leather wreath

When N. and I were first married, we bought a leather(ish) armchair from Ikea. I say "ish" because it was a combination of leather and bonded leather -- and what leather there was must have been about Z-grade -- and it just really didn't hold up well.  After a few years it wasn't looking very pretty, so we wanted to slipcover it, only to discover that it was a very slightly different size than the non-leather Ektorp chair.  It was just a tad too large. So to squeeze a slipcover onto it, we had to pull the leather(ish) covering off to make it just small enough to fit.

Anyway, I hung onto the nicest bits of leather, thinking I could make a throw pillow out of it, or some baby shoes or something. Fast-forward a couple of years, and it was still sitting in a bag. We came across it during our move, and feeling like trying to sew something cute out of leather scraps was not high on my list of priorities, I tossed the bag in the trash.

Of course, the VERY NEXT DAY, it occurred to me that we needed a wreath over a doorway that lead to a little hall, and that bag of leather scraps would be perfect for a wreath!  Well, I dug through trash cans and couldn't find it, but N. found it in a trash bag in the garage -- and the only other thing that was in there was packing peanuts and crumpled paper and plastic from moving boxes, so we didn't have to worry about it being stinky or gross to get to. 

I cut the leather into strips and petals/leaves (carefully cutting across the stitching where I could, so it would show) and hot-glued it to a straw wreath form, and here is the result!

I'm pretty sure it is N's favorite of any project I have ever made. His response was, "Wow, that looks like something someone would pay money for!" -- which is pretty high praise, indeed, right? :-) And he has subsequently complimented it several more times.  It goes well with our eclectic-rustic look, and I know he's glad it's not too feminine.

I have to say, it looks a bit better in person, but you get the general idea. Not bad for something from the actual trash heap! :-)

Easter Dress

So, hi, I haven't blogged in, what, three and a half months? Oops.  We have been super-busy, selling our old house, buying a new one, and moving.  Sheesh! I say this every time, but... we're never moving again!

(at least for a few years until my feet start to itch again.) ;-) 

But really, we are so blessed. We love our new house and neighborhood, and one day soon, we will finally be "settled in." So my next few posts may be about house projects.

Anyway, with all that going on, I haven't sewn in ages -- and I really miss it! -- but I did want to post about the last thing I made before all the craziness began: H's Easter dress!

I wanted something really classic, so I got a vintage pattern from 1958 and some pretty polka-dotted fabric with an embroidered border (no longer available). I'd never used a border fabric before, but I really liked what it added here. 

Front

I do love a peter pan collar with piping! And look how wide that skirt is! The little cap sleeves kept it from getting too difficult.

Back

One of the cool things I realized while making this pattern is that it was exactly the style both of H's grandmothers would have been wearing when they were little girls. (And I do have a picture of my mom wearing a very similar look.) So sweet! 

 The big reveal on Easter Day!

After the difficulty I had with the petticoat for her Christmas dress, I cheated and bought a "tutu" on Zulily this time. I really couldn't believe I got her to wear her headband, petticoat, and even (for a little while) little white gloves! So fun. She is just getting to the age where she enjoys dressing up and looking "fancy." She calls this her "princess dress." She has never seen a princess movie yet, but somehow they have already entered her consciousness. I think she thinks anyone who wears a dress is a princess. Sounds fair to me!

My little sweet pea! Yes, it is driving me crazy that the petticoat was sticking out in all the pictures. I am so OCD. But seriously, what is the deal with petticoats?! They look great until I pull out my camera.

There, that's better.

Valentine's Day Top

This one was a bit crazy.  I did a whole bunch of stuff I've never done before, including a collar and set-in sleeves! (I guess everything I've made up to now has had raglan sleeves or straps or been sleeveless!) The pattern I used for the shirt and collar... well, let's just say it was less a pattern and more a series of general suggestions.  Not to knock the pattern-maker at all! It's just that she obviously has a lot more skill than me and wrote it for people who know what they're doing more than I do.  Also, she was clearly not a native English speaker.  And it was free.  So... no complaints.

