Rainbow Party

Party day finally arrived. I was really excited to put together all the things I have been making over the last month or so. Here is a selection of the decorations/food.

Top: Bunting with pictures of the kids - one per month for the last year
Left: Windmill from Seedling in an old cream bottle
Middle: CAKE!!
Bottom: String of balloons hung over the table

You can kinda see the food under the cover

Food included: Fairy bread; jelly in shot glasses; mars bar slice; assorted lollies; rainbow of fruit; asparagus rolls; mini quiches; sausage rolls; cocktail sausages with dinner rolls to make mini hot dogs. We also brought out a frozen pizza towards the end to make sure the men had been fed properly.

Another view - Chloe and her friend digging in

This photo you can see the bowls of different coloured M&M's that I painstakingly separated. I wasn't sure how many I would need for the cake and it appears I overestimated. Not a problem as I now have M&M's to last to the new year.

The awesome rainbow balloon arch hubby made

The party was a great success (even though it rained, grrrr). Lots of food was eaten, toys were played with and there were no 1yr old meltdowns. Now for christmas....

Rainbow Invitation

Here's the invitation I made up for the Rainbow Party. Yes, it's a joined party for the kids. I'm gonna try and get away with this as long as I can, which I don't think will be long!




On a side note: 60 posts! It would seem I have too much spare time for crafting, yet there never seems to be enough for the housework...

Rainbow Skirt

So this is the next part of Chloe's Rainbow Party outfit. 

It is a modification of the Market Skirt on dana-made-it. As she suggests, lots can be modified on this skirt. I added a couple more strips and made them a bit thinner. 

Each strip has 2" showing so I cut them 2 1/2" wide. For the top strip I added an extra 2 1/2" to allow for the elastic casing. For length, I measure Chloe's waist at 20", so cut the red piece at 28". This way I could increase the length by 4" on each strip and not go over my fabric width.

All the details are on the Market Skirt tutorial but here are some photos from putting this skirt together.

Each strip started like the orange one before gathering the top to end up like the green and blue strips. (The colour order is wrong here so some un-picking followed).

After gathering sew each strip to the previous strip, right sides together.

Sew open ends together. It tickles me that when I ironed the seam open the colours stacked like this.

The whole outfit.

Rainbow T-shirts

This idea was from my awesome mum. I have a plan to make a rainbow skirt for Chloe for the Rainbow Birthday Party, but wasn't sure what to do for Alex. I was contemplating using the fabric from the skirt and some Heat n Bond To do a rainbow on a t-shirt for him when mum suggested I just paint one. Brilliant!! Especially as I already have fabric paint. All I needed was a couple of $5 t-shirts from Baby Factory.


I took a rainbow I had made in Photoshop and printed it in black and white. I cut around the outside and traced around it onto the t-shirt with pencil. I then cut off the top strip and traced along the top of the new top stripe. I kept doing this until I had traced each stripe.


Then came the fun part - painting in between the lines. I got the red, orange and yellow done, but couldn't mix a green I was happy with so had to go out and buy another pot, and I got some indigo at the same time cause I just knew I wouldn't be able to mix that either. 


The end result is so cute. (Yes, I did one for Chloe as well).

Cushion mattress - part 2

I finally got around to finishing the cushion mattress. It didn't take very long in the end, just lots of long bits to sew. I started by folding over the selvage edges about 1" and sewing close to the selvage edge. 

I then folded my material in half so that the selvage edges were together, and sewed the ends closed. My sections are going to be 50cm wide so I measured 1m from the middle to get the point where I sewed the ends closed. Then I trimmed the ends and zigzaged.

Fold to a long strip

Sew the ends (hard to see with red thread on red, sorry)

Then I marked every 50cm with a pin. The velcro was cut to 45cm and centered between the pins, and sewn in place.

Then you just turn it right side out and sew the middle divisions.

Fill with cushions and your done :)

Rainbow cupcakes

So, I haven't put any baking on here yet, but I had to share these as they are so cool!!


I have found numerous pictures of rainbow cakes and cupcakes on the internet and decided to give them a go. I have an idea to use them in the kids birthday cake and didn't want to be trying them for the first time the day before the party. I used a basic cupcake recipe (butter, eggs, sugar, flour, milk) and did a half batch to save time (and my waistline).

Spoon the coloured mixtures on top of each other. This was them just before going in the oven.

Straight out of the oven.

Side view.

THE MIDDLE!!

They look very effective with plain white icing on top, but Chloe and I just had to eat one straight away. Next time I'll be careful to put the same amount in each layer, or maybe a bit more in the bottom layers. YUM!

Up-cycled T-shirt to dress

I think it's called up-cycling. I'm sure I've seen that term used a bit recently. Anyway, I was clearing out my old t-shirts and came across a yellow one that I hadn't worn much at all. I think I only bought it for a work event. I have made a couple into skirts for Chloe and decided to make this one into a throw on dress for summer that can get as filthy as Chloe can get it, and I won't stress. 
Here's what I did:

Start with an old t-shirt

Cut off sleeves. Sew up side to remove some of the bulk, making it fit a 3 year old better

Sew seam and trim away extra fabric

Pin up how much you need to take out of the shoulder seam, cut along the front piece at this point. I folded the back on itself and sewed the edges down as I needed the front to meet the back at the collar as I wanted to re-use the existing collar.

Pin the front to the back so that the collar meets

Trim the back piece to match the front

Sew up the shoulders. I top stitched the shoulder seams so they lay a bit flatter.

