Sewing For A Three Year Old

Always, when I am sewing, or knitting, or crocheting, my 3 year old wants to get involved. He really wants to make his own of whatever I'm up to. For a long time, I have planned to get him his own sewing needle (a big, blunt, wool needle),  but I wasn't sure how, exactly, I would get him using it. Thank you, Amanda! When this post popped up on Soulemama it was too perfect! It was exactly how I could and would get him involved.

My little guy is so proud of his new skill.

"Daddy, I was sewin'. I was just sewin' with my sewin' hands. But not with mommy's big sewin' machine."

What a treat to see him intently stitching away at his little piece of art. :)

Book Love & Kid-made Ornaments

HAND IN HAND : Crafting With Kids
By Jenny Doh
(20 Top Bloggers & Favorite Projects)

I just wanted to post about this great book that compiles 20 bloggers, with each talking a little bit about their creative life, and then sharing a favourite kid friendly project. I would love to get around to every project at some point but, so far, we have managed only one.

Levi printed gold trees with the potato stamp I made from a cookie cutter, and then he decorated the trees in red paint. I would have liked to add another colour of fabric paint for him to use, but running out to any shop right close to Christmas was not in my plans unless absolutely necessary (e.g. grocery store)!

I sewed them to a backing fabric with a ribbon for hanging attached, and he stuffed them.
A fun project, and one he is super proud of!

Looking back on the activity in the book that inspired our project, I see I should've taken the route of a raw edged ornament. Much simpler, quicker, and I even prefer the look of it.

I'd show you the finished product, but unfortunately Christmas came and went all too quickly in our house this year what with the listing of our home. All decorations were packed away quite swiftly after celebrating. Kind of sad, but also kind of exciting - time to get packing everything!!

Anyway, if you love crafting with your kiddies, this book is definitely worth having!

Oh, and yeah, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope everyone had a great start to 2013!

XO

Vintage Quilt Blocks

My parents visited Brimfield, Massachusetts, back in September for the massive antique fair that takes place there 3 times yearly. Luckily for me, their trip to Brimfield happened to be en route to my house! I say luckily for me, because my mom brought goodies!!

One of the treasures she arrived with was a stack of vintage quilt blocks - some finished, and some not quite. I can't wait to get down to finishing them, and creating whatever sized blanket they may cover. From what I have read about using vintage quilt blocks, you are better to wash them as a whole when they are already completed in a quilt. The strength of the backing material (which should not be vintage, as the vintage blocks need the support of new fabric), and finishing, will help to keep them together. I suppose though, that it may be worth knowing, before you venture to spend the time on quilting them, if they will completely fall apart!

Just look in the last photo at the hand stitching. This is a pretty big pile of pieced quilt blocks. That makes for an incredible amount of time spent stitching by hand. Just amazing...

XO

Birthday Party Ideas For a PDF File

I purchased a Retro Robot PDF file on Etsy. I loved the look of it, and figured I could find something to do with it for my son's much anticipated Robot party on his third birthday.

The hubby and I printed 2 sheets of the PDF, cropped, and then laminated each one for a fun little robot memory game.

Of course, I had to sew up a little drawstring bag to store it in! :)

In future, I would love to take this idea using cute pictures from a vintage children's book, or any number of other places and make memory games for the take home party favours.

Anyway, that was my one big idea. My mom, the crafty genius, came up with a crazy number of ways to use this cute little PDF - a party banner, loot bags, and food signage among them. Pop over HERE to see them all.

Also, head over to this post on Fun Fabrication to find more pics of the amazing Robot birthday!

Drawstring Gift Bags

I get on these kicks - I find a pattern I dig and I run with it. It happened with the Bedbugs, the Quick Change Trousers, and Cloth baskets. Now it is happening with these drawstring gift bags from the blog In Color Order. I started by winging it, but when I came across this tutorial and the concept of sewing all your pieces into one continuous strip, it made a massive difference in the ease and simplicity of a drawstring bag.

The one thing all the projects I obsess about have in common is the use of at least 3 different fabrics. I love browsing my stash to come up with fun combinations. Being that I usually don't invest in over a yard of any one material because I have no specific project in mind at the time, patterns that require more variety of smaller amounts work out pretty great for me!

Birthday Clothes

 

This year's Birthday Tee for Levi, came from I Spot You - An Etsy Shop selling really cute customized t-shirts for kids.

It was pure coincidence that the Robot fabric I had ordered coordinated perfectly with the birthday t-shirt! Yay!

The pants are pretty basic - a pattern traced from a pair of Levi's long shorts, or short pants, whichever way you wanna slice it.
I added pockets on the bum out of the circuit board fabric, and added cuffs in the contrasting orange robot fabric. All 3 fabrics are from Robert Kaufman's Robot Factory collection.
The waist is just a simple elastic waist band. I always use ribbed non-roll waistband elastic.

