Easter Eggs that Last

This is K's casual Easter ensemble. I say that like she has a fancy one. Not so much this year, at least not one that I made. But I wanted to do an applique shirt inspired by some party napkins I spied in Berlin and Adrianna helped.

The other day A was over and needed something fun to do. She had just organized my scraps into zippy bags by color (inspired by Stacey, best thing ever) and pulled some out for eggs. Nine bits of interfacing-fused fabric later, they were all lined up on the shirt. Some fun stitching around the edges of each one. I made a quickie knit skirt to go along with it, and now the quickie knit skirt is my other new favorite. K could be living in those all summer. The fabric came from Patsy Aiken's fabric sale, pointed out by Ashley.  One of Ashley's many inspirations.

So after finally getting it on her, K stopped for about 5 seconds to inspect the stitching.

And then she was all jumpy jumpy hippity-hoppity 3.5-year-old again.

So to get a photo of the eggs, I had to take it after removing it from her jumpy jumpy body.

And an unrelated question. A and I were talking about Easter baskets the other day and what would go in them. My answer? At least in part? The non-seasonally wrapped Halloween candy that K still hasn't gotten around to. Is that wrong? 

T-shirt to Henley Refashion: A Tutorial

Here's a simple makeover to add some decoration to a plain T.  This is pretty self-explanatory, so it'll mostly be a pictorial tutorial (I love saying that).

Make enough bias tape to go around the neck and about 4 inches down the shirt front.  Cut the ends into a "V" and press down for a nice finish.

Make the bias tape for one side twice as wide as the other, so they overlap for the button placket.

Cover the raw ends of the bias tape with a square patch, stitched on with an "x"

Bias tape around the neck

Add buttons & buttonholes

Done!  And some bad nighttime flash photography to see the final product:

Now go make a cute skirt for a whole coordinating outfit!

I Don't Like It Yet

Whenever I meet someone new, I often don't like them. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, I don't like new people. I have to get to know them first. It's good that I finally know this about myself-- that given some time and conversation it's quite possible that I will really love someone. Case in point: one of my bridesmaids was someone I REALLY did not like initially. When I was younger this was a big problem for me. I made quite a few enemies just because I wasn't self-aware enough yet to get that if I just spent some time relaxing a bit and talking... we could be friends. Good friends.

Well... for some reason... I'm thinking about this fact as it relates to trying something new and crafty. Knitting. I had asked my Mom (who is not a knitter but has a good friend who is and who works at a yarn shop) for needles, yarn and a first how-to book for Christmas. Yesterday, March 26, I finally sat down to try it, after seeing this dress on Etsy. The book my Mom gave me is lovely and lays out all sorts of what I presume is very useful information, but I have issues with reading instructions in any sort of linear way. (Are you getting some insight here on how difficult it might be for Adrianna to keep up with my rambling in real life?) So I skip to page 59 where it talks about casting on. And I try it. Somewhere between step 3 and 4... I am missing something. Which is pretty good, for me. Usually when it comes to knots or stitches I'm lost by step 2.

Yes, one would think that there should be some knitting-in-progress in this photo. Sadly, I did not get that far.

So, because I decided to try this at around 10 pm (woo hoo! wild Friday night!), I decided that:
1) Maybe I should try new things a bit earlier in the day.
2) Maybe I should look up some YouTube videos about it.
3) Maybe I should read the first 58 pages before I start on page 59.
4) Maybe I should use the needles as part of a collage project if the knitting doesn't work out.
5) Maybe the needles would make nice hair sticks.
6) Maybe I should put the needles up high when I'm not using them because K will likely pretend they are swords and jab her baby sister in the eye.

Any suggestions on site with good getting started videos online? Because I don't like it... yet. But maybe I'll have a sweater for a bridesmaid someday.

Crafty Bits: Berlin

We're back from our trip to Berlin to visit Stacey, and after a few days back at home with kids and laundry and grocery shopping and cooking and dishes and a lot of mama-mama-mom-mommy-mommmmma, we're all set to return. It was a great, relaxing time and our activities consisted of all our favorite things: eating, chatting, coffee drinking, and crafting!  Oh, and we saw some of Berlin too.  Ok, we did a quick drive-by on our way to more eating.  That counts.

The first thing Susan did was to put on the robot from Stacey's son's recent birthday party.  Then she got stuck.  After grabbing a camera and snapping some fun shots, I did eventually help her out.  You gotta have priorities, right?

Then we got down to the serious business of crafting.  We found all of Stacey's beautiful scrap bags, sorted by color, and absconded with them.  Thankfully she wasn't particularly attached to any specific bit, because we started cutting and sewing them together willy-nilly.

Stacey cut out a bazillion squares for a quilt.

With 1 sewing machine and 3 sewers, a little hand-quilting was in order.

We ate some delicious currywurst.  Sounds questionable, tastes phenomenal.

We went to KaDeWe, a large, ritzy department store where we enjoyed all the gorgeous Easter-y decor.

And Susan found the easter bunny she wants in her basket.

The Easter decorations were divided up mostly by color, making it very simple to avoid all things purple (yeah, it's Adrianna writing this post, in case you hadn't figured it out). Except for the purple journal Susan found that was on sale and made Adrianna buy.

I didn't think this butterfly tree would fit in our carry-ons, but you might see a copycat version of it coming soon to a Crafterhours blog near you.

