Getting ready for pictures...

I am getting ready to take Athaiah's 1 year pictures so I found a picture that I loved and the baby had a pearl necklace on!  Had. To. Have. One. Of course if you want one-you can never find what you are looking for and the thrift stores are too far away to keep driving there and looking for them all the time.  I couldn't find any in the jewelry departments...so per usual I decided to make my own.

In the craft area of walmart(I know, I know, but that is all we have in this little town) I found some fake pearls-they were even cream colored.  Problem was they were too short and I wanted a necklace we could wrap around her neck a couple of times.  Since they were $1 for a strand I bought 4!  I then bought that cheap stretchy floss.  Now, I could string them all together and make it be whatever size I wanted.  It only ended up being $5 so not too bad in my book! I only ended up using 3 strands, and to tie the end off since the stretchy stuff never stays tightly closed I put a dab of hot glue on the end, just to ensure that if she pulled on it-as we all know she will, it wouldn't fall into pieces.

Done! And so excited...

 Next, she needed a headband-as every little girl does.  I also found at walmart some pale pink ribbon and some cream ribbon with roses already on it! Bonus in my book.  I had elastic at home, so that saved me some money!

I  made this sweet head band out of ribbon and hot glue, no sewing here today!

I bunched up the cream ribbon just a bit so that the flowers were a bit closer together, and then I made some really tiny pale pink rosettes to stick in between, so it had both the colors I wanted!  For the elastic I cut it about 1/4" shorter than what I needed it to be so it would stay on her little head.  I hot glued the edges together and made sure when I attached the ribbon it went over the connecting point so you wouldn't be able to see that in the pictures or while it was on her sweet little head!

So far that is all the crafting I have done to get her ready for pictures.  I will see if I come up with anything else as I'm not too sure what all the pictures will involve yet.  I was going to take pictures this weekend as it is supposed to be nice, but alas both kids have a cold!  I'm not feeling runny noses in the pictures...so we shall wait until maybe next week.  I still have to do Elijah's 2 year pictures, so I'm hoping I can find a good outfit for him to wear so I can get some good pictures of him as well while we are out taking pictures!

Alternate Toy Box

I took another old diaper box and turned it into a toy box for our basement.  This time I did it with mod podge and fabric! 

Here is what it looks like:

It was really easy to do.  You can kind of see the huggies logo through it so next time I may spray paint the whole thing a solid color so you can't read anything through it, or just use a darker fabric!

I cut the fabric out to size.  I wanted it to go down into the inside of the box and under it so that it would lay nice on the sides.  Once it was cut to size, I put mod podge on one side at a time and attached the fabric.  Continued doing this all around the box.  Then I tucked in all the corners on the bottom of the box and put mod podge on those.  Once it was all dry I added a top layer of mod podge to the bottom of the box to ensure that it stuck well and held in place.

Not to hard and of course it matches the chair that I just refinished!

Pacifier Carrier

I cut a piece of fabric 5"x10.5 " I measured this along the fold of the fabric, so the actual size would be twice this length.  I then folded it so that right sides were together.  Sew this up, but leave one of the short sides open so you can pull the fabric through so it is the right way!

Let's make the strap now before we sew up the next part of the bag! To do this cut a strip a fabric that is 2"x7" fold it in half(with right sides together) so it is 1"x7", sew up one short side and the long side.  Now push this so that it is right side out, and you have a strap.  I cut this in half and used half for the diaper bag strap and one for the paci strap.

Now fold that piece in half, and tuck in the strap that you made so you can attach it to another bag (in my case to the small diaper bag). Make sure you put this strap in one of the top corners that you are going to sew up! Sew up the two side seams.  This will tuck in your rough end that you left.

 I made it big enough to fit a soothie since those seem to be the biggest pacifiers!

Now you attach the snap to the bag.  I bought the kind that you hammer in and they seem to work really well and it doesn't take much time to do. I also attached one half of the snap to the paci holder and the other side of the snap to the diaper bag, so they can be easily moved together!

 Matching pacifier holders!

Everything matches! Makes me a happy momma!

Diaper bag-small

With another baby on the way, I decided to make a small diaper bag-big enough to hold a few diapers and wipes.  That way I can put both of the bags in one big diaper bag and I don't have to carry around two big bags.  Especially since they will be in different classrooms but Eli won't need much more than diapers and wipes, and the baby will need more stuff.

Here is the pattern:
First cut the fabric so that it measures 10" x 22". This was cut along the natural fold in the fabric so it is actually twice this size (just a side note).


