Take a Memo

A long time ago (though I’m only now getting around to adding it to the blog), I made a memo board for the Little Miss’s room.

I didn’t use any type of tutorial, though I’m sure there are many, so I’ll give the brief “how to.”  At least the brief “what I did".”  I found a couple of things that worked out really well for me: for the foundation, I used a piece of foam core board.  I split it in half and stuck the halves together.  The fabric is a fat quarter, which ended up being the perfect size to cover the board.  I added a little batting to it, and stapled the ribbons across.  The pattern of the fabric was great and acted as a grid so everything lined up nicely.

I was going to use buttons at the intersections of the ribbon, but those were a little pricey for the quantity I needed.  I found these beads instead and glued them on.

And done.  I guess I didn’t hang it very straight.

Here’s one I made a while ago for her sister.  It has a stretched canvas as the base of it.  Looking at it now, I notice that it also has a grid-like fabric, which is funny—I didn’t recall that when choosing the fabric for the Little Miss’s board and just picked the fabric I did because I thought the color was good.

Being Super

Influenced partly by her enjoyment of the show “Super Why” and partly by her super hero-obsessed guy friends, I tried to make the Peanut a cape.  (My plan is to make several, but I needed to make a prototype first.)  Upon allowing me to try the cape on her, Peanut announced that she needed an eye mask.  Back to the sewing room I went, but with a couple of minutes, some scissors, a piece of felt, and some elastic we were back in business.

I didn’t find a tutorial I really liked, so I just made it up.  I used a stretchy velvet so I didn’t even need to hem it.  There’s a casing at the top that I ran twill tape through and used velcro for the closure.  Thrilling!

Petal Peasant Top and Ruffled Halter

I had originally set out to make a top like this, but got distracted on the way by this super-cute idea.  I merged the two and made a peasant top with the flower petal embellishment.  And I must have followed the peasant top tutorial too closely, because I, too, made the shirt too short with the necessity to add length.

The flowers are so much fun!  Since I didn’t use a knit, like the original tutorial, I ironed some interfacing on the flowers before I cut them out.  I hope they make it through a couple of laundry cycles before fraying into oblivion.

My plan was to make the girls matching shirts, but I want more variety in my life.  I had plenty of the fabric for two shirts (which was on clearance at fabric.com) so I decided make a coordinating shirt and use a different silhouette. 

And I love ruffles on the little Miss, so when I found this pattern, I knew it was the one! 

In order to be really fancy, I cut the ruffles so the stripes would go in alternating directions.  (The original pattern suggests that I should cut the fabric on the bias, but I didn’t do that and hemmed each ruffle instead.)

The other change I made is that I was too lazy to cut and sew a tie out of my fabric, so I just used bias tape and zigzagged it together.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

The idea of hanging dress-up dresses on hooks in a little girl’s room is nothing new or overly creative.  In fact, I didn’t really make anything in this post—so not craftycraftyjulie, but craftycraftyhubby.  I couldn’t find a long enough hook rail that had the types of hooks I wanted (and the longer the rail, the more pricey the item), so I purchased a nice board and some hooks.  I did all of the math by myself and figured out the spacing of the hooks, but left the routering to the husband.  I’ve used the router before, and things didn’t turn out awfully, but it was just easier this way.  I did drill some pilot holes myself, but those were terrible.  I didn’t “let the drill do the work,” according to hubby, and I chipped a couple of places on the board.  Oops.

The Peanut has several dresses (and more clothes that I stashed away in the interest of keeping her room easier to clean).  The very best part, though, is that after her first day of playing with these dresses, I asked her to hang them all back up and She Did and Did It Without Any Help At All.  Success!

Ooh!  Fancy edges! 

(And a really mediocre paint job.  I hate semi-gloss.)

The Pants of the Family

This month is “Celebrate the Boy” month on a couple of my favorite craft blogs.  I don’t have any little boys to sew for (and the big boy who lives here would rather be nude than wear something homemade by me), but I found a pattern that I had to make anyway.

