Happy Birthday Mary!!

Mary recently celebrated her second birthday. A perfect excuse for a project! For her gift, I bought a few items and made a few as well. Unfortunately, the sizing did not work out too well. I was super excited to get her these Tom's Shoes that my sister had been eyeing for a while but was unable to find at any stores (and sold out online). My sister loved them... Until she tried to put them on the next day and they were so narrow that they would not even go on Mary's feet! Odd though because all the reviews that I read online said that they fit great. I guess maybe Mary has wide feet. The good news is that they were able to exchange the shoes for a larger size that fit just fine.

Now, on to the handmade items... I used two different tutorials from Dana over at Made. First I wanted to try an up-cycled shirt dress. Unfortunately, my husband did not have any dress shirts that he needed to get rid of, so I went to the Goodwill instead. I bought two great shirts, and set the other one aside for a future dress. The shirts each cost $3.99, and then I bought a quarter yard of blue fabric for the waistband for $.49 at my local fabric store. I used my pattern from the 90-minute shirt that I made her a while ago to estimate the size. The dress itself came out the perfect size. I changed the pattern for the dress a little bit by giving it long sleeves. The sleeves turned out a little bit too tight though. I could barely get her arms into them. Luckily, That was a pretty easy fix too. There is one extra seam on the underside of the sleeve, but no big deal.






To go with the dress I made these ruched leggings (also from Made). They were really easy! I just love the buttons on the bottom. I only used three buttons because these are much smaller than the pair that Dana made.



The funny thing is that now if you ask her who made her anything in the house her reply is always "Aunt Laura."

It is hard to believe that this day was 2 years ago already. . .





And today we make a pretty cute niece aunt pair!





-Laura

I'm Back. . .

You may have noticed that all of the posts lately have been from Meghan. . . Sorry for my recent absence. I have been so busy with my masters classes that I have not had much spare time. I guess that maybe I am a summer, winter break, and spring break blogger at least until next year.

Anyway, I have a project to share. My niece Mary got a new baby doll for her birthday recently. This is a side note, but with everything being manufactured in China these days my sister wanted to find a doll that was made in America. She could only find one company that still manufactures their dolls in America. Interestingly, the dolls come in parts and need to be assembled by the owner. It turned out that the doll was very easy to put together, and she was able to choose from many different face and body styles to personalize the doll. Here is what she looked like when she was done.




Hmmm, something is missing... She needs clothes! She had one outfit that my sister found for her around the house, but part of the fun of a new doll is changing her clothes. So for Christmas I made her some new clothes. I found this vintage pattern on sale at my local sewing store for only $1. You can't beat that!

I was hoping to make a few more items, but I only had time for the slip and diaper cover, a dress, and the jacket with the matching bonnet. They all turned out pretty well.





I love green, but when I choose the fabric for the dress I did not even think about the fact that Lulu has beautiful green eyes. A happy coincidence!





I think that the jacket is my favorite. It is so elegant.







The pattern also came with three different doll sizes which is nice, because now I can make clothes for any future dolls too.

Stay tuned because I have a few more projects to share. Maybe I can get them posted by this weekend? I hope everyone had a great holiday!!

- Laura

The playmat is a big success!

I hope everyone had a great (and maybe handmade?) Christmas!  Hopefully everyone's grievances were aired properly and massive quantities of refined sugar consumed.

The highlight for me was setting out the playmat on Christmas morning and having my son run out to see it.  He stopped and just took it in.  Then he started pointing out all of his favorite places!

"My house!  D's House!  Cupcake store!  Library!  Fire Station!  Market!  I go to market now, mommy!"  And he handed me invisible fruit bought from the image of the market stand.

I was so proud.  I ended up finishing it with a quilt binding that he unknowingly picked out at the fabric store last week. He told me he wanted something made with orange stripes, so that's what he got.  Here are a few pictures of him enjoying the project!

Also, since I already sell maps over on etsy, I added a listing for a custom play mat over there as well.  Because every kid totally needs one of these!

-Meghan

Handmade Christmas (part 1-point-something)

I've been thinking non-stop about this playmat idea that I have for Henry.

I am getting more and more excited.  I've been really busy and my scanner has been soooooo slow that I haven't gotten much done on it yet, but what I do have I'm excited about.

I have the base for the streets and green spaces done!  It is to scale at 42x36 inches and each road is 2" wide.  I have draw the library, our home, daycare, the farmer's market, a bakery, a fire station, a park and a few other trees and stuff so far that I need to get placed on the mat.

