Oven Mitt Part One

I was determined to make something this week, other than excuses.  I'm still trying to keep this craft challenge from filling my house up with worthless (though pretty) mess, so I settled on something that I needed anyway-- a new oven mitt (I have only one pair, which were ugly to begin with and now are also burnt and worn through in places, they have begun to let heat through-- ouch).  I found a 'hot pad and oven mitt' round-up on Pinterest (see here) and chose a simple glove style mitt, tutorial here. 
Another sub-goal of my challenge is to use up the craft supplies I have lying around, whenever possible, instead of buying more.  I went through my fabric stash and found some pretty-enough cotton to use as the main fabric and liner.  All I had to buy was some Insul-Brite insulated batting, and heavy duty needles to sew through all these layers!



Cutting the layers was quick and fun-- using the rotary cutter reminds me of quilting, which I love the best of all sewing (if only quilts didn't take so much of everything-- fabric, time, money, space).  I didn't bother cutting out exactly 9 x 15 as the directions say, my fabric scraps were already around 11 x 18 and I didn't waste time cutting off the little bit extra.



Above are the layers, with the lining fabric face up (only after I started this project did I fall in love with that fabric a little and wish that it wasn't about to disappear inside an oven mitt).  The darker pink is for the bottom edge.  Next I quilted one half (so, one whole sandwich of outer, cotton batting, insulated batting and lining) with diagonals of whatever thread happened to be in my machine.  I thought this step would go faster than it did, and that I could finish the project today, but instead I think I'll just get around to quilting the other half. 



More to follow when I get this finished up.  When I started this project I chose a different fabric for the outer, but while ironing it I realized I had quite a big piece, and I didn't want to waste it on a tiny little quilted thing like this oven mitt.  In fact, I wish I could think of something easy to make that we would use outdoors, because the print is so happy and evocative of spring.  I'm stumped though-- what can I sew with this piece of fabric, not sure the size but I think less than a yard, which I can then use outside in the spring?  Help me with this if you have an idea, otherwise I've got next week's project decided already-- an apron.
Here's the fabric, my current crush:

Crib Sheet

For my second project of my 2014 craft challenge, I went with something both simple and veeeeery useful, a crib sheet for Snorzy's bed.  I had made three flannel sheets for his cradle before he was born, but the cradle lasted only until he was about 4.5 months old before he was too big for it.  Such a bummer to have to put aside those handmade sheets! 
I did a little research (hello Pinterest, yes I'm talking about you again) and came up with three or four more projects that I'll do for this craft challenge.  However, many of them are toys-- if I could do anything in the world I'd be a toymaker-- and I began to worry that my craft challenge is going to result in spoiled kids (especially Snorzy) and a house full of extra...stuff.  So in resistance, I decided my second project would be something that I would have had to buy anyway, if I didn't make my own.
I was excited to hit Jo-Ann fabric and pick out something cute, something with critters on it, maybe in flannel...but all the 'diy crib sheets' direction I found online called for fabric of either 44 or 45 inch width, and sadly all the cute, nursery prints and flannel were 42 or 43 inches wide.  Why is that?  Maybe I could have done better at fabric.com or something, but I was looking for nearly-instant gratification here, so I settled for some lovely aqua quilter's cotton (44 in wide).
I was able to bang this together in very little time, from remembering to prewash the fabric this afternoon just before going to pick up my niece D from the high school so she could watch the boys for me, (pause, find other things to do while I wait for the fabric to come out of the dryer) to ironing, cutting, pinning and sewing the corners just before I had to bring D home, to after dinner and nursing the baby finally finishing the last bit and putting it in his crib before bedtime tonight.

Next up, toys! (maybe)

here I am, sewing the casing for the elastic (thank you to my photographer, Primo):


And here is the finished result in Snorzy's crib.  Other handmade items in view: bunny lovey (mine) crocheted blanket (made by a good friend, Jen F.)

