Kids Pyjama Pants

What a super easy pattern!

Kids pj pants from this book - The Liberty Book of Simple Sewing by Lucinda Ganderton. Instead of needing front & back leg pieces, you cut each leg as a whole & essentially make 2 leg tubes that you sew together & then add a waistband. Easy peasy.

The pattern called for basting most seams first - I went straight ahead sewing without basting and it worked out fine. I adjusted the length of the cuffs in the given pattern & could have gone even shorter, but guess that means there may be room for growing into.

Someone likes them a lot - she wore them all night...and day!

Little Imp in the Button Room - an Owl Softie is created

My lovely sister in law gifted me a Sew Cute to Cuddle book by Mariska Vos-Bolman this weekend and Little Imp was taken very much by 'Wooksy the Owl'. By the time we got home she was determined to get going on the 'Whooskie' project.

I really wasn't sure how long the enthusiasm would last, but I provided some sheets of tracing paper and she started tracing the shapes from the back of the book, a few bull dog clips helped keep the paper still for little hands. Before dinner she had traced & cut out most of the pieces we needed. A few wobbly lines and cuts here and there, but on the whole Whooskie looked good on paper!

The first call the following morning was to "keep going with Whoosky". I traced around each of her template pieces & little Imp cut out most of the fabric herself

I restrained myself and let the jagged cutting go for the most part, but again she did such a great job anyway. Here is Whoosky ready for stitching.

I did all the sewing this time around, Little Imp sat on my lap with the roles of snipping, pressing the right buttons and helping with thread selection and threading. We had fun!

I did do the feet - I free formed stitched directly onto the traced lines, then Little Imp cut around the stitching before I turned right side out & stiffed those tricky little claws.

A bit of wing stuffing happening here.

I generally attach softie limbs/appendages with a quick straight stitch to one side of the body before stitching front & back body pieces together - I find this makes sure they get stitched in in the right spot.

A bit of graffiti on Whooskie's bottom so that there can be no mistaking who owns the Owl.

Love at first sight! There was a period of reassurance required as I covered up all of Whooskie's front body with the right side of the back of the body to sew front & back together & Little Imp had to wait for me to turn Whooskie right side out. "Don't cover up Whooskie mummy, you can't put her feet inside her body! Don't!"

Some things aren't perfect - a bit of French knitting whimsy

Little Imp was given a french knitter for Christmas. Not the sort I remember having as a kid, this one was big and plasticy, with twirling spools and other attachments.
Little Imp struggled with it all until we worked out that if she just used her hands instead of all the attachments she could knit all by herself. Just like kids did in the 'old days' (ha!).

I helped a bit, but after a bit of perseverance she had a tube we could turn into a cat - just like the one pictured on the cover of the box the knitter came in (well kind of!).

No instructions in the box for how to make said cat, but we muddled our way through, collecting all our ingredients from the craft box - pipe cleaners, felt triangles for ears, goggly eyes, stuffing and glue.

We stuffed the tube..

We tied off the top third to create the neck between the head and body...

We poked a (pink) pipe cleaner through the stuffing to create the upper legs/arms, and threaded a (blue) pipe cleaner through the base for the lower legs. I folded over a small section on all of the pipe cleaner ends to get rid of the sharp pointy bit. The blue legs we made quite a bit longer to help the cat sit up and balance (see pic further below).

Short sparkly pipe cleaners were threaded through on the face & twisted over and around each other for whiskers and the felt triangles were pinched in a bit to create an ear shaped curve and positioned with a liberal amount of glue.

The green pipe cleaner was twirled around a pencil for curly whirly-ness and looped in near the bottom to create a tail.

A stray green pom pom was located by Little Imp during my tail attaching and proclaimed to be required as a belly button (because all cats have to have belly buttons apparently).
Two googly eyes were glued in place where they belong...,

And the third eye you may have noticed in the 'ingredients' pile at the beginning? Well, apparently some cats also have an eye on the end of their tails!

Hello Whimsy Cat;)

Christmas Cards with paper bunting

I found these photographs today & have realised I never uploaded them - from 2013's Christmas. Some Paper Bunting Christmas cards I made all that time ago.  Quite a lot of work, but they do look good at the end of it all.

White A5 card folded in half with a Christmas print taped onto the front half. THe first ones I did like the photo below - the Christmas paper covering the whole front of the card with about a 1-2cm overhang onto the back over the folded edge - looks a bit more finished). I think the cards looked better though leaving a small border of white card showing all the way around (see below).

Then cut out an assortment of small 'bunting' triangles from coordinating Christmas printed papers, thread a needle with gold thread, tie a knot in one end ...

... and sew them all together, leaving gaps between each one to string them out across the card, allowing a bit of slack so it looks a bit more like they might be hanging up.

Tie off the other end of the thread too and then use double sided tape to stick the triangles at each end down (and in doing so hide the knots).

Stamp out some sort of Christmassy word (like 'Christmas' for instance!!)...

...and stick that on the front too. (The card below shows the design I prefer; where I left a small white border showing all the way around)

Add a little something to the back of the card for fun - here a small punched out tree and a left over triangle. All Done.

Photo memory quilt

The lack of blogging does not mean there has been no action in the Button Room. Quite the opposite in fact. 

One of the key projects to finish in time for Christmas was another quilt commission, this time by a school friend for her young daughter who is due to head to boarding school next year. A very different quilt from those I have made before, she sent me a picture of a quilt she liked and a range of fabric she had selected.  

What makes this quilt extra special are the photographs printed onto fabric and incorporated into the quilt.

Here's the finished quilt front:

 And a beautiful Kaffe Fassett 'Dahlia Blooms' print looks fantastic on the back.

But best of all, I have word that the recipient is pretty pleased with the finished product.

Many a way to use a Suffolk Puff

Christmas crackers

I'm excited for Christmas this year. Preparations for feasts and advent and gifts are already underway in my little world.

One feast I am very excited about is to be hosted at our house, with all the Hootchie Ladies (my bestest uni girlfriends) and families coming to celebrate.

One of the other crafty hootchies and I have been at work making Christmas crackers. Here is a little of how it went down.

We gathered supplies - Christmas paper napkins (good for easy tearing therefore good for a good cracker rip), snaps, toilet rolls, raffia for tying, card and prettyness for decorating.

We wrote the jokes, super BAD cracker jokes - you can see how much fun this part was:)

Now, see those naughty little Christmas elves in the picture above. They were created last year and got up to mischief every morning of advent. Well they seemed to have got wind of Christmas preparations and made an appearance...and made us drink some wine...

So, we wrote the jokes, we found/made some trinkets (not showing you those pictures - it's a secret!), and we compiled the crackers. Lots of crackers.

We think they look good.