Now fold it so the right sides are together and sew up the sides.  Remember to leave an opening so that you can pull the fabric right side out.  I left like a 3" hole so it was a bit easier to turn it the right way.

Iron so that it lays flat. You don't want any air in it or it won't fit in a small space, which is what we want.
Tuck in the raw edges that are left on the one side(you don't need to sew them up).  We are going to make a small strap to attach to the bag, so it can be attached to something such as the pacifier carrier.

To make the strap:
Cut fabric 7" long by 2" wide.  Fold in half right sides together and sew up the sides, leave one of the short sides open so you can pull the fabric right side out through this hole.  You may need to use a long stick, I used a knitting needle to help push the fabric through the hole.  Now you are going to cut this in half, so you have a piece that's 3" long. Now you have two to use, we will use the other one in a different tutorial.

Back to the main bag:
Now you are going to fold it in half again so that it makes a rectangle.  Place on of the staps on a top corner of the bag, lay it on the inside so it will end up on the outside of the bag.

Sew up the two side seam, your raw edge should be in these side seams. Turn right side out, and guess what you're almost done.

I then put a snap on the top middle of the bag (I bought the kind you hammer into place, really quick and easy to use and not too expensive).  I then put half of one snap on the middle of the strap.(I put the other one on the pacifier carrier strap so I can attach them together.) It turned out quite nice!

 Diaper bags with matching pacifier carriers, one for Eli and one for the baby girl!

Ruffle Skirt

I decided to make our little one a cute skirt!  Possibly one to wear to Uncle Matt's wedding in May, she will be 1 mo old at the wedding and I want her to look cute but didn't really want to go buy a big fancy dress since Elijah grew way to fast to keep him in any clothes!!

So here is the pattern.  I kind of made it up as I went as I had an idea of what I wanted and then just ran with it.  Also note, this is my first attempt at an elastic waistband on anything so we will see how it goes!  I think I am going to take the blue material that is left, and make Elijah a matching tie or bow tie onesie so they match.  Then maybe a skirt for me.... Just thinking out loud sorry.  Ok, onto the pattern.

Fabric strips for ruffles: 2.5" wide, 27" long

Fabric for base of the skirt: 18" wide, 9"long
Elastic 1-4" less than waist of the skirt
Thread and Sewing Machine

First cut out the Fabric for the width of the skirt and length.  I do not have a baby to measure this on so I had to kind of guess.  I used a newborn pant waist and a 3 mo dress and put it somewhere in the middle(hopefully it will fit).  You can adjust the sizes of this to fit any little girl in your life.  Just measure their waist and add some space for seam allowance and go from there.  Now hem up what will be the bottom of this rectangle.  That way you have a nice smooth bottom edge of your fabric with no loose ends to worry about.

Last sew the two ends together so that you get a circle which will be the base for your skirt.  You will then pin everything onto this one piece.  So it should be 17.5" around and about 8.5" in length just so you have an idea.

For the ruffles you will need them to be 1.5x the width of the skirt so you have room to gather as needed.  Hem the bottom of the ruffle.  Then you are going to do a gather stitch for the ruffle.

To do this you are going to set your sewing maching to the greatest stitch length (mine is 4) on just a straight stitch, also make the tension less.  Sew in a straight line.  Pull on the bottom thread(bobbin one) so that the fabric will gather, don't pull too hard as you don't want to break the thread.   You will need to pull on some of the fabric as well to help it along, just remember nothing too hard.  I cheat with the gather stitch and I only do one instead of two-it is quicker that way!

Pin into place and sew onto the fabric, I like to start at the bottom so I can see where I need to go. Easier for my brain I guess.

Add the next ruffle 1.25 inches up from that one, continue for the next 3 ruffles.

We are going to use the rest for the waistband and hemming!-This gives us a lot of room but I wanted a lot in case I messed up so you could probably cut like 2 inches off the top if you wanted, especially if you have done elastic waistbands before!

Now it is time to tackle the waistband. I'm new at this so I hope I explain this well.

First I sewed the top 1/2" down so it looked hemmed, just to give it a clean look no matter what happened! That is the easy part.  Next, we are going to fold the fabric over top of the raw edges so that we hide it.  I did this in an accordian style.  So the right sides of the fabric were together, but it still came out with the right side up. (I hope that makes sense, there is a picture below)

Inside view!

Outside view!








Sew the edge by the ruffles to cover up the top of the gathering.

Once it is all sewn, you are now going to insert the elastic waistband. Make sure when you cut the elastic that it is 2" shorter than the fabric.  It will make it bunch up more.