I used this tutorial from MADE for the puffed sleeves, and while they aren't perfect, they turned out way better than I could have realistically expected on my first try!

Please excuse the horror-show lighting! Taken at night in a dim room. :-(

I also had to improvise on the back closure because there was supposed to be a zipper but... well, the aforementioned problems understanding the pattern directions nipped that in the bud.  I had pretty much no facing left to attach the zipper to.  So I ended up making button loop closures and putting buttons on.  It was my first time doing button loops and, again, they turned out a bit better than I'd expected (except I obviously attached the top one too high, so it's hiding under the collar.  Oh, well!)

And here's the whole outfit when paired with the pants from this post. Unfortunately (I think because of the fabric print) it looks too much like pajamas to me! I haven't tried them on H yet, but if they look like pajamas when I put them on her, I will probably separate them into two outfits.  

Right now I'm rushing to whip up her Easter dress, because we will be MOVING soon and I will have no sewing time for a while. :-(  (Sad face about the no time for sewing, happy face about the move! Although not about the packing!)

Here's an Easter dress preview -- I'm using this vintage pattern (View A) and a border fabric (something I haven't done before). I am having so much fun with it (waist darts in a toddler dress?! Toddlers are straight up and down!) and dying to see how it turns out.  

My new best pal!

Well, Santa really delivered... I got the serger I had been wanting! After wanting it for so long, you might think I'd have jumped right in, but I allowed intimidation to get the better of me for about 10 days... but when I finally worked up the nerve to get it out and start messing with it, it was love at first sight. It can do so many cool things! Nice, clean overlocked seams, rolled hems, gathers, etc., etc. I decided to dive in with a project and do as much as I could with the serger. I ended up only using the regular sewing machine for the elastic casing!

I made this pair of heart pants as part if a birthday/Valentine's outfit I have planned. I used this tutorial to make simple pants without a pattern, then tweaked it to make a ruffle at the bottom. I serged all the seams, serged the waistband before folding it over for the casing, made narrow rolled hems, and used the serger to gather. The gathers aren't as dramatic as I'd hoped, but I may just need to adjust my technique. I really have a lot to learn, but it was a fun start, and I'm amazed at how fast, quiet, and efficient Little Brother is!

Now to make some kind of top to finish off this outfit.

A new kitchen for Christmas!

Nope, Santa didn't bring me a brand-new kitchen, but he brought something even more fun -- a mini-sized one for the nugget!

My handy hubby is almost totally responsible for this awesomeness, as usual.  I got to do the fun stuff -- brainstorm little details, and make and buy accessories.  It turned out so much nicer than I had hoped!

We booted her toybox to another part of the room to squeeze it in by her little kitchen table.  Soon she'll have a whole mini house-within-a-house!

OK, sorry for the bad lighting on this picture, but it's the closest I could come to a full-on front shot without changing camera lenses (which I was too lazy to do), and to get it I had to stand outside the back door in the dark. ;-)

An old toaster oven baking pan for the sink, with a real faucet.  N thought of the towel bar; I whipped up a (very wonky) little hanging towel.

"Window" out onto a garden view, shelf, stove, magnetic Ikea doodad holder, counter space... The little white cabinets we used were less deep than the nightstand we used for the oven, so he built them out and put strips of real (leftover from another project) butcher block at the back.  Added benefit: weight and stability!

N added an oven door to the nightstand, with a plexiglas front, and dollar-store cooling racks for baking racks.  Don't you wish your range/oven came with a (heat-proof) drawer?! He also came up with the solution for the burners: copper tubing he formed into coils. Aren't they pretty?

My splurge: a 1940s or '50s tin tea set from eBay. SO cute.

And my favorite detail -- I asked N to paint the "fridge" with magnetic paint. He did me one better by wrapping the door and side with sheet metal. It looks pretty authentic! I made some of the magnets, and some are purchased, obviously.  I also wrote out some family recipes on cards and had them laminated, and threw in a photo booth strip of the three of us from Homecoming.  We have the same one on our big fridge.

