DD is so proud, and with every right to be! She knitted her first square, with very little help from me. It is about 5"x 5" and has become a small pot holder (she can't wait to add it to the linen drawer). She even chose and sewed on the fabric by hand with very little help. I am so proud of her. She is also the photographer of her project, and we have posted it as a finished project on Ravelry Olympics. Way to go! She is already talking about making it's matched mate.
Pattern:
In case you are interested in making one too, it was made with worsted weight yarn and 6 mm needles.
Cast on 18 stitches. Knit all rows until square. (aprox 20 rows) Bind off. Iron out on low heat to block
Fabric back:
Then we sewed on a square of fabric. The fabric was cut the same size as the finished square. We ironed the edges under on the fabric and did a blind stitch to sew it onto the knitting. DD also added a "flower" to the center. with two pieces of yarn sewn through all layers and tied into a knot. We cut the ends short and frayed them.
There are so many ways you could decorate this wrap. The dollar store here has quite a variety of iron on or sew on sequins and embellishments and glass beads. But I raided my Grandma T's craft stash which I inherited and pulled out a skein of mauve wool yarn and a tatted dragonfly pin she had made and some vintage glass crystal buttons
Crochet Edging
Blanket stitch around the entire poncho, (every raw edge) with your yarn and darning needle. As you add new yarn and gain tails, leave the tails to tie in as you crochet later. I also blanket stitched around the neck to sew the raw edges of the hood and poncho together. If I find my missing yarn, I would use this blanket stitch to attach the collar to.
Crochet Directions: with a size J hook
Starting at the point of the wrap, Single crochet along the curve of the wrap and around the entire bottom of the poncho. As you come to the place where the fronts and backs meet at the arm pit/elbow, single crochet decrease right in the corner.As you come to tails from your blanket stitch, work them into the single crochet stitch.
Row 2: ch 4 and skip first single crochet. *Double crochet in next single crochet st, ch 1, skip next single crochet* repeat from * all the way around, doing a double crochet decrease at the armpit/elbow. Finish to the point of the wrap end, ch3 and join to last single crochet.
DON'T TIE OFF if you want to use crochet as an embellishment such as mine.
ch 100 or more stitches, until you have a string long enough for you to play with and design on your wrap end. Tie off.
Lay the chains (ribbon or braid if you would rather) flat on your wrap end and design a pattern. Pin it into place as you go. Decide where you might add buttons or sequins or other embellishments as you pin. Sew the chain into place as you would ribbon and sew on your embellishments.
Pin your brooch at the front on your shoulder. Sew ribbon ties to the hood if you wish. And you're done!
If there is ever a part 3 to this, it will be for the collar...(now to find that silly yarn!)
Some people love ponchos' for some it is traditional wear, for others it's the warmth, but for me I always look like I paid a visit to Omar the tent maker and asked him to sew me a sweater, I just don't look good in them. But I LOVE their warmth and I hate how I am always dropping a wrap or shawl...you cant work in them.But I had a vision of draping beauty. I was originally going to try to knit the entire creation, but I get distracted easily and large projects get left on my needles for extended periods of time. So I found a fleece blanket at the thrift store for a couple of dollars and pulled some wool yarn and crystal buttons out of my stash. What do you think?! The shawl that never falls off!
Here are my basic drawings I used to design the pattern (Click on the drawings to see them in full page)
I never got to making the collar, I wanted to knit or crochet it, but one of my balls of yarn has mysteriously rolled away into a hidden bliss.
To make this it helps if you know how to.....
Sew a straight stitch and zigzag on a sewing machine
sew on buttons
Materials
One personal size fleece throw or 1.5 m of polar fleece
Matching Thread
One favorite bulky sweater to trace for pattern.
1 Shawl pin/brooch
Embellishments of your favorite kind, buttons, braid , sequins, ribbon etc
1 average size skein of worsted weight or double knit yarn
Darning needle
Directions
Fold your fleece in half the longestway possible. At the far left side, lay your favorite comfy sweater on to the fabric, with the neck line at the fold of the fabric. Fold the sweater arms in onto the sweater, from 2 inches below the armpit.
