Knitted Teddy Bear

Another pattern from the Australian Womens Weekly. I was half way through the cardigan when I decided that my skills were now at a level where I could attempt this cute little teddy bear. When I had first looked at the instructions I was a bit overwhelmed by all the abbreviations, but when you know a few of the stitches the abbreviations actually start to make sense. The cardigan was put on the back burner while I made this little guy up.

He is made using Cleckheaton baby cocoon 4 ply, 70% merino wool 30% nylon (so he is super soft), colour 0003.

Knitted Cardigan

This pattern was from the Australian Womens Weekly magazine. I hadn't knitted anything since I was little apart from a couple of scarves a few years back, so the thought of trying a cardigan was a bit daunting. My patient mother showed me the few stitches that I had forgotten, but I also used this website a lot which has great videos on casting on and off, as well as all the basic stitches.

I admit that I had to do the first three rows about 4 times before I got into the swing of it, but after a while it comes more naturally and you can power through the rows. The hardest part for me was 1) the buttonholes, and 2) the neckline and getting it to fit around the front and back pieces. In the end I don't think it turned out too bad.

ABC BeanBags

This was one of the first blog posts that I wanted to make by lilblueboo. There is a great tutorial on her blog to follow, though I had to make one small change - I have yet to find freezer paper like she describes to use for stencils. Instead I printed out the letters I wanted to use, cut them out, and then traced around them onto the material with a sewing pencil.

The material I chose to use was the stack of CanTeen bandannas that I had accumulated over the years. I only had to use 4 bandannas (I have about 8) and I got 8 beanbags from each one.

The material pieces that made up 1 beanbag each

The first few letters were my trial beanbags so they turned out a little bit different. It wasn't until 'D' that I decided to use 2 colours, and I decided to outline them to make them stand out a bit.

I went to my local Bin Inn and got a large bag of the smallest beans I could find. These turned out to be some little black and some little red ones (don't know their actual names). I found the pinto beans were a bit big, and the smaller ones gave a better texture.

Once I had finished them all I realised I needed somewhere to store them so I've made up this drawstring bag to put them in, using the same letter stencils to do the lettering on the front.

Sundress

This one is from one of the blogs I frequent a lot - lilblueboo. The pictures always look so cute that I want to get my sewing machine out straight away and make it. This one caught my eye as I thought I could make it in one evening and I had some material that I knew would work well.

Unfortunately, as I did make it in one evening, I didn't measure the places for the straps on Chloe so they slip a bit, but I plan to fix this.

Chloe doesn't really like posing for photos so what you see is what you get.

Mini paintings

I was at Warehouse Stationary in the craft section (very dangerous) when I saw some cute 4"x4" canvases quite cheap. I grabbed 3 and a pack of paint tubes thinking "surely I can make something with these".

I came home and spent a while searching the net for image to use. I initially thought about using cute cartoon animals, but it became apparent that, unless I magically gained skills to draw them myself, this was not going to work. I then decided on 3 basic images to use - a star, a heart and a flower. I made them the right size a printed them outMeanwhile I mixed up the colours I wanted for the backgrounds. As they are for my girls room I went for yellow, purple and pink. I mixed up enough purple and pink to use for the shapes as well so that I didn't have to try and make them again and try and match the colours. The yellow I used straight from the tube.

After letting the background dry I traced the images onto the backgrounds. To save on cutting out I just rubbed a pencil over the back of the image and drew around the shape while pressing onto the canvas. This transfers the image to the canvas easily.

Just a couple of coats for each of the images and done!

Fabric High Chair

I saw this first on homemadebyjill and she linked it through to the template that I eventually followed which was on thismamamakesstuff. Both have great tutorials on them and the chair was really easy to make.

Something to note - if you follow the one on thismamamakesstuff the measurements really only work for a chair with slats in the back to fed the back part through (like in the picture). I've tried mine with a couple of chairs without backs and it isn't quite long enough, though it may be I that Chloe just has a very rotund bally. The one made by jill has longer measurements so is a bit bigger around the middle when using an open back chair, but will probably be a bit more versatile with different chairs. If you have a long enough piece of velcro it doesn't really matter how far it wraps around the tummy.

I didn't have the fat velcro used in the second blog I mentioned so I did a double row of 1" velcro.

Market Skirt

I got the idea for this skirt while spending too much time looking at other craft blogs, specifically: dana made it

It is super simple to make and this tutorial has VERY clear instructions. I decided not to add the pockets like Dana had, and you could also make each segment whatever length and material you want.

I used plain old cotton for mine and it is quite short on Chloe, so the next might have some longer sections, but it is so cute on her.