N's mom bought the kiddo a ton of play food for Christmas, so her fridge is well stocked.  The under-sink cabinet is full of little pots and pans (some from Ikea, some dainty-sized real vintage ones from an estate sale that was held around the corner a few months back).

There are a few little details I didn't quite get to before the big day, like labels for her canisters (dollar-store Christmas containers we spray-painted white). Also,we ended up spending a bit more than I thought we would, so it cost more than, say, a plastic one-piece kitchen set.  But it was less than than buying even one "appliance" out of the higher-end ones, and I think it's at least as sweet as those.  And, besides, we only got her two presents! :-)  Anyway, I think it's pretty dadgum cute -- and most importantly, the nugget LOVES it! 

The Christmas dress in action

The petticoat didn't actually stick out that much -- I guess it was just slipping a bit when this picture was taken.  She was really cute and very good-natured about wearing her big floofy dress.  Not so much about wearing her matching hair doodad, though...

Here's a very bad picture of that before she yanked it out.  Sometimes she wears hair bows so nicely, but she was not having this one! It was a big poof of blue tulle with a red fabric covered button with a sheep from the matryoshka fabric on it. Ah, well, it was cute while it lasted.

Toddler girl's ruffled apron

So we've instituted a tradition at our house, at least for these baby years: Santa brings one present (handmade in his garage workshop) and Mama and Daddy buy one.  It kind of stinks, because Santa gets all the credit for our hard work! ;-) Last year, it was a handmade doll and a wooden push toy (which she pretty much never, ever played with, sigh). This year it's a whole bunch of Duplo and a homemade play kitchen. 

The kitchen has turned out to be a pretty big project, and "Santa" is doing a great job with putting it together -- it should be finished in the nick of time.  I, meanwhile, get to do the fun stuff... the little details like dishes, refrigerator magnets, and accessories.  The stuff that makes it feel like a real kitchen! 

One of the things I had in mind from the moment we came up with the play kitchen idea (seriously, I have had this fabric at least six months) was a ruffled apron.  I am a sucker for a ruffled apron, and I have made a couple now based on this absolutely adorable grownup version from One More Moore.  I think I've finally got the dimensions of the toddler-sized version just right, so I thought I'd share measurements and the few little changes I made to the method Morgan Moore used in the original.

I started with: a back piece 13.5" wide by 10.5" long 

One 3"x13.5" piece for the waistband

Four stirs 4"x22" for the ruffles

Two strips 2.5"x20" for the ties

I hemmed three sides (not the top) of the back piece and each of the ruffle pieces.

Then I zigzagged the top edge of each ruffle piece. Oh, Santa, I hope you bring my serger!

I took my tie pieces, folded them each in half lengthwise wrong-side-out, stitched along one end and long side, turned, pressed, and top-stitched. 

Pressed my waistband piece under .25" on all four edges...

...then folded it in half lengthwise, right side out, and pressed.

Made a long gathering stitch along the top of each ruffle strip and gathered until the width of my back piece.  Then pinned and stitched them down thus: the top edge of the bottom ruffle is exactly 3" from the bottom of the back piece. Each of the other ruffles is positioned 1.5" above the one below it. This means that the top ruffle is stitched down .5" from the top edge  of the base piece.

Like this.

It's a bit hard to see here, but I tacked down the apron ties to the top of the backing fabric, then sandwiched the apron and ties inside the waistband piece.  The top of the backing fabric went right into the crease I pressed.

Then I folded and pinned it down, and stitched along all three edges, catching the apron ties, backing fabric, and top ruffle inside the waistband.

So fun! Can't wait to try it on her and see her playing in her new little kitchen.

The fabrics are all by Michael Miller: Retro Put a Lid on It in Citrus Yellow and Electric Green,  Petit Point in Denim Blue, and Ta Dot in Tangerine.


EDITED to add photos of the apron "in the wild."

I took these today while H "helped" (haha!) me bake a cake for her SECOND BIRTHDAY! I can't believe my baby is getting so big! Please excuse the bed head. We are having a "stay in your pajamas all day" kind of day today.