Christmas part 2

In addition to the huge puppet theater project, I made a few more things for Christmas this year. I made lots more fabric bags for wrapping, although I need to make more, since we totally ran out before we were done wrapping.

I made a bunch of birdie ornaments like this:
They were my version of this pattern from the Purl Bee. I stuffed the body with stuffing, rather than a layer of batting, and it worked way better to use heavy interfacing on the wings and then just sew them together from the outside, rather than trying to turn them. Obviously I made them a little smaller as well. Oh, and I used upholstery thread for my hanger, rather than ribbons. I preferred the look, which I discovered after I forgot to put in the ribbons after the first set! I made a bunch of birds - teacher gifts, stocking stuffers, and gifts for random people I wasn't expecting to give presents to! I especially like the fact that they take such a little bit of fabric, because it's a good use for some of my favorite fabric scraps.

I made everyone lip balm as a stocking stuffer, too, which was a hit. I have enough left over that I'm going to make myself some more sometime, although I may do a higher beeswax concentration so it's a little more like chapstick - the recipe I used was more lip gloss than lip balm.

My last major Christmas project was an outfit for each of the girls, and I'm quite thrilled with them. Although they make A in particular look really big! I think it's the jeans.
I had the shirt with hood pattern from Burda, appliquéd a flower on the shirt, then added them to jeans as well. (Which was actually rather a pain - I ironed them on, but then I did hand stitching to secure it, because the location on the jeans made using my machine impossible, and boy, am I BAD at making nice, neat, even hand stitches! It's a good thing no one will be looking too closely at that stitching, lol!) But they look awfully cute. And A has already requested more of the shirts (not a surprise, really; she loves those shirts with hoods.)

Our Christmas itself was very nice - busy, but it's always good to see everyone. And now that the Christmas crafting is done for this year, I can make myself something - I have a few projects in mind, but I may take a short break first! I hope everyone has a happy holiday season!

I finished! Christmas part 1

Happily, I finished everything in time for Christmas. :)

A while back, I posted about some finger puppets that I made. After I finished them, I was inspired to make my big Christmas project for this year - a puppet theater and puppets for my kids:

I used (more or less) this pattern from Don't Look Now, and I really liked it. I made a few changes - no backdrop fabric, only one clown, and I renamed it to a + m theater, which took some creative lettering. Christmas Eve night we almost had a total disaster, because it turned out that we had the wrong dowels, but thankfully Iestyn had things in the garage we could use to make do. Anyway, I love the way it turned out (which is good, since it was hours and hours of work!), and the kids seem to like it pretty well. It's a little hard to tell, since they have so very many new presents to play with right now! But I'm sure it'll get use over time.

I took the ideas from the original puppets and made many more, as well as a bag for storage:
(The little birdies from the theater are so stinking cute, I'm going to have to use them on something else!)

The gingerbread man and the fox:
The Little Red Hen and her "friends":
An unpictured polar bear and monkey, and then my personal favorites, Tacky the Penguin, and his companions, Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly and Perfect:
If you've never read Tacky, you really should. He's hilarious. And my kids like to play Tacky anyway ("What's Happening?"), so I figured they'd have fun with the puppets.

I also made a few more doggies for my nieces and nephew, but I took no pictures of those.

Crazy Christmas Craft

Normally every year I create something known as the Crazy Christmas Craft - some crafty goodness that I make for just about everyone that I know, and often something that takes up quite a lot of time. Like the hand-made, stenciled t-shirts last year. Or the polymer clay animal ornaments. There have been many. This year, I'm apparently not doing that. I've made crafts for people (and have more to make!), but there is less of an overarching theme. Or at least a little less stress. Although actually, I don't really find them stressful normally - sometimes a little nuts, but not stressful.

However, I *am* making my kids something that I suspect will end up in the Crazy Craft realm, because it's taking a lot of time. Not bad time, but LOTS of it. Here's a little sneaky peek - it involves this guy:

(who will have a face at some point). And I'm super excited about it!

I heart my husband

Iestyn spent last week in Japan on business. Before he left, we were talking about how I'd like to go shopping in Japan because they have such great crafts and fabric. And he is such a sweet man that he offered to buy me fabric while he was there!

So I found him a branch of Yuzawaya to visit near his hotel, and some, well, honestly, totally vague guidance about what sorts of fabric I like, and he went and got me this fun haul:
2 yards of the yellow one, which is frogs (adorable, and A loves it already), 4 yards of the pink with daisies, and a yard of the other three - ballerinas, dinosaurs, and some Kokka Trefle fabric(!) - look how cute:
He has a pretty good eye for things I'd like, especially for someone who's a little afraid of the fabric store, lol!