Wipes Box Toy

For my first project of my 2014 craft challenge, from this blog post, as seen on Pinterest: I made a baby wipes box ‘toy’ for Snorzy, with fabric squares that he can remove again and again.  Maybe making this was a little bit stupid, since none of my three kids ever did the ‘pull every baby wipe out of the box’ thing, maybe I’m just encouraging bad behavior.  He drives me so crazy anyway, though, in that he hardly plays with toys but instead looks around for anything he can get his hands on that he *shouldn’t* play with.  I think I wouldn’t even mind so much if he pulled real wipes out of a current box of wipes, if it would keep him sitting still for five minutes and not pulling on electrical cords or knocking over my things. 
I cut out about twenty squares of fabric in a variety of colors and textures, using pinking shears to get a hard-to-ravel edge without having to do any sewing.  I opted not to do applique letters or numbers on the squares yet, but if he ends up liking this toy a lot I’ll add them later.  To decorate the box and hide the brand labels, I covered it in bright blue duct tape (left over from Primo’s Tron costume from a few Halloweens ago).  So far he likes the box itself more than the fabric, and it’s a little hard to get him to take the fabric squares out (we have to pull one out halfway and then show it to him).  He likes opening and closing the box, though, and if we take the fabric pieces out of the box for him and throw them around, he plays with them.  Yesterday he stood there and carefully handed me one after another, while I said, “Thank You” for each one.  Time will tell if this turns into a favorite toy, but it was free and he’s played with it a little, so I’m satisfied.

Bunny Lovey 1

Lessons learned from my first attempt at sewing a lovey:

1. using my blue Mark-B-Gone pen on the 'wrong side' of the ivory swirl fur fabric was a bad idea.  Little did I know that the blue marks would show right through.  And I have a sinking feeling that they will not B-Gone when I wash the finished lovey.  I'm not sure what I could have used instead-- disappearing ink would have disappeared from one naptime to the next, before I finished the project.  And chalk would have wiped off.
2. the ears needed to be super-sized compared to the pattern in Moebes' book-- I traced around her pattern on separate paper to make ears that were probably more than 50% bigger, giving me the 'voluptuous flop' that I crave in a bunny
3. the part that I thought would be the hardest, sewing the curved seams on the head, was actually not bad at all. 
4. sewing the straight seams on the triangles to form the square blanket was where I made my biggest error, probably because I thought I was on the 'easy part' and got careless.  To my horror, as I was topstitching the blanket after sewing on the lining I found that along one of the blanket seams, for several inches, the seam had come apart because I had actually sewn into the fur at the edge and not the fabric backing at all, which leads me to:
5. when the directions said to sew a 'generous 3/8" seam', I needed to be more generous for sure-- I was too worried about the whole thing coming out too small when I should have been thinking more about making all the seams *strong* to withstand baby boy manhandling.  I fixed it in a kind of 'Frankenstein's monster' fashion by sewing by hand with ivory colored thread.  My hand sewing technique not being up to snuff, this is not an invisible seam of hidden stitches but a big hard ridge of sloppy stitches forcing the seam back together.
6. I stuffed the head firmly using little pinches of fluff as suggested by Moebes, I think I would have liked it better a little understuffed and floppy, to match the general floppiness of the ears and the blanket.
7. in the future, I'll have to find a way to mark out the circle around the base of his head for sewing last of all-- mine was a funny little lopsided spiral rather than a perfect circle, and it shows when using a solid colored lining as I did here.

Overall, I am over the moon about how easy this was to sew, and how cute it turned out even with all my errors-- this one will be under the tree for Snorzy's first Christmas, and hopefully Lovey's bunny charms will lure S away from his horrible, tacky store bought 'Taggies' bear that I got him just for 'second best' and that he ended up falling in love with and needing in order to sleep, every day and night.  I plan to make more of these bunnies, which I will continue to customize away from the original pattern (the head and neck are a little too skinny and weird for my liking).  I managed to make this, despite my inexperience, in 2 1/2 naptimes-- one for cutting and sewing the ears, another for sewing the head (very quick), and one more to do everything else but the embroidery (which I whipped through while watching t.v. the evening after finished the rest).  I don't know what I'll do with more bunnies but I do know that I won't be able to resist making at least one more of these, I think I have enough fabric left over from this one if I cut carefully!