Elephant Dress

I made this dress before we left for our big vacation early August. It was a lot of fun to make. I took this picture 5 minutes before we left for the airport because I wanted to bring this dress as a gift to a special little girl.


Here is a close up of the elephants.


I bought this fabric a long long time ago and thought I was going to make a blouse for Kira. That so did not happen and this fabric got stashed away. I am glad it is now being worn by the cutest baby girl. Happy birthday, Em!

Getting Ready For Work

So I should be getting ready for work. Reading, preparing lessons and other such things. I thought about it and actually started it. The thing is, as soon as I started, I got this overwhelming urge to craft like there is no tomorrow. Maybe that's just it - I feel like there is no tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I am excited to be working again but working means no time for all these other things that I do. Perhaps I am just anxious and expecting the whole work situation to be more demanding than it will be. In any case, instead of working, I've been "playing" hard! In addition to spending hours finished the dolls for the teachers, I finished some other long overdue projects.

Meet C. This is the BFF doll that I promised the Girl. Instead of a dress, I decided to make her kind of a bubble jumper. I have plans to knit her a jacket/cardigan for cold, foggy days ahead.


Oh... she will probably need some shoes too. Here she is in the original hair style. The Girl's friend often wears a little braid on one side of her head. The doll's hair gets so crazy messy so easily that I end up just putting a pony tail on her most of the time. I have to work on making better doll hair. Any good tips?


The other thing I finished were these bags that I owe Mrs Turducken. If you are reading this, the bags are on their way. Will probably arrive mid July. Sorry they took so long.

Embroidery Part 3

The idea for this project started a long time ago when I read this blog post. Last year, I bought this plain dress and thought I would embroider one of the Girl's art work onto the dress.


Well, her drawing was not very interesting last year. They were mostly blobs of colours then so I put the project on hold. Seeing her embroidery brought this project to the surface again. We started with a drawing that we both liked.


I helped her redraw the picture onto the dress with a fabric marker. Drawing on fabric is a little hard because the fabric shifts around so much. I had to help her quite a bit. I am not sure if you can see the outline here.


With that, I set to work. I love the red/aqua colour combination so I just went with an all red plan. The embroidery itself was very simple. Except for the eyes which were done in a satin stitch, everything was done with a back stitch.


Don't you think a simple design like this totally livens up the dress?


The Girl was very excited about her new dress. She wanted to take a picture with the inspiration of her drawing, Stripy Sammy.


The cutting of the dress is quite forgiving so I hope she gets a lot of wear out of this garment. The only thing is that the neck hole is strangely small and my kids have big heads. I may have to cut a slit and make it a v-neck dress down the road. We'll see.

Embroidery Part 2

Encouraged by her success and enthusiasm, our second project involved a "pattern". I drew a simple picture with short line segments resembling stitches on a piece of muslin and mounted that on a hoop. The Girl was instructed to start on one end of each of those little lines and finish on the other end. Here, a picture is worth a thousand words.

See those little lines, they were drawn with a Sharpie.


She was so happy and relaxed during the whole process. It cracks me up that she made up this little song to go with her handy work and I love seeing her kick her little feet.


After about half an hour or so, we ended up with this.


Was she ever proud of herself. Then she got all excited and wanted me to turn this into a picture of her. "This is a Girl and she needs long hair." Well, she hasn't quite figured out that long hair equals lots of stitches. After about 3 more stitches, she gave up. So we put it away and brought it back for short periods of time over the next two days. Finally, this was the finished product.



I messed with the colors a little bit to show of the stitching because the palette she chose was very pale. I drew the stitch lines, tied all the knot, threaded all the needles and fixed a few unintentional knots and she did the rest. If you look at the outer most blue hair, you'll see that she got confused and filled in the white space in between the dotted line instead of filling in the dotted line. I considered taking it out for her and have her redoing it but decided maybe it's part of the charm of her first embroidery project.

I have a few ideas as to what to do with this. We'll see if she has the stamina to finish a few more squares for me to assemble a quilt for her. Otherwise, I can sew this onto her clothes or make another bag for her with it. A girl can't have too many bags, right?

Embroidery Part 1

I introduced the Girl to some hand sewing last week while she was stuck at home. For the first attempt, I had her sew on a piece of felt mounted on a small embroidery hoop. The goal was to get her to understand where the needle has to go in and where it comes out. I also had her put what she now calls her sewing pillow on her lap so she won't stab herself. I gave her complete artistic freedom. She chose the thread. She decided where the stitches went and she decided what to do with the final product.

"Oooooh... thread...."


"This looks like a good starting point."


"Hold on, I need to concentrate."


"Success! One stitch down..."


This video shows her goofy attempts as well as her first sewing injury.


The final product was what she described as "little flowers on the grass". We sewed the little piece of felt into a pillow for her new "pet kitty". Presenting Stripy Sammy Napping On The Grass.


So proud of her work!

Dolly

I should have shared this a long time ago but I was hoping I can share this Dolly and her BFF together. Anyway, here is the doll.


Does she remind you of someone we know? Look at how girlie she is.


What about now?


Now?


The doll is supposed to look like my Girl but I didn't make it for her. I made it for her BFF.


Her BFF moved away and the original plan was they would each get a doll that resembles the other so when the miss each other, they'd have the dolls to play with. I finished the Girl dolly in time but I haven't made the second one yet. It's all cut out and the Girl asks me all the time when I will get around to sewing it. I am going to say... in the next month or so. So much sewing to do, so little time. Look at these goof balls. I think I should make a set of funny glasses for the doll, too.


Silly girls scratching their noses.

