Friday, January 31, 2014

BURP CLOTHS

One of my daughters gave me this burp cloth pattern. She and I have made a whole pile of these, because with her baby, we need them! :) I folded the pattern in half to trace it onto typing paper so it can be printed off here, but I would advise doing it on a large sheet of paper so you lay the long pattern on your cloth. I made my pattern on some of that paper you buy on a roll at office supply stores. I guess you could do it on wax paper in a pinch. I wanted to make a lot of these, so I bought about 1 1/8 yard of each color to make 8 burp cloths. I used different material front and back, just for interest. Leave a couple of inches open on the curve so you can turn it right side out. Clip the seams on the curve before turning. Then blind stitch the opening when it is right side out.
When you lay it out to pin and cut, start on the open edge and cut them close together, If you do this, you can fold the pattern in half lengthwise and get one more burp cloth out of the material.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

PEG PEOPLE (Not for Children Who Put Objects in Their Mouths.)

I had someone ask me to put my peg people on this site. I did not come up with the idea for these super heroes, these came from Pinterest, but I did make these. I have found the best and cheapest place to buy these wood forms is Hobby Lobby. I paint them with acrylic paints and spray a coat of clear (glossy) acrylic spray over the top.
Some of these Disney princesses also came from Pinterest, but I did add a few that I came up with, such as the one from BRAVE,
A couple of the Harry Potter people came from Pinterest, but I came up with the majority of them because, yes, I am a Harry Potter fan. I think I did these more for me than the kids. :)
Because the granddaughters complained that the Disney princesses had no one to dance with, I had to come up with Disney Princes, too. I looked at children's books to come up with these.
I found some tiny peg forms, so I came up with Tinkerbelle and some of her friends.
These are actually the first peg people I painted, and they were for a castle I made of various shaped boxes, which has long since died and gone to paper castle heaven. Don't worry, I found a plastic castle for them at a second hand store.
I don't have patterns for these and wouldn't even know how to go about making one, really, but you can click to enlarge and look at the details if you want to make some. I think you could print these off to look at.

NOISY BOOK

This is a small diaper bag sized book. The pages are heavy pellon, and the pictures are cut out of felt and sewed on by hand with a blanket stitch. Most of these have black beads for eyes, unless noted, and some details are embroidered. The animal name and sound are embroidered with a chain stitch.
I put 2 pages per piece of pellon, and then doubled it over. Each piece is half the size of a sheet of typing paper.
I sewed 3 pages together at a time on the cut ends, and then sewed those pieces together. The cover is a piece of quilted material that I sewed seam binding around. I opened the sewn pages up to the middle, then centered the pages on the cover, sewing in and out to sew the pages in up the back of the "spine" of the cover, making sure that the stitches showing on the cover were small.
Page patterns:




COLORS BOOK

This is a diaper bag size book, with pages of heavy pellon. The pictures are made with felt and adorned with buttons and embroidery. The felt pictures are sewn on using embroidery thread and a blanket stitch. I used sew-on google eyes or black beads for eyes.
I did 2 pages per piece of pellon, and the pellon is cut the size of half a sheet of typing paper. The pages are folded and then sewn together two or three at a time, then all of those pieces sewn together with a blanket stitch. I then opened the sewn pages to the middle of the pages, and sewed them onto the cover, making sure the stitches on the cover are small and aligned. The cover is made of a quilted fabric edged with sewn on bias tape. I sewed a button on the front and a ribbon on the back of the cover so I could loop the ribbon around the button to keep the book closed when not using.
Page patterns: