Playground Love

I’m not sure it it’s just a little girl thing or not, but most of  our time these days consists of playing in the play kitchen making food for A’s dolls. Most of the time we are getting ready for some one’s birthday party and need treats. I’ve been making a few pieces here and there so here is my tutorial for making donuts (ironically, these look much better than the real thing, except for Honey’s of course!)

You will need:

• 1  sheet of acrylic felt
• 1 sheet of acrylic felt in a contrasting pretty icing colour
• embroidery thread for sprinkles plus embroidery needle
• regular needle and thread
• stuffing (old pillows work great)
• something circular about 6 inches in diameter to trace ( I use A’s wooden stacking ring for a disproportionate amount of crafting these days!)

1. Lay your circles down on the acrylic felt and trace them. Make a centre point and a smaller hole- about 1.5 inches. Cut them out. You will need two.

2. Lay right sides together and sew all around the larger (outer) edge with the regular needle and thread.

3. Turn the donut right side out. Begin sewing the smaller circular edge but leave about 2 inches unsewn. Stuff all the pillow stuffing through this hole. Sew it up tight.

4. Using the same size large circular object, trace another circle and draw a hole inside. Instead of following the chalk line all the way around the circumference, I cut the circle in a wavy pattern, mimicking the drippiness of icing.

5. Take contrasting embroidery thread and make large haphazard stitches over the icing circle. This is the icing wrong side facing the camera as you can see the stitching crossing over and the knots. Sorry!

6. Using the same colour regular thread, blanket stitch the icing in place over top of the sewn up donut (sew right side of icing facing up on top of right side of donut). Don’t forget to sew the icing to the donut hole small part too!

Enjoy!

xok

The world is a vampire….

Music geek that I am- the title of the post has been swimming around in my head for days, along with the Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet With Butterly Wings…. In case you are in need of a girly costume idea- here’s one that kids of all ages and girls going to parties can use- with a bit of tweaking of course!

So for Halloween Amina wants to be a butterfly. To be fair, I only gave her three choices- bumblebee, butterfly or ladybug. I was relatively certain that I could get a decent looking costume out of one of these three options made in time for Halloween.

First: the butterfly body-

I used an old pattern for a dress that I had created a while ago and added on about 1/2 inch to the seam allowance as this would be going on over jackets, etc. I also used material that frays really easily but is lovely and irredescent. This meant that I had to cut out the pattern twice, sew the good sides together, stitch and flip right side out and begin sewing them together. This saved time finishing the seams once the garment was sewn and I’m happy with how it turned out. If you don’t have an old bodice pattern laying around, you could trace a tank top and cut the back panel down the middle from top to bottom. These are the three pieces I ended up with: front panel and two smaller back panels. The dress will fasten up the back with velcro- this will get it over A’s head.

I sewed each of the shoulders and the underarms and created this:

Next came the skirt part of the dress. I went for bubble look as I wanted this to be bug-like.I took about 2 metres of fabric, about 2 feet wide and halved it so that it was 2 metres by 12 inches.

I basted the long seam together and then basted 1/2 inch from the bottom of the fold so that I could threat an elastic through. Next I pinned the unfinished end to the bottome of the bodice. I left 1/4 inch on each side of the skirt so that the back could be sewn up. I began pucker pinching the skirt to the bodice so that the skirt would have a tonne of volume. After sewing this- I took about 14 inches of elastic and threaded it through the bottom seam and sewed the elastic shut. I finished up the back by sewing from the bottom of the skirt to the bottom of the bodice.

I attached some felt pieces to the insides of the back of the bodice so that it would fasten properly but still give lots of room to get over A’s head.

Pinned them in, attaching them to the inside of the bodice so that they wouldn’t be seen when being worn… and sewed them.

I attached a sequined elastic down the front of the bodice and then into the skirt, where it bunches up really nicely and gives a really nice bubble effect.

A practicing her butter-fly moves. Har har

Next: the mask:

I used some sunglasses for inspiration and cut out a pattern with the left over felt I had. I glued some feathers to the inside of the front pieceo of the mask and I sewed elastic in between the two pieces of felt. I also tried them on a few times to make sure she could see out of them am still stay on her head.

I embelled with sequins and fabric paint and hopefully, A will wear this out and about!

