put in the basket.


The apples are made of felt and I have backed them and done a blanket stitch around them before sewing on a snap.

The tree trunk is felt and the tree 'leaves' is cut from cut from cotton and then both have been sewn around and onto the page.

For the basket I started with 2 pieces of white cotton, one rounded a bit at the top for the back of the basket, and the other a bit concave for the front of the basket. I then sewed some gauze to the front piece of white cotton to give the basket a weave look. Then both pieces were sewn to the page. I puckered the front piece a bit so it would pouch out enough to fit the apples in.

Finally I got out my fabric paints to add the hill, some grass and a flower, otherwise the page would have been a bit blank. Then finished as I did with the others with some bias around the edge, and now it is actually in the book. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

29 Oct 2010

Plunket Book Cover



Someone once mentioned to me that they had made a cover for their grandson's Plunket Book which I thought was a great idea. They aren't the best looking book and would be so cute personalised. My mum then purchased one at a market and I thought - I can make that....so I have.

I started with some stiff felt. I cut a rectangle measuring 33.5cm (1 cm wider than the front and back cover + 1.5cm for the spine) x 23cm.

I also cut 2 strips measuring 5cm x 23cm that the front and back cover will slip into.

For the cover I traced around some letters with a fabric pencil for Chloe's name, which I then painted in.
I then sewed around the whole cover with a fancy stitch to attach the cover holders (for lack of a better name).

At the hospital we had been given a little pink heart with Chloe's details when she was born. This has been taped to the front of her book up til now and has been getting a bit tatty. I laminated it and have attached it to the cover with a ribbon coming out from under a little felt flower. This heart will sit tucked behind 3 other felt flowers.

The flowers cut out, and then stitched down with a running stitch around the yellow centre.

All done!

Flash Cards - sort of

When I knew that I was going to be laminating Chloe's birthday invites I decided to make up some extra cards for her to play with. She has been doing well at recognising the letters from her name so I did p some cards with the letters from her name on one side and an animal starting with that letter on the other side. Then, to fill up the page, I did an 'A', 'B', 'C' with some different pics on the back.
After laminating them I trimmed the edges and rounded the corners to make them kiddie safe.



So far we have had fun spreading them out and playing a game of 'where is the...?'.

Birthday Invites

My little girl is going to be 2 soon! Can't believe how fast it's gone. For her birthday we decided to do a zoo theme as she loves going to the zoo. We were going to have the party at the zoo but decided to stay at home in the end a)to keep costs down and b) so the 9mth pregnant mum has everything handy and doesn't have to carry everything there.

The invites are made and ready to go out and I'm rather happy with them. They are modeled on the 'Friends of the Zoo' passes that Auckland Zoo does.

Using Photoshop I put together a series of 5 animal pictures for one side, and the other has the skin/fur of that animal under the invite info. My lovely hubby made a family zoo logo for it and the whole lot got laminated and put on a lanyard.
Before cutting and laminating



Now the weather just has to behave on the day!

26 Oct 2010

Baby Booties - blue

Just got finished with the other style of baby booties from the Spotlight pattern. Definitely not as easy as the ballet style ones, but still kinda cute. One thing I would say is that keep your cast off at the top loose, otherwise it may be a bit tight around baby's ankle. At least it was good practice at joining yarn, though joining it to 3 stitches (the middle bit at the top the strap goes through) was not easy.

24 Oct 2010

Quiet Book - Cover

I thought I should make something to put my quiet book pages in so made a cover for them. I have all this lovely girly fabric but managed to restrain myself in case #2 is a boy. I'm sure it wouldn't have really been as issue, but I am hoping that both kids will get some use out of it. After a rummage I came up with the fabric I used to make the fabric high chair. I thought this would work well as it is a sturdy, durable fabric and would be easy to find with the bright yellow.

I started by cutting out 2 rectangles that allowed an extra 3cm at the top and bottom and sides of the pages, as well as allowing 6cm for the 'spine'.

From the yellow fabric I also cut a smaller square that will serve as a pocket on the back for bits of notepaper or even holding pieces from the book if necessary.

I went to sew the pieces together a couple of times before stopping to realise that a) I need to sew the pocket on first and b) I need to do the buttonholes in the spine first. The buttonholes will have metal rings through them (the kind you get at a stationary store) so that the pages can be removed and shared amongst kids. I am so lucky to have and awesome buttonhole feature on my machine. I just found a tiny button to use as a guide and they were all done! I also used this same button to add buttonholes to my already finished pages in the corresponding spots.

Pocket and spine

Then came sewing the pieces together, right sides facing and leaving a gap to turn in the right way. I also top stitched around the edge to make the edges sit well. Then I sewed two lines down the middle 6cm apart to form the spine of the book. This will hopefully give it a bit more shape when the pages are in it. The cover is a bit boring at the moment but when I get some inspiration I'll just use some Heat n' Bond and add something fun.

Cover

Next step is get onto finishing the pages. I'm halfway through an apple tree page and have a page planned with a backpack and a small zip, and a shoe that laces up.

19 Oct 2010

Baby booties

I got my latest Spotlight mailer and fell in love with these baby booties. I liked the idea that one of the styles had ribbon around the ankle so you could do them up as tight as necessary.

I started with the ballet style ones in pink:

They were quite easy to do, and not too fiddly.

I have one blue one made in the button style and will post a pic of that one when done. The button ones are trickier as you have to rejoin the wool at a couple of places at the end and I haven't gotten that perfected yet. I also found the part of the pattern where you have to cast on extra stitches for the ankle pieces a bit difficult to decipher, though what I ended up doing worked.

Another Dress

Got some cheap denim at a fabric sale - yay. Decided to make another dress, and wanted to base it on one I saw in a store that had some cute cotton under the denim.

