Babushka Doll Shirt {a Silhouette Project}

I just love the ladies over at Prudent Baby. They're so sweet every time I talk to them, not to mention all of the great projects they have for mama's and kiddos. They had a contest awhile ago to see who could come up with the cleverest phrase to go along with a Silhouette Babushka Doll cutouts they were giving away. My entry was "Sometimes it's ok to be full of yourself." I thought it was pretty clever. I didn't make first place, but they were sweet enough to humor me and send me a cutout of the doll anyway. Awesome!

I have several babushka dolls that I've collected through the years, and they now sit in Haley's bedroom up on a high shelf along with all the other things she's not allowed to touch. She always asks for them, so I knew she'd love it if I made her a shirt using the babushka doll cutout.

Supplies:

• Shirt
• Babushka Doll design in Silhouette Studio
• Iron on transfer material
• Sewable interfacing
• Scrap fabric the same size as your doll cutout
• Scrap felt for the flower
• One small button
• Basic sewing supplies

Step 1: Cut out your 2 doll pieces.

You will need 2 babushka doll cutouts: 1 of the full design on transfer, and the second just a silhouette of your doll in fabric.

First, use your Silhouette to cut your babushka doll design. Weed the excess transfer material, saving the outline of your doll (seen below).

Next, follow the instructions on the sewable interfacing to iron interfacing to the back of your scrap fabric. Using the outline you saved from your babushka doll template, trace your outline on your fabric using a disappearing ink marker.  Cut out.

Iron your babushka doll fabric onto your shirt and sew around the perimeter of the doll.

Step 2: Apply your iron on transfer material.

Now that your design has been weeded, place the design on top of your fabric. Follow Silhouette's instructions to iron the transfer material to your shirt.

I use a little Fabric Fusion to stick down any unruly edges that don't want to be ironed down well.

Step 3: Make your flower embellishment.

Cut two circles out of your felt: one that is 1 inch in diameter, and one that is about 3/4 inches in diameter.

Place your biggest circle on the bottom, then stack the smaller circle on top followed by the button. Hand sew your flower to your shirt.

Not too bad, right? (Besides the fact that you can see the blue disappearing ink marker I used to trace the doll :)

Haley was just happy that I let her play with the dolls during the photo shoot.

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Superhero Cape

I remember watching old reruns of the original Batman episodes on TV when I was little and wondering why anyone would want to prance around in their underwear and tights and punch people in the face. Eventually I came to realize that all little boys at one point or another love to play superhero just as much as I loved playing with my Barbies and X-Men (Wolverine and Barbie were on and off for quite a few years.)

Even though my little guy is only interested in gnawing on things at the moment, I'm sure once he gets old enough to find hobbies other than eating he'll want to put on a cape and fight bad guys too. Every little boy wants to be the hero who saves the day, so when my friend made me the Bee Inspired drawing for my craft room, I knew exactly what I wanted to make for her 2 little boys in return.

A superhero cape! If your little guy has a favorite superhero, you could make one with his symbol on it. Or, if you want to make it really special, you could personalize it for your child.

Supplies for a small cape:

•  Download my free pattern HERE
• 1 yard knit fabric (you may need more depending on how big your child is)
• 2 sheets of felt for the collar, and more for the patches on the cape
• 3 inches of Velcro
• Craft glue
• Sewing machine and basic sewing supplies

Step 1: Cut out your pattern pieces.

First, download my pattern HERE. Cut out and tape page 1 to page 2 where indicated. With your knit fabric folded, place your main pattern on top of your fabric with the edge on the fold where indicated. Trace around and cut out. Repeat for a total of 2 pieces, one for the front and one for the back.

You could also use a men's knit shirt to make your cape like I did, in which case you'll fold your shirt in half longways and place your pieced template on the fold like this:

When you trace and cut, you should have 2 pieces.

To cut out your collar, fold your sheet of felt in half and place your collar template on the fold. Cut out 2 of your collar pieces.

Decide what kind of design you want on your cape. This one was made for a friend's son named Sadron the 5th, who goes by the nickname "Five," so I decided to make the patch on his cape play off of his nickname. Make your design in Microsoft Word then cut out your letters and design and use these to trace your design onto your felt. I cut an S and a 5 from felt, as well as a sunburst that I found in Microsoft Clipart.

Glue the pieces of your patch together using the craft glue and let dry.


Step 2: Sew on your patch.

Position your patch on the right side of your cape (the part that everyone will see) and pin.

