:: a happy nest ::

felt & tulle princess hat tutorial.

This weekend, we attended a little friend's birthday party. It was a "sprinkles & sparkles" party - a very pink, very girly, very sparkly affair! Thea and I decided that a pricess hat would make a fun gift. The hat you see above is what I came up with.

{on a side note, I am the mother of a {suprisingly} very girly-girl, and I have very reluctantly entered the sparkly, pink, flowery world of princesses and twirly skirts and all other such fancy things. since this seems to be all that my wee girl thinks about these days, I'm just going with it, trying to also emphasize the importance of independence, smarts, strength, and  a good old-fashioned mess. while it's far from my everyday, fancy is quite fun! so I'm letting my sweet one guide me on this sparkly adventure.}

Here's how to make it:

 

materials

large piece of paper to make pattern

pencil

piece of string at least 18 inches long

1/3 yard wool-blend felt

medium or heavy-weight fusible interfacing

1/4 yard of tulle or other material (for the top of the hat)

sewing machine (or you could also hand-stitch)

handsewing needle & coordinating thread

felt scraps, buttons, trim, etc. for embellishment

{And just a note, I often buy my wool-blend felt locally at Quilting Adventures, but I also frequently buy online from Erica's, especially when I need yardage of felt. They have a wonderful selection of colors at different price points and very reasonable shipping.}

 

the process

First, make your pattern.

Use your pencil and string to make a quarter-circle. I was going for a hat to fit the 20-inch head of a three-year-old, and my radius for the quarter-circle was 14 inches. You may need to make your radius larger or smaller, depending on the size hat you need.

To do this, I tied the string to the pencil, then measured 14 inches and held the string at this spot while I traced the arc of the circle. I then used a ruler to make the lines for the straight edges.

Cut out your pattern.

Place your interfacing on top of your felt.

(I only had light to medium weight interfacing on hand, but a heavier weight interfacing is really better for this project, as it will give you a much sturdier hat).

Pin the pattern to the felt and interfacing & cut around your pattern.

Following the directions on the packaging of the interfacing, iron the interfacing to the felt.

Trim any uneven edges.

If you have any trim to sew on, do it now, so that the ends of the trim will be sewn inside seam of the hat.

Cut your strips of tulle. I cut the following widths: 1 1/2 inches, 2 inches, and 3 inches. Then I cut the three long strips into shorter pieces of various lengths.

Layer your tulle into a stack.

Put your felt interfacing side down and then lay your tulle on top of the felt, with the ends of the tulle close to the top of the hat.

With right sides together, pin together the straigt edges of the hat.

Make sure you catch the tulle as you pin.

Sew the straight edges together. You can trim off any extra tulle if you like.

Turn your hat right side out. You may need to use something to poke out the tip of your hat (I used a large knitting needle).

Now for the really fun part - embellishing your hat! I'll show you how I made the flowers you see on this hat, but of course, there are endless options.

To make the flowers you see above, I used this template from the craftside blog. You could of course freehand your flowers or google images for "felt flower pattern".

Use a chalk pencil to trace your pattern onto your felt. For each of my flowers, I used one small and one large(r) flower in different color felts.

Use a running stitch to sew a circle around the center of your flower.

Pull on the long end of your thread, which will cause your flower to bunch up a bit.

Tie a knot to secure.

Once your knot is tied and the gathering is secured, you can spread out the flower petals if you like.

Do this for as many flowers as you would like to embellish your hat.

Now you're ready to sew them on! I layered a large flower, a small flower, and a flower button. I didn't take photos of this step, but I did sew the flowers & button together before stitching it to the hat.

And that's that! I hope your little girl loves this as much as mine does.

halloween fun.

{Thea, our orange flower fairy princess}

We knew she would want to be something orange, it was only a question of what she would settle on. For months, she asked to be an "orange sled," before changing her mind only a few weeks ago. I must say, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I could stop figuring out how I was going to make that costume!

