baby clothes!

Now that I have a new sewing machine I've been sewing a lot :D I made the little pinafore dress
and bloomers I shared on this post, I made a dress and bloomers for our 2 year old niece and I
made a dress, bloomers and little shoes for our brand new baby niece who is a week old now :)
I also made bows for all 3 things :)

Here is the dress I had shared before with its hair bow :) As I had said in the post I had

shared this dress in, I made this dress with an old McCall's pattern I had.

This is a close up of the bow :)

This is the dress I made for our niece Dezi :) with bloomers and bow.

I used some fancy flowery stitching on it :D The pattern I used for this dress was from

The Stitching Scientist.  She has a very good tutorial for making this dress.  The bloomers

came from Sewing Mama Raeanna.  It's a very good pattern and tutorial.

This is a close up of the hair bow.

This is the dress, bloomers and shoes I made for our newest baby niece :)

The dress pattern came from Shwin and Shwin :) She's got a good tutorial on there. The 

bloomers came from See Kate Sew, another good tutorial :) Last, the little shoes came

from Tao of Craft.  Great tutorial for the shoes on there :)

This is a close up of the head band i made for the baby :D

A great place for hair bow tutorials is The Ribbon Retreat.  They have very good pdf and 

video tutorials

Next I'm going to start sewing and cutting my Waldorf doll pattern pieces.  I'm excited about that

just need to buy more stuffing as I don't have enough.  I also have fun mail coming :D I'm waiting 

for some mohair yarn to make a wig cap from and the pellets I'm going to use to weight my doll 

yaay :D I can't wait :)

new sewing machine!

Well I finally got my new sewing machine today!  So happy and excited :)  I've already
done one of my projects I had in my projects queue :D  It sews very smoothly and the stitches
are very nicely done :) This machine has 80 different stitches!  I'm very excited.

Here it is!

Isn't it just beautiful!  It's a lovely Singer.  It comes with an extension table and the scissors

and thread were free gifts :) 

This is the baby dress I made today with bloomers :)  I used an old McCall's pattern I had.

 See the fancy stitching I did there :D

It came with different feet to use but I'm not sure what they are for. I know one was for zippers

and I used the buttonhole one.  The others I don't know so I'm going to use trusty google to

figure it out. 

Tomorrow, the next project on my list using my awesome new machine yay :)

Busy Books :)

Some of my favorite projects I've worked on have been the busy books aka quiet books.
They are so fun to make.  It's fun to plan out what pages you want to use, plan how to put
them together, gather up all your supplies and then just create it all :) I'm sure some
people out there can whip one of these babies out really quick but not me :D  Busy books
take a little while for me but they are worth it :) and the kids love them.  I've made four of them.
I made 2 in 2014 and 2 last year.  The first 2 I made were different from each other.  Last years
were exactly alike because I was trying to finish them before we went on holiday.
I found so many quiet book page ideas on pinterest :)  These are some of my favorite ones:
Imagine Our Life
Maybe Matilda
ANDNEXTCOMESL
PA Country Crafts
bubbles & bobbins
forty-two roads
The Montoya Family
KRĒ-ĀT
Shill O'POP
how does she?
Empty Bobbin

Their ideas are awesome :) My busy books are mostly all made of felt.  One of the first ones
I made was for one of our little nephews.  It was made of 8 pages and it had 14 activities.

This is our nephew Ryan's book :)

The mailbox one was an awesome activity :) I loved making that one.  Was fun

making the envelopes and letters :)  That page came from here.  Some of the 

other pages came from links that I gave you in this post and others I saw pictures

on google images.  I made changes to some of them and a couple of them I 

made my own.

The second book I made was for one of our nieces in Texas.  Her older sister, Kylie, loves 

the book but she doesn't get to play with it much because sharing isn't Stella's strong point :D

I'm thinking of making Kylie her own for her birthday in May.  She'll be 7, so these books 

work for big kids too! :D  

Stella's book had 8 pages and 11 activities.

This is Stella's book :)

The pages from this book came from the links I shared in this post too. The purse activity

was fun and I looked at this page to help me with the play make up.  I came up with 

a couple of these on my own.  I came up with the animal sounds activity.  I'm sure there

is someone out there who's made a page like this but I didn't look for it and didn't see any.

I was thinking on what else I could put in the book and since kids like animals I thought

a matching game would be fun.  The shopping activity was another one.  I saw some of

those but my wife and I came up with our own version :)   

Last year I made 2 books and they were exactly alike.  Those books had 8 pages and 

14 activities.  Some of the activities came from the links I shared in this post. Some of

them have changes I made.  The frozen page I made up :D I got inspiration from a couple

on google images but I made it my own.  The Elsa doll pattern came from here. 

