Sewing

Sewing Past and Present

Posted on by Amy

Miss has really been into sewing for the past couple of weeks. A few days before we left to come to my parent’s house, she said she wanted to get a “Princess Starglow” (yellow star-shaped princess character from a Care Bear movie) and asked if she could use her allowance that she has been saving to buy one. I told her I wasn’t sure if we could buy a Princess Starglow, and looked on the computer with her to see if anyone sold one. No one does. So she asked, “Can we make one?” Well. Okay.

I told her we could. She initially asked to make one with yarn. I told her it might work better to sew one. We made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to get some shiny material. I drew a pattern and traced it on the fabric. I was all set to get it ready to sew, and excited for her to have her first experience with my sewing machine. She looked at it and said, “No Mommy, I want a small Princess Starglow.” Apparently the pattern I made was too big. My girls seem to have a strong affinity for pocket-sized toys and dolls. I should have known.

When she protested the Princess Starglow I had started making it was just a day or two before we left for this trip. So I put the Princess Starglow makings out of sight and put the project on hold until we get home.

She’s been fine with that, but has still had “sewing” on her mind. Today, my mom got the girls to “sew” on some leaf-shaped lacing cards. Miss saw some light blue yarn and asked me to sew a Cinderella Dress out of it. I told her I couldn’t really do that with the yarn. She didn’t understand, since we hadn’t actually gotten to the sewing step in the Princess Starglow project, so she said, “But you could try, Mommy.” Oh boy. I can’t say no to that. I agreed that I could.

Before I got a chance to test my Fairy Godmother skills, my mom brought out something that took my back to the very beginning of my own sewing journey.

I started making this quilt when I was about five years old (that’s over 30 years ago, folks). My mom cut the squares from scraps and traced hearts on each of them for me to quilt.

I worked on it off and on for many (roughly 20) years. Some of the stitches are huge and very wobbly.

Funnily, I was just wondering about this quilt this morning when Miss was asking me about sewing. I haven’t seen it in at least a decade. It was awesome to see it again.

I have finished 19 of 35 squares.

Today I talked to my girls about us finishing the rest of it together. They were really into the idea. Lass repeatedly said, “Yes! We do it togevah (together)!” I think it must have been meant-to-be that I didn’t finish this as a girl. It will be so much better for me to finish it with them.

So, back to the Cinderella dress. I had no fabric. Just blue yarn. I cut the bottom off of a paper towel roll. Shaped it into sleeves. Wrapped the yarn around.

Miss was really excited about it. She loved it. She showed it to my husband. He said, “Oh cool, it’s Toodee!”

Toodee?!

C’mon! Really?

You can see it, right?

All that really matters I guess is that Miss loves it. Now she wants me to “sew” her a Cinderella to go in the dress. I’ve created a monster… .

Girls’ Rooms Made Over

Posted on by Amy
As I have mentioned several times, I have been crafting stuff for the girls’ rooms for the past few weeks.  I think it has been my form of nesting.  I am finally near enough to completion that I can reveal what I’ve been working on.  Here’s a look at Lass’s room.

I’ve already posted about how to do the growth chart.  If you want to know how, see the tutorial here.

This is basically what Lass’s room looked like before (check out how tiny Miss is in this pic!).  All of my girls’ rooms had fairly pathetic wall decor, so I decided to use a few ideas from Pinterest, add a few ideas of my own, and make them much more fun and interesting.

I got the idea for the fabric rings from Pinterest.  They are so easy and cheap and really make a big impact I think.  I am not completely happy with the balance of the circles in Lass’s room, so tonight I made a couple more circles and will try adding them tomorrow to make it look better.  But I still love it even as it is right now.

I also spruced up the other side of her room.

This is what it looked like before.  I needed to take this huge rocker and move it to Baby Sis’s room, so I brought Miss’s old reading chair in and added some shelves.

I love the finished product.  My mom made these curtains!

Baby sis’s room still has a bit of work to be done, but the wall above her crib is done.