Sew around the perimeter of your patch and design to secure.

Step 3: Join your front and back pieces.

With the right sides together, pin the sides of your cape and sew around the perimeter, but leave the neck open. Turn your cape inside out through the opening in the neck.

Step 4: Attach the collar.


Sandwich the raw edge of your neckline in between your 2 collar pieces and pin.

Sew around the entire perimeter of your collar to finish.

Step 5: Add Velcro.

On the top of the left side of your collar, sew several inches of the hook portion of your Velcro. On the underside of the right side of your collar sew the loop portion of your Velcro.

And now you have your very own personalized superhero cape - or one with his favorite superhero on it.

And if you're wondering why the cape below is gray instead of red, it's because I made it and then realized afterward that I made it way too small for a 6 year old so I had to cut out my patch and start over. Sigh.

Again, why can't my projects just turn out perfectly the first time?

My friend's 3-year-old son was originally supposed to model the cape for me but he decided not to at the last minute, so Connor graciously stepped in - even though the cape is way too big on him.

 "Watch out bad guys!"

 "I'm off to save the day!!

Until the Evil Captain Mommy scooped him up for kisses.

The world is a safer place with my little superhero on duty.

The craft fair

Well, I can finally say that I've participated in a craft fair! This past Friday and Saturday, a couple other girls and I shared a booth at one of the local craft fairs in Memphis. For the past month, I've been cranking out bibs like crazy and managed to make around 30 of them for the festival. The other girls brought a variety of painted canvases, bows, and other goodies for kids and babies.

I think we had a cute little booth :)

One of the girls had an old window that she used as both a decoration and a sign to list pricing of all the items.

I hung my bibs at the front of the tent so people would see them as they walked in, and they'd hit them in the face when they left ;) I used Picnik to make a sign to advertise the bibs, which I modeled after this sign I found on Google. I wanted the sign to have a "country" feel to it - I really like how it turned out!

The festival was fun but really exhausting! I have a lot of respect for all of you who do festivals every year! I may do another one in the future, but for now, I think I'm going to focus of making things for my Etsy shop that I want to start very soon.

So what do you think, would you want to buy a bib if I started to sell them on Etsy?

Mandy over at Sugar Bee Crafts has some awesome tips on how to prepare and decorate for a craft fair - her booth is so cute! Check it out HERE

My end-of-season steals

Nothing else gets me like having to pay $30 for teeny baby jeans that they'll grow out of in a month. I mean, babies are like 1/6 the size of a normal person, so lets take that price and divide it by 6. I'd happily pay $5 for baby jeans. Sadly, I don't think retailers will ever agree with me. And that's why I love end-of-season sales so much.

If you've been reading for awhile, you know that I hate paying full-price for stuff, especially clothing, which is probably why I love making clothes for my kids so much. When I go shopping, I usually walk in and make a bee line for the clearance rack. When it comes to clothes for myself, I have an awesome sister-in-law who dresses me, so she's just helping to enable my cheapness even more. And I love her for that. And don't even get me started on my husband. The man would be happy to own a pair of cargo shorts and 2 baseball tees, one in black and one in gray.

So back to baby clothes. At the end of each summer and winter, the hubs and I make a trip to some stores and stock up ahead of time for the coming seasons, which helps us get a lot of cute clothes for the kids at prices we would never be able to get in season. We happened to be in Babies R Us recently to find a new car seat for Connor, and they had an amazing clearance event that I couldn't pass up. Everything was discounted already with an additional discount on top of it PLUS a buy one get one free deal.

It was on.

Here are some of the cute things we scored for next year:

A bunch of cute matching graphic tees and comfy shorts,

(I just love the blue striped shirt for some reason, the color is so pretty! ...I mean manly.)

And of course, I had to get a pair of swim trunks for Connor for next summer. He's going to look like such a big kid :(

For Haley, I found this adorable ruffle skirt,

Jean shorts for $3!

And assorted other pants and shirts. But my favorite had to be these:

Adorable rainbow sneakers! Love love love. They match everything, so that's a major plus :)

Is anyone else an end-of-season shopaholic like me?

Mystery project reveal and a winner!

Many of you made some good guesses on the blog as to what I've been up to lately, and if you follow me on Facebook I threw out some hints about what I was working on. I think I'm pretty terrible at hinting. That's probably why I only made it through 3 hints before someone got it. I'm also really bad at lying which I suppose isn't a bad thing unless your 4 years old and your dad tells you that he got your mom towels for her birthday and to keep it a secret. I'm sure you can guess how that one turned out. I kept that secret for a whole 15 minutes.

