Handmade Holidays 2013

I ended up not doing a whole lot of Christmas sewing this year (I had big plans, but didn't get to most of them), but there was a fair amount of knitting.  I just mailed out the last thing this week *sigh*, so I'm finally blogging about the gifts as well.

I made O's teacher some boot toppers and also gave her some coffee and coconut oil exfoliating scrub that apparently never got photographed.  It was brown and in cute jar, so just imagine that.  I was quite pleased with the boot toppers.  (Ravelry notes)  Someday I'd like to make myself a pair.  I looked on Ravelry a couple of days ago, and the last time I knitted myself anything was 2009!  I still wear that hat too.

E's teacher and para also got the scrub, along with some slippers.  I made her teacher Bea's Slippers (Ravelry notes) and loooooved how they turned out.  They took a lot longer to knit than I was expecting, though, so I had to find a quicker option for her para.

I ended up knitting double-stranded slippers for hers, and they were super quick and quite squishy.  (Ravelry notes)  She told me after the break that her kids kept swiping them from her.  Haha.

I also wanted to give a little some thing to the secretary at E's school, since I end up bugging her to sign in and out nearly every day at drop-off and pick-up time.  She had a bio up in the entrance at the beginning of the year that said she sewed, so I had that in the back of my head and decided to make her a jar pincushion and fill it with a few chocolates.  Honestly, she had one of the best reactions to a gift that I've given in a long time.  It made my day to see how happy she was that I had read her bio and remembered that she sews.

Here's my only actual sewn project!  Ray asked for a phone cozy for when he runs in the cold.  I took this tutorial and simplified it, since I knew he couldn't care less about the piecing.

O wanted to make E a blanket and decided a tie blanket would be the way to go.  He was right, she loves the fringe. He chose the fabric, I did the cutting and Ray and I both helped him tie it, but he did a significant part of it.

It looks like E's staring down that raccoon.

Back to knitting (I have no rhyme or reason to this post, I guess), my SIL requested an earflap hat for her younger son, so I made him this one.  (Ravelry notes)  This was my most shamefully late gift of this holiday season.  Winter doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, though, so he will have plenty of opportunity to wear it still.  Hopefully it fits!

And last, but not least, the kids' annual Christmas ornaments.  (You can see 2011's here and 2012's here.)  O has been very into watching the Peanuts holiday specials, so I was inspired by this ornament on Etsy and made him Charlie Brown.  I wanted to use a glass ball like the original, but couldn't find any when I finally went shopping (I think Hobby Lobby has them, but it was a Sunday, so they were closed).  I settled for a paper mache one instead, so Charlie Brown is a little bumpier than I would have liked, but O didn't seem to care.

E's ornament was again based on her Halloween costume (as well as her on-going love of our cat).  It ended up being a huge pain to knit and then sew up this fun fur yarn, but I do like how it turned out.  (Ravelry notes)  I used scrapbooking stickers to put her name (blurred out, obviously) and the year on the ornament the cat is holding.  Stickers are the way to go.  Much less stressful than trying to paint the name and year with a shaky hand like I did on O's!

 

And that's it!  I felt really busy, but I guess I didn't really accomplish much.  Now I'm on to working on birthday gifts, since we have several in our family in February.  Winter KCW was this week, but I didn't even make an attempt this round.  I have been enjoying looking at what other people have been making, though! Have you been sewing along?

A Christmas Kyoko

I have a to-do list about a mile long, so now's the perfect time to ignore it and blog, right?  Just a quick post about E's Christmas dress, which she wore yesterday when Santa came to her class Christmas party.  It's the Modkid Kyoko in a 3 for width and 5 for height, which worked out perfectly, just like it did for last year's Sydney that she still wears.

I made my own bias tape again, because I'm a sucker for a perfect match, even though I find it annoying to make.  For a solid top, you could probably just get away with turning the hem under and topstitching it, but I wanted that little bit of extra detail.

I mostly followed the directions as written, other than taking the easy way out by applying the bias tape to the neckline and hem just by topstitching instead of doing it the "right" way.  I did do the sleeve binding as instructed and it was pretty slick.

 I made a self-fabric bow for the obi instead of using ribbon.

This is probably the most accurate color-wise.  It's a bit of a darker red.

I also thought it called for some fancy-schmancy hair clip of some kind, so I made a fabric flower like this with a fabric-covered button for the middle.

She wore the pantalets from her Raggedy Ann costume underneath for some added warmth.  The top comes down pretty low on her, so she wore a long-sleeved tee also.