 Make sure when you put the elastic in that you pull it really tight and sew it up close to the elastic so it stays stretched. I would pull it tight, pin it in place, sew up to the pin.  Pull it again and pin it.  I repeated this until the elastic was all sewn in.

Sew the top part down so that it is all clean.  I did a zig zag stitch on the top just for extra flair.  It looked really nice in the end. The inside should look like below. You are now done! Not too hard right??

Roll up Car Mat

We couldn't find a good car mat that we liked and I wanted one that could roll up small and fit nicely in a closet and not take up a whole room.  Greg wanted one that the roads were the correct size so that one car could drive on each side of the road.  So I decided to make one.  This is going to be one of Eli's birthday presents since it is at the end of this month, and he got some match box cars for Christmas.  He is still a bit young to use it, but it sure was fun to make!

1/2 yard Green Felt
1/4 yard Black Felt

Red, Blue Felt- small amount of each as I made the structures out of my scraps from making the trains.

Hot glue gun/glue

I took my Green felt and cut it in half length wise, so like where the natural fold in the fabric was from the bolt.  This is the size piece that I used since I wanted it small.

Next I cut out my road pieces.  I decided to make them a square, with a one way street going each direction down the middles so it forms a t shape in the middle of the square.  I then hot glued all theses pieces onto the green felt.  (Note: when you hot glue them don't put any glue down the middle, this will make it really difficult later when you add your middle street line) I put them mainly off to one side because on one of the short sides I am putting a storage place for some of the cars so we can take it with us if we go somewhere.

Next I made all of the buildings that I wanted.  I made a lake(really small with a boat and some fish), a car wash, a house, and of course a gas station.  These were fun to make.  I put one in each of the small squares.

 

I then attached the blue felt to the side of the mat.  I sewed this on, but make sure you keep one of the long ends open so you can slide the cars into the slots.  I then sewed on the blue piece, to make pockets each one is about 2.5 inches wide so the cars can fit inside with ease.

I then attached one last strip of felt to the outside so that I could roll the mat up and tie it all together. I sewed it on first, and then I hot glued it on either side of the sewing just to make sure it stayed in place.  You could always use a cute ribbon, or put a nice backing on it, but I liked it simple! The last step that I took was I quilt stitched a line going all around the outside road down the middle, for the dividing line in the road. If I wanted to do it correctly I would have used yellow thread, but I only had white available so I used that instead of running to the store.

In case you want to make one the same size as the one I made here are all the measurements for everything I made (with the exception of the buildings)

Side road: 4"X11.5"

Top/bottom road: 4"X20.5"

Middle road horizontal:2"X13

Middle road vertical:2"X11.5

Blue car holder:4"X19" -each pocket is 2.5" wide
Green mat: 19"X 27.5"

Tie: 3"X32"

I hope this helps, and I hope if you have a little one that they may enjoy it to, as I know my husband is looking forward to playing with Elijah by the hour with this! Now we just have to wait until his birthday

Bib

I made a bib that I like! I made it for pretty cheap too, and plan on making a few more just because I can!

Tablecloth(those vinyl picnic ones)

This tablecloth that I used was one that was $3 after Thanksgiving at Walmart, and it will make a lot of bibs, but I'm trying to think of something else to make instead of like 24 bibs although I wouldn't ever need another bib.

I folded the tablecloth in half width wise(hot dog style??)  When it was folded in the bag it came in i just folded it back along with middle crease, it then is still divided into three parts(by fold lines), so one of those fold lines is wide enough for a bib.  I took one of Elijah's cloth bibs and cut a pattern out of newspaper, making it longer and a bit wider around the neck, so it will fit for quite a while as the cloth ones he is starting to grow out of.

I took this pattern, and cut out the shape.  I kept the right sides of the fabric together and starting at the bottom edge, went all the way around the bib.  Leave a small opening at the bottom so you can turn the bib right side out.  I then tucked in the edges and sewed up the last side.  I used snaps to attach it so you can put the bib on.  They are the kind that you hammer in.  I think it was like $1-2 for like 7 snaps so not too bad and no extra sewing involved. 

It turned out good, and makes clean up after dinner so much easier because I can just wipe the bib down, I don't have to add to my ever growing laundry pile.

Hat with earflaps!