Sewing Instructions
Turn right side out and try it on! Place a pin at your shoulder that the wrap end covers to hold the wrap in place.
To sew on the hood, mark the center back of the hood and the center back of the neck and match. Pin into place all the way around and sew
Now you are ready to embellish your wrap on the tail. Part 2 will be the crochet edge instructions.
I have a hard fast rule that I won't spend more than $10 out of pocket on a friends birthday gift. DD has a dear, sweet friends Birthday to go to tomorrow and we just finished the gift. I SWEAR I only spent $10....I just happened to add to it with some busy sewing fingers and my scrap bag and supplies on hand!
I made two more of my little travel dolls, a picnic blanket and a play mat from discounted fabric at Walmart
:o( sadly, we too are loosing our fabric department ) and purchased a small set of doll house dishes and a draw string bag at the Dollar Store. I also made a tiny frog for friends little brother to play along with. The joy of this mat, is that it is also a tied blanket quilt with batting in it, and a game!
(DD doesn't know it, but she's getting one of these for Christmas! )
When I can figure out a better way to link PDF's I intend to post all these as patterns. But for now, I hope you find it an inspiration in these pictures!
I purchased 1 m of green and 0.8m of blue soft suede velvet and 1 m of quilt batting.
I trimmed 3 inches off of the width of the blue fabric and cut the batting to fit. I layed down the green and then the batting and then the blue and cut the green 2 inches larger all around than the blue to become the binding.
I had a handful of polyester felt squares and gold embroidery thread on hand. The Flowers are silk flowers removed from the plastic stems and a yellow circle of felt was sewn into each one. Each lily pad and flower has a letter of the alphabet embroidered in the center, (The flowers are the vowels). I sewed them onto the blue and then I folded the green up double over the blue and pinned into place. I sewd it by hand onto the blue and went around a second time, hand quilting through all layers.
Each lily pad used two strands of yarn to tie the quilt for the quilting. I frayed them to make them look like flowers.n On the back, they look like little "Forget- me- nots" where the dolls can have a picnic together on their picnic blanket
Nature Play Mat/ Blanket
Enjoy a picnic with your dolls on one side and a swim in the lake on the other. Or wrap it around tight to keep warm on a cold day. But this is not only a fun play mat and a blanket, but it is a game as well! On the pond, you will see each lily pad has a letter of the Alphabet. The set of dolls or frogs become your playing pieces and the lily pads and flowers become your squares.
How to use the triangle die
Roll the triangle dice and then pick it up from the point on the top. Tip it over and look at the number that is on the flat bottom and that is the number of spaces you jump.
Games to Play
Depending how old you are, you can play the alphabet game in so many ways.
If you are just learning your letters, roll the die and jump the number of squares. Name the letter you land on correctly! If you don’t name it correctly the first time, you miss a turn.
If you are learning your letter sounds, roll the die and jump the number of squares. Name the letter and it’s sound.
For example:The Letter (S) says “sssss”.
If you are wrong, you will miss a turn though. And remember, if you land on a vowel, it has two sounds. If you get both sounds right you may take a second turn!
If you are reading, roll the die and jump the number of squares. Name a word that starts with that letter. If you are spelling, spell that word correctly. If you are wrong you miss a turn. At your next turn, spell the word correctly before you move the dice to move on.
The first person in any game to reach the letter “Z” wins the game!
Beanbag Toss Game
Decide how many tosses each person gets. Toss a doll, and which ever letter the doll lands on, follow the directions in one of the games above minus the die.
Make a point system if you wish:
1 point if you land in water but name a letter close by and follow directions,
2 points for landing on a lily pad and following directions
3 points for landing on a flower and following directions
Keep score on a chalkboard or paper, and at the end of the tosses, add up the score to see who has the most points
Cleaning Instructions.
Dolls and Frogs are made of Flannel and filled with rice. Wash surface with a damp cloth if needed
Mat/ Blanket is made of plush fabrics and should be surface wiped with a damp cloth, or immersed in a tub of luke-warm water and a mild detergent and hung to dry to be freshened. Do not iron.
