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!!

Recovering an armchair - Part 2

Little Imp's armchair is complete, with little matching pillows.  What fun I've had.  Check back to Recovering an Armchair Part One for the chair used to look like.  I ended up replacing only the bits in green - the front skirt, arm rests and a piece under the main cushion & kept the original white of the old chair cover for the rest.  The embellishing is made up of a combination of free form machine embroidery, Heat-&-Bond iron on adhesive to attach fabric pieces, hand stitching, felt & buttons.

But for now I might just let the pictures do the talking.

Little flowers and bugs hide at the base of the tree under the cushions & Sullfok puff flowers grow on the wings

Fabric embroidered birds on a ribbon wire with bright buttons & flowers

Applique and free form machine embroidery toadstools and flowers on the front skirt

A hand stitched tree & machine embroidered flowers on the armrest 

Felt embroidered circles & fabric owls on ribbon 

A line of elephants

Appleville

Another two frames completed for Little Imp's feature wall.

The main print fabrics used for both of these is from a Robert Kaufman collection by Suzie Ultman called Appleville. Cute apple faces and rows of houses.  My designs are inspired in part by some of the other fabric prints in this same collection.  3 apple picking girls in little felt dresses with apple picking pockets and 3 little houses under an apple tree surrounded by free motion flowers.

Two little birds

The next installment for Little Imp's feature wall.  Two Little Birds.

Mini quilt - in a frame

I've finished the first frame for Little Imp's feature wall!

I wanted to combine some of the sewing techniques I have been playing with and practicing over the last year or so, quilting, free motion embroidery, applique.  This is how it turned out.  As you can see, I'm still getting mileage out of one of my favourite fabrics - an owl print I've used to make many owl baby grows already, and a number of the other owls are earmarked for other frames already.  So there will be more!

I'm not sure that this is truly a 'mini-quilt', but the background has the look of lots of tiny pieces of fabric being pieced together like a quilt.  To achieve the haphazard layered look I cheated a bit by ironing my little bits of fabric onto a pre-cut piece of heat-and-bond, including the owls.

The pieced fabric 'sheet' before being ironed onto the aqua backing fabric

Then for some free motion embroidery.  Haphazard stitching around each little piece of fabric, sometimes going around more than once to reach the next section.  This is what the back looked like.  Almost tempted to frame this, I do like geometry designs.

And here are some close ups of the design detail.

Tree positioned just so Mrs Owl can perch on her branch

An appliqued tree and leaves, edged with free form stitching and some little flowers. 

Some free form flowers embellished with  buttons

Not all of the pictures for Little Imp's feature wall frames are going to be this detailed.  But it actually didn't take too long to make once I had worked out the design & how I would put it all together.  One picture frame down....

More Elephants

Keeping with the elephant theme after making many a George the Elephant Kings / Queens (!) I crafted an applique elephant baby top for a friend who is awaiting her little boy's arrival.  I bought a large piece of elephant print stretch material on sale last year with the idea it could become a summer sleeping bag for a little one, or a great stretchy swaddle.  I loved stretchy swaddles when wrapping up Little Imp - so much harder for her to escape from her mummified state in stretch fabric!

After making the elephant softie for my friend I decided an elephant swaddle and matching applique top would make a perfect gift bundle.

Swaddle material in the background & copied elephant ready to applique

Basic 'How To'
I used fabric pens to copy the elephant design onto plain cotton fabric which I then roughly cut out & framed with strips of matching printed fabric scraps.  After using 'Heat & Bond' to iron the whole piece to the top I used a smallish sized blanket stitch around the outside edge to fix the fabric to the top & stop the edges fraying with wear and tear.  A straight stitch on the plain fabric to frame the elephant finished it off.

And then I made another one, and another.... The more girly ones also had a free motion embroidered flower embellishment added for fun.

I labeled these tops using the alphabet embroidery card on my sewing machine to stitch 'OneLittleImp' on felt,  & then sewed this label on the back neck line. Much neater than the handwritten labels I've made in the past.

'Toot Toot'

Another up-cycle project, this time with a couple of magnetic pull along wooden toy trains I picked up at a baby market.
Each train carriage has grooves that must have once held something that you could slip in and out, but this wasn't part of the purchase so I decided to make my own.  This was the result.  A perfect stocking filler for the Little Imp!

Part of this project was playing around with my sewing machine and some free motion embroidery.  I had a go using this to attach the felt letters to the fabric backgrounds and although I have a way to go until I am happy to embroider something a bit more special, I was surprised that it wasn't as hard to do as I expected.

Although I have made these little fabric letter cards to fit into the train carriages, they would also be great for kids for lots of other things - attach magnets for sticking on the fridge, adapt as a memory game or shape recognition with different felt symbols....

Basic 'How To' 

Cut out cardboard, background fabric and felt letters

1. Measure and cut pieces of firm cardboard (e.g. from a box) to the size you want
2. Measure and cut your background fabric  (here from blue & orange spotted patterns) - it needs to be double the length of the card with approx 1-2cm seam allowance all around 
3. Cut out letters (or shapes/ symbols) from felt to fit the card
4. Sew the felt letter onto the bottom half of the background fabric, positioning it to allow for bottom and side seams in the next step. This is where I played around with free motion embroidery, but you could  do this with a standard machine stitch or by hand)
5. Fold each piece of background fabric in half, wrong sides together.  Using the cut cardboard pieces as a guide, mark the position for the side seams leaving a few extra millimeters on each side.  Then machine straight stitch up each side along these marks.  
6. Trim side seams and turn right side out
7. Slip cardboard piece into fabric pocket that you have created
8. Slip stitch the bottom seam closed

Pieces from left to right demonstrating steps 4 - 8