I am often frustrated with the narrowness of little girl pants—even when the pants themselves flare at the bottom, the thighs are sometimes in disagreement with the thighs of my daughter.

So I took the pattern, made a couple of edits (the original size is a 3T) and made pants for the Little Miss.   I chose a lightweight, fine whale corduroy and made a pair of loose-enough, elastic waist pants.  They’re as comfortable as her knit pants (I imagine—I mean, I don’t really fit into 18/24 months clothing) but are a bit nicer-looking.

They move with her, which is great because her 15-month-old self is interested in climbing *everything* these days.

 

And they even are great for an adventure outside, in which she tries to decipher whether or not she likes walking on grass.

(The jury is still out on the grass).

So I compared the pattern to a pair of existing pants of hers that fit well.  I know, in theory, that I could draft my own pattern, but I tried that with something else pants-related and it did not turn out as nicely as I imagined it would.  Anyway, I ended up taking about an inch off of each side, and some off the bottom, and they’re great!

I don’t foresee making all of my girls’ pants from this point forward, mostly because fabric always ends up being more expensive than I wish it was…

…which leads to the best part of these pants.  I had the thread and elastic on hand (yes, I asked for—and received—elastic for Christmas), but I purchased the fabric for a whopping 35 cents at JoAnn!  I had a coupon for $5 off a purchase of $5 or more.  The corduroy I used was $7.99 a yard, and I purchased 2/3 yard.  I was thrilled!

Too Pretty for Dishes

Since the first dishcloths I crocheted entered the service rotation before I could photograph them, here are the next two dishcloths I made.  Don’t worry, gentle reader.  These are the first—and last—dishcloth pictures I’ll post.  I assume that there are more in my future, but cannot imagine there is anything to be gained by chronicling each one.

Since the edges never turn out quite as nicely as I hope they might (or as they do when knitting), I made up a little boarder.  It’s a little bit ruffly.  It might have a name, but since I just tried something random in hopes it would turn out, I do not know that name.

One is for a friend, thus the fancy ribbon.

Also, I realized I don’t actually know how to stop crocheting (not in the grand sense of the word; I simply don’t know what to do when I get to the end of a project).  Help?

Hat Trick

After admiring a hat one of my friends had crocheted, I forced her to teach me.  I brought to the table a slight amount of yarn experience—I can knit a dishcloth over the course of several weeks, and I made some crochet chains when I was in middle school.  She promised me it was easy and I would be able to learn.

She was right.

It really makes a lot of sense, and once you get the hang of it, it goes fairly quickly.  I only spent a couple of days making this hat for the Peanut.  Of course, I didn’t eat or sleep during those 48 hours, but it only took me two days.

I even figured out how to make a (somewhat special-looking) flower, and my friend taught me this neat-o trim.

Since the first hat attempt was successful, I made a second.  This was I made in reverse colors for the Little Miss.

I used a different pattern for the flower and a fun vintage button I swiped from my mom’s jar of antique buttons.

The Little Miss doesn’t love to wear it, but is oh so cute in it!

Her big sister is a fan, though.

Since I was on a roll, I made a bitty hat for my friend’s sweet newborn!

I also made a couple of dishcloths, but those were called into service before they could be photographed.

Twirly, Whirly, and Gray

I needed a skirt for the Peanut to wear—her little sister had a dress and I needed something coordinating.  The Little Miss’s dress is grey wool, and I wanted something simple to go with it.

I picked up some gray suiting material with a nice drape (thank you, JoAnn), and used Carrie’s tutorial for the Easy, Peasy, Whrrly, Twirly Skirt.  It was just what I needed!

I didn’t do the bias tape on the bottom—I just made a simple hem.  It was great to use elastic (I had black) for a waistband and not have to use a casing.

Peppermint Christmas Decor

Trying to get in the holiday spirit, I put up a few decorations for Christmas this year.  Last year my decorations were really sparse, as I had a two-month-old and little energy.  This year’s decorations were sparse also, as that two-month-old became a walking threat to any decorations.

