crafty gifts

 A couple dear friends had babies and I was in a crafting mood. I googled some sewing gifts and made some stuff :)

A glorious "alone time" trip to JoAnn Fabrics

Followed this first easy blanket pattern to make a blanket for baby Micah, son of my friend Missouri Jill. 

Quick and easy, and very soft with that minky dot fabric.

Then followed this one to make some ribbon binky clips, made one for each babe. 

Very easy. If I made this again I wouldn't use a silky ribbon, but they were ok.

Made a couple of these headbands for my friend Josh's new baby girl Callie. 

They were very cute and soft. 

My pretty model!

And then made a hat for little baby Micah. I wanted the dino pattern on the top but I guess I needed to get a wider width of that fabric since my pattern went horizontal not vertical #beginnersewerproblems

Finally made these cute little rattles, one for each. 

Their cat face is way cuter, lol! I tried!

My rabbit face turned out better.

Micah's pile of gifts!

Callie's pile!

Very fun to combine 2 of my favorite things, crafting and gift giving :)

crafts

I made a quilt for my coming-soon new baby niece!

fabric in grays, yellows, and purples

washed, dried, and cut into strips

sewed all the strips together

backed it with a plain light yellow/cream sheet with the quilting sandwiched between

sewed a purple binding all around the edge and I'm done! Also made a little matching headband from the pretty purple floral fabric.

Mailed it off to my sister-in-law. And here are the big sisters sitting on it waiting for baby sister :)

Project number 2: burp cloths for my friend Kim's new baby girl

cute lamb and arrows fabric, and a towel for the backing

4 burp cloths, easy!

The last project I did stemmed from seeing this super cute irresistible fabric I found when I was looking for fabric for the burp cloths. I was wishing I could make something other than blankets with cute fabric, but all the clothes attempts I'd tried before had always been a little wonky. August was also growing too long for his sleepsacks, so I thought I would give making a bigger one a try

I don't know why, but I love this hot air balloon fabric so much. Got a little more than a yard and a yellow zipper

traced the measurements off a sleepsack that did fit him, and pinned up the edges and pinned the zipper in place. Then sewed it all.

Ta-da! Took a little more than an hour but was less than $10, which is cheaper than new, but not as cheap as getting lucky at the Salvation Army. Although it is getting harder to find as nice stuff as he gets bigger. Anyway, it's a flannel so its a perfect lighter layer for spring/summer, but he's still in the fleece one now.

I was really proud of myself.

sewn gifts

A couple things I've made lately.

Inspired by this on pinterest:

I made a quilt for our friend Fran who is expecting a little boy. I thought I was going to have to miss her shower, so I wanted to make her something really special. It turns out I get to go anyway. So bonus for Fran!

One nice thing was I had a lot of blue fabrics from another quilt project I did a couple years ago, so I didn't buy more than $16 of supplies.

I didn't have a pattern, I just kinda cut up triangles, sewed them together, then laid out my pattern so it wouldn't be too much of the same color in one spot, and kept sewing

Many hours later it was all sewn and ready for the edging

little mistakes like this always seem to happen :(, but a cute neutral gray soft backing.

all done!

Somehow I didn't notice until the end that her color gradating was from top to bottom and mine is from side to side. So I actually like hers better. And hers is a little bigger. But oh well, lesson learned, and just a cute little blanket to throw down and let baby play. August was proud of me.

One more thing I made was a sweet little baby bonnet from a pattern I found online for our friends from our Apologetics class having their first baby.

Once again using mostly scrap fabric from old pillowcases I used back in massage school. I worked on it over a couple bedtimes so I don't know how long it took exactly, not too long. It was the 0-3 month size so August's head is way too big to test it out. Hopefully they will have a cat-sized headed baby girl :) September approved!

crafting!

I copied this idea from someone's blog I saw about a year ago.

I'm not a very good original thinker, but am an awesome copier :)

supplies

a little interference with my thread

ta-da!

I was pleased.

This little kitty cracks me up. My mom and I went shopping and found her a sweet little sweater.

But she hated it.

She slunk around the house miserable until we took it off. This cat just wants to be free.

Little supervisor kitty:

She knows she's not supposed to be on the counter, so she will sit on the trash can and 'supervise'. Haha. Makes me smile. Make sure you get all that skin off the pineapple!! Meow!!

hosting gift

We're back! What an adventure. We went down to Missouri over the holiday weekend for my friend Jill's wedding, and then continued on down to Tulsa to see my old roommate Kristen. Such a great weekend, great visits, good talks, good food, but long long drives and adventures involving a tow truck on both ways! More about that another day, first I'm going to talk about this fun craft I made for a hostess gift.

I followed this blog post to make DIY stenciled tea towels. First I got some white cotton fabric at Joann's, altho I thought it was too thin. Later I found some plain white towels at Meijer, so if I do it again I can use those. I also bought a tube of fabric paint and then printed the stencil onto cardstock. I didn't bother with spray adhesive, just held it down while I sponged on the paint.

sponging on the design

hemming the towel

sewing on the lines for the birds

pretty!

I thought it was a nice gift combined with a jar of honey from Liz's dad's bees and a jar of my tomato jam.

Here we are, a united family again. This was last night after leaving Tulsa at 3am and getting home after 11pm, tired!

And a bit of 'harvest' from my garden after being gone. My pepper finally turned from green! But has been munched on by something. I think our friend over-watered my garden because the tomato plants especially are looking pretty soggy and dead leaves :( too bad, it's so hard to keep stuff alive!