elsie marley

a little pair of baby shoes for a new little boy.  These are quick to make, which is good because I had to make four in order for two to be the same size.  It would be sweet to make a pair and fill them with treats for St. Nicholas day (december 6th–does anyone celebrate this anymore?), or tie them together and hang on the tree, or just make them for all the babies on your list–which is what I am going to do.  I followed the tutorial for Heather Bailey’s bitty booties and you can too.

holiday birthdays always get the shaft. I don’t have one, but have sisters and friends that do and I’ve heard many lectures on the topic (all riviting). The lesson always is never ever say, “this present counts for christmas and your birthday!” So go back to your christmas list, make a new column for birthdays and do these poor, suffering people a favor and make them a birthday present (you get extra points for wrapping it with actual birthday paper).

I made this train bag for a little boy, whose birthday is before thanksgiving (so it doesn’t quite count as a holiday birthday). I used this very clever tutorial and did some freezer paper stencils on the inside.  The stencils were not planned and really should have been, but oh well it’s not bad.  He didn’t seem to mind, but he is only 2.

click here to see all the faux bois builders.People love making forest creatures, so why not make the forest too. I tried my hand at this plush craze. But when it’s late and you should be in bed and not attempting to start something new, you don’t realize that if you make softie that looks like a cake that looks like a log it just ends up looking like a piece of wood. duh. I thought it was a genius idea to make a little plush buche de noel for the ornament swap, but it just looks like a sad little log. Oh well, I have a couple more ideas. My first ornament came in the mail today, so I better get a move on.

damn. I missed two days. Oh well, my husband pointed out that I was starting to phone it in anyway. I was going a little crazy trying to find things to post about for 30 days straight. And then I was with my sister over Thanksgiving and there was some celebrating and recovering from celebrating. I’ll try to finish out the month, but damn.

click here to see all the mushroom makers

just a couple more plush fads, because really where the hell do these trends come from? And since I haven’t stopped eating or thinking about eating since thursday, I give you 12 stuffed mushrooms. Once I stop patting myself on the back for the christmas presents I have made, I’ll make some more and post them for all to see.

click here to see all the amazing owl artists.

We’re on Thanksgiving vacation in these parts, so I’m going to keep going with theme and post about some plush trends for the next couple of days. And there is no trend bigger than the stuffed owl. Why is everyone who tries their hand at toy making compelled to make an owl? Hell, I even made a couple myself. What is it about an owl that makes people want to immortalize it with fabric and polyfil? It’s cool looking, but so are plenty of other animals and it’s not particularly soft and cuddly unlike others. Why do we find ourselves cutting out big googly eyes and little top hats to go on this beautiful bird? Who knows, but somehow every owl ends up looking completely different from the rest. Abby Glassenberg has recently added to this enormous owl family. Her owl is majestic and beautiful, just like the real bird, and somehow different from every other stuffed owl that came before it.

Just onne more bird. Happy Thanksgiving!

gobble, gobble.

such strange trends in the softie making world. please click on the picture to find out whose demented imaginations came up with all these wonderful dolls.

These all are (or will be) pockets for Denyse Schmidt’s shimy, shake, and bake apron. The first and the fourth ones I made with the pattern in her book, but I feel a little funny using a pattern for something that is made specifically to look unplanned and a little wonky. I can do wonky just fine on my own. So I just winged (wung? wang?) it with the other two and they came out just fine. The grey fabric was very thin and puckered quite a bit–can anyone explain to me why and how to remedy it? I don’t know if I’ll do it over, or leave it and just consider it extra homemade.

I do love me some egg fabric. I have reams of this stuff. why?

Today is Monday, so my daughter and I had a little crafty time together.  I wanted to try making a collage with contact paper for a while now.  She’s only just 2 and she hasn’t quite mastered the glue stick yet. We gathered our supplies: contact paper, tissue paper, leaves and twigs we picked up on a walk, and fabric scraps.  We slapped everything down –well, I arranged mine–on the sticky side and then put another piece of contact paper (sticky side down) on top of it all. It looked like this:

Then I cut out leaves and taped them to the window.  I think this is a good craft for the toddler set.  Tearing paper and sticky things are pretty exciting to my daughter so this project actually held her interest for a while.  Contact paper isn’t all that sticky, so the tissue paper worked best.  But if you are crazy like me and save the tiniest scrap, well they work too and I think thread would look nice.  Leaves work if they’re pressed (ours weren’t) and you get leaves in leaves at the end, which is exciting only to me.  You could, of course, cut any shape out: turkeys, christmas trees, vacuum cleaners, whatever.  When it came time for cutting, my daughter was already on to other things, but 10 quiet minutes is pretty huge.

just a little pincushion (from this tutorial) and a needlebook: christmas presents for a crafty friend.  Have you started making for christmas?  I pulled out all my old martha stewarts for ideas and some unfinished christmas projects from last year as well.  I started making stockings for my family, but never finished.   And though I don’t know much about sewing now, I really didn’t know much then–so there is a lot of ripping and rethinking before they can hang on our mantle.   I’m sure you have all seen the daily gift tutorials on Sew Mama Sew (if not, go look), but did you know Jane (from janeandtheducks) is posting christmas gifts she has made everyday.  Makes me feel like I’m sitting on my ass just a little too much.  So I’m going to get up.      right        now.

I posted about these little guys when I was working on them, but now they are all sewn up and ready to be wrapped.  Five presents down, many many more to go.  My sister (hi judith!) picked up this little tree at her local thrift store for me last summer, but I hadn’t taken it out of the box until today.  It’s a perfect little charlie brown tree! I can’t wait to put it in my daughters room and help her decorate it.  We went to Target the other day and had to go around and around their christmas display a hundred times. I liked christmas before, but christmas with a 2 year old is going to be ridiculously fun.