merry xmas

Merry christmas everybody and a peaceful Holiday Season.

bits of sunlight

Tee made some time ago for my oldest which brings some sunshine into grey foggy or rainy days. Beloved. Just does not take good pictures.

Heavily inspired by this work
pattern based on ottobre 

cookie madness

Backing cookies with my two munchkins including decorating all those cookies is fun but still stressfull crazy. Do not want it another way (well maybe less stressful wouldn't be too bad).

journaling

Besides my silence here and all the family time spent lately, there is a lot of crafting happening and christmas production has already been started. I've started yet another big project. Can you believe this? While wipping up an album of our vacation this year, I've had so much fun that everything has to be journaled. Starting with our old pictures, of course.

crocos

 

For J, which misses all those handmade clothes that his brother now wears.

Pattern: ottobre

Size: 98

sleeping bag for teddy bears

 

One night when a fun and fast project was needed, I grabbed my batting scraps, cut into my stash and came up with a sleebing bag for J's teddy bear. Which now can't live without. Since it is really shy, the bag had to be modelled by our bunnies.

feeling inspired

 

 

yesterday evening I had the urge to create. something small and soft for my little ones. to play, to hold, to tell them their joys and sorrows before falling asleep or whatever else. 

 

kids wardrobe planning

It's summertime - burning hot and all - so it's time to think about this years fall-/winter wardrobe for the boys. Especially for me slow, part time sewist. They sure did grow a lot and will need some new stuff. Last year, I've started the mission to sew at least a part of there wardrobe since I would like too plus pants weren't slim enough and there are way too many licensed characters on clothes of there sizes. Thus, we'll need:

• Longsleeves
• Hoodies / Sweater
• PJs
• few pants, there should be enough for the beginning

Just started looking for inspiration, though. Last year we had a lot of brown and charcoal with popping colors like some of the clothes below. Not sure where it will be heading this year but there are a few goals:

• comfortable and sturdy
• complementing the existing wardrobe
• some pops of colors for better mood
• experimenting further defining and refining our style
• using up my fabric stash
• and most important: still having fun, which is something easy to ignore when setting goals too high.

Cool boys might be a nice theme. Just found some nice biker jackets for them. Little M loves orange, so it will be incorporated somehow. Big J has not exactly a favorite but tends to green and subdued colors. Not that easy. So the next weeks will be used for pattern reviews, searching for inspiration and some planing. Meanwhile I should hurry to is to finish some summer projects.

kids crafting - monsters

 

The boys felt crafty lately, so we digged out a lot of supplies and they get started. What a fun. Big J was brimming with ideas, whilst little M just enjoyed his pompom work. My role was just to sit back and comment, most of the time. Thanks to the childproof scissors they can cut nothing else than paper and lets face it - clue bottles are just better tubes of toothpaste. So the handling was easy enough for a two year old and who cares about some spots and dirty fingers.

kids library

Once upon time there was this really empty, ugly and unwelcoming corner in our kids room. Due to its odd shape, no furniture was put there and all it could attract was clutter and dust. So one glorious day paint came to the rescue. Birches grow, birds moved in and butterflies were flying around. Finally the greatest library was built and suddenly all the kids were coming for reading and playing. The corner was beaming with joy. And they all lived happily ever after.

  

color: sand
birch and owl: painted free hand (or to be precise mainly left out)
birds house, birds and butterflies: craft shop supplies
srcreen prints: alphabet prints by strawberryluna

invitations

It's party time overhere! So I was digging deep in my stash to come up with these lions bringing each an invitation to Big J's kindergarden buddies. It was so fun to but all the colorful papers together and to search for the right accessories. The envelopes are former placemats which just got stamped, which creates a nice set. Such a nice project. I definitely should do more paper stuff again.

new tees

The boys are growing like something. Maybe they have the wrong diet. Everything gets too short or to tight.  Anyway, this gives us the opportunity to play around with different jersey knits and testing print patterns (like screaming blue green dragons) and color combinations.



I used two ottobre patterns and altered the sleeves every here and there so it does not look all the same. Sizes are 86 and 98. Plus two long neglected UFOs in size 92 got finished before getting to small. Hooray.



