She Knits Shizknits

crafty mother's day

This year the small men and I made little sachets for the grandmothers for Mother's Day. We cut some muslin into squares and used fabric paint to make handprints on the muslin. Evidently, for the small men, the best part of making this craft was spreading the paint on their fingers. I wanted to take a photo of the process but I was so busy trying to keep the paint from getting *everywhere* that I only got to take a few shots.

After the paint was dry, we glued the squares together and filled them with lavender.

I've seen this idea around on several blogs, but I really liked how cute the finished sachets turned out. And the lavender smelled divine!  I got 8oz of great-quality lavender from this Etsy store- not only was the price right, but she shipped super quick and refunded me some $$ because the shipping cost wasn't as high as was originally quoted. Great Etsy seller!

The grandmothers (and grandpas) came over today and we had a lovely Mother's Day Brunch. I made fresh waffles, a crustless spinach quiche, and of course, the famous fruit tart.  Little Man and Monkey Boy must have eaten four or five whole waffles between the two of them!  Not to mention all the bacon!

Once we finished up brunch, the small men gave the grandmas their sachets. I also got a very sweet card from the small men and the Dearest. And of course, there were the cutest little Mother's Day crafts from both LM and MB. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out- I even got to take a nap! Then we met up with some neighbors and had a casual pizza dinner.  There were plenty of margaritas and funny conversation during dinner, then it was time for us to head home since LM has school tomorrow.

All in all, a great way to spend Mother's Day. I hope my other momma friends had their own wonderful Mother's Days, too!

crafty zen

A few weeks ago, my friend Jennie talked me into trying out a new yoga studio that opened up in the town center.  I have been practicing yoga on and off for a few years, but haven't attended a studio class in a long time....probably three or four years at least!  The previous studio I tried had great classes but it was difficult to attend on a regular basis because it was a bit of a drive.

The local studio is less than 5 minutes away by car (and about 10 minutes if I ride the Xtracycle...which will probably happen during the summer). They have a deal where they allow you to take unlimited classes for the first week for free. So Jennie and I got out our yoga mats and headed down to try several different classes.

After that first week, we were hooked! We both signed up for a month, and we've been going to at least a couple of times a week. Sometimes we go together, sometimes we go separately. Jennie even got me to take a "hot" yoga class (where they raise the room temp to 100F or so), which I wasn't so sure about, but have grown to enjoy.

As it happened, Jennie was also my Secret Sister at our MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers) table. So when I had to find a gift for her during the Secret Sister exchange, the first thing I thought of was a yoga mat bag. She had been carrying her yoga mat back and forth to class without a bag, which made for a bit of juggling, what with the water bottle, wallet, keys, etc..

I did some fabric stash-diving, dusted off the sewing machine, and a couple of hours of later, I had this:

The pattern came from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing book.I LOVE this fabric!!! And I think the bag turned out really cute...

I made the bag a bit larger than the pattern calls for, so Jennie could put her towel or water bottle in the bag with her mat.  The bag was so quick and fun, I made another for myself (photos to come).

Oh, and Jennie?  She saw the bag and guessed right away that I was her Secret Sis...and she's been using her bag for every class since!

new stenciled tshirts....

I saw a really cute stenciled shirt on another blog yesterday and thought it would be perfect for Little Man's first day of school outfit. So of course I dropped everything and spent the afternoon with an x-acto knife, freezer paper, paint and an iron to produce this:

I love how it turned out! Next I'm going to do one with a nutcracker and a nut saying "You crack me up." LOL Just right for 1st grade humor, IMO.

 Then of course Monkey Boy wanted a shirt with a helicopter. I saw something similar to this somewhere (maybe on craftster.org).

I found the helicopter stencil online, but I just cut the scattered hearts out of a sheet of freezer paper randomly and then combined the two images. Sorry for the wrinkles, but Monkey Boy was at VBS today so I didn't have a willing model.

I'm especially happy with these shirts because both of them had some stains on the front that made them "stay-at-home-shirts".  But the stencils cover up the stains perfectly so they can be worn in public again, thereby upholding my 'perfect-mom' facade. *snort*

dino-love thursday

Monkey Boy came up to me a few days ago and demanded, "Momma, use you sew match-een, make me stompy dinosaur!"

Translated: "Mommy, use your sewing machine to make me a softie dinosaur!"

I don't know where he got the idea that he needed a 'stompy dino', but he was incredibly insistent about it. All morning Sunday morning he asked over and over that I make him a dinosaur. But I was busy with LIttle Man's going to school outfit and kept telling MB that I'd make one for him later.

