All Aboard!

My granddaughter loves trains so when I saw this conductor hat tutuorial on Pinterest, I knew I wanted to make her one for her upcoming 3rd birthday. I found this a cute pink, brown, and green striped fabric on clearance that would be perfect so I happily bought it and skipped all the way home to whip this easy hat up!

I was about halfway into it when I realized that this hat was going to be way too small. So back to the fabric store I go. And of course the cute fabric is gone. So I search and search and search for something similiar and finally decided on a fabric that looked absolutely nothing like the original fabric. Oh well....

The tutorial was easy to follow and it really didn't take too long to make; after the fabric debaucle, maybe a couple hours. I chose to leave out the elastic on the hat band, though, so that may add another 15 minutes or so.



The inside is lined with red corduroy scrap fabric I had. I also added some red ric rac around the the hat band for some decoration. OK, it's actually to cover up some funky stitch lines but whatever. And since I went to the trouble, I finished the smaller one for Little Sister:





I don't know how excited they were about them but at least they kept them on long enough fo rme to snap a few pictures :)



And here's goofy Keeley and her Thomas the Train hat:



(Excuse the dog butt behind her) And little sister Kira:



Pretty cute, right? And the hats didn't turn out so bad either :)

Organization for a 10 Year Old Boy

Because what 10-year-old boy doesn't love being tidy and organized? What's that? None of them? Oh. Anyways, I just finished my nephew's birthday present, who turned 10 on April 8. (Two weeks late isn't that bad, is it?) I haven't given him his gift yet as I have to mail it to him but I thought I would post about it anyways. I don't think it will ruin the surprise for him because I doubt that, as a 10-year-old boy, he is reading any sewing blogs. So, here it is:



Um, what is it, you ask? It's a Nintendo DS carrier! I found a pattern for it here. I had to make a few adjustments to it to make it look how I wanted it to, but the basic pattern is the same.

I added a strip of black nylon webbing around the center of the carrier and attached velcro to it:



The inside of the carrier has a pocket for the DS, pockets for games, and an elastic strip for the little pen-thingie that comes with it (I can't think of what it's called!).



The outside is made from a blue and black striped sweatshirt fabric and the inside is black jersey cotton. Because of the stretchiness of the fabbric, it looks a little wonky and uneven in the picture but, trust me, it's all good. The tutorial was pretty easy to follow. The only part that really had me confused was where I was instructed to fold it in half "hamburger-style". Um, what? Do people fold their hamburgers in half? Other than, though, pretty simple. And, I like how it turned out!

Who Says Easter Was a Week and a Half Ago?

Not me, that's for sure. And that's mainly because I just finished sewing my Easter gifts for the grandbabies. I found this pattern at Jo-Ann's several months ago:

It was so cute and looked somewhat simple to make...at least that's what I thought at the time. I mean, it has "Simplicity" right in its name! Come on! (Side note: Jo-Ann's usually has AWESOME deals on patterns at least once a month. This one is regularly priced at $15.95 and it was on sale for 99 cents. I LOVE a good bargain!) Anyways, back to the Easter gifts.....I thought these would be relatively easy to make. Why I thought that, I have no idea. I have since learned that I should perhaps read through the sewing directions before deciding on its difficulty level.

I wanted to make two of them so I had to cut out 100 circles of fabric and 100 circles of batting. And then I had to sew each one until I ended up with a huge pile of fabric discs:



And, of course, to make these difficult, there were three different sizes:



Side note: It would have been so much easier if I had one of these:


GO! Fabric Cutter...only $500...*sigh*.....

Anyways, the construction part of the process wasn't too hard, apart from sewing the head, appliqueing (that is a word...I looked it up) all the facial features, and sewing them to the fabric discs. I mean, other than that, it was a breeze. But, even though it took me foreva, I think it was worth it. I love how they turned out! First the happy little hippo:



He looks so happy!



And a close-up of the discs:



And a little hippo padunk-a-dunk:



And then it was onto the monkey:





Close-up of the discs:



Rear view:



And, look, they're friends!



So, even though it took me about 8 1/2 years to finish these and there may have been some cussing involved, I'm really happy I was able to finish these. I think they're super cute! And, the upside to giving Easter gifts a week and a half late? Easter baskets that are 75% off. And you know how I love a good bargain!

This Is How I (Crayon) Roll

My nephew will be 5 next week and I have been having the hardest time thinking of things to make for the boys in my family. I've seen these crayon roll projects on several websites and blogs and thought that it would be perfect for a 5 year old.

I used a tutorial I found at www.skiptomylou.org. That particular tutorial was for 16 crayons but I wanted to do a mix of crayons and markers (thanks, Courtney, for the idea!) so I adjusted it to meet my needs. And this is how it turned out:


Honestly, I thought this was going to be a nice, easy project that I could complete in an afternoon. Not so much. Maybe for someone else but not for this girl. It took me several days and I had to start over twice. I just couldn't get it to look how I wanted to look. I'm still not super happy with it (I wish I would have made the ric rac a little more pronounced and the corners are a bit wonky) but overall, I like it. Here's some more pictures:


I do love this fabric though:


Cute, right? I used red corduroy for the pockets and red shoe lace material for the tie:



So, that's that...what do you think?