Daisy Welcome Wreath

As soon as I saw this wreath on Pinterest, I knew I needed to make my own version.  I would be barefoot all the time if I could (darn winter!) and daisies were my mom's favorite flowers.

I wanted to make mine a bit bigger, so bought a 12" wreath form and also used fake flowers instead of daisy trim.  I'm also still mildly obsessed with buntings, so I wanted to put the wording on one instead of the flag.  It took about a skein and a half of Fun Fur, and much more time that was necessary to wrap the wreath, since I'm way too picky about ridiculous things that make no difference to the end result.

Then I had the seemingly brilliant idea of sticking the flower heads onto sewing pins, so I could reposition them easily.

Several flowers ended up falling off the pins as I worked with it, so I went back and hot glued the flowers to the pins, which worked well.  I didn't want to totally commit by gluing the flowers right to the wreath, so this was a good solution.

Then I printed off this bunting.  My original plan was to stamp the letters on with one of the alphabet sets from my stamping and scrapping days, but all my sets were either too small or too big, so I had to suck it up and write them on with a Sharpie.  This was a bit nerve-wracking, as I have the world's worst handwriting.  I taped the flags onto some embroidery floss and tied it to pins to attach to the wreath.  At that point, I realized that the bunting was much too big to fit all of "Bare Feet Welcome" on it without looking crazy busy.  I was bummed, since that was one of my favorite things about the original!  I was not about to start over and have to redraw all those letters, not to mention cut out the flags again, so I decided to simplify it to just say "Welcome." 

Despite that minor disappointment, it's pretty fun for a spring/summer wreath.  I think my mom would have liked it.

A HeartFELT Valentine's Day

Nothing like waiting until the last minute once again, huh?  I finally finished up our Valentine's Day bunting this afternoon, after having the pieces cut for weeks.  O. chose the glittery felt for the hearts.  I'm so not a glitter person, but it turned out cute.  This is the first time I've made a bunting with felt for the backing.  The others, for the kids' birthdays and Halloween, were turned and topstitched quilting cottons.  Those hang better, but this was so much faster!  I think it would be a great no-sew project too.  I wanted the added texture of the visible stitching, but you could whip one out pretty quickly with a hot glue gun!

Look, we covered up that weird outlet above the mantel with a clock!  Much better.  "Bee Mine" is a printable from here and the owl is from here.


While we were stocking up on glitter felt, O. also found some felt bookmark blanks, so we decided to get some felt letters and hearts and make personalized bookmarks for his classmates' valentines.  Grandma stepped up and helped him work on them over the weekend when I was knee-deep in prep for E's birthday party (dress details to be posted in the next few days), and we finished the last five or so last night.  He really enjoyed choosing which colors and hearts to use for each friend and did the majority of the work himself.  He only needed help finding the letters in the pile and putting on the ribbons.

Halloween Projects

     Whew!  Halloween sewing finally wrapped up at 3:30 pm today!  Okay, there are a few things that I said I'd finish up for subsequent years, but the essentials got done.

     O. asked to have a Halloween party with some of his kindergarten buddies this year, so there was some sewing involved, of course.  First up was this bunting.  I have a thing for buntings.  ;)  Isn't that painted-over outlet above the mantel a nice touch too?  We used to have it covered by a picture, but it fell off the wall at 12:30 am one night!  Lovely to be woken up to the sound of glass shattering...

     O. and I made this little ghostie.  No sewing involved, but lots and lots of coats of various types of starch and stiffening agents.  I think he took us two weeks on and off.  We rigged up a form like this to shape him.  We downloaded the cupcake toppers from here, and O. helped by cutting out half of them, then we hot-glued them to toothpicks.

     I also made goodie bags for the party guests. (We kept it small, and I'm so glad.  Four boys doesn't sound like many, but it one small house, it was quite chaotic!)  O. chose the fabrics and wrote out the tags, which I found here. 

 

     On to the costumes....  E. is still small enough that we get to pick for her.  Yay!  Her favorite toy by far is a bee, so it was the obvious choice.  I used the same Nasta Pinafore pattern from Otto 4/08 that I used when she was a ladybug her first Halloween, modified to just pull on instead of buttoning at the shoulders.  The stripes are satin ribbon, which I probably wouldn't use again.  I made a cone out of fleece for her stinger, and stuffed it lightly, in case she ended up sitting on it.  Had I thought ahead, I would've flared out the jumper some more, since she can't stand.  It rode up quite a bit when she sat on the floor.  I was originally going to make wire wings, but thought it would be too uncomfortable when she was in the stroller or rolling around on the floor, so I used fusible web and two layers of felt, then tacked them onto the jumper.  They're a little droopy, but get the idea across.  Her hat is from the OOP Butterick 4305, the same as I used when O. was Mike Wazowski, with pipe cleaners that have pompoms hot-glued on.

Her bee slippers are from one of my standby patterns, the Darling Diaper Minimocs, which is a freebie.  I think the pattern runs a bit narrow, even with E's narrow feet, so I played with it a bit to get a good fit.  My first pair was too long (I always forget that her feet are small for her age!) and I also didn't like the narrow satin ribbon I'd appliqued for stripes.  I shortened the foot of the second pair and cut a curved piece of fleece for the stripe.  Much better!  I think I may put them on her for everyday slippers too.

O. wanted to be a clone trooper, which I was not too psyched about.  I figured I could modify the pattern for the armor from his knight costume from last year, but when I was looking for a helmet on eBay, I found a great deal for the entire costume, so I bought it.  O. requested that the husband also be someone from Star Wars, so he picked Obi-Wan Kenobi.  I should have started this much, much sooner, but didn't, so many of the details are still missing.  I used Simplicity 5840, and had pretty good luck with it for a Big 4 pattern.  I made the cloak first.  Wrestling with nearly eight yards of a cheap cotton/poly bottomweight fabric was interesting, to say the least!  I didn't stray much from the pattern, other than that the binding of the neck seam didn't work for me as written.  I had to trip the seam allowance a lot, and the topstitched it down from the right side, since I didn't have the time or patience to slip-stitch it all.  The tunic and belt were made from a much nicer linen/rayon blend.  The only change I made to the tunic was to skip the hand-sewing again.  You were supposed to slip-stitch the neckband facing, but I serged the facing and just stitched in the ditch instead.  The pattern belt ties, but we wanted to be more authentic, so I made a rectangular belt with hook & loop in the back, then he wore his own belt on top.

Happy Halloween!