Time to get cracking on my list!

A Visit from St. Nicholas

I seem to remember that after last year's sewing of the Christmas jammies from St. Nick, I decided it wasn't worth the time and effort to sew footie pajamas.  But then I found this super cute Charlie Brown Christmas fleece and couldn't pass up the opportunity for the kids to have matching PJs, so I found myself working on them at the last minute once again. 

I don't learn.

The Peek-a-Boo Classic Footed Pajamas pattern has been updated since last year, adding more sizes and a half-zip option.  The full-zip is easier with E, so I made that version again, but I think the half-zip would be much simpler.  I ripped out the part on the leg where the end of the zipper meets the inseam three times.  When my fourth attempt was still puckered, I decided that no one else would even notice, so I left it.

O's pants are also the same as last year, just a size bigger.  They're the large (size 10) pants from Kwik Sew's Sewing for children, with the side seam eliminated and the legs widened 3/4" on each side.  He's a huge fan of all the Charlie Brown specials, so he thought they were pretty cool -- as far as pajamas go.

Have you ever sewn footie pajamas?  Worth it or not? I find them kind of putzy to sew, but think they're just so cute when they're done, so I'm currently undecided.  I guess if I stick to just making them once a year, it's not so bad.  Ha.

Super Totes!

I feel like there should be some sort of superhero theme music playing... SUPER TOTES!

Anyway.  E's teacher (this is E's third and final *sob* year in the same early childhood classroom) went on a trip last month and told me how well the Noodlehead Super Tote I'd made her worked as a carry-on bag.  The para then said that she uses hers as her everyday bag, and then I realized that I never blogged about the bags, which were their end-of-school gifts from us.  Weird, because I LOVED them.  So, so much.  Even though I started them much too late and ended up practically pulling an all-nighter.  So I was happy to hear that they're holding up well.  Late night sewing can be suspect.

The pattern is pretty awesome. I had no problems with it, despite my lack of sleep.  It does require quite a few pieces and a lot of interfacing, which added to my time crunch.  Well, and my usual procrastination.  One thing I will mention is that the recommended interfacing was super expensive compared to my usual stuff.  I'd never used anything like it before; it reminded me of a fusible muslin.  It was nice, but considering E's owl bag was made with considerably cheaper interfacing and is holding up great on its third year of daily use, I probably wouldn't spring for this stuff again.

The main prints are both home dec fabrics.  The red and brown are linen blends, and the linings are quilting cottons.  There was much agonizing over fabric selection.

I didn't make many changes.  Instead of piping on the outer pocket, I just used a strip of contrasting fabric.  I'm pretty sure I swiped that idea from one of the bag testers, but now I can't find where I saw it (one of the perils of blogging about something months later).

Love magnetic snap closures!  You can also see the non-piping trim.

 I only put the elastic pockets on one side of the inside, purely for time-saving reasons.

The recessed zipper top might be my favorite feature.  It was easy too, so I'm sure I'll add it to other totes that don't have a zip-top.  I seem to manage to tip over my bags regularly, so secure closures are much appreciated!

I  actually cut other another one for O's teacher, but he wanted to give her a gift card to his favorite frozen custard place instead.  The pieces taunt me regularly, so I'll have to sew it up soon.  I think I've finally recovered from the panicky night sewing to attempt another one.  Ha.  He actually has the same teacher again too (his school combines 2nd & 3rd grades, as well as 4th & 5th), so maybe I'll see what he thinks about it for a Christmas gift.

Rockin' Baby Gowns IV & V: Wisconsin Sports Edition

The Rockin' Baby Gown has definitely become my go-to baby gift.  One of my college roommates is a serious sports fan (they had the most awesome baseball-themed wedding), so as soon as I received an invitation to her baby shower, I knew exactly which shirts I needed to find to refashion into gowns.

Both tees were adult smalls, which weren't big enough to cut the sleeves from, so I dug in my stash for coordinating colors.  The Brewer blue is a closer match to the printing in person than it looks in the photos.

I'm not quite as crazy about the yellow sleeves, but anything's cute on a baby, right?  This was the first time that I just hemmed the neckline with a zigzag rather than finishing it with ribbing.  Generous use of spray starch made it go smoothly -- much better than I'd anticipated.

The Brewer gown was pretty much the same as the ones I'd made previously.  I really like the look of the sleeves and neckline in this color combo.

My friend's husband is a Yankee fan, but he'll just have to deal.  ;) 

A Harry Potter Halloween: 2013 Edition

Happy Halloween!