Thus far, I like the more subdued colors the best whereas the little munchkin loves his share of orange (his favorite color as far as I can tell). What about you? What garnments do you so or would like to?

birthday quilt

 

Big J is getting 4 soon and has quite outgrown our baby quilts. Therefore, I've collected some precious fabric over time for a colorful new quilt. The design is pretty simple to show them off. It is backed with red flannel (how the grinch stole christmas) and entirely hand quilted, which was a quite enjoyable process. And the best part is that now last minute night shift will be required ;)

getting cover

 

This precious fabric scrap waited so long for just the right display. Guess I' ve found it. Combined with lots of beloved fabrics and the charcoal linen scraps that were leftover from another project.

nighty night

 

If only I would stop procrastinating and all the duvet covers done. There is a huge pile of fabric stripes waiting vor it. They will look fabulous and the best is, it's only from stash. Hooray for some stash busting.

 

  

Meanwhile at least the munchkins have got some new summery covers. Time again to ponder about final layouts and possible distractions.

just can't keep it simple

 

sometimes. When it was time to decide what to do with all my lovely Umbrella Print trimmings, I got a bit obsessed the last weeks by piecing an elephant and experimenting with different techniques on a small scale. That is something I have meant to do for a long time and never get around to it. So the bittersweet journey to this pillow cover began. Playing around with ideas, auditioning, reconsidering, sewing, appliquing, ripping apart and starting all over. Sometimes it felt like being in elemntary school when trying to remember embroidery stitches like the daisy stitch.

 

The elephant and the mouse were paper pieced whereas the coati was appliqued (needleturn) using some softer trimmings. This little guy is just 2" high. Now, Let's talk about tiny. Somebody should stop me next time. The ruffled grass gives the needed perspective.

The words floating from the upper right corner tell the wondrous tale of the elephant meeting a coati. Therefore the wordstrips were quilted in lines that yould easily be seen as Chinese calligraphy. At the end I added some trees and a little feather to complete the scenery and a few handstitches. It was time to practise free motion quilting again.

 

The panel finished at about 10" and got framed with the rest of my trimming package (the darker blue belonged to it as well). All that is left is dust and some tiny pieces. Not sure if they will get anything in the near future. Taking pictures was a bit different with the rainy days here and my little helpers. But nevertheless, it is finished and sits now in the reading nook of the munchkins where it belongs.

Here is a closer look on my trimming package I have used and let me tell you get quite a lot out of it.

save my scraps

 

There ain't many scraps in my scrap box. All the time I need some small piece of fabric, I dive into this box before I cut in any yardage. It was fun to use every tiny bit for just the right project. But at the moment, I am kind of saturated. Although those scraps are still lovely and everything, the idea of using them up doesn't inspire me at all. There are small, not so small and bigger pieces of quilting cotton fabric, selvages, some organic cottons, bits of flannel and some home dec weights deeply burried in the dark. Really, anyone should save them.

 

Spring is here, so I do need to redecorate and maybe paint a bit. I already have some color swatches hanging in the living room and in my sewing corner. Can't decide yet what color it should be. There is teal, pink and purple hanging over my sewing machine. furniture is mainly white or beech  and the decoration not that colorful at the moment. They would be a fit still I am not sold (read: need way more color swatches or somebody helping to get a decision).

 

On the brigther side. The kitchen is done since about a year and I am still pretty happy with it. I painted it a pale green right after moving in and added a tree and a bit of fitting wall decoration to get a bit of a coffee shop feeling. A cozy on, of course.

 

Big J painted some hedgehogs with me. He did the ones on the right side with only little help with noses and eyes. Currently, he is more into cars and airplanes. But there is still some place left if creativity strikes again.

magician and dragon

I did it, I made nearly the whole costumes for the munchkins this year.

The pants (patterns: Ottobre) were a bit embellished to fit to the costumes: The ribbons on the pockets have little dragons/dinosaurs on it and of course the pants had to be green and blue like the rest. Which is pretty cool as I used up a cordury leftover, laying around for more than two years and I finally made the urgently needed new pants. Why do those munchkins always have to grow that fast. Memo to myself: Stop feeding them!

 

The dragon shirt (pattern: Ottobre) was actually already made last year. The dragon hat and tail was a nice little scrap buster project - not that it would make the slightest dent in my non patchworky pile of scraps. But, oh well. The cape is a blue jersey knit with some stars and moons and the hat was store bought long long loooooong time ago and only sewn a bit smaller.

Best thing: The munchkins love to dress up at home so we will need a little corner for all the costumes that might come some times.

gone shopping ...

with my new market tote. In Germany, you normally have fabric totes or fabric baskets. So do we. Only that the normal tote is plein beige. I wanted something more pretty and did some stash shopping for it. The apple canvas was just big enough and certainly as sturdy as needed. The brown binding and the tangerine piping was quickly added. The hedgehog is a raw edge applique using up the few brown scraps I had. (My scrap bag is rather tiny.)

 

Didn't take too long to make and makes me smile everytime I go to the grocery store :)