Finally- the wings. I used two white coat hangers for the wire frame and unbent the hooks to start. The white ones work really well because they seem less strong and more bendy. Next I turned them into butterfly shapes. I laid them ontop of material that was doubled and used chalk to trace a pattern, leaving about 1/4 inch sewing allowance.

After cutting out the wing, I pinned both sides together and sewed about 3/4′s of the wing all the way around, starting from one of the pionts near the hook. I flipped the wing right side outwards, and slotted the bent hanger inside. I folded down the frayed edge and pinned and then hand sewed all the way around the wing to give it a nice finished look. I did this for each wing.

Next, I cut out different felt shapes and glued them on with crazy glue- I did four copies of each shape- for each wing there would be a mirror image on the other wing + front and back. I decorated with glitter glue, fabric glue and sequins.

Tomorrow’s project is getting the wings attached together and getting the elastic for the arms sewn and attached. I’m planning on attaching the wings together by trimming the hooks off and wrapping duct tape around the remainder. Next I will wrap some felt to make it comfy. In the meantime, I will sew some elastic arm bands for A’s arms’ to go through that will hold the wings to her back- I will probably use a method like the one in the felt crowns post, but will ajdust accordingly.

I can only hope that A will actually wear this on Saturday. It’s been really fun conceiviing the idea and seeing it through till the end.

I’m a bit torn, well actually a lot torn about trick ‘r’ treating with her as we are not a candy crazy family. I went to Costco and tried to find some healthy alternatives to hand out- I picked some fruit leathers and some Annie’s bunny snacks. I’m also considering leaving a bowl of mandarin oranges out front for anyone to take as they please but am worried the candy police will be called to my house and all oranges will be confiscated and replaced with a bag of Hersheys. And that a news crew will show up in front of our home and declare me a crazy razor blade injecting wacko. Am I crazy for wanting to hand out something slightly healthy and not endorsed by Big Candy? Am I depriving A of all her rightfully earned candy goodness that every child dreams of? Am very torn. It’s not like M and I will raid her goody bag for treats for ourselves as we both don’t like candy and are big chocolate snobs. Hmph. Perhaps we can use the collected candies as more potty incentives. Yes! Potty incentives. Great idea!

Well, A is spending the night with her grandparents and I am going to stay up to the wee hours reading my latest library acquisition- Girls of Riyadh- and enjoy my sleep in with an uninterupted cup of very strong coffee before going to work. Ah- a night off. Well deserved and much needed. Good night!

A few weeks ago, some mom friends and I were bemoaning the seemingly perfect life of another mom who blogs prolifically and crafts incessantly. While finding this mama amazing and inspiring, we are all just a tad bit jealous of her as well.  Her life, or what we can glimpse of her (which is all she wants us to see) seems perfect- she seems awesomely capable of balancing a successful writing and crafting career while being a stay at home mom to four (four!) kids with the perfect family and relationship with her husband. We comforted ourselves with the notion that this blogging mama probably fed her children popcorn for dinner in order to turn out so many wonderful creations. Where this “evidence” came from I have no idea but we grasped at it and it stuck.

Although far from being a “perfect” parent (and let’s face it, how boring would “perfect” actually be?) I think I do a pretty bang up job most days. Yesterday was not one of them.

While hemming a new pair of pants, I bent over to look at the fit of the cuff in the mirror and did not notice the sword-like point of my cleverly positioned Ikea shelf. I found myself on the floor with my hands covering my left eye- too frightened to remove them fearing my eyesight would be gone, an eyeball would pop out or some other nasty fate.

As luck would have it, I got away with a very colourful bruise along my eye socket instead. But feeling down and out at the time, I was lolling about on the couch cursing my stupid luck with an edamame pack on my face. My daughter woke up and needed something to eat for a late lunch/ big snack. I hadn’t had any lunch earlier in the day as I was too busy turning myself into a pirate to eat and knew that I’d never make it to dinner.

So I made us both popcorn for lunch. I found myself silently chuckling as I roasted the kernels and also mentally toasted my blogging mentor- whether she makes her family popcorn for meals or not. What a great idea- popcorn for breakfast (which I know for a fact my own mother loves). Popcorn for lunch. Popcorn for dinner. Why had I waited so long to do this?