I was looking up puppets for a Little House project and I spent some time admiring professional puppets. They look like so much fun! We have a few at home that we play with, and they are great for story telling and role playing. And as I was web browsing I saw some puppets that were two handed-one for the mouth movements and the other fit into a shirt sleeve that was on the body of the puppet and into a gloved hand. It really helps to animate the the puppet.
So my gears started working and with the puppets I had seen, including a puppet on Dr Wonders Workshop, and the desire to add a new activity to our ASL learning I came up with Paws. You don't need a working mouth for an ASL puppet, but two working hands!
He is an over sized 20" stuffed animal that I bought at the thrift store, a size 6X boys long sleeve jersey shirt and a pair of fleece gloves. (You could use stretchy gloves from the dollar store as well) All those supplies cost me a whopping $3!
Here are the directions....
Materials
1 large cuddly stuffed animal of choice (make sure there is a forehead and a mouth area and a chin area on the head, sounds crazy, but trust me! Round headed animals are the easiest)
1 long sleeved shirt that fits the animal (don't worry about extra long arms or length, just have a pleasant fit around the body and neck. Make sure that you can fit your forearms into the sleeves and your hands past the cuffs.)
1 pair of fleece, nylon or stretch knit gloves. (Thick heavy gloves or chenille gloves don't work because you can't shape signs with your fingers well enough)
Tools Needed
scissors
stitch ripper
pins
a strong all purpose thread in the color of the shirt and the animal
hand needle
sewing machine
Directions
Prepare the Bear (or other stuffed animal like our lion):Carefully with your stitch ripper, remove the arms of your animal and then with your needle, whip stitch the body closed. (I know, a sad thing to do. That's why we didn't pick a toy from our own toy boxes) Set aside and pick up the shirt.
Armholes: Carefully cut the back seam of the shirt arm that runs from the shoulder to the under arm along the seam. Roll and pin the now cut and open area into a hem and sew all around with your sewing machine.
Hands: Sew the gloves by hand to the inside cuff of the shirt. Stretch the gloves and cuff with your non sewing hand inside of them as you sew the two together around and along the shirts natural hem. This way you know you have enough stretch to get your hands through
Shortening and lining the shirt: Now here comes the tricky to explain part.... the shirt will probably be way to long for the puppet, but you are going to use the extra length to create a liner so that you don't have stray fur or color popping out of the arm openings as you use your puppet.
- From the shirt bottom, fold the shirt up inside itself until the bottom hem at the side seam reaches the shoulder seam right by the neckline. With your needle and matching thread tack the shoulder/neck seam and bottom hem together. Repeat for second side.
- Lay the shirt flat on a table inside right, and with the bottom hem still tucked up inside, even up the fold around the bottom and pin all the way around
- Sew around the shirt 1 inch up from the fold edge. This makes the shirt look like it's hemmed.
5. Place the shirt on the puppet. With a needle and thread tack the shirt (at the same place you tacked the shirt at the neck) to the top of where you whip stitched the arm holes together. This would be the shoulder of the puppet. Do this on both side so that the shirt won't be removed. The remaining tucked up shirt fabric is just left alone, unless you find there is too much bulk, then you could tack it in various discreet places to the puppet.
6. Now have fun! Go to Paws To Tell You or SigningSavvy to learn some ASL alphabet and favorite words (manners like "please" and "thank-you" are good preschool signs to start with)
Place an arm down each sleeve and place the puppet in your lap. Keep your elbows tight to your side as you move the arms of your puppet. (or it will look like a puppet gone out of control with dislocated joints!)
Grandma has been in the Hospital for some time now and is going to be moved to a Home. (She had an unfortunate fall which included a broken bone. ) She's not as mobile as much now. But I was a little disappointed when I saw how her personal care was being handled. Her hair wasn't being done everyday (She has long silver hair that she always braided and wrapped around her head). And her Hospital gown looked a few days old. She was quite anxious when she saw me and fidgeted with her gown and hair quite a bit.
