A few weeks ago, I was able to celebrate the arrival of a sweet baby girl into our church family. She is the first girl born from within our church family in two years. Since that time we've had NINE baby boys born. So as you can imagine a baby shower with pink and flowers was a welcome change from the marathon of blue and dump trucks that we had going for nearly two years. Oh don't get me wrong, all our boys are wonderful and they will surely enjoy many fun father-son camping trips in the future, but a little sugar and spice is always nice.
A few weeks ago now, our little girly had a birthday party to attend for one of her friends that we go to church with. And our church family is particularly blessed with an abundance of boys, so the girls really have to stick together. I'm really glad these two girls have each other. So when it came time for this birthday party, I thought of my friend, Amy and how she made some pillowcase dresses for her daughter and daughter's friend for a birthday gift. So after not finding what I was looking for on the internet, I emailed Amy to get the links that she had used. This one was what I was looking for, but it didn't have pictures and that's what I've come to appreciate with craft blogs. So I decided to take pictures of my process as I used the steps from the ehow article Amy sent me. Hope you enjoy this photo tutorial.
To make 2 coordinating pillowcase dresses in about size 5/6, I purchased: 2 yards of coordinating fabric (1 yard of each), 1-3 yard spool of 7/8" ribbon and coordinating thread.
To cut the fabric, measure from the back of the child's neckline to the finished length + 2 inches for seam allowance and cut your fabric to this length. For me the measurement was 23 inches. So 23+2=25 inches. With my fabric folded in half, I just cut it into a long 25 inch rectangle. I also added a 6 inch piece of the coordinating fabric to make a band around the seam. And I think I also used a 1/4" seam allowance unless otherwise mentioned. (On the second dress, I made that coordinating band 8", just to make it a bit wider.)
Now time to press:
With the wrong side facing up, press the top edge of the fabric in a 1/4" all the way around.
Then fold and press 1". (You're prepping the casing for the ribbon around the neckline.)
Then I pressed that 6 inch piece in half, so it's now 3 inches. (On the second dress, I pressed the 8" piece in half making a 4" piece.)
With right sides together, I pinned and then sewed the double sided 3 inch band to the bottom of the main fabric piece. Then I pressed the seam up toward the main fabric.
Next, fold the fabric so right sides are together. Measure 6 inches down from the top of the casing folds. Mark with a pin. This will be the top of the one side seam and the bottom of one armhole. Now sew up this side seam.
Then I went back down to the bottom of the dress and sewed a top stitch to keep the band laying nicely. This was about 1/8" seam allowance.
Now back up to the armholes. On the folded side, you will need to measure 6" from the top of the folded casing, mark it, and cut the fold apart. NOTE: If I make these again, I'll be doing the armholes differently. Either, I will trim the fabric for the armholes at a curve or just finish the edges with bias tape. It was really hard to get the seam right on the corner around the folded side.
But I followed the directions I was using and folded the armhole edges in 1/4" on the selvage edge, and 1/4" plus one more 1/4" fold on the raw/cut edge. Then I sewed these seams, but it was really tricking. Not my favorite part of the dress.
Then it was time to sew down the casing. I did this seam really close to the edge of the casing fold.
Lastly you put a safety pin on one end of the ribbon and feed it through the casing to the other side. Singe the ribbon edges and tie in bows. And that's really it! Not too bad, pretty quick.
Here are the girls in their dresses on Sunday morning. They seemed to like coordinating.
But most of all they liked to twirl together! And who can blame them?
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we gave out some eggs from our chickens for Teacher Appreciation gifts. I also mentioned that we gave them something else that I'd reveal soon. Well the time has come to share the Coffee Cuffs that I made for two preschool teachers in our lives.
I found the idea here while I was blog hopping one night and thought it was just too cute. It seems that we often give coffee gift cards to friends for different events/celebrations. So this just seemed like a great way to add a homemade touch to such a gift. So here's how I did it.
First you'll need:
*two pieces of coordinating fabric at least 5"x13" (I used some fat quarters that I liked),
*insul-brite (found with the interfacing--it's the heat resistant batting stuff that's between pot holders),
*matching thread, pins, iron, yada, yada, yada.