Of course, little brother had to have a tee to celebrate the occasion too!
                                               
            

*Tie T-shirt material is the orange Robot Factory

A Mother's Day Apron

    

One of the few times I have "gone out on a limb" and just created what was in my head, and this half apron is the outcome. I had this vintage thrifted towel put away for AGES to make something for my mom, and after tossing around a hundred different ideas of what project would suit it best, I finally settled and went for it.

The towel itself is completely uncut. I added a waistband, bias tape, and a pocket.

The waistband is from the Yard Sale Wrap Skirt in Heather Ross' book Weekend Sewing. Instead of using her pattern for the shorter side piece, I simply used the longer pattern piece for both sides of the waistband. I sewed the waistband together except for the bottom edge of the 2 centre pieces. I gathered the towel at the top, placed that gathered edge between the two centre waistband pieces, pinned in place and then stitched through all 3 layers along that same edge.

I used a bias tape maker, and found that it is just as simple to create bias tape without one. It does guide the fabric, but you still need to do most of the work. Maybe I wasn't using it correctly?... I'll have to look into that, because I have heard other's say they thought the bias tape maker was wonderful.

~The waistband, pocket lining & bias tape fabric is by Denyse Schmidt for the Hope Valley Collection
~The pocket fabric is Speckled Sky from Cloud9 Fabrics for the Maman Organic Collection
~The small piece of lace was thrifted, as was the vintage towel

Hexagons

Something new, and lovely came in the mail last week. Possibly to steer me from my over-ambitious queen sized english paper-pieced quilt dreams. :)

I picked up  my copy of this Japanese sewing book here. It has 21 projects in it.

I love a portable project!

xo

English Paper Piecing

A few weeks back, I took part in a workshop for a little sewing technique called english paper piecing (a very old-school method of quilting which uses a paper template).

Having 2 young boys makes it difficult, if not impossible to escape into my sewing room most days, and so I was in the market for something new, and portable to fill my creative needs. This workshop sounded like it was just that new something I needed. Once the initial step of ironing your template (butcher or freezer paper) to your fabric is complete, you can take it absolutely anywhere!

The workshop was held at The Workroom in Toronto.
It was incredibly tough to concentrate on the workshop with all those shelves of beautiful fabric calling to me. I couldn't imagine "working" here. My earnings would be spent every week before even being deposited in the bank!
Needless to say, I did not leave empty-handed.

English Paper Piecing is fabulous. I have just set about making hexagons with no ideas quite yet of what I'm making. Possibly something small? A pouch, bag, cushion cover maybe?... Or maybe I'll just go full-on and head for a queen size. That's what I really want.

For now, I'll just keep putting these together, all non-committal like, and see where it leads me!

Don't miss THIS POST! Be one of the first three people to comment on it, and you'll end up a part of something  awesome!

New Ironing Board

I do NOT iron, per se. I iron for sewing projects, period.

My ironing board was the ugliest ironing board ever. E-VER. I say was, because thanks to a thrifted piece of vintage used-to-be-a-curtain material and Sara - one of my favourite bloggers - I finally saw how simply I could scratch this item off of my list, and off of my mind.

Sewing just got better, and ironing just became bearable. :)

Hemming/Repairing Woven Blankets

We bought these beautiful woven throws in Morocco. Although I love the look of the existing frayed, natural edge, they were beginning to unravel which is not exactly in synch with my plans of our 2 boys having their cherished moroccan souvenir 10, 20, and even 30 years from now!

I searched the internet for how to deal with this, but came up empty-handed. I then realized the solution was actually quite a simple hem.

The original edge

Zigzag stitched along the frayed edge

Clipped the frayed edge close (but not too close!) to the newly zigzagged edge

Folded the cleaned up edge inward (about 1/4 inch)

Folded this same edge inward again to create a slightly rolled edge

Pinned the rolled edge in place

Straight stitched (by machine) as close to the inner fold as possible

The completed hem

Because of the weave you can't even see the stitching which works for me! Hopefully this makes for a more durable blanket.

Hemming Jeans With The Original Hem

I gave this a try on a new pair of too-long denim's I had bought and I'm happy with it. Unfortunately I hemmed them shorter than I feel a pair of bells should be! The beauty of this hem is I can (but really don't want to) take it out and try again as the excess fabric is still there. I'll probably let them irritate me for a week or so before I can't take it anymore, and then go to the trouble of fixing them.

I felt the excess material would become bothersome, and so I ironed the material up the leg of the jean and machine stitched "in the ditch" of each side seam. I considered a small hand sewn stitch around the perimeter but, it would take much longer than you want a hem job to, and you might end up with little dimples around your pant leg.

