Scandinavian Inspired Stockings

Today I am sharing my Christmas stockings that were inspired by Scandinavian folk art with you.  I think that they look just perfect hanging over the fireplace which I wrote about in my last post.  I couldn't find any stockings that I liked in stores so I decided to make my own.  I was inspired by this Scandinavian looking stocking that I saw on Pinterest:

I made the stockings following this tutorial from the Fabricworm Blog.  It was very simple to follow.  I chose natural linen fabric for the main body of the stocking and white linen fabric for the cuff.  For the designs on the cuff I used my Silhouette Portrait and red heat transfer vinyl.  I used this design for a nordic bunting and just separated the shapes and recombined them to my liking.

I used a simple font for the monogram letters.  I ended up removing that border before I cut the designs because I thought it would be too busy on the cuffs and hard to line up.  Of course I had to flip the designs before I cut them since I was cutting on heat transfer vinyl.

Finally I added pom pom trim with hot glue.  I could of sewed it to the cuff but I like the look of it glued on the topside of the cuff.  

There wasn't enough of the white pom pom trim for all four stockings at Joann Fabric so I ended up buying red trim as well.  It was a happy accident because I like the variety with the trim.

You can see in the pictures of the mantel one of the decorations that I made for my daughter Ana's baptism from this past weekend as well as the cake topper from her cake nestled into the floral.  I hope to blog on that event in the near future.  You can also see some new furniture in the last photo.  Those are Agen chairs from Ikea.  I am currently in the process of making cushions for those chairs so I hope to blog on that and the rest of the new additions to the living room soon (which includes a new light fixture and a sectional).  I have also been doing a lot of Christmas sewing in addition to these stocking which include Christmas pjs for the girls, harem pants and a bandana bib for Ana, and a soft structure doll carrier for Lyla.  So many future projects to blog about!  Handmade holidays are the best!

Sister Shirts Using the Silhouette Portrait

In my last post I told you that there was one more part to the gift that we gave to Lyla when she came to meet Ana at the hospital.  The last part of her gift was a big sister shirt.  Of course I had to make a little sister onesie so that Ana could match.

This project was quite simple and I've already written several posts on using heat transfer material with the Silhouette Portrait so I won't bore you with all of the details but I'll just hight light a few important things.

I found the onesie and toddler t-shirt at Hobby Lobby.  I created the graphic using a font called October Twilight.  With any script font you want to make sure to weld the text before cutting out the shape so that the text will come out as one continuous shape and not a lot of little pieces.  I found the heart arrow in the Silhouette Design store by typing "heart arrow" in the search bar.  I measured the front of the t-shirt and the onesie where I wanted to put the designs and then sized each design accordingly.  When you are using heat transfer material you always have to remember to mirror the designs before cutting them out.  Also make sure to load the heat transfer material properly into the machine.  I accidentally loaded it upside down the first time oops!

I just love how the shirt and onesie turned out!  Now getting a picture of the two of them wearing their sister shirts was the challenge.  Ana wasn't having it so she had a pacifier for most of the shots. Lyla kept kicking her legs up in the air so that I had to fix her skirt a ton of times.  Finally I told her that she needed to keep her legs down if she wanted a snack at church ha ha.

Of course most of the shots were less than perfect like this one when Lyla heard daddy walking by.

Or this one where Ana's pacifier fell out and Lyla looked like she wanted to run away.

Or this one where Lyla is trying to pull up her skirt and Ana's legs are straight up in the air (I think she was imitating big sister here LOL)

This shot was the only one I got with Ana's eyes open.  

But even the outtakes are adorable.  I love these two girlies so much!  Next up on the blog I will be sharing Lyla's Halloween costume with you and I am so excited about it.  It is the first time that I sewed her a costume and it turned out great!

Christmas Pajamas

Now that it is after Thanksgiving it is probably okay to post about these cute Christmas pjs that I made for my daughter right?  I purchased this Red and Green Fairisle Deer fabric from Girl Charlee Fabrics last year.  I had already gotten one good use out of the yard I ordered by making these cute leggings for Lyla last year

Here is my little cutie sporting her Christmas leggings at around 5 months old.  By the way the pattern is called Baby Got Back Leggings which you can read more about in this post.

I still had a significant amount of the Fairisle Deer fabric left and I thought that Christmas pajamas would be the perfect use for it.  I found a pattern called Movie Night Pajamas from Sew a Little Seam which I was excited to try.  I like this pattern a lot and I will be getting a ton of use out of it. The pattern includes options for shorts bottoms and long bottoms, short sleeve and long sleeve tops, and the option to add gathered sleeves to give the pajamas a more feminine touch.  It is also a layered pattern which is nice because you have the option to only print the pattern for the size you are making.