This used to be Miss’s room.  We were initially going to move Sis into our third bedroom, which was previously a guest room, but at the last minute decided to move Miss in there and put Sis in Miss’s room.  The main reason was because we couldn’t find a good place for the huge rocker pictured above in the other bedroom.

This was Miss’s crib that we converted to a full size bed when she moved into her “big girl bed.”  We converted it back and Miss got a new big girl bed you can check out below.  I made a couple of crib sheets for Sis’s crib and used the bed skirt that my mom and I (mostly my mom) made for Miss’s room before she was born.

The biggest transformation has been in Miss’s room.  We painted it this green originally to match the fabrics for Sis’s room, but the color works just as well with Miss’s new bedding.

In her old room, Miss had rails on the sides of her bed.  She was ready to have those taken off, as the only thing they have been needed to keep in her bed for the past several months have been all the “friends” Miss had been sleeping with.  I got these planter baskets from Hobby Lobby and they have been a perfect way to keep the friends within reach, though not right in the bed.

This was Miss’s reading corner in her old room.  The chair went into Lass’s room, Miss got a bigger chair, and the bookshelf stayed where it is for Baby Sis.  It’s attached to the wall, so Miss got a new book shelf.

Here’s Miss’s new reading/vanity corner.  I got her this cute little vanity to replace the dresser that was in her old room (which stayed in there to serve as a changing table for Baby Sis).

She has adjusted remarkably well to this move, considering we decided to do it kind of last minute.  She loves her new stuff, especially the vanity.  I also took some fabric flowers (left over from the arrangement I made for her that you can see below) and a few upcycled food cans (I made sure to remove all sharp spots) that I painted in coordinating colors, and I put them in one of the blue boxes on her shelf for her to use to make her own flower arrangements.  This has been a huge hit with her.

After all the shuffling around of rooms and furniture and all the crafting and sewing I’ve done (2 growth charts, tons of fabric circles, two crib sheets, and three large cardboard initials), I’m extremely happy with the results in all the girls’ rooms.  I have to give credit to my husband for all the work he did to help (moving lots of furniture, putting up a chandelier, putting together several pieces of furniture, and many other “Honey-Do” tasks). One of the projects I’ve been really happy with is the cardboard initials I did for each of the girls.  The initials came from Hobby Lobby.  I used Mod Podge to come up with three different looks for them.  They were all very easy.

For Miss’s I used torn pieces of scrap book paper and Mod Podge.  I just put the Mod Podge down before placing each piece of paper, used enough overlapping paper to cover the whole letter, and then put a final coat of Mod Podge over the top when it was all done.

For Lass’s letter I started by painting it green, and then cut out these flowers from the fabric that I had used to make her crib sheet.  The fabric flowers got Mod Podged in place, and then I again put a final coat of MP over the whole thing when it was done.

Baby Sis’s letter was done by just Mod Podging some of the leftover fabric from one of the crib sheets I made onto the cardboard.  This one was a little bit more tricky to figure out the best way to piece the fabric to get the whole letter covered and still looking nice.  I started by cutting strips of fabric as wide as the depth of the letter and covering the inner “V’s” of the N first.  Then I just used one big piece to cover the front of the letter and outer sides.  I had to wrap around a little bit, but it turned out great.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks.  I still have a few more projects I would like to get done, but they don’t feel as pressing as these did.  Each of my girls has a pretty new look for her room, so I’m satisfied.

DIY Growth Charts

Posted on by Amy
I have been trying to get a lot of stuff done for the girls’ rooms before Baby comes.  This week was my target week to get things done.  For various reasons, I haven’t gotten as much done so far as I was hoping, but I did manage to finish growth charts for both Lass and new Baby Sis.  
Here is the one I made for Miss about a year and a half ago.  

