Cutest Baby Dress Ever!

When I came across the Criss Cross Dress Tutorial over at Melly Sews, I immediately fell in love with it and knew I had to make one. Look how adorable this is:

(Photo from Melly Sews)

Did I have a baby girl to make this for? Nope. Did I make one anyway? Yep!!

It really is an easy dress to sew, and doesn't it look so sweet on Melly's model?

I loved the seersucker fabric she used, so I followed suit. I appliqued a flower on the front of my dress.

As it turns out, a friend of my sister just had a baby, so I will gift it to her!

You can make the ruffly bloomers to match, and I will admit they were a bit of a challenge for this newbie sewer, but I think they came out alright. There is a link to her post on how to make them at the bottom of the post for the dress. 

Here is the front of the dress:

and here is the back:

Love, love, love it! Thanks so much Melly for such a wonderful and easy tutorial.

Let's Play Catch Up!

I can't believe I haven't posted on here since September!  I figured I would do a post and show you some of the projects I've done since then.

In October I sewed some things for my great-nieces. First I made these pacifier clips:

And then these door snugglers:

I thought these were a great idea. You stretch them over the door knob in baby's room so that if you go to check on them while they are sleeping, it doesn't make noise when you open the door.

Also in October I made these cute Ipod pillows:

I keep one on my desk so that I always know where my phone is at. All of these I gave to my sister and she shared them with the girls at her office, they loved them!

In November I crafted these napkin rings out of the paper tube part of a roll of paper towels:

I hot-glued burlap around each one and then decorated them with ribbon and other fall decorations. We used these at our family Thanksgiving dinner.

So far this month I have made this pillow:

And used some glass blocks found at Home Depot to make this for my friend Kaitlin:

And this one for my Mom:

The best part about making these is that I FINALLY learned how to make bows. I have struggled with making bows, but I found a great video on You Tube that makes it so easy.


Where to find tutorials for these projects:

Pacifier Clips - http://www.danamadeit.com/2012/09/tutorial-pacifier-clips.html

Door Snuggler - http://beffie48.blogspot.com/2012/06/door-snuggler-pattern-quiets-noisey.html

IPod pillows - http://seamedsimple.blogspot.com/2011/10/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html

Napkin Rings - http://betterorganizedliving.com/2012/11/06/toilet-paper-napkin-rings/

Christmas Tree Pillow - http://www.thetraintocrazy.com/2012/11/12-days-of-christmas-sewing-easy-merry-pillow.html

How to Make a Bow Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNwLVZc_VN4

Oh Baby

Here are some baby things I made for the granddaughter of a friend of mine:

Flannel Receiving Blanket

Crochet Edged Blanket, Diaper burp cloths, onesies, soft block toy

Up close of the Soft Block Toy. It is so cute and so easy to make. Tutorial for it can be found here.

Stencils for Applique

I have been making lots of appliqued onesies, and I wanted to share with you what I have been making. I love to make the onesies with the initials of the baby, or the tie onesie, but I wanted to do something different. While strolling through the aisles at Jo-Anns one day, I came across some stencils and a light bulb went off in my head.... why not use the stencils for my onesies?  Here are a few I have made:

You can see the duck and car stencils I used behind the onesies in this picture!

And for a sweet newborn named Abbigail, I made this:

I found the stencils in the craft paint aisle... one of the packages had 48 stencils in it for around $4.99. Not a bad price (and with a 40% coupon, even better!)  They also come in different sizes too ... the ones I got are about 4 1/2 inch ones, but they come bigger and smaller than that.

They also had packages of alphabet stencils:

I really love this "A" that I made for Abbigail embellished with a little silk rosette that I stitched on.

These are sew easy to do.... just iron some Heat n Bond or Wonder Under to the wrong side of your fabric. Then trace the stencil onto the paper backing, cut out the shape, iron it to the item and then zig zag stitch around it (don't forget to put your freezer paper underneath when you sew - check out my previous post about that here.)

No need to limit yourself to baby items either - you can use this for your toddler or children items too. I also like that they included so many different shapes in the stencil pack - snowman, cats and dogs, nautical items, a birthday cake (which I will be using to embellish a birthday shirt for a soon to be 5 year old!), boy and girl silhouettes, hearts.. the list goes on and on!  So much fun, and so much easier than trying to find shapes on the internet, print them out to the correct size, etc. etc.!

I sure hope you give this a try.  :)


Linked up to:

Ruffle Butt!

I don't know why I waited so long to make one of these Ruffled Butt Onesies. They are so adorable, and I can't wait to see a picture of my friend's grandbaby wearing it!

The tutorial for this can be found here.  Since I don't have a serger, I made Option #2.

Appliqued Onesie Tips

I recently came across the most helpful tips I have found in a long time, and wanted to share them with you. Yes, you... if you are out there... I got no comments on my last post, so maybe you haven't been wondering if I fell off the face of the earth!  Ha ha! Oh well, if nothing else, this blog is a great place for me to keep track of my sewing and crafting projects!

Anyway, Terri over at A Creative Princess shared this post about machine applique back in March. I don't know about you, but whenever I have done machine applique on baby onesies in the past, I always had a hard time sewing them. Sometimes the onesie would bunch up, and it was always hard for me to see where I was sewing.

Terri shared two fantastic tips. The first one is to use an open toe foot on your machine when sewing appliques. That is probably common sense, but honestly, I never even thought about it. I just happened to find a clear plastic open toe foot at my local Wal-Mart for around $9.00, and boy has it made sewing easier. Now I can actually see where I am sewing, and it makes it so much easier getting around curves and corners.