So I was inspired by this, and made a decoration for my mantle.

Hoping it might last until next year, I sprayed the finished product with several layers of polyurethane.

Fun and cute, no?

White Elephant Window Treatments

This might officially be the Best White Elephant Gift Ever: a roll of upholstery fabric.  And it isn’t even ugly; in fact, it is quite nice and fits in the color scheme of the main floor of my house.

The pattern has a nice sheen to it that didn’t pick up in the photographs, so you’ll just have to see it in person sometime.

Anyway, I took this:

And turned it into these:

Cornices for the music room!

(Ignore the fact that they’re a little wide—like the craft room, we’re going to put trim around the windows so I needed to leave clearance on the sides).

Tiny Swimmer

I have now, officially, attempted the smallest sewing project I have ever done.  Barbie’s “little sister” (who is her daughter, to my daughter) wanted to go swimming in Barbie’s new pool.  And who can blame her, really?  It’s got a diving board and a basketball hoop…but I digress.  Anyway, she needed a suit.  I had a chunk of lycra sitting around, so I cut out a simple itty bitty suit for the little girl.  The hardest part was sewing the arm straps together—my machine just wanted to munch on the lycra rather than stitch it.

Here she is; styling and posing is courtesy of my daughter:

And then her friend needed one too.

I was smart enough this time to cut it on a fold so I didn’t have to stich the arms, just the sides and bottom.

Glad that’s over!

Shelf Life

One of my friends found some cute decorative shelves that she liked but did not want to shell out big bucks for, so I made her a pair as a Christmas gift.  They are destined to have cute floral arrangements in the jars.

I didn’t have any directions, since I only had photos of the originals, but they’re simple enough I was able to figure out how to make them.  I took a trip to Menards and picked up a board and a little piece of trim.  I made my husband pick up some “L” brackets for me some random time he was out at a home improvement store, which is about every other day.

I cut all of the wood by myself (on hubby’s beloved compound miter saw) and even cut the circle for the jar (thank you, dear drill press).  I sanded the edges using a disk sander (which I unfortunately just had to ask the name of, and described it to my husband as a “hand held sander-thingy”).  It is not painted—I was not sure what color my friend wanted and she likes painting, so she will get to paint it at her leisure.

Madam Librarian

My eldest daughter likes to look at books, but I don’t think to read them to her nearly as often as I wish I did.  I’ve been wanting a way to make books more accessible—well, they’re plenty accessible, as they’re on bookshelves within reach, but I wanted them to be more prominent so I would think to read to my children during the day.  I know.  I’m a bad mother.

One of my friends introduced me to the idea of rain gutter bookshelves.  They’re made of…wait for it…rain gutters.  The vinyl ones, of course—not aluminum.  They actually work out great—they’re lightweight, durable, and the mounting brackets can be purchased right off the rack and necessitate no modification.

So following this tutorial, I did a little update to our reading nook (read: hallway).

We still have all of the room that the bookshelf gives us, but I now have a wall of “featured books” (or books that land there).  If I were fancy, I could make a point to put seasonally-appropriate books out when a holiday approached.  I’m not; I assume the books will naturally rotate themselves with some assistance from my fourteen-month-old and her book-flinging skills.

And I am so pleased with the results!  Both kinds of results—I think they actually look great (and hubby, who kindly went along with the project but doubted that they would look nice, actually gave me/them a compliment!), and the girls have looked at many books today.  The Little Miss actually sat and let me read a book to her.  We put it back, then she went and got it back off the shelf and we read it again.  Twice.  I realized with some guilt that I read to her approximately never, and hope that it’s not too late to start—I hope that I haven’t failed her already!  Her sister could turn the pages of a book by seven or eight months; I realized today that the Little Miss is capable but hasn’t ever had the chance (some of that is because her older sister is always around, too).

Since the books are so bright and inviting, I haven’t had a problem (yet?) with the Little Miss grabbing the shelves and trying to use them as a ladder.  I’m not ruling out that she might, but I am optimistic.