Fabric Evergreen

It has been a while since I've posted a tutorial, and what better time than now? We are all getting crafty for the holidays! This is one of my favorite homemade craft decorations that stays up long after Christmas has passed; I consider it a Winter decoration, not a holiday decoration.

The Fabric Evergreen

and the best part is that it requires absolutely NO SEWING!

1. choose your fabric (amount depends on the end size, but a fat quarter should be more than enough)
2. choose your styrofoam cone (any size you like)
3. grab a box of dress pins (also called straight pins; the small silver ones with a flat top)
4. cut a strip of fabric, to wrap around the base of the cone, about 2 inches wide
5. pin the fabric strip into place from the bottom of the cone (leave the sides un-pinned for now)
6. cut the rest of your material into 2x2 inch squares & pin one over the tip of the cone
7. next, fold a square of material in half and then in half again, so you are left with a 1x1 inch square (or diamond)
8. turn your cone upside-down and place the tip of the folded diamond corner over the fabric strip, just touching the bottom edge of the cone
9. pin the right corner of the diamond to the cone (pin should also hold the strip to the side of the cone)
10. repeat with the next square of material, overlapping the folded diamond side corners
11. once the row is complete, start the next row by off-setting the diamond point
12. continue until you reach the top of the cone

I hope these instruction made sense... I forgot to take photos as I worked.  I will be making more of these Fabric Evergreens in various sizes, so I will add additional photos later.

Halloween Mystery

Where have I been lately?

I have been struggling to get into the new school year rhythm!  But now that birthdays are Halloween are over, I can finally breathe.  And maybe even blog a little too...

Here are a couple snapshots of the costumes I made my little guys for Halloween.  We were going for a Ben 10 theme (check out Cartoon Network for a variety of the Ben 10 incarnations).

Kevin 11

Four Arms (one of the original 10 aliens)

And Ben Tennison, himself

Don't they make a good looking bunch of aliens?

Matching Mickey Shirts

I was flipping through some family vacation photos from last year and I was gushing over how cute my boys are when they are dressed alike! 

Then I realized that I started my blog after I had created these matching Mickey Mouse shirts for our trip to Disney.  And I do have to share because they were incredibly easy to make. 

1. Buy a solid color t-shirt (or as many as you need).

2. Buy t-shirt paint in colors of your choice (I went with red and black - traditional Mickey colors).  Make sure you get opaque colors because the irridecent doesn't show as nicely.

3. Use one cupcake liner and two mini-cupcake liners to make your Mickey Mouse template.  Place your template on your first shirt.

4. Squeeze your base color t-shirt paint in a thin line all the way around the template.  Remove the template and use a dry flat paint brush (mine was about 1/2 an inch wide) to fan the paint outward.

5. Once the first color is dry, repeat with additional accent colors.

It is incredibly difficult for me to find matching shirts in all 3 of my boys' sizes - making t-shirts is always an easy and inexpensive way for me to get those cute pics!

A Boy and his Monster

You don't see very many stuffed monsters for sale in the toy stores.  They tend to come as hard plastic action figures.  But every little boy deserves his own monster that he can cuddle up with at night or during a scary movie.  I posted earlier with a picture of the monster my own son designed, that I promptly made into a stuffie. 

Well here is another monster created by another little boy!

and the drawing it was created from

I have to say that I wish I had more hours in the day to work on these.  I really do love the way that they come out.  And I love the way they make all these little boys light up with joy!

The Drawing and the Toy

For those of you that don't know, Pinterest is a very dangerous site for the craft addicts out there.  And I finally fell prey to one of the pins I came across.  There is this wonderful blog by a woman who creates stuffed toys based on childrens' drawings.  Apparently her waiting list is super-dooper long, so I thought "I'm crafty; I can totally do this on my own."  And so it begins...

Here is the drawing that my son made.  This is Mete-Or.

We decided that the drawing of Mete-Or was a good size (about 6x12 inches)

so all I had to do was trace out the pieces directly from the drawing as my pattern.

and then the fun task of embroidering all of the details

Once the details were all stitched, I was able to sew the backside to each limb, turn right-sdie-out, and stuff with fiber-fill.

 

I then attached each limb to the front of the body, sewed on the back, and filled the body before stitching Mete-Or closed.

Here he is: Mete-Or as a drawing and stuffed toy!

A couple of things:

1.  I will definitely be doing this again.  My son absolutely loves it and now my other son is begging for one (he is still creating his perfect drawing though).

2.  I'd be happy to do this for others - leave me a comment and we'll work it out.

3.  You can check out the blog that inspired me at Child's Own Studio

I have a plan...

I was really hoping to post pictures of the boys' new bunk bed and room arrangement.  My plan was to have these fantastic, visually appealling photos of the white furniture against the aqua walls with all the vintage vehicles fabric accents.  It looks awesome in my head!  Unfortunately, I am not as talented a seamstress as I would like to imagine myself.  So I have called in back-up: my mother.

My mother has been sewing, knitting, quilting, crocheting, fabric-crafting since long before I was born.  She can do things with a sewing machine that would take me months to figure out.  The one problem with my fantastic (and free) back-up?  She lives a couple states away.  So I have a few more weeks to wait before my plan can come to fruition.

What will I do in the meantime?  I am building a "Honey-Do" list of sewing projects for my mother to complete in the 4 days she is here.  Who needs to spend time with their grandsons?  Sewing is definitely more important.  The last week of February will include posts on these creations of hers (I promise not to take credit for her fabulous work).  I may even have her blog about them herself!!!

What projects do you prefer to out-source?  Post a comment and share!

Oh Scrap!

Scraps - we all have them and we all cannot bare to throw them away!  While re-organizing (see my last post), I recently found some fabric strips leftover from one of my mother's quilting projects (I cannot even throw away other people's scraps!!!).  So I took the opportunity to create something. 

A fun, colorful fabric coaster - to set my drink on while I am scrapbooking in my craft room.

Super simple instructions for those of you who would like to use up some of your fabric scraps:

1.  take 3 strips of fabric that are the same length (I used scraps that were approximately 2 1/2" x 44" each, but you can tie shorter scraps together to get the length you need).

2.  knot one end and braid the three strips - knot again once finished braiding.  My braid ended up being about 28" long.  HINT: don't braid too tightly; you want a little stretch to it.

3.  using a needle and thread, start at one knot and sew the braid to itself in a spiral pattern (this knot will be the very center of your coaster).  My coaster ended up being approximately 4" in diameter.

I'd love to see what you're ideas are for using up fabric scraps (because you know I have more) so post a comment and/or link so we can check it out!