I knew this was the right thing to do as A and I sat on the living room floor playing doll house with her “guys” (a motley assortment of FP Little People, discarded mini-Cabbage Patch Kids figurines and weird unbendable dollhouse “family” members. After reaching both hands into the popcorn, she climbed up onto my lap and said “Mommy, I love you-my best friend.”

Ha! Take that popcorn haters everywhere. Also- I’ve been bribing her with Smarties to potty and it’s working.

We all have our little skeletons, don’t we?

Here’s my recipe for awesome popcorn- anytime, anyplace. Why wait for movie time? Have it now!

You need:

• a wok with a lid- the one I use has a glass cover
• vegetable oil- about 1/4-1/2 cup depending on how much popcorn you want, or enough to thickly coat the bottom of the wok
• 1/4-1/2 Cup popcorn kernels- or more (who am I to judge?)
• butter
• salt

Place the wok on medium. Pour the oil and kernels into the wok.  Place lid on wok- very important if you want to contain the popcorn. Gently shake the kernels every 30 seconds or so, so that they don’t burn to the bottom of the wok. In 1-2 minutes, you’ll hear and see the kernels popping. Keep shaking until the popping lessons to about once every 10 seconds or so. Take the wok of the heat. Add butter- the heat from the wok will melt the butter and you can stir in the salt to taste as well.

Yum- no microwave or popper needed!

Whoa! It’s been way too long since I’ve written! And it’s not been for lack of creativity that’s for sure. The cooler weather seems to have ushered in all sorts of crafty ideas and I am having trouble finding the time to get all my ideas to materialize! I picked up some extra hours at work but that seems to have settled  for now, so I’ve got some time to spend catching everyone up on what’s being crafted.

Our kitchen upgrade is complete. Check out the before and after photos of the cupboards and painting done. Now that the cupboards look so good, it sort of makes the crappy countertops and flooring look even crappier. Who uses granite floor tile on a countertop anyway? Gross. Our long term plan is to replace the countertop before Christmas and then cash in on the home reno tax credit for the kitchen upgrades and bathroom gut jobs we did and buy a new stove with the proceeds. Then we’ll have a kitchen that feels clean and nice and lovely. Send comments, I’d love to hear what you all think! (P.S.: Sorry about the wonky picture attachments)

Before

Before

After

After

With space at a premium in our household, I never really considered a permanent spot to set up my sewing things. But now that I seem to be back in the groove, setting up and taking down each night is a big pain in the butt, so I put my designing skills to the test and gave myself a whole 8 square feet of permanent sewing space. If my husband can have a whole room for guitars and keyboards, surely I can have 8 square feet?

This has meant relocating a number of household things, which just seem to landslide into moving other things and then other things….. I’ve been really trying to organize and get sorted during this process but it’s taking up a lot of time. Time I don’t really have when trying to put a fiesty toddler to sleep, keep the house “clean” and generally take some for myself, when I can find it. Oh- and quality time with my spouse. That’s important too! Except now I have to do battle with guitars and Lego. Don’t get me started about the Lego piles on the floor, the Lego robots on the bookcases and the Lego towers I topple over every time I move in the living room. I’m not talking about my daughter’s Lego, by the way. This is all my dear husbands!

First up: brought GG’s sewing machine into Mason and they are taking a look and giving it lots of love. The machine is a beaut but cannot straight stitch so I think a setting is slightly off. Thanks to my other GG for taking such wonderful care of it. Who knew the man of the house did all the sewing? A man truly ahead of his time.

Second: need to sell two things to make room for the sewing table. We have a cavernous but lovely asian sideboard that used to house our electronics and tv. It’s been storing sewing machines, fabric, notions and all sorts of things that we want out of sight. Now that has to go and I am trying to find new homes for everything it was hiding. Am coveting all sorts of antique suitcases and hat boxes on ebay. Who knows what I’ll end up with!

Third- taking the opportunity to re-paint the sewing table and paint and recover the stool that comes with it. Treated myself to some lovely Marimekko fabric yesterday and will place lovingly on top of the stool once the paint job is complete.

I will send photo’s once the space is complete, but thought I’d let you all know what I’ve been up to.