The costume wasn't complicated, and didn't even take that long. For the flower necklace, I used this tutorial from Martha Stewart (though there was no template for the flowers, so I used this one from her pet costume tutorial).

For her dress, I dyed a white cotton jersey sheet orange - though it turned out much more peachy in color than I intended, which actually worked out quite well. I used this super easy pattern, by chicken hill on etsy. To finish off her costume, I dyed some white tights green for her flower stem and made her a wand from felt scraps.

Thea came down with an awful cold a week before Halloween, so she spent the week home with me. We spent our mornings working on things to get ready for her preschool class Halloween party. We stuffed treat bags and mede these little monster treat cups from recycled egg cartons.

{sick, but still silly}

On Halloween day, she was finally well enough to return to school, and it was a good thing: I think she would have been heartbroken if she had missed the festivities.

The kids took part in a parade, and then sang sweet songs for the parents. We finished the morning with a party for her little class.

By the end of the day, I was the one who was sick. I went out for a few minutes to watch Thea start out trick-or-treating, but I didn't last long. I managed to snap a few {blurry} photos of her in her costume before I headed to bed.

John continued on, accompanied by our wonderful neighbor friends and their two sweet daughters.

They made it up one street in our neighborhood before it started to pour. Which was probably just the right amount of trick-or-treating anyway.

All in all, it was a good day. A good day indeed.

a new tutu.

As I mentioned before, I've been working on a new style of tutu that will hold up a bit better to the tough love of a three-year-old. The one pictured above is what I came up with. It was fairly simple to make, and I'm working on a tutorial so you can make one of your own! Stay tuned. :)

Happy Wednesday!

65 roses project : update

My brother's big hike is THIS weekend. Sadly, I'm much further behind on the project than I had hoped. Thea and I have both been sick, and with her on spring break last week, I didn't have much time to focus on much but being a mama.

The good news is that fundraising for the hike stays open until May. I'm planning on finishing photographing everything next week, and I hope to have all of the items up on etsy by Friday.

I've been having a lot of fun sewing up these sweet shirts for little girls. One of the fun things about having a collection of vintage sheets is that so many of them have pretty roses as a part of their design.

I picked my favorites, and have been sewing them on as appliques.

I've also been making a few different styles of earrings and bobby pins.

At this point, I actually have well over 65 different things to list. I am going to offer them all up and sell as much as I can.

As I mentioned before, 100% of sales will benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

It is so important for the CFF to receive donations because the CFF receives no federal dollars for research or development of a cure. Your dollars are highly utilized to develop therapies that help manage CF and hopefully will one day cure CF entirely. As I mentioned before, $.90 of every dollar donated to the CFF goes to RESEARCH to FIND a CURE for CF.

Here is a video that my sister-in-law's friend and fellow CF mom Rebecca Fish made to raise awareness:

 

Again, you have my deepest gratitude for your support of this project.

celebrating.

Yesterday, our sweet little girl turned THREE!

Last week, we had lots of fun getting ready to celebrate.

I made her a birthday shirt.

And a special birthday crown.

We made cupcakes, and used this fun teplate to make happy flags to top our sweet treats.

And we made our own crayons to give to Thea's friends from her preschool class.

I think I had as much fun (or more) as she did!

What are your favorite ways to celebrate your little ones?

 

birthday number shirt tutorial.

A while back, I saw a blog post about a mama who made her kids a fun shirt for their birthday, telling the world how old they were that year. The idea stuck with me. I made one for my niece's first birthday. Another sweet little girl in my life had a birthday last week, and I made one for her too.

I used the reverse applique technique, and I'm just in love with it. I'm working on a few more shirts using this technique. For this one, I took pictures as I went along to show you how I did it. It's so easy! And you don't even need a sewing machine.