I made this because I wanted a growth chart for her room, but I could never find one I liked or that would even remotely coordinate with her decor.  Frankly, I thought that most of the growth charts available for purchase were kind of gaudy.  At least those I looked at were.  I didn’t find any kind of tutorial for making my own growth chart, so I pretty much winged it when I did this one.  It turned out quite well, so I just used the same process with the two new ones.  Read on if you’d like to know how to do it.

Here’s what I used to make them:

Two yards of canvas duck fabric. For Miss’s I used white.  For Lass’s and Sis’s I got the natural unbleached color.  This type of fabric comes in various colors, so you can use whatever color you like.

Gesso and a gesso brush (or maybe a roller?) – For Miss’s, because I used the white canvas and wanted the background of the chart to be white, I obviously used white gesso.  You can also buy clear gesso, and that’s what I used for the two I just made to keep the natural color of the fabric (you would of course use clear on a colored canvas too).  I think you can also tint gesso if you wanted a custom color, but I didn’t try this.

Acrylic paint and paint markers to do the actual design, letters, and measuring “ruler” along the side.  Also a set of brushes.

12-inch wooden dowels – 1/2 inch in diameter (2 per chart).

Paint for the dowels – I used off white paint to match the canvas.

Ribbon for hanging the chart – I used 7/8-inch gros grain ribbon.

Two-inch stencils for doing the lettering of the girls’ names.

I got all of the above items at our local Hobby Lobby, so none of it is that hard to find.  For equipment, I used a sewing machine, staple gun, measuring tape, large cutting mat, straight edge, and rotary cutter.

Iron the canvas and then cover an area with gesso about 52-53 inches long and 13-14 inches wide.  The canvas below has two gessoed strips around the same size.

Paint your dowels.  Let the gesso dry overnight and then use your cutting mat, straight edge, and rotary cutter to trim it to 12 inches wide and about 51 inches long.  You might want to make it a bit longer if you think your child will be taller than about 5’10”.  That’s the maximum measurement on each of my girls’ charts, and the extra inches are to allow for folding over the edges to make pockets to slide the dowels in.

Speaking of which, fold the ends over about 1-1/2 inches at top and bottom and sew in place 1/4-inch from the end, leaving two pockets (one at the top, and one at the bottom).  Then slide the dowels into the pockets.  Cut 2 lengths of ribbon long enough to tie at the top and staple them to the back of the top dowel.  Make sure to staple them on an angle so they will be easy to bring together and tie.  Now your chart is assembled and ready to paint.

Use the measuring tape and a paint marker to mark the measurements along the side of the chart.  I started with 2 feet at the bottom and mark 1/4-inch intervals up to the top.  

Then I use the stencils to put the girls’ names at the top of their charts.  I just eyeball the placement of the letters, starting in the middle of each name to get them approximately centered.  Be careful to not use too much paint so it doesn’t bleed under the stencil and make sloppy letters.  I am no artist, but I added my version of “shading” by putting a bit of darker color in a few spots.

After that, the rest is just painting what you like.  As I said above, I am no artist, so I kept it simple with each chart and just did flowers in slightly different shapes and colors to match each girl’s room decor.  Here’s Lass’s:

And Sis’s.

None of them are perfect, but I’m okay with that.  Though I wouldn’t be satisfied with a sloppy end result, I’m okay with some slight imperfections.  That’s what I call “character” and it’s all part of making things yourself for your kids, in my opinion.  If you make a mistake, just gesso over it and try again.  Of if you’re using clear gesso, just find another way to paint over your error.  Lass’s chart has a bumble bee in one spot where I accidentally slipped with some blue paint.  Sis’s has a leaf strategically placed to cover a drip of dark pink.  When I made Miss’s chart, I gessoed some extra canvas so I could practice what I was going to paint.  Do whatever works for you.

My next project was supposed to be making crib sheets for Sis’s crib.  I found these beautiful fabrics when visiting my parents before Christmas.