Crafting wise, I’ve been making:

• several wool diaper covers out of old sweaters (awesome way to recycle sweaters- I will document this in detail in an upcoming post because they are so easy to make!)
• diaper/ wet bag (instructions to follow in this post)
• knitting needle satchel (will not even try to explain how I made this as I kept changing my mind and redoing parts so that the stitching wouldn’t be visible. Definitely a challenge-and then I burnt with the old iron. Grrrr.) This was inspired by a satchel I saw at Collage Collage, an art studio I’ve been taking A. It was so lovely, I thought about how I could make something similar for my needles. You could store a lot of things in here- crayons, markers, make up brushes, etc.
• knitting a diaper cover that I’ve ripped out twice so far. Will the third time be a charm?

Here’s some pics and a how-to to make your own diaper/ wet bag:

Needed:

• 1 Meter PUL (polylaminated urethane) or other waterproof material like a really heavy duty nylon
• Matching thread
• 12″ zipper or one that spans the width of the bag
• 6 inches webbing

1. Fold material in half- this will give you enough to make two bags from and cut. Alternatively, put two 12″ X 14″ pieces of fabric together, good sides facing.

2. Place good sides of material facing each other and pin along the top where you want the opening and zipper to go.

3. Baste along the top- leaving about 1/4″ seam allowance. (Basting means a really wide straight stitch. This is so that it is easier to rip out, which you will see why in a moment).

Baste stitch top edge

4. Press open. With the PUL it was very hard to press- I just had to hold it open for the next step.

5. Place zipper face down on the pressed open seam. Pin to each seam. Sew in regular straight stitch. You can use a zipper foot for this, or if you don’t have one, you just need to do a bit of extra finagling around the zipper head. Leave the end near the zipper head unsewn. When you have stitched the zipper in, undo the zipper down to the other end, and the stitch in the part that still needs to be attached.

Zipper face down on sewn and pressed seam

6. Flip bag right side out and use a seam ripper to unpick the basted stitches used to make the original seam. Now you have a really nicely concealed zipper. Top stitch around the zipper to finish.

7. Place good sides of fabric facing each other again. Pin and sew each of the three remaining sides together. I added a bit of webbing to hang the bag up. If you want to add webbing- fold 6″ of webbing in half and stick in between one of the side seams about to be sewn and hold in place with a pin. Make sure that the webbing is inserted in between the good sides of the fabric- when you turn the bag right side out, the webbing should be sticking out.

8. Sew- turn bag right side out.

Now it’s good to go for holding wet bathing suits, wet clothes, dry or soiled diapers. Yay!

Another Homespun Salon coming up this weekend and Halloween to start planning for. A is dressing up as a butterfly!

Here are some books I’ve been getting inspiration from:

I have been experimenting with tie-dying lately. I’ve made several pretty cute t’s to date and have given them all away as gifts. Here are the pictures and instructions of the gift sent to A’s cuz in Quebec and to our friend Max.

A's cuz J, dancing in our living room in his tye-dyed T.

The pattern I used is a spiral. (The t-shirt was first tie-dyed pink and I used elastic bands during the 1^st dying process- that’s why there are white circles on the shirt).

Lie a slightly damp plain cotton t-shirt (or whatever it is you want to dye) on a flat surface. Using your finger, draw a cross shape to help identify the centre of the shirt. Using your thumb and forefinger, grab a chunk of material, lift slightly and begin turning.

The fabric will begin turning as well and you will need to keep adjusting your grip on the material. It is very important that while turning the fabric, it is kept snug. If too much dye gets in between the folds, you will not get the spiral pattern.

You should keep turning until the fabric is snugly wound into a circular pinwheel shape.

Slide two elastics over the material to form a cross and one to go around the base of the pinwheel. This will keep all the fabric secure in the dye bath.

All the supplies for the project were bought from Maiwa (synthropol, Procion non-toxic dyes, + soda ash and household table salt)  If you live in or around Vancouver, you will probably know this store. There are shops in East Van and on Granville Island with both artisan crafted items and a shop for supplies. Alternatively you can look on-line.

I followed the instructions that came with the dye but changed the amount of water, dye and salt recommended as it called for enough water to dye 3 adult sized t-shirts. Here are the instructions from Maiwa: http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/procion_mx.pdf- I used probably 1/3 of what was required but stuck with the recommendations for the amount of dye as I wanted really vibrant colours. Iused the hand dying portion of the instruction sheet. You could probably use RIT stuff to dye the fabrics as well, but the Procion stuff is non-toxic and I liked that aspect as the shirts and onesies I made are all for babes and toddlers.