When I worked in a Palliative care floor in a local Home, I saw it important to allow residents to still be well maintained in their clothing and hair and hygiene. It made the resident, despite their condition, feel less conscious about themselves and also made the family more comfortable when visiting. It definitely made for happier "endings". But regular clothing is difficult to change on a bed ridden or chair bound patient. Front buttoned gowns are very helpful and look very nice, but are still difficult to maneuver when trying to toilet a patient. From a care persons vantage, open back dressing is much ore accommodating. There are a a lot of companies that sell dresses made this way, but a completely new wardrobe is not always an option for every patient. So in passing messages between my dad and his sister (who my Grandma was living with) we are hoping to change some of Grandma's clothing to make it usable for her. She always wore dresses, so that does give us a in closet selection to choose from.
My Aunt is a quilter, so I have written up a set of directions for sewing panels into the clothing , that I will now share with you! It is a PDF download, the link will direct you to the PDF I have downloaded to scribd.com. I am still exploring ways to make it a more direct link..... Handicap/Geriatric Clothing Conversion
P.S After a chat with the palliative care director, they are now combing Grandma's hair more regularly. :o)
A friend of mine has a precious little girl in need of glasses and an eye patch to strengthen the muscles of one eye. But the taped on bandage style are sweaty and sticky and tight and annoying. Any patch will be annoying, but to have a reusable patch is much cheaper! So I designed a small patch that fits all ages and can be for play or some medical purposes (not for keeping out light completely or dirt) I want to make a small barrette to hold the ribbon off her uncovered eye and to make it one step harder to throw off. And I figure you might as well mix style with function!
If you want to make one of these, it takes 2 layers of fabric (one in black) and two layers of iron on interfacing. The patch I made has a 1/4 inch seam allowance.
I cut two pattern pieces of interfacing and two squares of fabric large enough to fit the pattern piece.
I then ironed on the interface to the back of each fabric and cut out around the interfacing EXCEPT for the center dart.
At the sewing machine, sew the dart with right sides of fabric facing together and on the interfacing to a point in the middle of the patch.
Now you can trim the un-faced fabric. Do both fabrics this way.
On the colored fabric fronts, sew two pieces of ribbon, 1/4 of an inch from the top corner of each side and as close to the edge of the eye patch as possible. (The ribbons should lay to cross each other, with the front of the ribbons down on the fabric.) Pin the ribbon to the middle of the eye patch and hang the ribbons down to the bottom of the patch.
Place the black piece on top so right sides are together and starting on one side, sew around to the other side and leave the bottom open. Turn inside out and whip stitch the bottom closed!
Just before mothers day this year, our local Salvation Army had all their craft supplies 50 % off, so I went in to look for yarn. But I found something better! (I did find yarn too!) Priced at a whole dollar, and rang in for 50 cents I bought this vintage folding work basket. It folds into a purse and opens into a sitting work basket. I had eyed one of these up on eBay a long time ago but couldn't convince myself to pay the shipping.
(before picture) It had a "lovely" (read the sarcasm) fabric of brown and gold upholstery and a lining of gold. I did like the lining color and material, but it had a few small holes from stray needles poking, so I removed and discarded the entire bag AFTER I cut it up and made a pattern to copy it. Here is the result!
I have traced the wood for a pattern and also kept the pattern for the bag. If anyone desperately wants to try making one or has one to recover, email me and we'll see what we can do! Here's a question... is this a work basket that you would be interested in seeing brand new, in an etsy shop? Click "Interesting" below if it is, or leave a comment!
Thanks to DD for modeling the bag and letting me use her camera!)
It's officially spring when we make our first trip of the year out to the Keady Market (close to Tara, Ontario) Last Tuesday we had a wonderful day out at the market with my parents and the children, looking at flowers for grandma's flower beds, browsing the vendors, and sitting in the cattle auction. I didn't buy much, in fact only one item. But OH What and item! It is a sewing spool caddy. And each level spins Lazy Susan. I am in love with this vintage piece and might have been willing to pay more than the $12 I did hand over for it. It is my new sewing friend! I am contemplating turning the little cup on the top into a pin cushion, although it might be useful to hold the machine bobins in, still undecided on that yet.
I am working on the tutorial for the doll head (this post is me procrastinating) It is requiring me to make a few diagrams in the windows draw program to help explain the process. I hope to finish soon to get it up for you all!