This works very well for a pant with a wide hem and I would definitely do it again.

More Cloth Baskets...

I actually made these 2 Cloth "baskets" just before going away on our trip.

The top one was made as a gift for a very close friend. I'm unsure of the main fabric, but the smaller piece is a Kaffe Fassett quilting cotton, and the interior is a solid brown.

The lower "basket" is for little old me. This is a special one because the material, both the small strip, and main fabrics were picked up at a little shop in Hanoi, Vietnam when we were there in 2007. I've been waiting quite a while to decide what to use it for. I'm unsure of the interior, but it is a lovely yellow floral. This basket is a reflection of two of my favourite things - sewing and travel.

Back to the Machine

It feels SO good to get back to sewing after nearly 4 months away from it. I had the pleasure of taking my mom's new sewing machine for a spin. It has a lot of nice little features that mine does not.

I love these little reversible pants - Anna Maria Horner's pattern for the "Quick Change Trousers" from her book Handmade Beginnings.

The pattern goes up to 24 months so for the larger pair, Levi's pair, I enlarged the pattern, extending the length by 2 inches, and adding (by eye) as much to the entire pattern as it seems to increase with each size. They turned out a good size, and they should fit for quite some time, especially with all the room available in length.

The materials I used for these 2 pair are from Anna Maria's Folksy Flannels collection.

This third pair I gifted to my cousin's wee one a couple of weeks ago. They were made from a vintage Star Wars bed sheet I have had in my stash for quite some time.

I love a project that let's me combine several different fabrics, as these do.

Crafty Lisbon

Browsing Lisbon for fabric was a fun adventure despite not really buying any.
I came across a few good shops, and had I not needed to be so discerning due to lack of space I probably would have left Portugal with more.

I didn't actually find any material that was so unique that I had to have it. Speaking with a gentleman at one of the shops, he told me that I wouldn't find any "Portugese" fabric per se, as it was only produced for clothes manufacturing. Likewise, when it comes to yarn there were a few Portugese spun yarns available, but all the wool is coming from elsewhere - mainly New Zealand.

My favourite shop was called Retrosaria - Rosa Pomar, found at Rua Do Loreto, 61 on the 2nd floor(the main floor counts as "0"). (If you happen to arrive there with your baby fast asleep in the stroller just head next door for a 'pasteis de nata' and a drink until he wakes up!).
This shop is just getting in to producing their own yarn and sells a wool they have spun from Portugese sheep - though it is quite a harsh wool. I was told they are working on another, spun from a Southern breed which is much softer.
They sell some great designer fabrics, of which I bought a small bundle of scraps. Unfortunately, I am in love with one of the fabrics in the bundle, but no one knew the designer, or name. Bummer... Maybe, I should post a pic and someone may know?...
The shop also sells a ton of Japanese pattern books for crochet, knitting, and sewing. They were tough to resist- so much so, that I bought one. Shhh, don't tell my hubby. Could there be a worse thing than books to buy when all you have is a backpack?? I suppose yes, maybe a lamp... I know because I wanted one when we were in Egypt but I suppose it made sense that I couldn't buy that one.



I also picked up a few Portugese knitting pins (Aha! something local!). They explained to me that they are the alternative to draping the yarn behind your neck while knitting, which I also was not familiar with. Now, I'll give both techniques a try and see where I'm at. Maybe, it'll all of a sudden make me a crazy, super fast knitter!! Ahhh, dreams...
A woman, who I believe may have been Rosa herself, warned me to use the pins while wearing a shawl or sweater - just something that it will easily pin to - as otherwise you will be left with a hole in your top.



Despite the lack of "local" fabrics, I did pick up a couple of "Portugal" tea towels from a tourist shop for 1 Euro each to use in sewing projects. I have also seen some great tablecloths that I would love to sew with at only 5 Euro a piece. Maybe. before I leave Portugal I should grab one of them too...
No matter what I do buy on a trip, I pretty much always end up kicking myself for what I didn't buy.

A few other shops:

Rua Da Conceicao in the Baixa Ciado area, had several "haberdashery" shops, of which I learned are shops selling pretty much all crafty bits - buttons, ribbons, knitting spools, embroidery floss, yarn, needles etc. Some specific ones I checked out were at #91, 93, 95, 115, and 121.



Rua De Aurea also in the Baixa Ciado area, had a very large multi-level fabric shop called Feira Dos Tecidos. Just down from that one was a 2 level fabric shop called Retrosaria (as so many are), with a nice selection (especially on the lower level).

A small fabric shop is located on the corner at Rua Dos Fanqueiros, 69.