Mommy's Nap Time: January 2010

Friday, January 29, 2010

Sneak Peek!

Here's a little look at my most recently finished project.

It's in the mail now! More pictures to come once it has been recieved!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Tutorial: Valentine's Day Crayons.

Here we are, my first tutorial. I guess I'll make it pretty simple. Valentine's day is coming up and if your chilren's school is anything like my neice's then you know how restricting the no-sweets rules can be. So here's another option: heart shaped crayons. they're super simple to make, and the kids can help too!

Valentine's Day Crayons.

Step one: Gather all your household's broken crayons. They don't have to be the same color or the same brand. Any will do!

Step two: Use an exacto knife to slit the wrappers lenthwise (adults only). Then pass the slit crayons to the kids so they can easily peel the wrappers off. Tip: use two gallon size ziplocs, one to collect the wrappers and one to collect the crayons.

Step three: sort by color (relatively). being sure to keep warm colors with warm and cool with cool. (so you won't end up with murky muddy looking crayons). Feel free to scribble a little with each one - you'd be surprised at how much those purples and blues look like black!

Step four: Break each whole crayon into 3-4 peices (depending on the size of broken ones they can be left alone or broken again).

Step five: nearly fill each section of a silicone heart shaped ice cube tray (found in a pack of two for $2.5o at target right now). Keep colors sorted by warm/cold tone.

Step six: carefully place full tray into microwave and turn on for about 5-7 minutes. Stopping periodically to check and poke with a toothpick (as per 9yr old's liking). Crayons should look shiny but with some solid looking parts remaining (for swirled crayon). Melting too much will give you a solid colored crayon and possibly some melting of your silicone tray.

Step seven: Carefully remove tray from microwave (adults only!) and place into freezer for several minutes. Remove from freezer when crayons are still a little warm - this makes it much easier to remove them from the tray.

Step eight: Remove crayons from tray and enjoy!

Sewing with Friends

For Christmas my dear husband got me a new Singer Confidence sewing machine! So... here I am with my dining room table dueling sewing machines.

This made it very easy to have my friend Mary over to teach her to sew. Here she is sewing away!

Finished projects: shopping bags for Christmas presents (Mary made a ton of these!).

She made this onsie dress for her neice too! Pretty awesome huh?

Then my neice Katee came over with her new American Girl doll Samantha. Samantha needed some more clothes so we fashioned this bathing suit out of the foot of a sock (which was remaining from making leggins for the baby).

Samantha needed hair ties that wouldn't rip out her hair too - so we cut the foot of the other sock into loops. Perfect!

Here's Samantha's quilt. Yep, designed and sewn by my 9 yr old neice!

and backed with scraps from a thrifted pillowcase. A pocket there at the bottom, for secrets - with her initials on it (iron on)

Samantha with her new stuff! Great job Katee!!!!

Loft Creations No Strings Attached Challenge!

I have been obsessed with string quilting blocks. Especially those quilts at www.filminthefridge.com. So, I decided to give the "Loft Creations No Strings Attached Challenge" a chance. Here are my first projects.

A replacement doll blankie (about 8"x10") with strings at the sides to hold it on.

I even used some of my fancy stitches from my new Singer Confidence on the top.

Here are some close-ups of some favorite blocks on my purple kaelidoscope quilt. WIP

Notice some pieces of Anna Maria Horner's Chocolate Lollipop in there, and scraps from Allie's quilt.

Here's a view of all the squares so far (as of about a week ago).

I hope for this quilt to be about a queen size quilt for our living room - for the family to snuggle under. It's my first full-sized (not baby) quilt.

Handmade Christmas...

It's mid January and I finally have my computer back in working order. After all that waiting to show pictures of my handmade Christmas gifts - here they are - better late than never!