He was so patient! Every morning for two days he'd remind me about the 'stompy dinosaur'- finally I took an hour's worth of Quiet Time yesterday and cut, sewed and stitched like a madwoman. Here's the result: one rarely-seen Stompy Dinosaur:

I used Minkee fabric for the body. My first thought for the spines was felt, but then I remembered that Monkey Boy likes to twine his fingers in the ribbon tags on his blanket. So I found this cute ribbon in my stash and used it instead:

Little Man cut out the eyes, which fit with a bit of mommy-trimming:

How did Monkey Boy like it? Let's just say that Stompy Dinosaur has already been stained with chocolate milk from breakfast, been to the craft store, Trader Joes and to pick up Little Man from school, as well as riding on MB's scooter and going to bed with him. MB wanted Stompy Dinosaur to "take a swim lesson" with him...but that was vetoed by the instructor. LOL

What did I dino-love about this project?
-playing with fabric again (forgot how quick sewing is!)
-having fun sketching different dino shapes before I settled on this one
-little helpers with scissors
-the mess of scraps left by little helpers with scissors
-MB holding his hand over the fan exhaust on my sewing machine and saying "make more air!"
-Little Man's earnest 5yr old design decsions ("the eyes have to brown mommy!")
-seeing MB clutch his new softie everywhere he goes

what are you loving this week?

quick n dirty craftin'

One of our neighbors had a birthday over the weekend and he (like most small men) is obsessed with pirates. There's quite a bit of pirate fabric in my stash so I let Little Man loose in the piles to pick some out. It was only a couple of hours before the party so I knew I had to make something quick- a pillowcase would be fun and take only a bit of concentrated sewing time.

This is what 45 minutes of sewing will produce (it would have been faster, but the small ones were 'helping'):

The larger piece is one panel- I prolly should have added something on the left side to keep the edge of the wording from being cut off in the seam. No time for that though! We were putting on swim suits as I was ironing the edging! I think LM did a great job picking out the fabrics. Now he wants his own pillowcase out of more pirate-y stuff. He was also very adamant about keeping all the scraps, since we could use them to "make something cool for daddy". Hmm....sounds like a frugal crafter to me.

busy busy weekend

A Baby shower, a visit with an aunt with a beach house, Sea World....you get the picture!

So much to blog about and I don't have time right now....gotta get the boys to their swim lessons. Here's just a quick peek at some completed knitting (a FO report will follow

The completed blanket (it's folded in half) with all its fringing.  That's two days' worth of fringing you're looking at there! Whew!  It turned out cute, tho. Check out my super 'fluffly' packaging:

 

And since you can't have too many onsies for a newborn, I threw together these little guys...

Closeups here and here.    These were just made with scraps of fabric that fused to the onesies.  Then I sewed around them with my sewing machine.  It's the first time I've used my machine for applique and it was hard!  I felt like I didn't have much control of the stitching since I'm used to hand sewing around the motifs.  But it was also about 10x faster!

Now, off to pack up the small ones for swimming, and school, and teacher conferences....Oops, gotta take a shower first! LOL

pirates and spots, oh my!

A couple of visitors snuck into the closets of the small men and took up residence on their t-shirts.  Meet Pirate Ted:

And his twin brother, Spot (who is not quite the rake Pirate Ted is, but is still a character!):

 

Both Pirate Ted and Spot were made from scraps of flannel and felt. I used HeatBond to fuse them to the t-shirts, then embroidered around them. My stitching is (as usual) a little wonky, but I don't think anyone minded. I made up the shapes- tho they're inspired by some softies in my "PlushORama" book.  Now I'm looking through the boys' closets for more blank t-shirts to applique! It's an addiction!

convenience crafting

Little Man attended a birthday party for one of his preschool friends tonight. The honoree was a girl turning five. Since I have absolutely no clue what the cool gift for girls at this age is, I asked my mother-of-three-girls-neighbor for some suggestions. A few days ago Little Man & I headed to the local Le Tar-jay and picked up some Polly Pockets based on my friend's comments and LM's ideas (he wanted something with animals in it so we got a set with dogs & cats...I think the doll is supposed to be a vet?). I wanted to use one of my already purchased little totes for a gift bag, but it looked soooo boring as is. It needed some gussying up!

I sewed up a couple of "yo-yos" from scrap fabric pieces and added vintage buttons. Originally I was planning on embroider the little girl's initial on the bag, but after about six tries I gave up. I was attempting to put Monkey Boy down for his nap and did all the sewing in the rocking chair in his room (getting up every 10 minutes to tell him to close his eyes and go to sleep). You can probably tell how distracted I was by the somewhat wonky embroidered stems:

Whew, that's some mighty messy stitching! Oh well, I still think the bag came out pretty cute. And the project lasted long enough for Monkey Boy to finally fall asleep- how convenient!