Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Baby Gifts for Ashley

On this pregnancy message board I belong to I was paired with what is called a due date buddy. This is usually two ladies who have similar due dates. This was my first time doing this so I was a bit tentative at participating. I am so glad I did. I was paired up with a wonderful lady by the name of Ashley. She is expecting a little girl on the same date as I.

As a crafter, primarily a knitter, I was overjoyed to find out she was having a little girl. Since I'm having a boy there would be no cute little pink and purple girlie items. So as soon as she found out the planning began.

The first gift I made her was this adorable pink hearts blanket. I have had this pattern for a couple of years and have always to make it. Well now was the perfect time! It was a fun knit and I was pleased with the results.


Next up was to make some hats for her. She was showing me some picture of hats from etsy so I had an idea of what she liked. I made her a minnie hat since my first one turned out so cute for my niece. (The picture shown is the one I made my niece. I apparently forgot to take a picture of the newest one)

Up next was a cute little crochet hat with ears:

And last but not least this is the daisy hat from Itty bitty hats. I couldn't find green yarn to make the stem so I just made the daisy and the stem all the same color.

I also made some knit burp cloths which I forgot to take pictures of.

The one item I made that was not yarn related was a cloth covered diaper wipe case. Ashley loves purple (so do I no wonder we get along so well) so I used a mixture of purple fabric and ribbon for her case. I was a bit disappointed with how the case turned out but Ashley loved it. It was my first one I did.


The other non yarn item was the tag baby block which I had made. I was inspired by the tag baby blanket but I wanted to make something different so I found instructions on how to make a tag baby block. It was a lot of fun to make. I added bells inside to help make it a little more entertaining for baby. They are totally child proofed inside so there are no worries that they will come out.


So overall I had so much fun making all these items for my due date buddy, Ashley.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The pillowcase dress that turned into a skirt

I came across some tutorials on how to make a pillowcase dress so my interest was peaked. I spent quite a bit of time watching and learning how to make them. So last night I decided to dig through my linen closet to see what I could find.

After taking inventory there were only a handful of cases that would work due to the patterns. (I was tempted to use my husband's star wars pillowcases for the heck of it). My youngest daughter decided to pick an old Powder Puff girl pillowcase.

So here starts my adventure. Since it was a pillowcase obviously the pattern will be horizontal rather than vertical. (this realization did not come to me until I put the case up against her). Hmmm sideways powder puff girls wouldn't work.

Bright idea #2! Let's open up the pillowcase and then the designs would run vertical! After an hour the pillow case was finally open all the way. Stupid me didn't realize that now the characters on the back side would be upside down. Time to take a break after that.

Pillowcase dress is now out of the question. After spending all that time I decided to make a skirt. I used my Bobbin's nest pattern as a guideline.

Here are the problems I ran into with the skirt:
- I apparently am no good with using a rotary cutter yet. I ended up cutting the skirt about 1 inch too short on the width.
- I wanted to add a ruffle to the bottom. My strip came out way too short
- When making the casing for the elastic I forgot to sew up the side hem before doing this

The plus side:
-I finally figured out why my first skirt seemed so tight. I was able to make the skirt have more ease and not be as constricting
- I improvised my own bottom edging.

All in all I spent way too much time tweaking this, but it helped me learn a couple new techniques.

So after spending the entire afternoon working on the skirt here is the finished result:


Here is the happy new owner happily wearing it:

I will attempt a pillowcase dress sometime in the near future.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

New Skirt

So it appears that I'm back on the "I want to learn to sew" kick. I think part of this new craze is because I'm expecting a new baby in August and would love to make some handmade clothes for him. One problem I'm running into is that "cute" boy patterns are hard to find. Luckily I have 2 girls so I can indulge in making pretty girly items for them.

My local sewing/yarn shop, Bobbin's Nest, had a free demo day to make a girl twirly skirt. I figured this would be great to attend to see if I could actually attempt sewing again. The demo was quick yet informational. I was excited the skirt seemed so easy to make. No real pattern just taking measurements of the garment wearer and go from there.

I had a lot of the materials to make it at home so I let my daughter pick out her choice of fabric. Here is the end result:


I can see some of my mistakes and the next one I hope to make will be a bit better. She loves it though and it isn't falling apart on her. So I'll take this as a win in the sewing column.

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