I still need to finish the arm holes some way. I was just going to leave them, but when I tried it on Chloe I decided it needed to be finished. I'll probably just roll a small hem and stitch it down. I'm thinking it might work well as a beach cover-up.

Cushion mattress

I have the material and the cushions, now to make a mattress inspired by this. 

My mum had lots of cushion inners from her work that were going in the rubbish so I grabbed some. I had seen this on a friends Pinterest board with the idea to sew together 5 pillowcases and insert pillows and, voila, instant mattress. I figured it would be cheaper to buy 1 big piece of material and sew divisions and add velcro. The material is drill as I think this will be used on our deck this summer, so wanted it to be reasonably hard wearing.

I'll update with more photos as I get it made. Actually, should go and sew some now.

The Quilt - update

I am slowly getting there with the quilt for Chloe, in amongst all the other things I am making. So far I have made up 5 big squares (only 20 to go). They are looking good and still look tidy so I hope that it all works out like that when I sew them together. I have found that when adding the sashing the pieces were longer than I needed so I have just centered them. I have been using my magic quilting foot so I know my seams are exactly 1/4", so not sure how I have got the extra. It's on all of them so I'm hoping they will still piece together OK.

Handy Toddler Bag

Just a quick pic of the finished handbag...with all the little bits and pieces ready to go in it.

Cute Summer Dress

I saw this pattern ages ago and couldn't resist buying it, even though the smallest size on it is age 3yrs. I pulled it out again recently and realised that now would be the perfect time to make it, as Chloe is nearly 3 and doesn't have many dresses for this summer. At a trip to Spotlight I saw some royal blue drill with white spots and knew it was perfect. 


It is actually a false cross-over (as you may have picked by the zip in the back), and is all sewn together under the sash, but the skirt crosses right over to the other side so it's not really obvious.It also means that it's not going to come undone with all the running around a 3 year old does.


It's a fiddly pattern, especially with putting binding around the armholes, and in some places you are sewing through 5+ layers of material, but otherwise not too bad. I won't be rushing to make another one though.

I just had to have a go at a handbag to match as well, and I think a nice fat headband is in order too. This is the handbag so far:

It has been modelled on a bag I found online, and when I can find the link I'll add it. I had to reduce the size by half so that the bottom is about 10" wide and it's about 7" high in total - perfect for a box of raisins and a little toy.


I'll try and get some pics of Chloe in it all when I get the accessories done.


ETA: website with the bag pattern is this one

Newborn Presents

A few people have been having babies recently and I enjoy personalising things for the new bubba. I did the fancy rattle cube recently, and teamed it with a baby towel that I embroidered the baby's name on. This is one I did for the latest new bubba:

 This little one also gets a pair of my favourite kids socks from Lamington (they actually stay on little feet!)

Rattle Cube - The Fancy Version

A friend just had a baby girl so it was a great excuse to try something that I had been thinking about recently. This is my way of mixing the cloth book with the rattle cube to make it a bit more interesting. The letters are her initials and the flower on the top has crinkly petals.

The crinkly petals were a bit of a challenge. After trying to sew a petal right sides together then turn right way out (not easy with plastic involved) I ended up drawing around a template onto a piece of felt, then sandwiching my plastic between that and another piece of felt, then sewing inside the lines I had drawn.

After this I cut along the lines and then zig-zaged the edges so that it was tidy and you couldn't see any pen marks.

I trimmed the ends of the petals until they were the length I wanted (I knew they would hang over a bit but I'm happy with that). I then cut a pentagon to fit in the middle so there wasn't a big hole in the middle. I straight stitched then zig-zaged the petals onto the material and once I had put the green centre on that was straight stitched then zig-zaged as well. Those petals aren't going anywhere!

The letters were put on a satin square with Heat 'N Bond then I zig-zaged the edges.

These are the squares ready to be sewn together.

Here's the final cube. I added a loop so it can be attached to things.

I'm actually pretty happy with this and a little sad to give it away, but I'm also excited to be giving it as a pressie for this new precious little bundle.

Pin cushion

I have spent far too many evenings looking at craft blogs!

I found this cute pincushion on one and realised I needed a pin cushion so here is my version:

I folded my circle wrong so ended up with more segments but it still worked out OK. The ribbon you can just see at the top is to hang it from my bobbin winder while sewing.

Bibs

I felt that I needed more bibs and had my nice green microfleece from Greenbeans so I made some.

The first was from a pattern I found on the internet, and of course I can't find it again (sorry!). I really like that it does up at the side which makes it much easier when Alex is lying down or in his car seat. It has microfleece on the front and toweling on the back. Not in the photo is the dome I added to do it up with.

This works really well at catching the food but needed to be a bit bigger so the next one I squared the bottom and widened it a bit. Next time I will make the transition from the neck bit to the square bit a bit less angular. The white bit is microfleece so is nice and soft around his neck. The bottom navy bit is flannelette and again it has toweling on the back. I quite like the look of this one with the contrasting colours.

I have just ordered some more microfleece so will have a think on how I will do the next one.

Soft Baby Book - take 3

I have been having so much fun with these that I thought I'd try one for my nephew. I changed things up a little with different colour pages and couple of different ideas.

Warning: Photo overload :)

The apple has plastic in between 2 pieces of fabric so it crinkles. It's only sewn at the top.

The body of the sheep is microfleece.

Shark with rick-rack waves.

Shapes that can fold down/up/sideways.

Rugby ball that has batting underneath to make it squishy.

Truck with fluffy velcro tipper.

Boat with satin sails.