Late night madness

T went to bed early last night, so I took advantage of the time alone to go a little crazy with the craftiness. First off, I finished a sundress for my friend's daughter, Sofia. We like to joke that she and E are BFFs, and I love having other people to make stuff for.

I went a slightly different route with this one and actually cut the top instead of just folding it down, which I'm not sure if I like as much. But I thought that adding a seam would take away some of the stretchiness. I also used ribbon for the straps, so that I wouldn't have do any measuring. But I think they may be a little short. We'll see when I give it to her later today. I may have to make some adjustments.

I also made my very first hair clippies last night. I've had all the stuff to make bows & clips for a long time now, but I've just been too lazy to bust out the hot glue gun. Somehow, having a baby (well now I guess she's actually a toddler) roaming around is not very conducive to working with hot glue.

I have to say though, making these things was really not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I mean, glue ribbon to metal. Done, right? Well, I don't know if I have the wrong kind of glue gun (low temp vs. high temp), but it was really hard to get the ribbon on there before the glue hardened up and dried. So I spent a lot of time picking off gobs of dried glue. Bleh. Not the neatest job in the world (wow, I'm really noticing now how crooked the ribbon is), but for a first effort, I'm not going to beat myself up over it. They actually look better in the in person since they're teeny and farther away. Ha!


I figure I'll get better at it if I ever decide to make more. As it turns out, E's just not really a hairbow kind of girl. She needs something to keep the hair out of her face, so we'll see if these will fly. Oh, the white fuzzy stuff peeking out is the fuzzy part of a strip of velcro. I thought it might help them hold better since E's hair is a bit fine and a lot of clips just slide out.

Last, but no least, I also used my fancy new iron to give fusing plastic bags another go-round. My first effort (with the old, crappy iron) was...well terrible. I don't know if it was the iron or the type of bags I used, but it was all ugly and wrinkly and not very "fabric-y," if you know what I mean. This time, I decided to use all Target bags and it came out much better. Of course, I have no idea what I'm going to do with this just yet - maybe sew some kind of bag or pouch to put wet swimsuits in.


I am totally on a roll now! I'm going to try my hand at another type of dress tonight. And tomorrow I'm going to learn how to applique! Woohoo!

Gotta show off a little bit

Here's a pic of E in the dress. It was a wee bit cool for sleeveless, so I put a white tee underneath.

I finally got to finish it up this morning after she got up and I was able to measure how long the shoulder straps needed to be. I think it turned out pretty much super cute. I can't wait to make more now.

On hiatus

Between playdates and travel, the last few weeks have been very very busy, so I've been on a bit of a crafting hiatus. But T was out of town this weekend which actually gave me the opportunity to haul the sewing machine again after I put E to bed. I started off with some more babylegs, made by request for a mom from local mom's board. I love the patterns - they're so cute. Now that E is walking, I'm actually a little bummed that I don't have an excuse to put any babylegs on her until the weather gets cold again. (Forgive the crappy quality of the picture. I was in a bit of a hurry.)

I also finally got around to working on a sundress for E. It's a pretty easy project because the material is already smocked when you buy it, so all you have to do is sew a seam up the back and add straps. I'm still pretty proud of myself though, since it's the first garment that I've ever sewn for E.

Next up, I'm going to try to make a pillowcase dress, or some version of one. I'm also going to a sewing night next weekend where I'm (hopefully) going to learn how to make an appliquéd tee.

Crafty links

I know I have a couple sets of links on the sidebar, but lately I've come across some random fun stuff that I thought I'd share for the other crafty types out there.

First off is Shana Logic, which is a cool little shop with lots of really funky stuff. Some of it is kinda pricey, but it's good for some inspiration if you can't afford the price tags.

For all you sci-fi nerds out there, I found this crazy contest to make your own Cylon on Make Magazine's website.

