On the weekend I....

Made turquoise flower petals

Please excuse the mobile phone photo!

Washed and tidied, and babysat and watched cartoons...

Made green flowerpetals

Sewed a prototype for a client and packed lots of Last Chance Hotties ready to be taken to the post office

...and made two tones of purple flower petals.

What did you get up to?

Yesterday

....was a morning filled with sunshine (what a pity it didn't last all day).

Nico had stayed for a sleepover Saturday night so we broke out the textas after brekky to make these supercute Easter Baskets by Draw Pilgrim.

 There's a link to download the PDF and make your very own!

The Weekend

No time....

....to talk

We're off to the park....

Revealing - part three

Now it's time to reveal some of the handmade pressies for my nephews.

I was a little bit stumped for ideas this year as I've made them so many handmade things over previous years for birthdays and for christmas.

I would have loved to make them all a pair of shorts, but I just ran out of time. The two big boys received gift vouchers for the local bike shop, and nothing handmade (whoops)!

I made teeny tiny zippered pouches using my Dragster Fabric for the Bubbas (they're two and a half now so I really should stop calling them the Bubbas). They don't have wallets so they needed little coin purses to keep inside their manbags.

I made little boy sized lanyards for Moo Moo and Nico, so that they can wear their wallets around their necks like the big boys. We also discovered that the lanyards can hook onto the tow bars of Chuggington trains.... just in case anyone would like to wear a train around their neck?

The four little boys also received a supercute handmade wooden boat each that I bought at one of the local craft markets. It's the type where you blow up the balloon and attach it to the top and it makes the boat paddle along.

I wish I'd taken a photo of them playing boats in the spa at the holiday house.... oh well!

Do the Bot Dance

I completely forgot to include a photo of Nico's Bot Dance Birthday Card in yesterdays post.

It's last weeks drawing in technicolour...

All the kiddies had a wonderful time at the party.

 
There was a Toy Story theme (hence the t-shirts)...

.....and a mighty big stick for the pinata

 

The littlies weren't having much success in splitting it open.

Hmmm... blankie - check, dummy - check,..... mighty big stick?

It took a while, but they finally managed to break it open and scatter the spoils everywhere.

I think Noah liked the chupa chups the best!

A Birthday Wrap

It's Nico's 3rd birthday today, so he's having a little BBQ and party..... and they've even decided to run the biggest horse race in the country on the same day to celebrate (maybe I should have used a horse print)!

I've made him this sweet little texta wrap....

With a velcro closure for little three year old fingers.

I decided late yesterday afternoon to make a couple of appliqued tees to go with the texta wrap, only to find that I've either completely run out of applifix, or I've just lost it amongst the mess (which could be entirely possible).

Desperate times called for desperate measures, so I came up with an alternative.

I used some medium light interfacing on the back of each fabric square, and then used basting spray to hold them in place on the tees while I stitched them down. I tried to do a close zig-zag stitch all the way around, but for some unknown reason, my machine just hates doing the zig-zag. Even though I use gutterman thread, it constantly breaks and jams up. Drives me nuts!

Anyhow, I did lots of extra stitching because I didn't have the applifix to secure it. Hopefully they'll wash and wear just as well as normal.... fingers crossed.

PS - Just a little end note: Lots of bloggy peeps seem to have changed their settings lately, which means that your blog can't be read in a reader such as Google Reader. No photos show up, just a few lines of text from the beginning of a post and that's all. Might be worth checking up on if you have - I'm missing out on reading lots of my faves at the moment.

Animation Friday - Impromptu Shoot

I had a little visitor last week.
This is what happened when I asked him to stand still in front of the wall so that I could take a photo......

Join in Animation Friday at My Poppet.

iMoby V2.0

Do you remember little Moby?

I adopted him in January, and he's been happily living with his friends in the bookcase ever since (he really likes reading craft books I hear).

Lately he's been receiving a bit of attention from a little visitor who seems to have fallen in love with him.....

I couldn't bear (pardon the pun) to give him away, so instead, I asked Jess if I could possibly order Moby a twin brother.

So this is iMoby V2.0....

He arrived in a gorgeous little box (notice the postie even stuck the postage stickers right over to the side so that they didn't interfere with the lovely packaging), and with a batch of super cute bear stickers and my favourite type of chocolate (peppermint).

Now that he's had a bit of a stopover at my place, I'd better deliver him to his new home fairly soon.... or he might just have to stay!

How time flies...

I had a quick little bloggy break over the last couple of days... except that quick as a flash, the four day Melbourne Cup long weekend is over!

Not much craft has been happening, and Nico's shorts didn't get finished in time for the birthday party, but here they are. Better late than never I suppose. I'm sure a 2 year old won't notice that one of his pressies is a little bit late.

This is the Burda 9793 pattern again - size 2 shorts.