Here is one of the books :)

 

 

 

 

So far these are my only busy books but got another one getting planned in my brain and a

couple others I want to make for Christmas time :D  They are so much fun to make I

do recommend it.

first post of the new year

I've not posted on here for a long time.  The last time I posted I was working on my
Christmas projects so I could finish them before we went on our holiday to the USA
to see my family.  Well I did finish everything I wanted to make :) I made 3 diaper bags,
a craft apron, small pillow, 2 travel doll houses, 2 dinosaur mats and 2 busy books.
The diaper bags I showed off in this earlier post.  Three of our Texas nieces got those
with 3 dolls I made :)

 

 

We've got a little nephew in Texas who loves crafts! :) so we got him a big plastic box 

and filled it with all sort of crafty bits and I made him a craft apron :)  I got the pattern from

here.  I changed it a little bit though.  I didn't make the neck strap the same and I added a

felt pocket in the middle of mine.  I made little shapes out of felt and glued them on.  I had 

seen this one and I liked the words on that apron so I embroidered them on mine.

   Here it is!

Two of our nieces got the travel doll houses I made.  I wrote about them in several posts.  This

is the post showing one of the finished houses :) They were both mostly the same except for the 

color of a few things and the little dolls hair color.

Two other nephews got some dinosaur mats :D They were fun to make :) I got inspiration

from a lot of pictures I saw on pinterest some of my favorite ones were these:

Fun at Home with Kids

Makezine

apartment therapy

Blog Her

This was mine :)

  I also made a pouch to put it in :)

My favorite part of this project was making the volcano!

I think it looked really good :D I made it with a bunch of scraps of brown felt 

all glued together :)

The busy books I made were for one little niece in Texas and for Lilah-Mai, our little niece 

here in the UK.

I've made a total of 4 busy books aka quiet books.  I made 2 last year and 2 this year.  Those

are very fun to make but they are projects that take a whole post for themselves :D So I'll show

you and tell you about them in another post soon :)

It was fun going to see the family in Texas and eating all the things :D Three weeks went by 

too fast.  We came back home to our lovely cat and our beautiful Christmas tree that we put up 

before we left on holiday :)

We got the train in Texas :)

Now it's back to normality.  I have some projects in a queue :)  I want to make a weighted doll.

I've made my own pattern for this and can't wait to try it out.  I also have 2 quilts to make, a

baby dress for our newest baby niece born just today in Texas :)  I also am going to make a puffy

sleeve dress for our baby niece Dezi.  She's just turned 2 :)  

I made one of these dresses for miss Lilah-Mai with a hair bow too :) I used a pattern I got here.

She's got a very good tutorial with pictures.

Here she is!

What am I waiting for you might be asking.  Why are my projects waiting in a queue you ask.  

Well I am waiting for my new sewing machine.  I've been waiting since I ordered it on the 2nd.

There was a mix up with my bank and them but it got fixed and on Monday they said it would be

sent.  I would have it within 1 to 4 business days.  Tomorrow is day 4.  If it doesn't come 

I'll be calling and using my serious voice! 

Hope everyone is doing good so far this new year :)

Sold a little house :)

I've started working on my travel doll house again.  I wasn't feeling too great for a while but I'm feeling ok now so I've started work on my projects again :)  This week I also sold a little house I had for sale on my Etsy page.  It was this one.  It's on its way to the USA to its new home :)
Today is Lilah-Mai day here so we will be spending time with her and going for a coffee.  After this I will spend some time on my second travel doll house.  I'm hoping to finish this house this weekend and then start work on some quiet books :) I made 2 of these last year for one of my baby nephews and one of my baby nieces :)  I want to make one for Lilah-Mai and another for miss Dezi :)  Quiet books, or busy books as I call them, are very fun to make.  I'll share pictures of the ones I made last year in another post soon.  Now off to start making lunch :D

Quick Post 6

I've not been feeling to great lately so I've not really worked on my projects for a couple of days.  I think I'll start in on them again next week.  I've been feeling so tired lately so I've sat looking at pinterest a lot.  My wife and I found out we will have a new baby niece early next year soooooo I was looking for cute baby dresses to make her :D  I ran across this very lovely site :) Olabelhe.  I fell in love with her sewing room.  I want it :D  There are several patterns on her site that I want :) I have found many other things I'd love to make her we will see what I pick :)

Doll House 2 and a Doll

Today my wife and I watched tv and had yummy things to eat :D I did start work on my second doll house but only cut felt pieces for different parts of the house. I'll start putting things together tomorrow.

This is what I got done today.

I also wanted to share with yall another one of my Christmas presents I made last year.  This was for our baby niece Dezi.  I decided to make her a small Waldorf inspired doll.  The little doll was around 10 inches tall and was made with my own pattern.  I made her with brown eyes and brown hair like miss Dezi.  Her little dress was made with a simplicity pattern I already had.   

Here she is!