Plus he got a sample package of a bunch of different quilting fabrics - like a selection of fat quarter blenders, except they're not fat quarters. Maybe fat 1/8ths? Anyway, there are a bunch of different things in there. And he also got this great kit:
Stuffed chickens! Hee-hee.

I haven't had time to make the chickens yet, but I did use some of my new fabric this afternoon to make this needlecase for all the hand-sewing I've been doing lately:
(The button looks better in person, although I may ultimately decide to switch it for another one.)

The inside has felt for the needles, and two pockets - one for my embroidery scissors, and one for whatever else I need:
I basically read the Tiny Happy housewife tutorial and then made my own version. I totally love it. Now I need to get back to my lengthy list of things to make for the holidays, I suppose, but I'm glad to have a fun pincushion (see next post) and needlecase to use for all those projects. And I already have plans for quite a lot of the fabric Iestyn got me. :)

Gosh, I'm whiny lately....

I have yet another project that I thought was a big pain, even if it turned out really cute. I made the Portobello Pixie cupcake pincushion pattern, and it took me about four tries before I had one that I'll be able to actually use. First I made the "high calorie" version. It actually went together fairly easily, and I really liked my fabrics, but the thing was HUGE. I think the top - just the top - was 6-7 inches across. Much too big for the space I have available for a pincushion! (I couldn't really get a grasp of the size from the pictures, but it' svery big.) So, then I thought I'd just make the smaller one. And that one is much harder to put together. Plus I made my life difficult by deciding to do two colors for the "wrapper" part (why do I do these things to myself??). Only then I realized it needed an additional ruffle to tie the colors together, and then I realized with an additional ruffle, the bottom was just too small. So, I took it apart, made the bottom wrapper part a half inch taller, and sewed it all together again. But because of the way I'd done it, I had to attach the wrapper to the top by hand. It took forever. I feel like there was another version in there, too, but maybe not. Anyway, I *do* really like the final result, but it wasn't the easiest project I've ever done:

But hey, at least I have a cute pincushion now!

This is cute, too, but....

Wow, what a pain to make!

Sew Mama Sew had a month of tutorials for using your scraps, and I came across this tutorial for a fabric colors book for babies, and I thought it was adorable. I have a niece with an upcoming birthday, so I thought it would be a good project to make for her. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Now, I'd like to point out that my problems weren't actually the fault of the tutorial. It would have been easier if I'd followed the tutorial a little closer. In that version, you do the iron on transfers onto a piece of white fabric, and that's one of the squares used. *I* thought it would be cooler to have 4 colored squares, and so I ended up appliquéing the color names to the middle. That was a huge pain. I also didn't square up my blocks well enough, which was just laziness. Oh, and the cover page looked awful at first - something went very wrong with the appliqué, and it was completely crooked. So I had to salvage that without starting over (also laziness). And I added a layer of batting to each page so they would be a little thicker, which was actually fine, but did add a step and some thickness.

Anyway, here's a terrible picture of the cover (and one of my favorite of the inside pages):

Sorry about the picture quality - I never get good pictures at night, but I wanted to go ahead and get the post up. (The jacket post is still coming. The only picture I have is really unflattering, so I'm going to be vain and wait until I can get a better one!)

So I do quite like my final product, but it was a lot of work. And I caused myself problems. I hate that. Oh, well, hopefully the recipient will enjoy it! :)

So cute!!

A while back I found a link to these fairy tale finger puppets from somewhere. I thought they were adorable, and M has a thing for pigs, so I bookmarked it to make them for the girls for Christmas. I finished them yesterday, and they are SO DARN CUTE. I really want to give them to the girls NOW, but I guess I'll probably wait until Christmas. Actually, I have ideas about my own variations (other animals I could make), so there may be quite a collection by the time Christmas gets here! The funniest part is that even though the pigs were my inspiration, I don't like mine all that much. The others are much cuter. Ah well.

The three little pigs:

The Big Bad Wolf:
Goldilocks:
Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. (They're my personal favorites.)
They required quite a bit of hand sewing, but apparently that's what I'm in the mood for these days, because I quite enjoyed it. Plus I can carry it with me and bring it along when I'm waiting around for various activities to be done, so that's nice.

I'm also going to have another post soon about a jacket success (to make up for the huge fail of the last one!) I actually finished it last weekend, but I haven't had a chance to get pictures yet. I'm very happy, though. :)