I started out by making a pattern. I opened up a cardboard cuff/sleeve and traced around it leaving extra space for a seam allowance. I gave myself an extra 1/2" on both the top and bottom and 1" on both sides. Then I traced the pattern onto the wrong side of my outside/main fabric.
Then I layered and pinned my pieces together in this order: insul-brite on the bottom, inside/accent fabric right side up, and outside/main fabric with wrong side up, and cut it all out together.
Then I used a walking foot to sew all three pieces together, making sure to leave one end open. And trust me a walking foot is better. The first one I made, I tried using a regular foot and it was not working out and got stuck. I'd much rather use the walking foot than have that frustration. I also realized that I didn't need the extra little triangle piece on my open end, so I cut it off. That's what I get for being particular and tracing the cardboard cuff just so. Ok, so sew the three pieces together, clip the corners, and turn. I used a chopstick to push out the corners neatly. Then press.
See my opened non-triangular end? Then I turned in the open end and pressed.
And top stitched along all four sides.
Then I had a long nice top stitched parallelogram that I wrapped around a coffee cup from my favorite local coffee shop. I marked with a pin where I wanted the overlapping edge to end. The I sewed right on top of the top stitched seam to make a circular shape.
Then I switched my thread and bobbin so I'd have green on top and purple on the bottom and I sewed along the top stitched seam that was on the inside of the overlap. That way nothing is flapping up and everything lays flat.
And then it's done! Ready to slip over your favorite to-go coffee cup. To give this, I stashed a coffee card inside the cup. If I make this again, I will probably try to use some velcro rather than stitching the overlapping edges into place. Because not all coffee cups are the same size around. And it would also eliminate a random looking stitch on the outside of the cuff.
The coffee cuffs were just a part of a bigger gift from several parents for the last day of Teacher Appreciation week. I volunteered to do a basket for each teacher. I found the baskets for 1/2 off at Joann's (yay!) and hemmed the edges of a fat quarter to line them. Then most of the parents and kids brought in something to go in the basket. There were a few small gifts, notes of thanks, and some art work from the students. It was neat to put all of our little things together and make a big impact of appreciation on these two wonderful teachers. There baskets were overflowing with tokens of appreciation for all the hard work they've put in and how they touched the lives of each student and their family.
This week has just been flying by for us. I've been meaning to post a recap of our Easter festivities for days now, and here we are on Wednesday night already. Oh, well. Hope you enjoy the look at how we celebrated the day.
Here's the precious little yayhoos in their Easter finest.
This was the first year that I've made an Easter dress for the little girly, and come to think of it, it's basically the first garment I've ever made for her. I was pretty careful to choose a pattern that would be as easy as possible for me. So that didn't leave her with much choice, but she did pick out the fabric. Then I decided since patterns were on sale, I'd go all out and make a necktie for the little man. It really wasn't hard, just a bit more time consuming than it should be for the amount of body surface that it actually covers. Anyway, I'm really pleased with how their outfits turned out. In fact, the little man's pretty much came together the day before. I had completely forgotten that someone from my hometown had hand-me-downed this adorable sport coat to us months ago. Good thing I was talking to my mom the day before so she could remind me of it. I think it really makes the outfit. In fact, it's possible that I just might have had thoughts along the lines of "I hope we're having another boy because then he could wear this outfit too". That possibly may have gone through my mind. Maybe...
Anyway, Easter morning discovering their baskets.
And then diving in
We also made Resurrection Rolls for the first time this year. I've seen some ideas for this on the web and our church did this for a VBS snack a few years ago. So I decided to give it a try this year. As I suspected, the little girly thought the whole idea including the symbolism was great, and the little man was happy with some sweet bread.
First we took two refrigerator biscuits and put a large marshmallow on one.
Then we sandwiched them together and SEALED them closed (pinched the edges down with our fingers).
Then we SEALED them in the oven, just as Christ's body was sealed in the tomb.