Whooooosh......That is the sound of time getting away from me! But here is Part one of doll making!
Materials: Doll Pattern, such as this one Cotton knit (or lycra knit if you don't care about it being made of all natural fiber), such as you find for bathing suit lining, in your choice of skin tone. Cotton floss for mouth (and optional eyes) all purpose sewing thread, skin tone color Quilting or heavy duty all purpose thread, skin tone color one neutral colored Bamboo stocking (or nylon if you're not going natural) Pins Stuffing ( I use a corn based eco friendly stuffing from Walmart) Scissors Wool for hair Crochet hook 1 long beading needle ( at least 3 inches) or doll needle Pencil (mechanical works best) or marking chalk pencil
Cutting out your doll To make a doll like mine, she needs to be made from 2 pieces. The average doll made his way is sewn around the head and left open at the side for stuffing. BUT for this doll, you will extend the top of the head by 2 inches and sew all the way around, leaving the head open for stuffing
So, cut out your doll and sew her up. Snip the curves carefully but not all the way to the stitches. Turn her inside out and pop put all the seams. Use a large end crochet hook to pop out the thumbs and heals if you need, but be careful not to stretch the fabric too much or you will break the thread (The fabric stretches much more than the thread. Also remember this when you stuff the doll)
Start stuffing the doll, legs first. Pack it as hard or as soft as you desire, but be careful not to strain the seams. Pack up to the top of her leg and stop. Using your quilting thread, cut off a long piece and double it on your needle.
Jointing Your Doll: I like this style better than plastic joints, as the doll hangs more natural baby like. Knot the end of the thread 4" up from the bottom. Take on stitch at the top of the leg and then wrap the thread around at least 5 times, cinching the stuffing into the leg. Knot tightly and then pass the thread through to the other side of the leg and cut. thread the 4" tail and pass it through the leg as well and snip. Repeat this process with the other leg and both arms. Stuff the body up to the neck and set aside
Thus ends Part one. Part Two will be "Forming the head and face, body sculpting" Part Three will be "WIGS"
I have been sewing the doll for the giveaway and I'm having so much fun making these dolls! So cuddly and sweet, like a real baby! If you want to make one of your own, here is a free pattern similar to the design I use. Look next week and I will show you how I assemble my doll and I will try to show you how I sculpt the faces.
Learning To Make Beautiful Things With Your Hands and Your Life
By Charlene Tremain Morrison
Scriptures in KJV
- Well, I am once again with pen in hand, well fingers to keyboard actually, writing what is becoming a bible study book with a sewing theme. I love the verse in Titus 2:3-5 that says "The aged womenlikewise, thatthey beinbehavioras becometh holiness, notfalse accusers, notgivento muchwine, teachers of good things;Thatthey may teachthe young womento be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,To bediscreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedientto their ownhusbands, thatthe wordof Godbenotblasphemed."
I'm not old, but I have skills, and have come through experiences that others might be going through as well. I hope to have it edited by a pastor or two and some other seamstresses and of course a few green sewers (drop me a note if you are interested!) I suppose I will have it self published to sell on my Etsy. Watch future posts, I may use some of the devotionals on Sundays!
I've been busy at getting ready for the giveaway, just need you all to help reach that magic number! Here's a sneak peak at the prize, it's young girl related, but could be boy as well. Can't wait to see that number reach 500 ! (wink wink, nudge nudge)
I received my business cards in the mail today, I'm very excited to pass them out. And DD asked for her own set. So today I ordered some for her with a pretty butterfly and just her name on it and our Etsy address for her birthday.
I've been busy on the sewing machine, my serger is also headed to the shop for a tune up. But I finished this tunic which is a shortened version of the Dress for Dolly, and my own design of lined Capri for DD. Their design is the result of me being distracted when I did the math for the measurements, but as you can see, all turned out well!
I also thought I would share with you these beautiful felt barrettes, loving how easy they are to make, even easier than ribbon covered. I think I will let DD have a go at some of these. I'm wondering if scrap book grommets would work on these, since the ends would be covered....Hmmmmmm
