Very Last Minute Costume Idea? Call Your Mummy

There weren't any new costumes as a result of my own effort this year. But I did serve as support staff for friends who were creating.

My godson J needed a costume for a school parade. The school encouraged parents to get involved and help make them at home. That meant that Mom and Dad turned to the crafterhours empire for cheerleading after finding this tutorial on Threadbanger.

J's dad, Curt, really didn't need much cheerleading. A thrifted shirt, pants and sheet are all the materials required. The tutorial includes a great video with its own guy-style cheerleading. ("You can't mess it up. It's a mummy costume.")

The best part of the construction process was Curt in the sewing seat, with his self-designed ninja headband. Apparently this is critical to development. He was in complete control of the sewing, I just helped with the bobbin once or twice.

The total cost for materials was about $6. Considering you really don't have to pay any attention whatsoever to the quality of your stitching, it came together pretty quickly. We learned that the fit of the base garments needs to be roomy throughout to accommodate sliding it on and off. I'd anticipated that with a knit base garment and a zigzag stitch we'd be okay, but there wasn't enough give without making the strips ruffly-- so there was an unplanned side panel refashion in the middle of the process. ("It's a mummy costume. you can't mess it up".) Maybe a rufflier version would be a girly mummy costume.

Rather than try to wrap J's head with strips as he was jumping out of the car for school, Curt trimmed the bill off of a baseball hat and used the rest of the hat as a base to apply strips so that they could be placed/removed easily. 

As with any costume, the measure of success is the level of excitement in the heart of the wearer-- and in this case, on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14.

It's the Great Pumpkin

We like to carve pumpkins.

We like to paint them, too.

Especially when we have a large blank canvas that begs to be pumpkinified. Like this one that has been calling out to me since I first saw our house for sale, saying "Paint me! Paint me! PAINT ME!" It's in front of our house, so I've literally looked at it every single day, thinking about painting it.

Of course a job like this shouldn't be handled alone. It requires a team of professionals. K was up for it, and carefully inspected the canvas.

We began by applying a healthy dose of orange tempera to the top. I then outlined a general pumpkin shape, taking into account some of the dynamic and exciting angles the canvas naturally presented.

K got to work spreading the medium with glee. 

The initial coat required some drying time. Which, incidentally, is a good time to try to take a nap, and then come back and apply the jack-o-lantern treatment.

I used a nearly dry brush to outline features, and K adjusted them and filled in the greater portion.

And now the Great Pumpkin has arrived.

I think it would require more than paint to turn this sucker into a turkey.

Mommy's Special Trans-Atlantic Flight Helper Badge

Tomorrow I'll be waking the girls up at 3 in the morning to fly to AMERICA!!  Wahoo!  We're so excited.

I wish I could tell you that I'm one of those super moms that organizes all kinds of educational activities, toys, and boredom busters for their kids when they fly, but I'm not.  Instead I have a dvd player and 14 hours of battery life back-ups.  Perhaps if I were flying with my husband or another adult, I would try harder, but when I'm by myself with a 2 and 4 year old, it's just about sheer survival.

Ok, before you think I'm the worst mom ever, I do have the bare minimum of entertainment supplies:

(Crayon rolls were birthday presents from our friend Kim - Thanks Kim!)

But really I'm just hoping they'll zombie out in front of the movie screen and fall asleep.

In the hopes of persuading my 4 yr old to help with the carry-ons during our layover and not have any meltdowns, I thought I'd help her take ownership of her very important job.  So I made her this little "Special Helper" badge.  She is already super excited about wearing it and the job that goes with it.

I printed the text onto white fabric using Susan's print-on-fabric tutorial (ha! I just noticed that she wrote that tutorial exactly 1 year ago today!  Sorry, I get overly excited about random coincidences.)

 Then I just sewed the ric rac around, glued some felt to the back, and sewed on velcro to attach it to her shirt.  I had to sew one side of the velcro onto the actual shirt, but I figured that would be safer than a pin and I can just rip out the stitches when we're done.  Easy and hopefully effective!