After they baked, we opened them to reveal an "empty tomb". The marshmallows evaporated into the biscuits leaving a hollow space.
The only thing I think I'll do differently the next time, is use crescent rolls rather than biscuits. Then I'll put one marshmallow in the center of the roll dough and wrap it up. We ended up having to bake the double biscuit version much longer than we had anticipated because there was so much dough. I think the wrapped crescent roll would be closer to the recommended baking time.
Since Easter fell on the first Sunday of the month this year, we had our monthly potluck with our church family following our worship service. The food was very good, and even better, the dessert was too.
After the potluck, we had a big egg hunt for the kids. Since we woke up to about 3 inches of snow on Easter morning, we had the hunt indoors. (I know, snow for Easter! Blah!) But having it indoors didn't bother my little hunters. They loved it!
By this time, we were ready to get back home. I had just enough energy to shovel some snow off my crocuses and take a few pictures of the kids outside in their Easter outfits, before we all took a well deserved nap.
Hope you all had a fantastic Easter and that you enjoyed the many blessings our Father in heaven has given us--most importantly His Son.
Well, I think it's official. I've become totally inspired lately by the Make It And Love It blog. A few months ago I saw this idea on her blog. I read through the entire tutorial she had and knew I wanted to make something similar in the near future.
Recently, I heard about a little girl from church who was sick and even spent some time in the hospital recovering. She's just a few months older than my little guy, so I knew there were probably only so many coloring books and TV shows that would occupy her as her little body recovered. I wanted to do something for her that would bring a smile to her face, and maybe even occupy her time for more than a few minutes. (If that's possible for a two year old.) My mind turned to this idea, and I decided to spend some time making a little felt potato for her this weekend.
Isn't he cute just hanging out in my windowsill, soaking in the natural light?
To start, I had to make my own patterns. But I just sketched them out by hand on regular paper. Nothing too technical. A few pieces I folded in half to get them to be equal proportions, but I tried not to be too picky. Then I cut out the pieces in felt--a front and back for each piece. (The pieces are layered together in this picture.)
Then I placed the velcro where I wanted the face pieces to be on the body, and then sewed them in place. Then I sewed a pocket to the back piece to hold all the extra pieces.
I then sewed the opposing pieces of velcro to one side of each face piece.
Then I took the two pieces of of each face piece and sewed them together (with wrong sides facing), left a gap for stuffing (poly fill), stuffed, and then finished sewing them closed. (All on the machine, of course. Cause no one want to sew all that by hand!)
For the body, I followed a suggestion I found online from someone else who used this idea, and sewed the body with right sides together. Then I turned it, stuffed it, and sewed up the bottom. The intent was to prevent it from puckering too much around the edges. I did it this way, but I'm not sure if I'd do it that way again. It was really hard to not get a flat bottom doing it this way. And we all know potatoes are round!
One nice thing about this project was using felt. Felt is great because you don't have to worry about the fabric fraying. That's why I could sew the pieces with the wrong sides together and expose the seams.
On these two pieces I sewed some detail seams. Teeth and lip lines. The teeth lines don't show up very well in the picture, but you can see them pretty well in the photo at the top.
Then I warmed up my trusty hot glue gun and added some accent pieces from some scrap felt. I used some photos online as a guide and then cut them by hand.
Here's all the finished pieces.
Here's the Mr version.
And the Mrs version
And then the extra pieces can tuck inside the pocket. Although in the future, I think I'll do the pocket differently too.
I will admit that this project was a little more than I had bargained for. It wasn't really difficult exactly. It just took me a bit longer than I had imagined. The truth is, it took me a total of about 5 hours to complete. And half of that time was interruption free because I worked on it after the kids were asleep. Shawn thought it was great and admitted it would have taken him much longer to finish. But he still told me, "That's five hours you'll never get back." Some boys just don't get crafting, huh? I realize there may be some of you reading this that are thinking the same thing, but don't worry. I don't feel like my time was spent in vain. I enjoyed the creative process and making something with my hands. And the bonus will be seeing the smile on the face of a little girl who will enjoy it.
Share the love little potato guy!
c
