Teacup Cactus Pincushion

 Hello!  I'm making an effort to actually get more than one blog post in during the month of April.  It actually wasn't too hard since all I had to do was edit a few photos that I had already taken.  I'm excited to share this fun tutorial with you today.  I've wanted to turn one of my vintage teacups into a pincushion for quite sometime but I had been seeing some adorable succulent and cactus pincushions lately that really caught my eye.  Then I had the brilliant thought to combine the two and I love how it turned out.

If you have been following my blog for awhile you may remember this post about planting succulents in teacups (so this is my first time at the teacup succulent rodeo ha ha).  For this project I decided to use my favorite blush pink and gold teacup and saucer that a friend gave me several years ago.  It goes great in my sewing studio as I have a bunch of blush pink accents in the space.  I started by gluing my teacup to the saucer with hot glue.  Next I measured how tall I wanted my succulent to be and found a circular object that was close in diameter to that measurement.  Then I grabbed a piece of green felt and drew 6 circles on the felt.

Next I cut out the felt circles with pinking shears.

Then I placed two circles together and sewed around the edge leaving about 2-3 inches open at the bottom.  I repeated this step with the other 4 circles.  I used my sewing machine for this step but you could hand sew them too.

Next I stacked the 3 sewn pieces on top of each other and hand stitched a straight line down the middle of the stack.  Make sure all of the open parts of each piece are lined up with each other before you sew them together.

Next I filled the cactus with steel wool (you could also use filler that you would use for stuffed animals but I thought the steel wool would help to keep the pins sharp).

Finally I found some black felt and cut a strip and cut it like grass for a kids art project (does that make sense...my baby/mommy brain can't seem to think of better words to describe that today).  I placed a little dot of hot glue on one end and rolled it up and placed another dot of hot glue on the other end to make the center of the flower.  I apologize that I didn't take a picture of that step.

Then I freehanded the flower and cut out two pieces from pink felt.

When I glued the flower pieces to the cactus I placed the top piece so that the petals lined up with spaces between the petals of the bottom piece.  Finally I glued the stamen piece in the center of the flower.

The final step was just to add the pins.  I think it is so cute and love having the saucer underneath to hold little items like small safety pins, a few of my labels for my Etsy shop items, and my little embroidery scissors.  

Next time I write a post I will be very excited to share my sewing studio and my giant pegboard with you.  It is quickly becoming one of my favorite spaces in this house!  

Sewing for Baby: Booties, Bibs, and Blankets

Man life has been busy.  It seems that I can only manage a post or 2 every month.  I've been busy with many projects lately but I haven't had much time for blogging about them!  Today I've managed to find some time to write another post in the Sewing for Baby series that I started back when my oldest daughter was a baby.  I have not one but three fun sewing projects to share with you today!  First up is my favorite thing to make lately: baby booties and shoes.  The pattern that I used for all of the examples in today's post is Maggie's Stay-on Baby Booties by Beautiful Pie Shop.  I've had this pattern for a long time but never tried it until a friend wanted some stay on type shoes for her daughter.  

I made my first pair for her using gray fleece and flannel lining.  I love this pattern so much.  It is easy to follow and they are really fun to make.  Plus they really do stay on!  I love them for my youngest because socks never stay on her feet and she is always pulling her carseat cover off of her feet.  I no longer worry about her little feet freezing!  I love making them so much that I now carry them in my Etsy shop The Petite Seam.  They can even be made without the cuff which you will see in a few of the photos below.

And here is my sweet baby girl modeling them in her 5 month photos (she is over 6 months now!)

 The next project is one that I have yet to make more of but I plan to make a lot more of them.  I hope to list them as a new item in my Etsy shop soon but so far I've only made one as a gift for a friend.

I used this tutorial for rounded pom pom bibs from the blog Life on Waller.  I didn't follow the tutorial to a T however because I hate hand stitching so left a small opening, flipped it right side out, then topstitched the entire bib.  I think topstitching makes it look more finished anyway.  The blog also has a tutorial for a fringe bib which I'm going to try next.

My final (or maybe not *wink wink*) project for today's post is a taggy blanket.

This little blanket was so easy to make.  I found some wooden teethers on Amazon but there are also some great ones on Etsy.  I cut a piece of cotton fabric and a piece of minky 17" by 17".  Then I cut a bunch of different pieces of ribbon about 4" each (it was around 32 pieces).  Just make sure you use ribbons with varying textures to make it interesting for baby to play with.   I wish I would of taken a picture of this step but I just folded each piece of ribbon in half and pinned the ends of the ribbon pieces to the right side of the cotton fabric.  For the wooden teether I just cut a slightly longer piece of ribbon and tied it around the teether and pinned that ribbon to one of the corners of the cotton fabric. Then I pinned the cotton and minky right sides together.  I sewed around the edge with a 3/8 inch seam allowance making sure to leave a roughly 2 inch opening. Then I flipped the blanket right side out, pressed, and pinned the opening shut.  Finally I topstitched around the entire blanket.

The watercolor blanket was a part of a baby gift for a friend but I also made one for my baby to go in her Easter basket.  I forgot to take a picture after it was done.  If you look closely you can see the pins in this one because it still needs to be topstiched.  Also that pacifier clip will be a future blog post :).

Finally I have a few more things to share with you that kept me busy at my sewing machine in February.  You may remember that I recovered the glider cushions in my daughter Lyla's nursery (I'm using the same glider in Ana's room now).  You can read more about that here.  Recently my friend asked me to make slipcovers for the glider in her daughter's nursery.  I love how this glider turned out.  The cushions before were a light green.

 I also made a few changing pad covers for her.  You can read more about those in this other Sewing for Baby series post.

