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;)

Some more elephant softies

I made a felt elephant recently for Little Imp's cousin....  

...and then, perhaps against my better judgement (given the excessive number of soft toys Little Imp already has) I agreed to make her one for Christmas too.  Given she is a bit older now I thought a cotton print fabric for the body would be more fun. And I think I was right! 

Given how much I liked how that one had tuned out I figured I may as well make her other cousin one too.

So now I have 3 elephants waiting to meet their owners.

I have made elephants for friends before from this Woman's Weekly pattern, but this time I also worked out a great way to add a 'jingle'. I've found in the past that when I insert the little metal bells into softies that the bell becomes far too muffled by all of the fibre fill. My solution in this instance was to do away with the bell altogether & instead I put some beads into a small plastic canister about 4cm high x 2cm diameter. The elephant is fat enough that I could stuff the canister into the middle of it's body still not really don't notice it among all the stuffing. Super Jingly too!

A link to some other elephant softies I've made in the past

Bungle Jungle Quilt - The finale!

The finished quilted quilt!
Front and Back.

My machine handles straight line quilting very well, without any special presser foot - I just adjust the settings slightly - and so I'm a bit hesitant to try anything else...maybe next time!

And now some close ups for good measure...(after a VERY long IT support call this afternoon I can now finally upload photos from my camera to my new computer - DON'T get me started on Windows 8 - needless to say, I do not like!).
So here they are...

 Just a quick few shots of the quilting and binding process:

That's Little Imp's foot there - busy making her own blue polka dot quilt for her toy animals. She has also tested the planned 'game of same' that I will eventually make to use with the quilt - but figure I have a while before the baby will be up to matching and memory games!

Right, now onto the next project:)

Bungle Jungle Quilt outline
Red and Grey Block
Green and Navy Block
Aqua and Navy Block
Red and Yellow Block
Bungle Jungle Quilt Back

Felt Weekly Activity or Routine Planner

Little Imp often asks in the morning, 'where am I going today'. Fair question given she spends her week days between mother-in-law, Daycare, Nanny or home with mum or dad, and then quite frequently we head away for the weekend to my parent's house.

I saw an in for creating a felt 'weekly activity planner'. Something Little Imp could use herself to look at and know the plan for the day.

My idea was 2 inch felt squares as a base, embellished with different symbols to represent the many places Little Imp might go in a week, as well as some of the more frequent activities she's involved in..  I wasn't sure initially if I would attach magnets to these and set the planner up on the fridge, or make a felt board to place in her room.

Here are some of the finished squares. Little Imp helped work out what some of the symbols should be and "assisted" with the gluing. The symbols ended up being made out of a combination of felt, glitter shapes, colored craft foam, scrap booking cut outs and fabric.

 

We live at number 7 - so these are for days at home

The days of the week were machine stitched onto felt.

I did try the magnet idea, but decided against it for a few reasons, so in the end I just cut a rectangle of felt for the backing, turned over about 5cm along the top edge and hand stitched this down. This created a space to thread a heavy piece of card into. I then clipped 2 holes along the top fold & inserted a small bulldog clip to clasp the card & create a loop for hanging.on the back of Little Imp's bedroom door.

After a few week's of use the only addition we've made is to add an arrow that we can move to point to which day 'today' actually is. The concept of today/tomorrow/yesterday is still a bit confusing to a Little Imp!
 

A Wedding Party Dress

One Little Imp is all partied out.  Her aunt was married this month and with a number of pre and post wedding gatherings to help with the celebrations we were out & about in the evenings a whole lot more than usual.  In an attempt to get Little Imp excited and willing to join us we kept telling her we were heading to another party - now every time we head out the door she is asking if she needs to wear a party frock!

Obviously the bride looked stunning, but Little Imp also had her fair share cuteness and comments in the little up-cycled dress I finished a while back.

Some quick kiddie T-shirts

A play date at the zoo today with 2 of Little Imp's interstate cousins.  Given I never get around to posting gifts & we hadn't seen them for a while I decided to quickly make them some t-shirts.  Given Little Imp's fascination (bordering on obsession) with 'raff's' at present, the zoo theme of the day and some spotty orange fabric found hiding in my stash, a new giraffe design seemed in order.

This is what eventuated:

Free motion embroidery around ears and 'ossicones'

Mostly the same process used making these ones as for all my other applique T-shirts.  Heat-n-Bond the cut out fabric design onto the shirt and then zigzag stitch around the main parts (neck, head and muzzle).  The ears and 'ossicones' were secured with free motion machine embroidery (even Nature Ranger me had to look up the real name for the antler/horns that a giraffe has - did you know they are the only animal in the world to have ossicones?!).  To stop the stretchy shirt material puckering I placed a small piece of thin webbing on the inside of the shirt & then stitched through this and the ears/ossicones.  Once all stitched I trimmed the webbing down with rounded edges.

Thankfully I had thought ahead for the possible tears if one certain Imp didn't have her own 'Raff', whipping up an extra one on an old shirt last night for Little Imp.  Good thinking that, she was pleased!!

A pretty party dress.

A family friend gave Little Imp a very white dress and cardigan set a while back that looks home crafted and very pretty in its own way, but not really something she might wear before she grows too big to wear it at all.

We have a wedding in the family coming up in the next few months & Little Imp needs a party frock.

The cardigan to start with

Hating to see a gift never worn, but also not too happy with the outfit as it looked to start - too white, too boring  - I decided to give it a makeover.

The finished dress

Some gold ribbons and bows were sewn into the woolen dress & the skinny white bodice ribbon replaced with a thick gold satin ribbon to be tied in a large bow at the back.

                      

 

Of course I've also made a matching pretty gold satin hair clip for Little Imp (in an attempt to somehow tame her wayward hair, where on earth did the double-crown genes come from!?!)