fairy babe

when i asked eric what secret santa gift he wanted to give a little girl in his class, he said "a fairy blanket". well, you can't have a fairy blanket with no fairy, now can you? so i started looking around for good ideas and fell in love with these little fairy babes the instant i saw them here.

i followed her directions (more or less), but had to adjust a bit because the wooden beads i had on hand didn't have holes that went all the way through. hmmmm...how to get the fabric to attach securely into the head with my beads? well, the first little babe was adorned with an obscene amount of glue. i felt the waldorf police hot on my trail, so i deemed her an experiment and got busy making more, trying new techniques each time. well, here's what i did.

i started with a 6 inch square piece of fabric (chosen by eric). i folded it in half, and stitched the two short sides, rounding toward the fold line.

this shows how it looks as you fold in the other two sides to sew them up as well. i had to play with this a bit...i'm a bit spatially impaired with even the simplest things like this, but picturing it as a little fabric wonton helped.

see? all stitched up and ready to stuff with crab and chee...oh, oh...i mean fluffy stuffing. these steps are pretty much the same as gingercake's (i think), but i left less unstitched fabric at the top because i wasn't going to be doing it quite the same way from here on in.

the boys filled her up with a bit of rice for weight, and then i topped her little body off with fluff and used the end of a paint brush to help poke it in.

here's her body, stuffed, with the little opening at the top. at the bottom of the photo is a piece of pipe cleaner, curled around a couple of times to coil down into that hole. i shot some hot glue down into the hole and then pressed the pipe cleaner coil down onto the glue inside the body.

next, i filled that little hole in the bead with hot glue and then stuck it on the end of the pipe cleaner sticking out of the body. i added a little more glue down around the bottom of the bead and

pressed the head down to make sure it was all good and stuck together.

eric chose a cotton fabric scrap for the hat, so i sewed it up like this and then turned it right side out and glued it on. this was tricky to do neatly while the glue was hot, so i don't have a good picture. gingercake used felt, and maybe a stiffer fabric like that would be a little easier to handle. i helped him draw a little face on. he said it was a girl, so she had to have eyelashes. he also said she was a fairy, so we sewed on some simple felt wings at the end.

sam, especially, was enamored with these little cuties and spent the entire morning covering up the first one with various blankets and scraps while i sewed. he was not a happy camper when i whisked away the one destined to be a gift, so i quickly sewed him another,

in this blue fabric he picked from the pile. he gave her lots of hugs and snuggles. good times all around. thanks, gingercake!

ago

my poor computer is absolutely paralyzed by the burden of our zillions of pictures. to give it some relief, i've been trying to clean it up a bit, freeing memory wherever i can. tonight, just as i sat down to delete, these were the first files i opened.

halloween, 2008

a three year old boy who wanted to be a "green and purple bull, with orange and yellow spots" and an almost two year old pooh.

it goes so fast.

for the birds

so, for a while now, i've been itching to dig into my stash and just make something already!

finally started digging last week and came across this sweater (had some tiny holes and little pulls in it, so not so great in this form anymore)...a thin, soft knit...a nice, neutral color...perfect for a lighter spring hat for sam.

i had this hat, and i liked the stretchy fit and overall shape, so i layed it on top and traced around for my "pattern".

dipped into the stash again for these little bits, cut into the shape of a birdie body and wing. cutie patootie.

after putting it all together here and there over the course of the day, here it is! ok, ok, so i know there are a jillion people out there who do stuff like this everyday, and i think they're so great. i've only been one of these people in my mind until NOW! there really is something to be said for just sitting down and doing it. throwing caution and perfectionism (my stumbling blocks) to the wind and just going for it.

i was just so tickled and excited to see it on sam...i had to put it on him, even though he was headed into nap time.

ok...and the best part? you know what he was doing just as i finished it up? sitting on the floor by the slider watching birds...yep...totally entraced by all the little birdies flitting around gathering food. he was so pleased when i showed it to him, pointing to the bird, then back outside, back and forth...recognizing the bird on his hat as similar to those outside...tweet tweet.

finally beginning

every now and then i can sweep away all other duties to carve out some mama craft time. this morning, after "second breakfast" the kids were left to their own devices while i began piecing together squares from these old sheets. got the idea from here to use cool old sheets for a project like this. it's been an exercise in patience (isn't everything?), working for little bits of time here and there, but this morning, it felt like i was really getting somewhere. the boys occupied themselves with stringing yarn all over the living room and generally continuing to spread toys around like butter, but they got along and were busy. perfect.