The dyes are supposed to be very colourfast, but I’ve had some feedback about them running so be sure to hand wash in cold seperately (I know not what you want to hear when you do many loads of washing with kids in the house!) and lay flat or hang to dry.

Lot’s of fun to wear, or buy some babydreadz and dress your kid up as a hippy for Halloween! Harhar.

Here's a great picture showing off the spiral pattern. This was for our friend Max's 3rd B-day.

Be sure to check out the “summer fun” page as it’s been recently updated with more indoor activities for babes. More to be added as the monsoons are coming.

More crafts on the horizon! I’ve taken a bit of a break from all the sewing I had done earlier this summer as we suddenly decided to upgrade our kitchen. Cabinets, paint, screws + f-bombs flying all over the place. Sanity has returned to our home and I am really keen to get started on some new projects. I had M re-wire my grandma’s sewing maching, now I just need to figure out how it works! I have found some great diaper cover patterns that I am going to try out as well, so I’ll be posting those when I’ve got them underway. And lastly, a Homespun Salon, a night of crafting and conversation, hosted by the lovely Doula Bonnie coming up this week! Lots to look forward to.

It feels like we’ve been insanely busy lately! All three of us had birthdays in the past few weeks. For my birthday, A spent the weekend with her grandparents in Abbotsford meaning, M + I had a dinner (Maenam- rating: awesome!) and a movie date (The Hangover- rating: meh, funny in parts)!

For M’s birthday, I surprised him with tix for the Phoenix Suns + Portland Trailblazers pre-season game at GM place. Although he checks the NBA site daily, somehow he hadn’t heard about this game! What a surprise!

So- goodies for you today include:

1. Pics of a dress…

…Made for A last year when I enrolled in a sewing class with the VSB’s Continuing Education. I pulled this out of the closet yesterday and am so happy it fits her. I had completely forgotten about it. I am so glad that I took the time to learn proper terminology and techniques for basic-intermediate sewing. I found out neat things like the existence of zipper feet, how important pressing and ironing can be and had a lot of fun in general creating all sorts of things.

In addition to the dress, I made a reversible blanket that is water resistant on one side and a fuzzy orange fleece on the other. This is really light weight and stuffs really neatly into a stuff sack made with the same purple water resistant fabric, a recycled rainbow guitar strap and a clippy thingy (so my terminology hasn’t advanced since the end of the class March 2008).

2. Pics of the sewing machine…

…I have been gifted with by my grandma. I am a bit daunted by all the fancy functions, but awed by it’s amazing construction (it’s metal, folks- not plastic!), comes in a great tiny fold-out table with matching stool (which I will repaint and recover), and also comes with an assortment of fancy add-on bits and bobs   (I see a zipper foot, yay!). I am really excited to get this up and running but first must track down an on/off switch which was sheared off during the packing for my parents’ WPG to YVR Cross-Canada Couch Surfing adventure.

3. Pictures of the birthday banner…

…I made for A’s party a few weeks ago. I used acrylic (the purple and white)  and wool felt (green) for this project. I had never used wool felt before, it’s got a really nice weight to it, where as the acrylic is almost a feather weight. Wool would not have worked with the crowns I made as birthday goodies.

I cut out a bunch of triangles, sewing the short edge over about 1/4 inch and threaded some yarn through to hang the banner from. I cut out rectangles of white felt to make the letters so that they would all be the same height and width and used scissors to design the letters from there. Easy and re-usable! I’ll be able to use this for many birthdays to come, and the “Amina” part of the banner can be detached and used for  or anyone’s birthday celebration.

4. Pictures of some scarves…

that Heather and I dyed up the other week. Kool-aid and food colouring does it everytime. When the scarves are all together, they actually smell faintly sweet- reminds me of my childhood. Although I can’t really remember drinking a ton of Kool-aid,  I do remember those silly commercials where the Kool-aid guy would crash through walls and things.

Hope you enjoyed! Upcoming projects: tie-dying and words of wisdom for camping with a toddler.

xok