I started thinking that I would just line the denim with the cotton, but after some thinking changed my mind and made the dress reversible. So I made the dress up in each fabric and sewed them together - easy! I left the cotton a bit longer in the hem so that it shows under the denim when the denim is facing out.

I got pink and blue buttons and meant to have them on the contrasting sides, but my mind is so muddled with being pregnant (best excuse ever) that I forgot to do this and couldn't be bothered changing it.


Needs an iron, but that doesn't get done much in our house, and it will be wrinkly again so quickly...

PJ's

Chloe has outgrown another pair of PJ's so rather than buying more I thought I'd get a pattern and make some. Took a while to find a pattern that was from age 1 up, but finally found a Kwik Sew one that goes from age 1-4yrs so I'll get lots of use out of it.

Looked easy enough thought the collar was a bit fiddly (I haven't done a collared shirt before). Happy with the result in this cute purple cotton with stars, and got some cute matching buttons.


11 Sept 2010

Quiet book - page 5: Flower Pot

I felt like I was on a roll with the quiet book and whipped up this page really quickly. This page is to practice with buttons, with the flowers able to be unbuttoned.

Easy to do - started by cutting out the flowers and attaching fusing to the back, and again doing a blanket stitch around them to keep them tidy. I then used my handy buttonhole foot to create the buttonholes in the middle of the flowers. I chose buttons that didn't take up too much room as the buttonhole needed to fit on the flower with room to spare.

For the stalks I used some green ribbon which I first hand stitched to the flower, then I sewed the other end to the page after placing them where I wanted them. The flower pot was sewn over all of this.

Final step was to sew on the buttons. I pinned the flower stems down first so that the buttons were in the right place and....voila!

6 Sept 2010

Soft Baby Book

This is something from the 'Celebrate the Boy' crafts and is from thimblythings blog. There is a tutorial to follow along. It is a cute wee fabric book that looks like much less work than the quiet book I'm doing for Chloe, primarily as it has no 'working' parts. I decided to make this for a friends boy who is about 9 months old as I thought it would be good for his age.

On hunting through my craft caddy I found some Heat 'n Bond I had bought a while back. I can't believe I haven't used it yet as it is the best thing ever, and perfect for this book. Shame I can't remember where or when I got it.

I chose to change some of the pictures to suit my friends boy. He is into lions so my lovely husband designed one for me. I changed the ladybird to a shark to be a bit more boy-ish, and the car to a truck. I also changed the sippy cup to an apple as I'm not sure he would recognise the cup.

Here is the lion in progress:
With the Heat 'n Bond attached to the fabric (it doesn't work on felt by the way).

And the pages with the fabric attached ready to be sewn:

I sewed around most of the pieces just to make sure they didn't come off in little hands.

Then, following the tutorial, I sewed it all together into a little book. Hope he has fun with it. Of course I forgot to take pics of the finished product before I gave it to him, but I'm sure I'll make another one sometime.

4 Sept 2010

Merino swaddle

I finally finished the merino swaddle that I had cut out before I made the dress for Chloe. Happy with the result.

It took a little while to turn the edges and get them all the same, but as it is just going to be wrapped around baby I'm not too worried if it's a perfect square.

I started with it being 1m x 1m and then folded the edges twice. I did a straight stitch around the whole thing, about 1/4" from the top fold, to keep it all in place.

Then I changed to the contrasting thread and did a fancy stitch along each edge to catch that top fold and keep it flat.

Even though this will be a summer baby, I have a feeling I will be using this as a blanket a lot.



Edited to add some more pics of the process while I was making a second one.

30 Aug 2010

Quiet book - page 4: Ice Cream colours

So this page is for colours. I first saw this idea on camillescasa and really liked it. I used my own design for the ice cream and cone but there are templates available on her page.

I had some scraps of leather that I had picked up so decided to use one for the ice cream cone. I scored the leather on a criss cross design to give the cone some detail.

The ice cream scoops are felt with fusing on the back, and hand stitched blanket stitch around the edge to help keep these tidy. There are 3 pieces of the fluffy half of velcro above the cone to put the scoops on.

I was going to have some more velcro to hold the spare scoops but decided to just sew a little pocket down the bottom to store them in.


In hindsight I would have put the cone a bit lower but I think it still works. Now if only Chloe could learn which colour is which...

21 Aug 2010

Getting fancy - tag cloths and cubes

After getting the new machine I figured I needed to play a bit. Here are a few tag cloths and rattle cubes that I had a bit of a play with.

For the tag cloths I tried using satin instead of fleece and some more neutral fabric colours. Also, there are heaps of cute stitches so I tried a few different ones for the final top stitching.

For the cubes, I picked up some cute fat quarters with some contrasting patterns, which are good for little babies. I also found a much better bell for the inside that you can hear better when inside the stuffing.

Quiet book - page 3: Shapes

After doing a couple of very involved pages as the first 2, I wanted to do something a bit easier for the next 2 pages. Shapes seemed to be easy so I started on that.

I traced around 6 shapes onto cardboard from Chloe's Tupperware Shape sorter - circle, square, triangle, cross, star and pentagon. I used the templates to cut out 2 of each shape from material and ironed these onto some fusing to give them some strength. Onto one of each of the shapes I sewed a square of velcro (the scratchy side) before sewing the 2 pieces of each shape together with a zigzag stitch.

The fluffy half of the velcro was sewn onto the calico. To create the shape to match the piece with, I painted the shape onto the calico around the velcro. To finish, even though Chloe can't read yet, I sewed the names of the shapes under each one. A bit of fusing on the back of the calico will help little fingers to pull off the shapes.


Next page - colours.