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 :)

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!