Also how amazing is that mid mod dresser that they painted teal!

This isn't all that I've been busy with of course.  I have also been working on a couple of more sewing projects related to cloth diapers that I will share in a future post that will also include an update on our cloth diapering experience.  As far as home improvement projects go I've taken my focus downstairs with our family room and my sewing studio getting paint jobs and some other exciting projects in the sewing studio which I will give you a hint at in this picture.

I will give you a tutorial on how to make that cute cactus teacup pincushion that you see next to my sewing machine in my next post!

Living Room Updates

 Hello!  I am back with a post to finally show you all of the updates we've made to the living room since we moved in. It is hard to believe that the room that you see above once looked like this:

Those dark purple walls were really making the room much darker than it needed to be so the first thing that changed in the room was the wall color.  I love this lovely greige by Behr called Silver Drop.  In fact, I love it so much that I'm thinking about painted all of the remaining walls in the upstairs the same color.  I am also going to be using painting the family room in the basement this color.

The second big change was that fireplace.  You can read about that transformation in this post.  The other new items that you see from this angle are our new sectional, a large storage ottoman, a couple of Agen Armchairs from IKEA, and some white linen curtains that I found at HomeGoods.  I hung up my watercolor skyline of Tulsa that you can read more about in this post.  I made the cushions on the Agen chairs (they aren't my best work so I won't be sharing a tutorial with you but they get the job done haha).  The pillows on the chairs were ones that I already had but I plan on eventually getting matching pillows for those chairs. We removed the ceiling fan in this room (it was just the fan, no lights on it) and put up this light fixture from Wayfair.  I love how the black of the light fixture works so well with the curtain rods (another Target purchase) and the black in the tile of the fireplace.

These pillows came with sectional and I may eventually change them out but the yellow actually works well with the yellow fabric on the backs of bookcase.

On this side of the room we set up the two bookshelves that were in the corner of our old living room on either side of the Liatorp sideboard that was in our bonus room in our old house.  The baskets on the sideboard are all TJ Maxx and HomeGoods finds.  Those bookshelves are kind of messy right now, eventually I will get them more organized.  Also our vacuum cleaner has a nice cameo in this picture oops.

Speaking of messes, note the lovely pile of toys behind the blue chair.  Our old storage ottoman from our living room is housing most of the toys but there is some overflow.  I plan to get some nice large baskets for some of them and the rest will move to Lyla's room.

And here's the not as nice angle in the room.  This way you can see more toys and a lot of blank walls.  I definitely need to put some art and decor on those walls but I like to be really purposeful about what I put up so I'm still coming up with ideas.  The blue armchair will probably move to the far corner where those toys since it is kind of crowding the piano area.  I plan to either get a new end table or give that one a makeover.  I like that it has storage inside of it but it is a little chunky.  Other plans for this room include getting a small table to go between the IKEA chairs, making roman shades out of the mini blinds on the windows, finding a lamp to go on the end table and maybe even  buying floor lamp for that corner where the blue chair might be moving to. I am pretty happy with how this room has turned out and I love spending time in here and having people over to hang out in here! 

Next up for the blog I have a large post for the Sewing for Baby series which will also include an update on cloth diapering in our household.  I have also begun work on my sewing studio in the basement and I have several projects in there that I will be excited to share with you.

Valentine's Day 2018

Over the past several years I've had fun making valentines for my older daughter's daycare classmates. 

All of the ideas that I have used have been non-candy ideas because between Halloween and Christmas I feel like kids are just saturated with candy.  You can read about the sock valentines here and the gold fish valentines here.

This year I had two set of valentines to make with two kids in daycare.  I also decided to make a little something for the teachers too. 

I made these cute teether valentines for the baby room at daycare.  I love a good pun when it comes to Valentine's Day if you haven't noticed.  I found these adorable silicone teethers on Amazon.  They come in packs of 5 so I needed two for the 9 babies in Ana's room.  That means that Ana got one too and she loves it.  It is so easy for her to hold and she loves chewing on it. 

They are food grade silicone and can be put in the refrigerator to get them chilled to help with sore gums.  I used my Silhouette Portrait to make, print, and cut the tags that I tied to the teethers. 

The teethers are supposed to be fruit shaped and it says on the package that this one is supposed to be a pineapple.  I don't know about you but to me this looks like an ear of corn ha ha!

For my two year old's classmates I made these play-doh valentines.  I just bought the party pack of play-doh (found in the party aisle at Target).  I made the cards on my Silhouette of course.  The holes ended up being a little small for the play-doh containers so I just snipped around the circle to make the opening a little bigger. 

Finally I made some heart cookies for the teachers and attached this cute card to each box.  I got the boxes from work.  Someone had brought the teachers at my school chocolate covered strawberries from Edible Arrangements and they came in these boxes.  I covered up the Edible Arrangement logo on the front of the box but didn't realize there was one on the inside lid too.  One of Ana's teachers said "I didn't know Edible Arrangements made cookies."  So funny. 

The cookies are chocolate sugar cookies that I made using this recipe from the blog Baking a Moment.  These cookies are fantastic.  They don't spread and you don't have to chill the dough because the recipe calls for chilled butter. I used a scalloped heart cookie cutter to cut them out.  For the frosting I used this recipe from the blog In Katrina's Kitchen.  This was my first time using the recipe and I really like it.  The flavor was good and it was easy to pipe.  I added a couple of drops of red food coloring to get this nice pale pink color which ended up matching my little pink pearl sprinkles perfectly.  I love to bake but I am not the best decorator in the world but this frosting made it easy to make a pretty finished product.

That's all for now.  I've got to get back to sewing now.  I think my next post will be another installment of my Sewing for Baby series as I have been working on a ton of baby related sewing projects lately!