The size options are 12 months-12 years which is yet another reason that I will get a ton of use out of this pattern!  I made 2T for Lyla even though she is mostly wearing 18 month clothes.  They are a little long in the sleeves and legs since I made the 2T size but otherwise the fit is awesome!  I had just enough of the Fairisle Deer fabric for the pants and the sleeves of the shirt.  The other fabrics that I used were a grey interlock from Joann Fabrics for the rest of the shirt and white rib knit also from Joann Fabrics for the sleeve and leg cuffs.  

With this project I also use a double needle for the first time to hem the shirt.  I found some good tips on using a double needle here, here, here, and here.  Your machine needs to be able to do a zigzag stitch to accommodate a double needle and you need to have somewhere to put a second spool of thread.  I actually have a place to attach a second spool holder but I have lost the attachment so I just dropped the second spool into a small mason jar that I placed behind my machine.  I checked in my sewing machines manual for tips on how to thread the two needles.  It was quite easy actually and I liked the professional looking results.

 I used my Silhouette Portrait to add the Merry and Bright lettering with gold glitter heat transfer material.  

Hopefully you enjoyed this post and found some helpful hints.  Oh and if you like that bokeh light effect in the background of some of these photos check back for a post on how I did it in the near future!

Harry Potter Ringer Onesie

Hello!  I am back today with a quick post on a gift that I made for a baby shower I attended a few weeks ago.  One of the games that was played at the shower was having the mom-to-be guess which onesie each guest brought.  I thought it would be fun to make a onesie.  Normally I would just buy a onesie and then add my own design using my Silhouette Portrait.  This time, however, I thought it was time to try out a tutorial for making a ringer onesie.

I used this free pattern and tutorial from Shwin and Shwin.  This is the same site that I found the Eleanor Dress pattern at from this post.

The pattern was free and the tutorial was pretty easy to follow.  For the fabric I used a heather grey interlock that I found at Joann Fabrics and a white rib knit.  I wanted to use a burgundy rib knit to make it more Harry Potter-esque but I couldn't find a rib knit in that color anywhere.  I used some yellow Kam snaps for the snaps.  The onesie isn't perfect.  I would need to practice a little bit more to get it down.  The biggest flaw in the onesie is in the leg ribbing because I didn't stretch it well enough at the beginning and ended up not being able to quite reach it all the way around.  It isn't a big deal though since you can't really see it.

I used my Silhouette Portrait to create a heat transfer design.  You can read more about creating heat transfer designs in this post and this post and this post.  You can find lots of free Harry Potter inspired fonts online to use for this project.  I used a font called Black Chancery.  For the shoe prints I just did a google image search on shoe prints and then dragged the one I liked into the Silhouette software. I then traced it to make a cut design.  I cut the words out on smooth white heat transfer material and the shoe prints out on silver foil-like heat transfer material (it is actually Cricut brand because that is easy to find in stores around here).

In the pictures you can see my latest set of burp cloths that I made for the momma-to-be as well. Well I hope this post will be an uplifting distraction to you on this very scary day in history!  I will leave you today with the words of a canon that my choir is working on since I feel that we need to hear these simple yet powerful words today:

What a goodly thing 

if the children of the world

could dwell together in peace.

Kitty ONEsie + Ribbon Trimmed Tulle Skirt

My baby girl is 1!  I can't believe it!  Where did this year go?  This is the first of few posts that will revolve around her 1st birthday.  Today I am sharing the outfit that I put together that she wore for her last installment of monthly photos and her birthday party.

First, lets talk about the onesie (I called it a ONEsie, see what I did there ;).  I purchased the onesie itself at Hobby Lobby but the design was created with my Silhouette Portrait.  When I was looking for ideas for 1st birthday outfits I found an image of a onesie with Minnie Mouse as the "o" of the word "one."  Since my daughter loves kitties I decided to take that idea and do a kitty as the "o" instead.

It was a pretty easy design to put together.  I used shapes in the Silhouette software to create the head and ears of the kitty.  The whiskers are just lines with rounded edges.  The kitty face is borrowed from a couple of different kitty designs that I had in my library.  I used a script font for the "n" and the "e."  I then welded the cat head and the "n" and "e" together.  Since it was a heat transfer design I made sure to mirror the image.  I used a gold glitter heat transfer material for the word and white heat transfer material for the whiskers of the cat.  You can check out how to layer heat transfer material in this post on how to make a Dr. Seuss thing maternity shirt.

I used two different video tutorials to make the skirt.  This video is a nice tutorial for making a tulle tutu with an elastic waist.  It gives ideas for how long to cut the tulle pieces and elastic depending on the age of your child. This video shows how to make a tulle skirt with ribbon trim.  I liked this method because she sewed the ribbon to the tulle pieces before attaching them to the elastic.  This tutorial shows how to sew the ribbon onto the tulle after the tulle has already been tied onto the elastic if you would like to use a different method.

And here are some more shots of the outfit in action.  You can see the many expressions of Lyla in this small sampling of the roughly 100 shots I took.

I love the expression in the last one especially and had to use it for her baby book despite the blurry hand.  Hopefully this post will inspire you for whatever project you are completing!