O wanted to do a family theme for costumes this year (yay!), and we kicked around a lot of ideas, but finally settled on Harry Potter again.  It took a while to decide on characters, since we didn't want repeats -- although O went from "generic Death Eater" to Lucius Malfoy specifically.

After much debate, we picked Crookshanks for E.  O thought we should really have a Hermione if Crookshanks was part of the group, but eventually came around to the idea.  A cat is perfect for her anyway, since she and our cat are BFFs.  Well, more like frenemies, but they are pretty much inseparable.

The cat costume costume is from Butterick 3238.  I made a 5, which is what she wears in RTW (albeit a slim in pants when I can find them).  It was roomy, but about what I expected.  I wasn't crazy about the fit of the hood, but it got the job done. 

I'd found some more cat-like faux fur at Joann's but they were 1/2 yard short of what I needed, so I ended up with this rather vibrant fleece.  At least it was cheap and super easy to sew.  My primary goal this year was to not stress about the details, especially for E's costume.  It's highly unlikely it will be worn again, hence the stash muslin lining for the hood rather than buying matching fabric.  I also didn't bother with shoe covers for the same reason.  And I may have run out of time to make those. Whatever.

O's cloak is McCall's 5952 and some cheap cotton/poly bottomweight fabric also from Joann's.  It also went together easily, although I should have checked the sizing before cutting it out.  I made his RTW size (8), and ended up taking 2" off the sleeves, leaving them to hit in the middle of his hand for some growing room, and 4" off the hem.  I really should have taken even more off the hem, since it dragged in the back if it wasn't situated perfectly and it's been raining all afternoon and evening, so he came home from trick-or-treating with a pretty soggy cloak.

I really liked how the neckline was finished with bias tape.  I'll have to remember that for other things that don't call for it in the directions, but could really use a cleaner finish. (I'm looking at you, Modkid Sydney!)

The only other modification I made was to curve the bottom of the sleeves so they weren't so pointy.  Lucius doesn't seem like a pointy sleeve kind of guy to me.  Actually, he probably would have a  tailored sleeve, but I wanted to make it a pretty generic cloak.

One of the things O really wanted to have was Malfoy's walking stick.  Since we weren't about to spend nearly $100 on a costume prop, we made our own out of a big dowel, clay, adhesive "emeralds", and some paint.  It's a little lumpier than either of us would have liked, but considering he's eight and I spent my semester of high school pottery drawing instead of actually touching any clay (my small-town school was not overly demanding -- ha ha), we did okay.  He was quite happy with it overall, and it was a fun project to do together.

Ray and I were Hagrid and Professor Trelawney, respectively.  Our costumes were primarily from our existing wardrobes and thrift stores.  I did buy some cheapo prescription glasses from Zenni Optical, since I have a few more future costumes in mind that would require similar frames.  And then I bought Ray's wig/beard combo from one of those pop-up Halloween stores.  The "Jesus" wig was the only one that was suitable, and I felt all weird buying it, wanting to tell people that we weren't actually going to use it for Jesus (I didn't, because who would actually care?!  They're all in there looking for sexy policewoman costumes or whatever, so I doubt they're judging me and my Jesus wig).  Can you tell I have a hang-up about religious costumes?  Also Native American costumes, but that's a bigger issue than I really need to get into at the moment.  Back to secondary Harry Potter characters!

We had a fun Halloween, and it was relatively low-stress. That doesn't mean I wasn't sewing the hem of O's cloak this afternoon, of course, but it really wouldn't be a holiday if I wasn't scrambling to finish something up at the last minute!

KCW Day 4: Pompom Poncho

Woo-hoo!  An actual completed project for KCW.  I'm not counting costume sewing, since nothing I've made will be worn other than for Halloween. [Edit: I just saw that the KCW blog featured costumes today, so I guess that was a made-up-by-me rule.  LOL]

I noticed the other day that E's poncho for the car was getting too small, so a new one was my first priority.  I've made so many of these from the Sew Baby Poncho Pizazz pattern that I've completely lost track of how many exactly.

I made my usual modifications for this one: adding elastic to the center front of the hood and overlapping the hem of the hood when sewing it on, which seems to make it sturdier.

I also added a fleece pompom from this tutorial to jazz it up a little, since it was made from a plain stash fabric.  I am desperately trying to sew down my ginormous fleece stash!  My camera has issues with blues and purples (or I am inept, whatever), so I tried to color correct it to close to the right color.  It's actually a really pretty cobalt leaning slightly towards purple.

I think she likes it.