Here's what I have so far, I'm still making some decisions about which direction things should face.  I'm deciding between having them all face the same way or all face the streets they are on.  So tough to choose!

-Meghan

A Handmade Christmas, part 1

Last year every single gift we gave was made by hand.  From the photographs to the frames we built.  We did a fake wood learning tower for Henry and a felt house.  People got reusable grocery bags and muslin tea bags.

And, frankly, it was a lot of work.

But the principle of it was great and it was a lot of fun.  We're doing a mostly-handmade Christmas this year.

Lowell is building a mini-workbench for Henry and I have been inspired by all of the car playmats.

The time it takes to applique all of the things like Jill did on her blog seems overwhelming.  There are some great fabric ones on etsy where it is one yard of fabric with the pre-made design backed onto a cute print.

But, I think that I will design my own fabric and print it using Spoonflower's printing services.  I have designed fabrics in the past and been pleased with them.  Plus, if I design the fabric I can then make it personalized just for Henry.  It can have his library, Daddy's work, our playground and the grocery store.

I'm pretty excited and realize this is going to be a lot of time in front of a computer designing it!  But, I will be so proud of it when it's done.

-Meghan

Hhappy Hhalloween Hhenry!

Here is the simple project I talked about last week. Ok, ok I know that it is not quite Halloween themed, but it is a little bit related. A while back Meghan mentioned that Henry sometimes refused to wear his underwear (he is potty training). She suggested that maybe she should make him some h underwear because he always wants to wear his h shirt. So I beat her to it.



The project was easy. I bought a package of boys underwear from target. I was amazed how hard it was to find little kids underwear that do not already have designs or cartoon characters on them.



Next, I printed out some large h's from my computer. I pinned them to an old t-shirt and cut them out. Then I pinned them to the back of the underwear and sewed them on using a zigzag stitch.



My personal favorite are the black skull pair with the orange letters. Very halloweeney.





You could do this with pretty much any letter, although some would be a little bit tougher to sew on than others.





-Laura

Halloween Costumes-Ghost!

Henry wants to be a "Ghote" for Halloween.  Not the kind that says "maaaa" but the kind that says "OOOoooOOOoooooo."

He is super excited about Halloween and understands the concept.  Maybe too well.  I am working on his costume and he wouldn't try it on.  I asked when he would wear it and he told me "to get a trick or treat."

So, I had to bribe him with M&Ms to get him to put the body of the ghost costume on.

Here are some pictures of him trying it on.  It's not done yet, hopefully the voile headpiece that he loves will be pretty easy to assemble.  Right now it consists of running around with transparent fabric over his head.

Happy birthday to me!

I am very excited because I have been dropping hints to my husband for months now that I wanted an iPad for my birthday. After giving me a decoy gift a few days ago, which had me thoroughly disappointed that he did not get the hint, he surprised me with an iPad last night! I am super excited about how much more convenient it is going to be to write blog posts compared to my really old and really slow computer.

I also got a free cookie today at lunch because one of my coworkers mentioned at a restaurant that today was my birthday. So all in all it has been a pretty good day!

I have a simple and fun project coming up later this week so check back soon!

90 Minute Shirts

 I know that we teased you with this a while back, but we finally got our act together and put together a full post about it. 

I wanted to try the 90 minute shirt tutorial from Dana on Made.  I do not have any kids, so I made one for my niece and one for Meghan's son.  My sister donated some old shirts that she had laying around.  She picked the fish pattern for Mary's shirt.  For Henry I picked the gray and yellow combo, but it seemed a little bit too plain.  A few weeks before I made the shirts I had gone shopping with Meghan.  We saw some cute letter shirts at American Apparel, but they were pretty expensive for children's shirts.  Henry has been really into letters lately, so I thought that H would be the perfect thing to make the shirt a little bit more exciting.

When the shirts were done we all got together for a nice picnic in the park.  Thanks to Meghan for taking some amazing pictures of the day! 

(This ice chest was really weird.  Just sitting in the middle of the field full of ice.  We think there might have been a wedding there the night before.)

(We were close enough to O'Hare International Airport to see big planes flying by.)

Here are my tips for anyone who wants to try the 90 minute shirts.

1.  I do not have a serger.  Dana has instructions for making them without a serger.  As I was sewing on the collars, cuffs, and H's they were looking very uneven and bunchy.  I thought for sure that this tutorial just did not work very well without a serger.  Then I ironed the shirts.  All the bunches and unevenness came right out!  So my tip is to not get discouraged.  Try ironing the shirt and see how it looks.  Chances are it will look much better after a simple ironing.

