elsie marley

I had a thousand ideas for the holiday ornament swap–most were crap or required way too much work, some were pretty good but I never wrote them down, and the best ones I thought of were things I could of done if I had thought of them sooner. Ultimately, something had to be made and this is what did. Little stuffed christmas birds. They are two pieces sewn together, but the tail is sewn perpendicular to the other seam. Does that make sense? I wanted to make something stuffed, but didn’t want to sew up 10 stuffing holes (that is my least favorite part) so I left the tail open, stuffed the bird, and machine stitched the opening to look like tail feathers. Oh, this is not making sense, but whatever. Some look like christmas seals, some like christmas chickens, but at least one turned out the way I hoped. They just need their hangers (loops, string, you know) and an envelope and they can go in the very large pile that will hopefully get to the post office monday morning. If you are in group 44 (represent!) they will be on your tree soon.

Two christmas presents done. I think I have started everyone’s gift, but finished a sad few. The starting is the exciting part; the hemming and trimming thread and finding a #@*% box to put them in is not. I’m desperately trying to get at least most of the gifts that have to be sent in the mail by friday, but I’m sitting here eating gingerbread cookies (stolen from my daughter’s St. Nick gift–thanks mom!). These two are from Sock and Glove, the japanese craft book (in english) by Miyako Kanamori. I have a few japanese craft books (in japanese) and I can follow all the diagrams, but always feel like I’m missing something. And I am–to fold an opening closed these are the directions given in the book: “Fold the back of the head like a caramel-candy wrapper.” It makes perfect sense, but how bizarre. These were a lot of fun to make. There was quite a bit of hand sewing involved, but they came together pretty quickly. The horse is actually a zebra pattern–same thing, right? That’s what I thought, but I should have made the mane longer to make it a little more horse like (equine, I guess). Oh well, he still cuddly. It’s pretty fantastic that these two came from two pairs of socks. There is a great pattern in the book for a sweater made from a sock as well. If there’s time (ha!) maybe I’ll whip one up for the elephant. I found this soft toy glove book as well with patterns for squirrels and bananas!

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.

The campaign is in full swing! All of Jack’s friends came out to support him: his beloved pie backed him right away, Hickety Pickety thought him a fine gentlemen, Jack Sprat wouldn’t think of voting for anyone else, and his wife made the lovely signs. So now it’s your turn. Get the word out–Little Jack Horner’s got the prettiest plum pie in the Holiday Smorgasbord! Don’t sit in a corner, go vote!

1.little jack horner sat in a corner 2.eating his christmas pie 3.he stuck in his thumb 4.and pulled out 5.a plum 6.and said what a good boy am I! I was short listed in the Softies Central Holiday Awards! What lovely news to wake up to. Little Jack Horner is a finalist in the Smorgasborg catagory. And he is in good company. There are a bunch of amazing soft toys in every category. The voting starts today and goes until Nov. 16th. So click over to Softies Central and vote!

After two days of two children whining non stop, I needed to reward myself with a little project. I started this digger months ago, but it sat in parts without it’s digger since then. So last night I watched some trashy tv (is there anything but?) and stuffed and stitched. I stopped working on it because I wasn’t happy with the design and because I wasn’t sure the digger part would actually come out. But it did. I never want to start working on the hardest part of whatever I’m making, but of course it always ends up being the most satisfying. I made some covered buttons for the button joints (do buttons with shanks even work for button joints?) but I liked the way it looked without them, so they went in the cab. There has been construction in our neighborhood, well, since my daughter was born and she points out all the diggers to me everyday. I thought it would be nice to make a digger for her that was a little on the girlie side. So there you have a slightly tufted, movable, flowery, digger. I’ve got another already cut out, with a slightly different pattern and I thought a patchwork digger would be cool. So more to come, hopefully.I think I’ll enter this into the Holiday Softies Central Awards (right under the wire) because I think it would be a great toy to find under the tree (if you are a 2 year old girl obsessed with diggers, that is).  Here are a bunch of other entries that I think are fantastic. Go look!