And don't think I'm above ripping it off her shirt and making her earn it back either (another bonus of using velcro).  I'm manipulative like that.

PS:  Keep an eye out for a Susan & Adrianna Crafterhours reunion very soon!!!

Patchwork Dish Towels: A Tutorial

aka: The One Where I Make the Mistakes so You Don't Have To.  (you're welcome)

Happy Monday everyone!  How about we make some dish towels today?  But these aren't just any dish towels.  They are super duper patchwork, reverse applique, seasonal, mistake-free dish towels!

For 1 dish towel you will need: 

- 2 16x24 inch rectangles of fabric for the body (I used linen).

- fabric scraps for the patchwork, at least 16 inches long if you're doing strips like mine.

- A scrap of cheap muslin or broadcloth, at least 16x10 inches.

- some other stuff that I'll get to in a minute if you keep reading.

Step 1:

Lay out your fabric scraps on the bottom third of your dish towel in a pleasing manner.  I made long strips, but you could use any manner of patchwork for this.  This could be a great scrap-buster if you piece together lots of small fabric bits too.  Or a nice way to use 4 of the 5 different red polka dot fabrics you own.  Geez, someone is predictable.

Step 2: 

Sew them together!  Press!  Don't these instructions sound more exciting with exclamation points?!

Step 3:

Find an image that you would like to feature on your dish towel.  Use an everyday shape, or make it seasonal.  Just make sure that the shape is very simplistic and doesn't rely on too many sharp curves or points to give it it's identity.  And watch out for that negative space.  For example, this image is NOT a good idea:

Why, yes, this is the image I used.  This is the part where I make mistakes so you don't have to.  The problem with this image is that the negative space between the top of the apple and the leaf was too narrow, so I wasn't able to turn it right side out later.  Just make sure you watch out for areas like that and you'll be ok.  Moving the leaf up a half inch would've solved my problem.

Note:

A good way to find simple images for projects like this is to do a Google Image search, then click on "line drawing" down there on the left.  You'll end up with better search results like this:

Step 4:

Once you have an appropriate image, trace it onto a rectangle of fabric that matches the measurements of your patchwork rectangle.  You can use cheap broadcloth or muslin for this fabric.

Step 5:

Lay the fabric with the traced image on top of the right side of your patchwork piece.  Pin all around and inside the image.

Step 6:

Sew all around your image directly on the traced line.

Step 7:

Cut out the inside of the image, making sure to clip very close to the stitching lines at any points and clip the seam allowances around curves.

Step 8:

Push the scrap fabric through the image to the back of the patchwork piece.  You'll need a chopstick or other pointy object to push out all the detail areas.  Press well.

Step 9:

Lay the patchwork piece over the bottom of one of your main dish towel fabrics.  

Use a disappearing ink pen to mark where the top of the patchwork piece hits the dish towel.  

Then flip the patchwork piece up so it is laying upside-down and right side down.  The top of the patchwork piece should still be aligned with the mark you made. (ignore the pins in this picture - don't pin yet)

Step 10:

Pull the patchwork piece down so it overlaps the mark you made by about an inch and pin it to the dishtowel:

Step 11: 

Sew the patchwork piece down to the dishtowel, using the edge of your presser foot as a guide.

Step 12:

Flip the patchwork piece down and stitch around your shape through the patchwork and dish towel.  Wow, wouldya look at that?  The apple magically turned into a pumpkin!  Bibbity bobbity boo!  (this was due to magic, and not the fact that my apple was so hideously wonky at this point that I didn't want you to see a close-up.  Magic.)

Step 13:

Lay the second dish towel rectangle right sides together over the patchworked dish towel.  Sew all around the border, leaving a few inches open to turn.  Here's a little trick (one of the many I've learned from Oliver + S patterns): Sew down the seam allowances when you leave a little space open like this:

That way, when you turn the whole thing right sides out, the stitching will force the seam allowances to the wrong side, making your job easier when it comes time to press and stitch closed.

Step 14: 

Flip the whole thing right side out and press.  Edge stitch all around the border, closing the opening as you go.