The second tip Terri shared was so awesome and amazing and wonderful ... it has made a HUGE difference for me. She uses freezer paper as a stabilizer underneath the applique when she sews it on. All you do is cut a small piece of freezer paper and place it inside the onesie, with the shiny side towards the fabric. You don't need to iron it on or pin it or anything.. it stays in place just fine.

Since I have started using the freezer paper, I have had no problems at all with the onesie bunching up on me at all. Here is what it looks like after you have sewn it on:

This is the inside of my onesie. Notice that you need to have the freezer paper a little larger than your applique. Since you have put the shiny side of the freezer paper towards the fabric, it makes it much easier to tear off when you are done. To help it along, I used my seam ripper and made little tears inside my letter like this:

Here it is with the paper all torn off:

And here is the finished product:

No bunching or binding of the fabric at all. I also played around with the stitches and tried to make a tighter zig zag stitch and I think it looks pretty good!

Here is another one I made:

I cut the dump truck and sign out of some fabric I had and just sewed around it. I even put this little sign on the back of the onesie:

Cute huh?!  (Please ignore the small piece of yellow fabric I had to sew on there, my bobbin thread got all messed up and made a hole in the onesie when I tried to take it off the machine)

I will be using these tips from now on whenever I sew machine applique. Let me know if you give them a try and how they work for you!

Hello!!

Some of you probably wondered if I fell off the face of the earth!  No, I have just been keeping busy since the first of the year. We got a new puppy January 2 and she is ALOT of work!!  I had no idea! She is my first dog ever, so it has been a new experience for me.  Her name is Lulu and she is an absolutely adorable Malti-Poo:

She is 5 months old now and quite a handful. She is a little ball of energy, but she is so much fun and is a great addition to our family.

I have done some sewing projects, but unfortunately the hard drive in my computer crashed a few months ago, so I lost ALL of my pictures. I am still trying to see if I can get someone to try to recover all the stuff from that hard drive. :(

I do have a couple of recent projects I can show you though. I found a great tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company for a self-binding baby blanket. You can find it here. I subscribe to their You Tube channel because they regularly post great sewing and quilting videos... be sure and go check them out. Here is what my finished blanket looks like:

And here is an up-close shot of the stitching:

I just followed along with the video and it was such an easy project. It was neat to be able to use some of the special stitches on my machine that I so rarely use. I bought some flannel on sale recently at Jo-Anns and plan on making three more of these! I think they will make great baby gifts.

I made this cute Car Cozie for our great-nephew:

It is made sort of like the crayon caddies, with pockets to hold their little cars, and a road built right in!  Tutorial can be found here.

For our nephew and his fiance, I made this pillow and then with the leftover scraps, the coasters/holder to match:

The pattern for both of these projects can be found here.

On the crafting side, I made an Easter wreath out of tulle:

I used the instructions found here.

I am currently working on baby projects; seems that there are always people I know having babies! I want to make more of those self-binding blankets, along with some pee pee tee pees, since everyone seems to be having boys!

I will post pictures when I got those projects finished. Hope everyone is doing well - I promise it won't be so long between posts next time!  :)

No Sew Fleece Blanket - Take Two

I made my second No Sew Fleece Blanket the other day. I forgot how easy and quick these are!

I absolutely love how this one came out with the brown and pink. It is for my nephew and his wife who are expecting a baby girl soon - she is decorating the nursery in pink and brown and ladybugs is her theme. I just so happens that I found some pink ladybug fleece fabric awhile back! So even though I am going to be making her a quilt, when I saw this fabric I knew I had to get it and make this too.

I did something different this time around to make my cuts and it worked out so great. My trick was this:

Peel and Stick Ruler Tape!! Rather than using my tape measure or yardstick, I just put this ruler tape down and I was able to keep my edge straight.

Another nice thing about it is that it is marked in 1 inch increments, so it's real easy to see where to make your cuts:

I am definitely using this from now on!

Here are the particulars for this project:

Fleece:  Hancock Fabrics (1 yard of each)
Peel and Stick Ruler Tape: Hobby Lobby (or try your LQS)
Pattern/Tutorial:  There is a really good one here

I hope you try this peel and stick ruler tape - you will love it!

Newest Baby Quilt

I finished the baby quilt I made for my nephew and his girlfriend. They are expecting a baby boy, so I did this one in boy colors:

I used my go-to pattern from Kate at Two Little Banshees. It really is a great pattern. This time I made "X's" in each block, and I kind of like how it turned out!

Here is the back:

Hard to see the color, but it is brown with blue polka dots.

I am pretty proud of this one, my binding is coming out much better!

I need to crochet one more baby hat, then I think I will be done and ready for my trip to NM tomorrow!

Have a great weekend everyone :)

Baby, Baby

I'm working on making baby things for my soon-to-be-born great nephew. Here is what I have finished so far:

I still need to make his quilt, a diaper wipe case, a fleece blanket with a crocheted edge, and some Pee Pee Tee Pees. I'm on a deadline, as I have to have it all done by next Friday, when I leave for NM!

I'm off to sew... have a great weekend :)

Another Baby Quilt

Yay, I finished another baby quilt!!

Here is the front:

And here's the back:

The fabric on the back is flannel, and it is so nice and soft. I am not happy with my binding, which is why I'm not showing you an up-close picture!  My mitered corners are good, but the stitching could be better.

Guess it's like they say ... practice, practice and more practice!