I’m working on my entry for the Holiday Softie Awards.  Well really I’m sitting on the couch whining to no one imparticular about being sick and trying to motivate myself to actually work on my entry for the Holiday Softie Awards.   So far it’s working pretty well, but there are a few more components and I’m a little nervous about tackling those.  I don’t want to give it away before it’s done, but you could probably figure it out.  Any guesses?Today, of course, was Monday.   So my daughter and I did a little craft project, but seeing as we are all sick it really wasn’t much of a project.  I taped a a big sheet of paper to a table (it would probably have worked better on the floor, but I didn’t want her little brother messing with it) and we colored little scenes for her toys:  a table she could draw food on, a road for all the cars, she drew a lake and I put in a diving board and some sea creatures, and a playground.  We color all the time, but I don’t usually think of getting her other toys “involved.”  She could add new things when she thought of them and her little people ate and swam and drove all around.  It made for a nice morning of rainy day play.

jack sprat could eat no fathis wife could eat no leanand so, betwixt them boththey licked the platter cleanHere they are staring at the clean platter.  The platter was kind of an afterthought actually (and I think it’ll probably end up as a rug in the dollhouse, because it looks more like a rug anyway) but it has given me a couple ideas for the dish who ran away with the spoon.   Jack and his wife turned out well–not quite as I imagined, but good enough.  I have this silly notion that if I can come up with the idea and draw it, then I can sew it.  When really I’m not a very experience sewer and even less experienced when it comes to soft toys.   These two, I think, are closer to dolls than to soft toys (if there is such a distinction).  And dolls are hard:  little limbs are hard, heads are hard, and hair is pretty much impossible.  I wanted Jack’s wife to have a little, neat bun, but instead she has a mass of wool dreadlocks rolled into a ball at the back of her head.  And the bonnet I made (pre hair) is a bit too small, but it matches her outfit–and it’s reversible–so it stays.On the other hand, I’m very pleased with how Jack’s hair turned out.  Granted there isn’t much of it, but it turned out just as I pictured, so I’m happy.  He is a little lacking in the accessories department, so I think I might whip him up a little vest to wear to dinner.Just one more picture, so you can see his wife’s apron.  I based it on one of Amy Karol’s aprons in Bend the Rules Sewing and I’m happy to say her patterns are just as fabulous in teeny tiny sizes.If you’d like to see more pictures of these two you can jump over to my flickr page.  Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

hickety pickety my black hen

she lays eggs for gentlemen

gentlemen come everyday

to see what my black hen doth lay.

This is the first of a series I hope to do. Obviously it’s based on the nursery rhyme “Hickety Pickety.” Though I recently discovered that there are two more lines: Sometimes nine, Sometimes ten; Hickety Pickety my black hen. So I guess some eggs are in order. I’ve always liked nursery rhymes, but now that I say it, it sounds strange. My mother would read to me all the time when I was little–from the big, black and white checked Mother Goose book. And because my sisters are much older they had babies when I was the perfect babysitting age and so I read to my nieces and nephews from the same book. And then came high school and college and cigarettes and boys and I forgot completely. But having kids made me remember how lovely those short, little verses can be. They aren’t as intricately constructed as Lewis Carroll’s books and poems, though he did have his way with some (queen of hearts, tweedledum & dee), but the language is still silly and bizarre. And they haven’t been boobified by disney like the fairy tales and really they couldn’t be–some are strangely violent. They are an odd mix of drinking songs and counting rhymes passed down orally. Which I think is fantastic.Jack Sprat and his wife are in the works, but as of this moment are headless.

owls for luka, originally uploaded by elsiemarley.

If you have a blog that is even marginally related to crafts you must make a stuffed owl. This is the number one rule of craft blogs. You cannot break it. I tried. And here I am making frikken owls. And I’ve only had this blog for a week.These were made from Moonstitches tutorial, which I would link to if I knew how (here it is), and really they were a pleasure to make. They are for a new baby boy so I make them with rugged, little boy fabric: cordoroy, denim, wool, and canvas. It was a little bit of a pain when it came time to sew their beaks, as all the fabric was quite thick, but I like how they turned out (if I do say so myself). This was my first attempt at embroidery and it’s pretty wonky, but I had a damn good time doing it.