2.  I found that Mary's shirt, which was about a 24 month size came out with better proportions than Henry's.  Henry's shirt was about a 3T.  The body of his shirt came out fine, but the neck was a little bit too large and loose.  I figured out that the key to a well fitting neck is the ratio of the size of the sleeve hole compared to how high the shoulder/neck pieces come (check the pattern on made and hopefully you will know what I mean).  I used the same 24 month onesie as a pattern for both shirts.  I made Mary's a little bit shorter and thinner, and Henry's a little bit longer and wider.  Mary's shirt had narrower sleeves and therefore sleeve holes.  This caused the shoulder parts to wrap farther around the sleeve on Mary's shirt.  This holds the neck in place.  Henry's shirt on the other hand had a larger arm hole, so the shoulder wrapped around less.  Therefore, his shirt does not hold as tightly at the neck.

Happy sewing!

- Laura

Mei Tai Baby Carrier

First, I would like to apologize for the poor quality of these photos.  I took them over a year ago, before we started our blog.  

Meghan has a really nice Mei Tai carrier that she bought online from a woman who sews them.  My sister tried it out once and really liked it.  I wanted to get her one for her birthday, but unfortunately it was a little bit out of my price range.  I think that Meghan paid around $120 for hers.  So I thought that if the woman selling them online could sew them so could I!

Meghan was kind enough to measure every last side, corner, and angle of her carrier so that I could make one with the same dimensions.  After calculating how much fabric I would need I went to the store to pick it out.  This was actually the hardest part!!  I think I spent hours at the fabric store.  My sister has one daughter, but I still wanted to make it gender neutral.  I figured that made it more versatile for future children.  I also was not sure if my brother in law would want to be seen in public wearing a bright pink carrier!  I came up with dark brown and baby blue solids because they look nice together, and those were my sister and brother in law's wedding colors.  I did not want it to be too boring, so I added the Chicago skyline to each side.  My sister and brother in law are both architects.  (I know, I know, this is the same as the iPhone case, but I actually made this one first).

It turned out better than I thought it would, but it was pretty time consuming.  Someday I plan to make another one, so when I do I will make a tutorial to go with it!

- Laura

Happy Monday

We've been busy!  From the White Sox game (a horrible loss, but cute ball players) to a picnic in the fields, Laura and I have had a crazy weekend.

We will be posting more about these adorable outfits this week.  Stay tuned for the details!  (Hint: one has 'h-es-es')

-Meghan

Felt-o-rama: Story board

I would like to dedicate our final week of Felt-o-rama to Sarah Zwier.  She was the first person to leave us a comment (we love comments)!  Sarah is so brave, she grew up in the Chicago suburbs but she is currently living in Laos with her husband helping native people who are poor and uneducated.  She also has a great cooking blog that includes some Lao cooking.  You should check it out at Mak Noa.  She is really Meghan's friend, and I only know her through Meghan, but she is an inspiring lady, and I wish her nothing but the best!  She is also the inspiration behind this idea.  She suggested a story board.  I am not sure if this is exactly what she meant, but it is what my imagination came up with.  I pictured a story board being sort of like paper dolls, only made out of felt.  But of course the doll needs somewhere to live!

I started with a white rectangle to be a room.  (It is really bothering me that you can see the fold marks in the felt, hopefully those will wear out soon). 

Then I created hard wood floors by using dark brown felt and sewing horizontal lines into it, and then short vertical ones at different spacing to look like the boards of hard wood floors.

Next, I thought it required a place to sit down, so I made a living room with a sofa and a large clock.  I have a really big clock in my house, and it is one of my favorite things in the whole house.

Then I figured anyone who lives here would need a place to sleep, so I made a bed with some blankets and pillows.  And of course a dresser to store clothes in.

Then I realized that there was no person, so I made one of those too.  She was the hardest part because I had to sew the face and hair on by hand.

Finally, I made her a few different outfit choices.

All of the pieces except the little girl are just one piece of felt with decorative stitching on them.  The girl is two layers of felt to make her a little extra sturdy.

Here are all of the individual pieces laid out. 

I must be honest and say that I am not totally done with this one yet.  I plan to make some additional outfits, people, furniture and other accessories to go with it.  But I think that you get the idea.  I have three other big projects that I need to be working on, so I need to set this one aside to complete at a later date.

Hope it was worth the wait!!

- Laura