Another magazine site I like is Craft Magazine. If it weren't so darn expensive, I'd love to get a subscription ($35 for 4 quarterly issues!), but I'll settle for the scraps I can glean from their website. I'll confess that part of the appeal is their nice clean design. And just ago, through Craft, I found my way to Etsy Labs, where, among other things, I found a great tutorial on fusing plastic bags! [Sidetrack: despite my efforts to use cloth shopping bags more often, we are constantly overrun with plastic bags which pile up and up under our sink and in the garage until either T or I get so fed up we make a special trip to the store just to recycle them. Bleg.]

I kind of randomly found Whip Up, I'm not sure how. But they have a lot of cute stuff, including interesting takes on what I would otherwise have written off as boring patterns.

Through the local moms board I'm on, I found Craftster and Instructables. Craftster is another message board, but there are lots and lots of great ideas and tutorials on all different sorts of crafts, from knitting to sewing to jewelry-making, scrapbooking...you get the idea. And you don't have to sign up to view stuff, so you can just poke around if you want.

Instructables is a bit more random in the type of stuff on there, but most of it is pretty entertaining, even if it's something you'll never make in your entire life, like say, a duct tape shoe, or a Bratz doll knife block. A lot of the stuff on there involves using power tools, so I kind of put it more towards handy rather than just crafty.

And I can't post a set of links without including one of my favorite knitting sites, Knitty.

quickie

The beanie visor ended up fitting perfectly! I couldn't help but show off a little bit with this picture. I'm thinking about making a few more hats like this for some of my friends with older kids.

Old & new

I've kind of been slacking on the knitting lately, but I went to a little knitting gathering last weekend with some other moms. It was nice to have a night out, even though only a minimal amount of knitting was done, and it did kind of "recharge" me to start some new stuff. I decided to try to make a felted bag using a pattern similar to the 'squares' hat the I recently made for a friend. Pictured at left is what I've got so far. It's turning out to be a bit narrower than I thought it was going to be, so now I'm debating whether to really felt it or not. Also, it loses so much length in the felting process that it may take me a hundred years to make it long enough pre-felt. I originally was shooting for a tote bag, but I may just leave it as is, sew a lining, and slap some wood handles on it and call it a purse.

Oh, I also finally got my second dishcloth done. It looks pretty much the same as the first one, just different colors. I like the variegated yarn a bit more though. It's a little more interesting. I really like this pattern as it's really easy and mindless to knit, so it's good for doing in front of the tv. The bag I'm working on...not so much.

I'm still working on finishing up the needle roll from the knit along. I don't know what my problem is, I just have to do the cables. I think I've just lost interest in it as a project.

I've got the sewing bug lately and have a lot of things that I want to get started. I bought a bunch more flannel to make bibs. They had some really really cute prints at Joann the other day, and I couldn't resist. I'm hoping to get some sewing done this weekend.

Animal Crackers

Today I hosted a sort of birthday party for a bunch of kids that are all right around E's age. As per my normal obsessive compulsive self, I decided that I had to make something crazy. So I decided to make some fancypants animal cookies. I will say though that unlike my usual, I did do a little bit of forethought and planning this time around. I took advantage of the fact that my in-laws were here all last week, which gave me time to bake the cookies over the weekend and at least get started on the decorating.

One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that the icing on these types of cookies takes forever to dry. So you usually have to do one part, like say, the outline, and then give that time to dry. Then you fill in the middle part and that has to dry (usually overnight), and then any little embellishments have to be done last and allowed to dry as well. So on average, between baking and decorating, they take about 3-4 days to make.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. I think that they could've been neater, but I always think that. The colors could've been brighter too, but I was trying to save time by just adding to pre-mixed colors. There were actually 10 animals in the set, but I skipped the monkey, polar bear and camel. The monkey just seemed like an odd shape, the polar bear seemed boring, and the camel just didn't seem to fit in with the others. In retrospect, I probably would've made more lions (I somehow only made one) and skipped the gorillas and rhinos. They were kind of blah. I think the giraffes turned out the best.