The whole color scheme of Sis’s room is planned around these fabrics.  Unfortunately, when I went to lay out the fabric to cut it for the sheets, I realized that this fabric is 44″ wide, and the pattern requires at least 45″ wide.  I’m quite annoyed with myself for this mistake.  I did the same thing with the first fabrics I bought to make Miss’s crib sheets, so you’d think I would have checked the measurements before buying this time.  Oh well.  I’ll get it worked out.  I found a few coordinating fabrics at JoAnn’s to use for some other wall decor for the room, so I will head back there and to a local quilting store to see if I can find some fabric that will work with the color scheme and be wide enough.

I’ll use the original, inspiration fabrics for window treatments or something.  Lots to do still with only three weeks until my due date!

Tutus and Sleep

Posted on by Amy
I decided that I wanted some tutus for my girls, so I went to my favorite resource, Etsy, to find some. Except that I couldn’t quite find just what I was looking for. And while most of the tutus could have been custom ordered, I realized that I could make some cheaper than buying them. So, I made a trip to my beloved Hobby Lobby the other day. And I went nuts in the tulle section.

While we were selecting the tulle, I was telling Miss that I was going to make her some tutus, and she got quite excited. Then every time she saw the pile of tulle on the counter in my laundry room, she kept saying, “My tutu!!” I’m not sure that she really understood what a tutu is, and I had to keep explaining to her that Mommy has to make the tutus first. After a day or two I got my act together and looked around online and found a few good tutorials. The one I chose to try was this one. I pulled out my rotary cutter and cutting board and went to town cutting strips of tulle.
Knotted it around the elastic, and voila! The hardest part of the whole thing was taming the static electricity while cutting and knotting the tulle strips.
And now, an update on the sleep in our house. I blogged before about my efforts to get Lass sleeping through the night without waking up and needing to nurse to go back to sleep. I am happy to announce that after only about 3 nights, we managed to cut out middle-of-the-night feedings. Hooray!
For about a week she was still waking up a few times at night and fussing a bit, but always managed to get back to sleep on her own. We have now had one night of 7pm to 7am sleep without waking, so I’m hopeful that will be the norm now. What a good girl!!
As for Miss, the transition to the Big Girl Bed has gone pretty well. The first night, as I posted previously, she went to bed with no trouble. She has continued to do wonderfully at bedtime. Naptime, on the other hand, was a bit of a struggle for a few days. Part of the problems was that I hadn’t really thought through how I would handle it if she repeatedly got out of bed (recall my complete denial that this transition would be happening in this decade and my resultant lack of preparation for it). So day one of Big-Girl-Bed naptime found her getting out of bed to play, over and over, and me repeatedly going into her room and putting her back in her bed. There was a lot of crying (mostly from her) and frustration (mostly from me). Finally I heard her yell, “I have a big poop on my bonnom!!” So I went up to change her diaper and put her back in bed and just decided to stay in the room until she fell asleep. I sat by her door and she was out in two minutes. However, I didn’t really want sitting by her door that to become a habit. So, for day two, I decided to try something different.
Day two naptime I decided to just let her get out of bed, figuring it was fine as long as she played quietly in her room and that she would wear herself out eventually, get into bed, and go to sleep. Except that it didn’t work out that way. She played for at least an hour and then started screaming that she had a poopy diaper again. I suspected this was just her way of getting me to come in her room, but went to check her diaper anyway. Sure enough, there was no poop. I had a brief discussion with her about the importance of telling the truth, and then put her back in bed and decided to try sitting by her door again. This time she popped right up from lying down and said, “Hi Mommy, what you doing?” In spite of attempts to get her to lie back down and sleep, I finally realized it just wasn’t going to happen, so day two was a complete nap failure.
I needed to regroup. I needed a plan. I remembered hearing about something called “Sleep Rules” in passing before. So I Googled it. I found info about Dr. Weissbluth’s Sleep Rules strategy and poster. It says to try it with kids 2.5-3 years old. But I figured Miss could get it, so I went for it. Here’s the poster I made.
I changed the Sleep Rules a bit from the ones Dr. W recommends, but these seemed more reasonable for her. She likes to chatter while falling asleep and I don’t see any harm in that, so didn’t want to make “Stay very quiet” a rule. We review the Sleep Rules before every naptime. After each sleep (nap or bedtime) that she follows the Sleep Rules, she gets a cool puffy glitter sticker to put on the Sleep Rules poster, and when she fills all the boxes, she’ll get to watch movie. I’m talking this up like it’s the coolest thing ever, since she’s never really seen a movie, and I was worried this incentive would be a bit ineffective. But she also gets stamps on her hands, feet, legs, etc., and sometimes another sticker from one of our books.
And it’s working!!! The first few days I still had to go in once or twice and put her back into her bed. I just said, “Stay in your bed” and eventually she did. Now she generally doesn’t even get out anymore.
So. Tutus, cool. Sleep, fine. But wait! Now I will connect these seemingly unrelated ramblings into a coherent, logical blog post.
As I mentioned above, most days the reward for following the rules is a sticker and some stamps. But a couple days ago, I decided to let the tutu be the reward. As I was putting Miss down for her nap I told her that if she followed the Sleep Rules today she would get to play with her tutu. She seemed so into the whole tutu thing, and I was so excited to see how much she would love the tutu I made for her. Unfortunately she woke up from her nap (she did follow the rules!) a little crabby.
She just wasn’t really into the tutu. At first she didn’t want anything to do with it. So I just put it on the floor and she decided it might be okay to sit on it.