I used size 3 needles for the earflaps and size 5 needles for the hat

Earflaps:
CO 3 (leave a long tail)
Row 1: knit
Row 2: k1, inc in 2nd st, k1
Row 3: knit
Row 4: inc in first st, k2, ins in last st
Row 5,6,7: knit
Row 8: inc 1 in first st, knit until last st, inc 1 in last st
Row 9: knit
Repeat until you have 20 sts on needles
Leave a long tail
*Repeat for the second Earflap

On Size 5 needles CO 18 sts, knit on one of the earflaps, CO another 18 sts, and knit second earflap onto needles.
Now you should have the base of you hat.  I didn't do anything fancy...so knit until the hat is about 4in
You will now start to decrease for the top of the hat.
1st decrease row: Knit 5, k2tog (repeat until end of row)
2nd: Knit
3rd: knit 5, k2tog (repeat until end of row)
4th: Knit
5th: Knit 3, k2tog(repeat until end of row)
6th: Knit
7th: knit 3, k2tog(repeat until end of row)
8th: knit
9th: kni 2, k2tog(repeat until end of row
Repeat 8 and 9 until you have 6 remaining sts
Cut a long tail, and sew through remaining sts, sew up the side seam.

I then added two more strands of yarn to the bottom of the earflaps and braided them together, so if need be I could tie the hat on his head!

Bib-How NOT to!

So I thought that it would be a great idea to take the extra vinyl and the extra fabric that I had from redoing the highchair, and make a bib out of it.  Well it was a good idea in theory but let's just say never again.  It may have been because I have no brain currently (since I am currently pregnant again, with a nursing 7month old), but it was definitely an epic fail.

So I took one of Elijah's bibs, and traced it out on the fabric making the neck hole slightly bigger since his are getting a bit tight around the neck area.  I also made it longer than usual so that I could make one of those bibs with the fun pockets on the bottom.  I also cut vinyl out in the same way.  I had some leftover Velcro so I decided instead of buying snaps to put on it I would just use that since I had it sitting around the house.  So I was so proud a bib for free! hahaha funny stuff.  Not a good idea to use iron on Velcro on vinyl it starting smoking and obviously burnt through the vinyl.  So now the Velcro does not stick quite well, but it is fairly functional.  But anyway that is not how you make a bib. 

I also must add that the vinyl did not work quite well because we bought the cheapest one, and it worked great for doing it one sided on the high chair not great at all on the bib, lets just stay that it sticks like saran wrap to itself and nothing else!  So that was also a nightmare. 

Soo needless to say I do not plan on making this again since it was a total fail, but I thought I would let you know what not to do when making a bib! Hope that helps if you are ever going to make your own bib don't melt the vinyl and don't use the cheap vinyl as it will be a pain in the rear to try and work with!

High Chair Redo

I am trying to fix up some little things around the house and I noticed how yucky the highchair looks.  This highchair has been very good to us for the 1 month we have been using it but it is blue with little rocking horses and bears on it, not really my thing and it does not match the dining room.  I love for things to match so it was sticking out like a sore thumb so we decided to do something about that.

I went to walmart and found some fabric that wasn't too expensive I think it was $4/yd, but we only needed a yd so not too bad.  I bought a 1/2 yd of some red, green, and brown fabric and then a yd of the brown fabric with wonderful green circle/ovals on it.

So I took the high chair apart, and deep cleaned the whole thing again, scrubbed it down with bleach and then with some shower cleaner and it cleaned up quite nicely again.  I then took the top and bottom cushions and laid them out on the fabric and cut two pieces of fabric about 1/2 in bigger then each cushion. 

I then took my lovely accent fabric and measure the outside edge of th cushions and cut my fabric accordingly.  This highchair was not one with fabric cushions on it, it had a cardboard like piece that ran on the backside of both and then it had a seam on the sides of it so I did that in the different color, just for fun.

Oh I forgot I also bought some vinyll.  I got the really cheap stuff it was 97cents a yd so we got 1 yard of that and I still have a ton leftover, especially since I decided to only cover the top pieces in vinyl so they could be easily wiped down when my hansome lil' man was done making a mess.  So I cut one piece of vinyl out for the top piece and one for the bottom.

I then took the bottom piece layed the vinyl over top of it and then I sewed the trim to it.  When that was done I took the other bottom piece and sewed it to the trim but I left one whole side open.  Since it was not just a cushion I could squish back inside of it, it had cardboard so I needed a big hole to be able to put the cushion inside of it.  I then did the same for the top piece.

I then stuffed the cushion in them and hand sewed up the last side.  I put it back on my highchair and voila I have a brand "new" highchair that I got for about $7 dollars.  Did I mention that the highchair was given to us for free.  So not a bad deal to spend $7 on it and making it look like brand new again, and I even got to pick whatever pattern I wanted I didn't have to just buy one I kinda liked at the store.

Pretty neat huh?