So the oh-so-secret mystery project is bibs! Not just any bibs though, fruit bibs! Why? Because fruit-themed anything is awesome. Remember the California Raisins? Exactly.

I'm participating in my first craft show this week, so I whipped up about 25 of these babies to sell at the show. I think my hands are permanently cramped in a claw-like position from all the sewing I've done recently. I really love how they turned out though, too bad my 2 1/2-year-old doesn't like things tied around her neck and my (almost) 1-year-old has started to pull a Hulk move and rip bibs off his neck with excessive force lately. Sigh.

They really turned out better than I hoped though. They get me in a very fall-ish mood, which is my favorite season next to spring by the way. I think I'd be ok if we did away with summer and shortened winter some, or at least required winter to stay above 50 degree temperatures and snow on command on days when I felt like seeing all the pretty snow. Not to much to ask, right?

They were inspired by a shirt I made, similar to the apple bib above, for a friend 3 years ago when I first started sewing. I then saw this pin on Pinterest and thought, why not combine the two ideas? I'm calling them Fruit Basket Bibs, and the fruits include an apple, pear, strawberry, and orange. I think the orange is my favorite, even though it took a lot of patience to stitch each individual fruit section on. Times 8.

You all made a lot of great guesses that came close, but Rebecca made the right guess on the Facebook page.

Congrats, Rebecca! You will be getting your very own orange bib in the mail very soon! The craft festival is this coming Friday, and I've never done anything like it, so wish me luck!

I'm linking up to the parties on my sidebar, as well as the Point of View Autumn Link Party and The CSI Project:

When life hands you lemons, make a brand new shirt.

Are you one of those people who makes perfect projects every time? Like, all you have to do is just envision your project, carry it out, and it comes out perfect, just how you imagined? If you are, I am extremely envious of you. I am not one of those people.

Most of the time I come up with a project, tweak it. Tweak it again. Do the project. Realize something is off. Tweak it again. Finish it, then when analyze the crap out of it and see only the flaws.

If you're on Pinterest, you've probably already seen this picture, but it makes me laugh every time because I feel this way during a lot of projects:

Source

I'm definitely harder on myself than anyone else, and a lot of the time it's just be being a perfectionist. Other times however, it seems the craft gods are against me.

This weekend, I got it in my head to make a cute football-themed shirt for my daughter to show her support for the Steelers. I found this adorable idea for a shirt on Pinterest for a shirt with a football helmet appliqued on it and a bow on the helmet - you know, show some support for your favorite team but with a girly twist. I was psyched. Since I had a lot of fabric leftover from making my son's Steeler's-themed bedding, I decided to use that fabric to make a shirt for my daughter.

I got all excited about making the shirt and was even going to do a tutorial, then everything started going wrong from the beginning. I couldn't get the Steelers logo to fit right into my helmet template and had to cut it 4 different times, then I was finally able to cut it out and iron it on my shirt.

I began using a satin stitch around the edges, and about 5 seconds in my machine caught the shirt fabric in the feed dogs. After prying the shirt mentally cursing out the innocent shirt (because that's a lot more sane than outright yelling at an article of clothing), I moved the applique and started again. Halfway through, my machine caught the shirt in the feed dogs again.

I don't know if you can see it well in the picture below, but it's the spot with the tangled mass of thread near the top of the mask.

When it happened, I cycled through the stages of grief.


Shock and denial: "Oh no!! Not again! I can't believe this happened a second time! Wait, it's Ok. It's barely noticeable. Except when I stick my entire finger through the hole..."

Anger: "Argh, stupid sewing machine, why did you have to eat my shirt! See if I ever oil you again...that'll show you..."

Depression: "Now I'm going to have to start all over. I might as well just throw the shirt away."


Dialogue and Bargaining: "Please just make this thing work, I don't want to have to start all over again! I've already lost 5 hours of my life!"

Acceptance: "...crap."


There was no way of ripping the original design out without making even MORE holes, so I decided to whip out my felt and cover the whole applique.

I still kept with the whole "girly football" theme, but with a football instead of a helmet. Not what I was originally shooting for, but I was about done with the shirt at this point. I was planning on doing a tutorial, but by the time I finished the shirt, I had run out of sanity.

So here it is. A football shirt for my daughter that took about 6 hours.

She will be wearing it until she's 16.

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