I ended up having an extremely busy weekend. My BIL had back surgery last week and is in hospital, so I've been helping out my sister with babysitting duties (so she can visit hubby) and 'witching hour assistance'.

She left me at her nice clean house yesterday, and by the time she arrived home, it looked like a tornado had hit. I swear that they all ran off in different directions just so I couldn't catch them. There were a couple of disagreements over a pair of sunglasses, and a UNO card, but all the cheeky grins and cuddles made up for that at the end of the day.

I'm going to need a holiday by the time this all over!

My creative space

It's Nico's 2nd birthday next Monday, so I've been getting to work making him some new pants.

I've used my new Burda 9793 pattern - these ones are 3/4 length pants in size 2. I couldn't follow the instructions to the letter, as I really needed to overlock the corduroy to prevent any fraying.

It's difficult to see in the photo, but this is the first time that I've tried this type of side hip pocket. I think it's pretty cute.

I didn't bother with pockets on the back - does a 2 year old really need pockets anyway (they usually just get filled up with dirt and sand)?

My next job is to cut out the shorts pattern and whip up a pair of those too, and then I just need a couple of appliqued tees and I'm done.

Make sure to head on over to see Kirsty and sign up or just check out who else is playing along today.

Try try again....

Yesterday, it was time for Nico's pants - take 2.

First of all, I whipped up a nice comfy pair of trackie dacks. I had a small piece of dark blue fabric, and a small piece of a lighter blue fabric left over from when I made trackie dacks for the twins.

Each piece was only large enough for half a pair, so I combined them..... I'm thinking of making it a hot trend - two toned pants are the new cool!

Next job - I had just enough of this light brown corduroy for one more pair of pants. I made them slightly smaller than the pants from the day before.....

......but they're still a bit too big.

Luckily he'll grow into them eventually.

The pants man

Sorry about the blurry photo - the model wasn't co-operating (even after trying bribery with lollies)

I've been promising to make little Nico some new pants for a while now. He's at an in-between stage where size 1 is too small and size 2 is far too long in the legs.

I made up a pattern in approximately size 2 but shortened the leg length so that it's custom fitted to his current size. These pants were the first test fitting. A little long in the leg, and a little high waisted, but other than that, they were pretty good.

Time for sample number 2!

Shorts.....or longs?

Now that the weather is getting warmer, I thought I should try to graduate from making kids pants, and attempt to make some shorts instead, using the mens Rip Curl shirt that I found at the oppy last week.

Nice overlocked seams.......as you can probably tell, I made these on Tuesday (before I broke my bloody overlocker)!

Anyhow, somewhere amongst the 100th time I've had to clean up the craft supplies for a house inspection, I've managed to lose the pattern that I bought for shorts. But never fear, I decided to make my own instead. Using the vintage size 2 pants pattern, I sized it down to what I thought should be size 1, and then made the legs at the length that I thought would be perfect for shorts.

In theory, this method should have worked. They looked like shorts when I laid them on the outdoor table to take a photo.

It was then time to take them over to Nico's house for a test fitting........

So, are they shorts or longs?

A birthday bib

After 71 posts to celebrate Blogtober...today I'm a little lost for words.....


But I managed to whip up a birthday bib for the birthday boy Nico.....


By the end of the day tomorrow, the number one should be covered in Thomas the Tank Engine cake....yum!

On My Desk....on a Wednesday

My nephew Nico is having his first birthday party this weekend so I'm making him some clothes. I was planning to be further along with the birthday production line than this, but I had another lot of prospective buyers come through the house at short notice lastnight so it was a mad scamble to clean up all of the crafty mess that I had strewn all over the kitchen again (and make the bed, and pick up the dirty washing from the floor, and bring in the fabric that was drying on the pool fence)!

While my roast lamb dinner was in the oven lastnight, I sat on the couch and did some crazy stitching on the felt star. I had already used vliesofix to set the star in place so the stitching is really just for a bit of added effect.

I almost forgot to mention, that these pants were made from a $1 mens corduroy shirt from the oppy. I cut the two front panels from the back of the shirt, and the two back panels from the front of the shirt. This photo is the back of the pants which have the front pocket from the shirt. I just layed the pattern piece in the correct place so that the pocket stayed in tact. I think it turned out pretty cute!

For much more On My Desk action, head on over to visit Kirsty and check out some more desky action shots.

Finally! A pair of cords

It's taken me a while but I've finally made some corduroy pants with the gorgeous fabric that Sherrin so generously sent me aaaaaages ago. I probably should have ironed them again before I took the camera out.

I overlocked all the seams before sewing them too, so there shouldn't be any fraying..... and I actually remembered to add the star embellishment before sewing the legs together this time.

I did somehow manage to overlock two wrong legs together at one stage and had to go back and unpick everything.

They'll be facing the fitment test on Moo Moo and Nico tonight. They are around the same size except that I just shortened the legs for Nico (which means that they're just not as flared at the bottom). Here's hoping that they fit!