Here's what you need:

store-bought t-shirt sized to fit the birthday kid

coordinating fabric of your choice (can either be knit or woven - I used woven for this project but have used knit for others and both work just fine)

thread - either craft/button thread or thick cotton floss

needle in a size to work with thread

iron

lightweight heat and bond

number template sized to fit your shirt

water soluble fabric pen

spray bottle with water

 

Ok, here we go:

Start out by creating your number template. You could use a stencil or even freehand it. I picked a font I liked in my word processing program and enlarged it. To make it the right size, I ended up enlarging it on a photocopy machine.

Cut your fabric to correspond with your number template, making sure it is about one inch larger all around than the template.

Iron your t-shirt and fabric.

For the next step, I did this the hard way (by placing the template between the front and back layers of the t-shirt and then tracing the number onto the front of the shirt - see photo below).

It would be much easier to just cut around the number on your template, center it on your shirt, and then use the fabric pen to trace around the number.

Here's a closer picture of the tracing:

Next, take your contrasting fabric,

and center it under your traced number (between the front and back layers of t-shirt):

Pin the fabric to secure it to the front of the t-shirt, making sure the contrasting fabric stays flat and doesn't pucker:

Starting from the inside, use running stitches to sew around the traced number:

Turn your shirt inside out and trim the contrasting fabric just outside of your stitching. This is what mine looked like when I was finished:

Trim any longer threads (I didn't photograph this step).

Next, take a small pair of scissors,

and carefully pulling the t-shirt fabric away from the contrasting fabric, make a small cut in the t-shirt fabric.

Starting at the cut you just made, use your scissors to cut over to the edge of the number, and cut around the inside of your stitches. Cut about 1/4 inch away from your stitches. Because knit fabric doesn't fray, you don't need to do anything else to finish these edges.

This is what mine looked like after cutting:

Use a spray bottle to wet the fabric, which will remove any ink markings.

Let the shirt dry.

:: I didn't take photos of the following steps - so sorry - but I will add them as I complete another shirt. ::

Turn your shirt inside out. Carefully cut away the excess contrasting fabric around the outside of your stitches - leaving about 1/4 inch of fabric outside the stitches.

Put the interfacing over the number/contrasting fabric and trace around it, about 1/4 inch outside the edges of the contrasting fabric. This is so the interfacing will completely cover the contrasting fabric and your stitching. Make sure that the silky side is up and the knobby/glue side is against the shirt.

Using your tracing as a guide, cut out the interfacing.

Carefully position the interfacing over the number/fabric on the inside of the shirt.

Follow the package directions to secure the interfacing to the shirt (you will use your iron).

This is the inside of my shirt when I was finished:

And you're done!

Please let me know if you have any questions or if anything isn't clear. Happy sewing!

sweet shirts for a sweet girl.

Remember this little birdie? It was practice for a few applique projects I was working on for my sweet niece. I made her this little birdie shirt,

along with a "one" shirt,

and a little stripey jacket with a "C" for Carloine.

The striped jacket and shirt were found at my favorite kids consignment store. My stitching certainly isn't perfect (especially on the jacket!), but I still think they turned out pretty nicely.

I lined the back of each applique with some soft fusible interfacing, to protect her skin from any scratchy threads.

This was a project that I kept putting off because it was something new and I thought it would be really hard. But it turned out to be really easy! I can't wait to try a few more.

little birdie book bag.

Remember this little birdie? It finally found it's way onto Thea's new book bag.

I made a simple reversible rectangle bag to fit her library books, and the little birdie is the outer pocket. The pocket is lined - I made it just how I made the pocket for the snowman felt play board.

The reverse of the bag is the same tiny yellow polka dots that I used in the birdie applique, and the pocket is the same as the red outer fabric.

Since my girl always has her hands full, and loves to carry arounda collection of whatever is most interesting to her at the moment, a new bag is always welcome.

Upon receiving this one, she declared it the perfect spot for her favorite little penguin - and tucked him right inside.

A few more of these are in the works - they are such a simple, useful, and satisfying project.