That's it!  Now hang it up in your kitchen and make sure your whole family knows that it is a decorative dish towel and not actually for wiping your marinara-covered face, thankyouverymuch.

I made a couple seasonal versions.

And of course, you don't have to use patchwork.  A plain length of fabric will work nicely too:

I'm already planning some Christmas and Valentines Day versions too!

Have fun with these and make sure you put any dish towels you make in our flickr group so we can all admire the loveliness!

An Alice in Wonderland Birthday: Party Details and a Gift

Well, we've talked about the invites, the dress. Let's talk party details. Well, not the food. We can't talk about the food. Alea's mom makes all sorts of delicious amazingness on an hourly basis, but to discuss it here wouldn't be fair. We're not food bloggers. The minute we can convince her to be one (we've tried) we'll be introducing her here.

We can talk about decor. It included giant mushrooms inspired by Filth Wizardry. Ours made use of water bottles as bases, plastic bowls for caps and lots and lots of aluminum foil, paint and glitter.

This one in particular made people giggle for some reason.

Alea's mom made giant playing cards and strung them around the party, and painted a Cheshire cat for a pin-the-smile-on-the-cat game.

Colorful ruffled streamers hung everywhere. Not because they related so much to the Alice/Alea in Wonderland theme as because they're colorful and ruffled and so so so so so fun to make.

The tables were set with lots of teapots. Lovely ones.

We can also talk about a crafty gift. Admittedly, we'd done a lot of fun things for Alea's party, but I still wanted to wrap something fun up for her. Any time I'm giving a little girl a gift, I can't help but think... when I was a kid, what did I want? (Uh, well, what I want hasn't changed that much. I still think I'd like this gift.)

But first I'll explain the inspiration. I'm totally fascinated with containers and packaging. I hate throwing it away. Recycling is better than throwing it away, of course, but it still generally means the end of the package. So when I was about to toss a cotton swab container recently, I looked at it a little harder. And I thought it could have a new, albeit short, life.

Another component to the idea? As a kid when my Mom would suggest homemade gifts I'm fairly sure I made a cranky face in response. In my mind, homemade gifts were boring. They lacked shiny newness. Commercialism. Packaging that you got to tear apart. (Come on Mom, those landfills need filling! It's my job!)

So in giving Alea a homemade crafty gift that cost pennies to put together but was most definitely made with a whole lot of love and a desire to encourage her creative exploration, I assembled my tools:
- an empty cotton swab package
- knit scraps
- computer + printer
- card stock
- water
- craft glue
- clips (bulldog, binder, clothespins, whatever)

I started by carefully tearing off the backing of the package. I wanted to keep it in one solid piece so that I can use it later as a template for a new backing. I soaked the plastic front in water and gently scrubbed off the paper bits around the edges.

Here are the package components:

I went to my knit scrap pile and cut strips of similar lengths and varying widths. She can braid, sew or knot these together to make all sorts of bracelets. While I was sifting through the scraps I also cut coordinating flower shapes that she can glue or sew onto her designs.

I believe that it is a result of Adrianna's influence that there is absolutely no purple to be found in my scrap pile. (edit by Adrianna: This could also be related to the fact that I had recently "sorted and organized" Susan's scrap pile)

I used the original packaging insert to create a new one. I just printed a design that was slightly larger than what I needed, laid the original piece on top of my design and trimmed it to match. No math required. I really don't mind math in general, but when one is multitasking there tend to be problems. When I've got one eye on a project and the other on a preschooler, I try to avoid it.

Same idea for the backing piece, which is just card stock with a phrase repeated continuously.

All of the strips are laid into the container on top of the insert that shows through the front of the package.

I removed a few here and there from the stacks I had cut so that the box isn't overfilled. (Guess who gets to make a few bracelets?)

A thin bead of glue all the way around, smoothed out carefully. Extra effort to avoid glue on the knit strips. Alea has high standards, let me tell you!

Then the backing piece is applied and clipped all the way around for a bit until the glue dries.

And now Alea has a crafty, personalized birthday gift. Homemade, but with shiny repurposed packaging she gets to pull apart herself. (I hope she's not disappointed that there aren't cotton swabs in there?)