Birthday Week

I am behind on pictures and posts again because this was birthday week. Two out of the three goof-balls in the family had a birthday. So, I was busy planning parties. Yep, parties, more than one.

Look at this silly girl. This is how she came in to my room on the morning of her birthday.


So silly princess asked for a princess dress up party. However, the guest list she gave me consisted of one girl and two boys other than herself. I am pretty sure the boys are not going to prance around in dresses so I had to come up with something that all the kids can enjoy.

Nothing says dress up to me like capes. There were 8 kids including the siblings so the first thing I did was to sew eight of these. The girl ones have hoods and fur and the boy ones either have collars or hood with no fur.


I gathered all the play dresses in the house.


Then to complete the royalty look, I made some crown. Just to make it even more boy friendly, I decorated with cars and trains.


Finally, I set up a dressing station and put a whole bunch of other accessories like shoes and masks near it.


Hubby was drafted to handle the decorations. He was asked to make the room very pink.


A final princess touch.


And the silly girl was transformed into a princess who is ready to party!


To be continued...

Will Sew For Food

We just got back from a 10 day vacation to Vancouver. Naturally, we were crazy busy before the trip so I have a lot of catch up blogging to do. If you just can't wait, I will soon put some pictures up on FB.

So, this has been a very tasty trip. One BIG (in every sense of the word you will soon see) highlight is the Pork-Turducken feast. It started out as some pictures innocently posted on FB. Friends of mine had the good fortune to enjoy one for Christmas and they put up pictures to show off their meal. I've heard lots about turducken and it's always been somewhat of an urban legend to me. Sure it's a great concept but do "real" people ever go into all the trouble to make one from scratch?

Seeing the picture made me strongly drop hints/beg/bribe/cry for one. Long story short, the kind chef agreed to make one for my next Vancouver visit. In return, I were to sew for his family.

I am quite sure I got the better end of the deal in this situation. All that was asked of me were a couple of crayon rolls and a clutch. As soon as the deal was in place, I started fabric searching for the crayon rolls. Making things for boys is sometimes tricky. They can't be too cute and I don't like things that are too loud. These are what I came up with.

I love this one. I think I should make one for the Boy. I have made at least 10 crayon roll ups and my children use ziplock bags to carry their coloring needs. I am ashamed.


This is the second one that was school themed. Both the outer and inner fabrics are Japanese linen and I think it has a great feel to it.


I thought the ribbon closure was too girlie for the boys so I used elastic and a button instead.


These were great fun to make. With that I held up my side of the bargain. Check out what I got in return!


See that cross section of the art piece. Starting from the top, the layers were turkey, pork stuffing, duck, pork stuffing, chicken, pork stuffing and turkey. We had four side dishes that went with this beauty: Eggplant Parmesan, potato casserole, cucumber salad and steamed broccoli.


This was my SECOND slice. Look at it. I know I am known to exaggerate but seriously, this slice was 2 inches thick! What mad man would serve this to his guest???


I made it through half of this before I threw in the towel. There was a spectacular chocolate pudding after the scrumptious meal as well. My brain was just too stuffed with food to remember to take a picture of that.

Going back in time a little. Putting on the finishing touches and getting ready for the feast.


Here is a picture to document the completion of our transaction.


I have always had a love-hate relationship with turkey. I think I eat it mostly because it's festive and I love cranberry sauce. The meat itself has always disappointed me but the turkey meat in the turducken was so so so moist. It was truly huge bites of heaven. The duck was my favorite part of the bird trio. Did I mention the gravy was also divine? Okay, I am salivating again just thinking about the meal. I am proud to report that I gained 2.5 lbs after this one meal. Honestly! I weighed myself before and after. 2.5lbs translates to at least a month of working out. It's all worth it.

A quick break after dinner. The Boy connect with another Cars fan.


After the meal, we all needed to work off what we consumed. Here is one way to do it. Choose a kid and do 20 reps of bicep lifts. Hint: If you plan on doing 20 reps, only promise the kid 5. He/she will keep demanding more. Remember, the kid you choose had also just eaten his/her fair share of turducken and is also likely on a sugar high.


We were all very happy that night. Great food, great company. Thanks so much A and T for hosting and M and M for cooking. I can't imagine how much time and energy and money you all put into this gathering. I can't promise anything this fancy but our home down south is always open to you and you will be well fed during your visit.

"What do you mean we were all happy? You forgot me! You all got to eat turducken and all I got was mush!"

Smocked Dress

I've been pretty productive lately. After I finished the cropped jacket, I have since made another sun dress for the Girl and I am trying a vintage doll pattern. I don't want to show pictures of the doll yet because so far, I just have a couple bodies, three heads, 3 arms and 2 legs. None of them are sewn together so right now it just looks like a spooky pile of body parts. I am not making a bunch of dolls nor am I making an alien doll. The pattern I have doesn't include seam allowance and I am trying to figure out the fastest, laziest way to produce the best result.

Anyway, back to the dress. Here it is.

"Pssss, I have a secret to tell you..."


"Mommy made me a new dress! She named it the carnival dress. Doesn't it look like something you would wear to a summer carnival?"


"My standard princess pose."


I used some left over tweedle dee and a strip of random left over yellow fabric to make this dress. It was super simple and took about 3 - 4 hours total. I think it should be a little longer but the cool thing about this style is that it can easily be worn as a top. I left the shoulder pieces really long in case I want to lengthen them later.

This is what I would call an instant gratification project. I am craving another more complicated more detailed garment sewing project. Maybe a dress for myself. We'll see if I can find a nice pattern.