Every department store should have fabrics in the "F" section of the alphabetic listings:

And it wasn't just a section. Because then, THEN, we found this:

Disneyworld for (crafty) grown-ups.  Only better. It's across the street from the main store, which made it tricky to locate... uh... except for this huge sign. That we didn't see. Until we saw it. 

I liked their pincushion display.  What a great idea for those of us who have way more pincushions than we do pins.

And they had ribbon....

....and buttons....

...and crafting supplies, oh my!

In retrospect, the store was pretty average by American standards, but for Susan and I, who haven't lived near this stuff for 2-3 years, it was eye candy galore.  

Susan snagged a ton (no, literally) of felt scraps. [Susan would like to brag that they're allllll wool and she only paid 5 euro for allllll of them.]

We took some fun pics out in front of the colorful "Idee" entryway.

And that night we had a terrific dinner of real steak with herbed butter with a side of real baked potato and real sour cream.  I know, again, not very impressive if you live in America, or another steak-serving country.  But for us?  Heaven.

Just to prove we did more than shop and eat, here are some finished projects.  Clockwise, starting at 12:  Stacey's first finished quilt block (and all her cut-out blocks to the side), Adrianna's scrappy skirt and embellished onesie for Stacey's niece, Susan's ticker tape quilted journal cover, Susan's itty-bitty teeny-weeny 1/2 inch square block quilt turned potholder, and Adrianna's hand-sewn patchwork doll quilt.

Stacey, thanks for being an awesome hostess and letting us so thoroughly invade your space and steal your fabric!  We miss you and Germany already.

Eve Needs a Jean Jacket: A Tutorial

It's been birthdays-a-plenty around here lately. Or, I guess the reality is that having kids that are now old enough to hang out with other kids means that we have kid parties to attend. In Eve's case, we had a party we planned to attend but had to un-RSVP because of the snots. I hate the snots. Birthday parties and snots. They don't go well together.

Long before the invite to the playgroup that was to celebrate the third birthday of Eve, I found a cool jean jacket that screamed out "Hey! Make me the coolest kid around!" And, really, how could I refuse? I had recently seen this.  I love all of the hand embroidery. My machine and I knew we weren't up to that level of amazingness, but we could do something fun our own way.

So I knew right away who the jean jacket would be for. An intimidating choice, though. Eve's mom has style. Like, when I visited her house for the first time, I was speechless. I was able to cover for that fact by virtue of holding a small baby that needed to be fed. I sat on the couch and fed the baby and looked around for a while while folks swirled around me, chatting. So so so beautiful. Clean and modern and personal and warm and colorful and smooth all at once. And Eve totally showcases her mom's taste. Well, now that she's three there may be a few new combos. That's about the age where K started to protest an item here or there and I decided that as long as there's something on her body when we leave the house, I can live with it. Halloween costume? Sure, whatever. But my discussion of Eve and Eve's mom's style is really to say: I was intimidated by the thought of creating something that Eve and Eve's mom would like. So I focused.

All you'll need to do something like it is:
a jacket to embellish
fabric scraps
fusible interfacing scraps
thread
water- or air-soluble marker
buttons

I wrote about using double-fused fabric here. It's fun to trim and work with. I started with Eve's name in cursive on the back. I drew the letters with a water-soluble marker on the right side of the fabric. Then I followed the line, trimming with scissors so that there was an even border on each side of my line.

After that shape was trimmed out, I placed it where I wanted it on the jacket. I didn't even pin it, because the presser foot held the double-fused fabric against the denim fairly solidly. I stitched right over the line I had drawn, using a decorative stitch set to a narrow width and a colorful variegated thread.  

I cut more of these leaves.

Then I started stitching leaves on in a vine-like pattern. Again, no pinning required, just nudging them under the presser foot where I wanted them as I went. I used a regular presser foot with the feed dogs operating as feed dogs do. The only machine-related note I have here is that you need to go slowly with steady, slow, controlled speed. I had a basic sewing machine that did not have any form of speed control and that machine wouldn't have worked for this. Spasms don't work so well with crafting. At about this time last year I got a new machine that wasn't a whole lot more fancypants except for the speed control.

After I placed the vines where I wanted them and spritzed the water-soluble marker lines with water to get rid of them, I used Disney's super-amazing button technique to add small white pearly buttons. Bling that isn't crazy bling-y. 

I wanted to add something simple to the front, so I stitched through one of the leaves, then kept feeding them through in a long chain without snipping threads in-between. When I had stitched through about 12 of them, I turned them into a flower shape and stitched a button into the midde. Then just a few stitches to attach that to a front pocket flap.

Since I wasn't sure that everyone and their brother would know Eve's name and the fact that this jacket belongs to her by looking at the back of the jacket, I used one of my "Hello My Name Is" screen-printed appliques inside the jacket. Just in case someone picks up the jacket and says "who does this belong to?" Since the bobbin thread of the stitching was all uuuugly in there, I trimmed out a piece of striped fabric to fit, ironed on some fusible interfacing and covered up all the ugly with some stripe-y pretty. And the name label.

And the best part, as always, is seeing a kid willingly put on something you've made.

As much as I love the jacket and as cute as I think it is, Eve is totally cuter. (And if I hadn't told you her mom has style, you'd know it anyway from how she accessorized the jacket!) Sorry about missing the party because of the snots, Eve. Glad the jacket is finally in your cute little hands.