Dr. Seuss Thing Maternity Shirt

March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' birthday and elementary schools around the country celebrate by participating in Read Across America Day.  Our school celebrates with a whole reading month which is kicked off by a week of fun dress up days for the students (and staff).  On the last day of the week the dress up theme is dress up like your favorite Dr. Seuss character.  In the past I have been a Thing and a Star-Bellied Sneech.  This year I decided to be a Thing again but I thought it would be fun to include baby in the fun.  This of course was a perfect project for my Silhouette Portrait so I opened up the software and got to work.  

 My medium of choice for this project was heat transfer vinyl.  I started by finding Thing 1 and Thing 2 images on Google and then I just dragged them to the desktop of my MacBook and then dragged them into the Silhouette software.  Then I opened the trace window and selected the image and clicked trace.

 After dragging the original image out of the way, I selected my traced image and selected release compound path from the object menu.  This allowed me to get rid of all the unwanted parts of the image.

I really just wanted the thing word and the number.

I put the shirt on to figure out what sizes to make the circles and then drew them in the Silhouette software.

I then copied the circles and made a smaller circle on the inside to create the border of the circle.  I also resized the "thing 1" and "thing 2" so that they would fit inside the borders.

Then I made sure to mirror the "thing 1" and "thing 2" since I was using heat transfer.  

I cut out the center circles out on white heat transfer vinyl and the rest of the shapes out on black glitter heat transfer.

I also cut out the inner circles on card stock so that I could make sure I got the placement right.  I found this read shirt at Target.  I love their v-neck tees because they are so soft and comfy.  They aren't maternity but I can still fit fine in a size large since I am only about 20 weeks.

I started by ironing on the white circles.  You need to make sure to put a piece of cotton cloth between the iron and the heat transfer.

Then I added the black borders.  I heated the white layer for about 20 seconds (with the cloth in between the iron and the heat transfer of course) before applying the second layer.  

I repeated this step with the "thing 1" and "thing 2" layer.  

It was so fun to wear this shirt at school today.  My favorite comment came out a conversation with some of my 1st grade students.  

1st Grader #1: Why are you Thing 1 and Thing 2?

Me: Well I am Thing 1 but who do you think Thing 2 is?

1st Grader #2: Your belly?

It was so funny!  They finally figured out that it was because I was pregnant which elicited my 2nd favorite comment of the day: Is it a real baby in your belly?  One of the best things about being an elementary music teacher is how entertaining the students are with what they say and do.  

Well I don't know what my next post will be yet but I am guessing it will be nursery related so hopefully it won't be too long before the next post!

Gifts and Cards and Labels Oh My!

I am now in that time of my life when weddings and baby showers are things that I attend frequently. Actually the number of weddings that I attend has been greatly reduced but now all the people whose weddings I have attended over the last few years are moving on to the next stage of their life and starting their families.  I love to attend both events because I take any chance that I can get to be creative and make something for someone.

A few weekends ago I attended yet another baby shower.  My giant stack of burp cloths is actually getting pretty small now so I might need to make a few more.  I have been having fun lately designing cards using my Silhouette Portrait.

I now have the designer software and my favorite feature is being able to turn anything into a sketch design.  For this card I used a baby carriage shape I found in the store and made the wheels into a sketch design and used a metallic sketch pen to sketch it onto kraft paper.  I then cut out the rest of the shape on a pearly baby blue paper and glued it to the card.  I sketched the the "congrats" onto some textured card stock and glued it to the card.  I drew the string for the banner by hand and then cut out the flags of the banner from washi tape.  I also put a piece of washi tape at the bottom.  I think it turned out so cute!

In July I attended a wedding and I shared the tutorial of how to make a heat transfer monogram for napkins with the Silhouette software in this post

I attended another wedding last weekend and made another set of heat transfer monogrammed napkins for the bride and groom.

For this set I used a gray fabric with a sparkly silver polka dot pattern.  I tweaked my monogram design slightly for this set by using a different block letter font and making the last name initial larger than the first name initial.  

Along with the napkins I bought silverware of of their registry.  It was the perfect gift combo.  I made a card with purple card stock (purple was one of their wedding colors).  I cut this beautiful cake design from the Silhouette online store out of silver paper.  Then I sketched the cake stand and the congratulations with a silver sketch pen.

You may have noticed my new sewing labels in a few of the pictures above.

My new blog logo and header design inspired me to redesign my labels.  You can check out my post on how I made my original sewing labels here.  I used the same process to make these but the Silhouette designer software gave me the freedom to use any font and any shape and make it into a sketch design.  I made the house by just using the line tool and then changing the line to a dashed line to make it look like stitches.  It was so simple.  

There should be some posts on home diy in the near future.  I have all the supplies to work on a project today, the fabric for our bedroom curtains is on order, and I just bought a bunch of paint samples at Home Depot on Thursday for the office.  I am excited to get back to it now that school has started and I am done with my beginning of the year preparations for teaching.