She liked the way it feels.

She finally decided to put it on.
She got about this far and changed her mind. “I no yike it tutu.”
We left the tutu for a while. Had a snack. Went to gymnastics. Came home and had dinner. And then we tried the tutu again. She liked it much more.

She even shook her booty in it a bit.
In general, she doesn’t really love it as much as I thought she would. I was kind of expecting that she would put it on and refuse to take it off. She likes to play with it but doesn’t put it on much. But she is just at the beginning of the loving-to-dress-up phase. So the tutu will go into the dress up box and I suspect it will be worn as the dress-up love grows. She may be a fairy. Or a princess. Or a ballerina. Or something completely unrelated to tutus. I could see her as a tutu-wearing dinosaur or something equally fun. I will make more tutus. I have to. I still have 3 lbs of tulle in my laundry room.

Check out these fabulous pants

Posted on by Amy

Yep, those are the pants I made with my own two little hands. Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about making Miss some pants like these? Well, I finally finished getting the ruffles on them last night and tried them on Miss today. I am seriously so proud of myself for finishing them so that they look like what I wanted them to, and for only about $5!! When I showed them to my hubby last night he said, “You made those? Wow, those are cool!” And not only did I make them myself, but the ruffles I did without a pattern! I had a basic pattern for the pants, which were easy, but then I had to figure out how big to cut the ruffles, how far apart to space them, etc. I already knew how to gather them evenly, because my mom showed me how to do that when we made Miss’s crib skirt last year. She also helped me decide on which size of the pattern to make when we discussed this project some time ago. Really my mom taught me everything I know about sewing, so thanks Mom! Check out how perfect the pants look on Miss.
She enjoyed trying them on today and flounced about a bit, kicking her legs to admire the ruffles.

As much as I am pleased with how the pants turned out, I do need to shorten the waist elastic a bit. I was so concerned about making the pants big enough to fit over Miss’s cloth-diaper-fluffy bum, that I ended up leaving the waist elastic just a little too long and the pants kind of fall off a tad. I also plan to make a few changes to the next pair I make, like double folding the hem on the ruffles and serging all the seams if I can get a serger, because I am having a slight problem with fraying on this pair. Otherwise, I’m thrilled with the result of this project and really want to make more. First though I need to get some things done for Baby Girl’s room, like her crib sheets, crib skirt, and a new cover for my boppy. So, no more baby couture until I have those projects done, hopefully soon. Then, more pants and maybe some bloomers too!