Another tiny button

I almost forgot to show off another creation I made. I had bought this dress already a while ago and had in mind to customize it for a little girl I know. (Not my daughter!)

When I bought it I actually had some kind of applique in mind ... but in the end I decided to embroider her name similarly to the big sister shirt I did last year. I love how it turned out!

When I was stitching I thought that a button instead of the dot on top of the "i" should look cute ... so I made some tiny heart buttons to play around with and ended up using the one in the picture.

I think it is sweet!

Of course now little bear wants a dress like that, too! *sigh*

Recycling: Pillowcase + Shirt = ?

What do you get if you throw together a pillowcase, an old shirt, and some embroidery thread?

The easiest drawstring bag ever! :-)

It is for my daughter and she wanted hearts on it.

That is what it looks like "flattened out".

And that is what happenes when you try to take an innocent photo of a cute drawstring back in our home ...

Some tiny person comes and steals it away .... ;-)

More felt finger puppets

So here they are - finally done! The ones that I was working on for the last couple of days after making the first finger puppets.
Dog, cat, hedgehog and mouse! I LOVE them! Maybe I should hide them and keep them for myself ....
(They are really not hard to do. The reason why it took me so long was rather that there were other things popping up that had to be done ...)
It was really hard to take a picture of these guys. Especially since one is white and two are rather dark. They look much better in reality.
The close up photos were taken inside - so they are even less pretty. But I tried to take them outside and almost lost the hedgehog - which I really adore! A gust of wind took it away and into the neighbours backyard. I had to rescue it out of the HEDGE. Where else would a hedgehog get stuck? After that I was too scared to try to take any more photos outside ...



I tried to keep the facial features kinda minimalistic. This makes stitching easier ;-) ... and I like it. I figure as long as the animal is recognizable - it's enough. You could of course get much more elaborate!

Felt finger puppets

Remember when I said in the last post about the felt groundhog finger puppet that you could easily adept it and make all kinds of animals ... ? Well, I did not really plan on doing this but my daughter got a very last-minute-kinda invitation to a birthday party. The party was today - and we got told on Thursday. We gave the little girl a ticket to a puppet theatre show. (Which I will go to tomorrow with the two little ladies. I am REALLY looking forward to this. I LOVE puppet theatre!)
But I thought we should give a little something that would go with it ... Since there was no way I could whip up or buy a handpuppet - which was my first idea - I spend Friday stitching a few finger puppets to play with. I actually really love how they turned out.

Big bad wolf and three little piglets. And a few close ups ...

It's hard to see them in the photo - but I love the piggy's tails!

That wolf was really hard to make. I actually had to do it twice. I liked the first one I made - just noone recognized it as a wolf! :-(

Well, and these two birds came also flying along ...

When I cut them out I got a bit carried away ... So look out for more felt finger puppets popping up on this blog in the next couple days ...

Updated:

If you want to see the card I made to go along with the finger puppets look at this post.

And the other felt finger puppets I made can be found in this post.

Mini-tutorial for embroidered shirt (including pattern)

Here comes a mini-tutorial for the "Big sister" shirt I made for my daughter for Christmas. It's actually pretty straight foward but maybe someone might find it helpful ...

All you need to make your own embroidered shirt are

-a white or lightly colored shirt
-embroidery floss (I make sure mine can be washed hot and the color does not bleed)
-printer
-water-soluble fabric marker

and just three steps:

1. Make your pattern (or print the one below)
2. Copy your pattern onto the shirt
3. Have fun embroidering


1. Make your pattern

On request I put up the pattern I used. If you want to use it too just open or download the pattern above, adjust it to your desired size and print.

(The font used is called Everytime I Miss You and you can download it free here at the blog by Kevin and Amanda. As this font did not have the german letter "ß" I simply drew this one by hand.)

If you want to make your own pattern just find a font you like and that will work well for hand embroidery. As already said I used the font called Everytime I Miss You but you could use any other font you like that works for embroidery.
Type your words into the computer. If you have more than one line of words arrange them in a way you like. Print them out in the desired size. This last step might take a few attempts until you get it right ... now you have your pattern!

2. Copy your pattern onto the shirt
(this will only work for white or lightly colored fabric!!!)

To copy your pattern onto the shirt simply put your printed out words under the fabric where you want to embroider (inside the shirt). You should be able to see the printed words through the fabric. Obviously this works only for lightly colored or white fabric! Put the words into the right position (you might have to cut your paper first). You can pin it in place if you want to. Now just trace your words with a water-soluble pen for marking fabric. I used one that will wash out with cold water. There are ones available where the ink simply vanishes by itself. Even if this sounds really cool and will omit the step of washing the fabric with cold water after you are done I would not recommend it. Unless you have only a really short word or are a REALLY FAST embroiderer the ink will vanish before you are done and you will end up retracing your words over and over again ...

2. Have fun embroidering!
I used different stitches and colors. But you could just as well use a backstitch only or only one color ... whatever you like! :-)


(For instructions on how to do embroidery stitches visit my old post to get the link to Stitchschool.)

"Big Sister" shirt

I just have to share this because I am SO PROUD of this one. I embroidered a shirt for my daughter saying big sister (Große Schwester in German). And I so love the result. I am actually thinking of making something similar for myself!!!
I have to admit that this was actually planned as an applique shirt. I have never done applique but wanted to try it. I thought this would be a great project to try the technique. Well ... I chickened out at the end. I did not have the supplies I needed (fusible webbing) and as I started to look for fonts that would work I realized that this probably is not as easy as I thought. Cause the letters are rather small the sewing bit would involve a lot of "turning" .... Well, time was flying by and I simply did not really know where to start. And also there was almost no time where I could actually sew because most of the time I was (and am) carrying around my baby boy in the baby sling. And I definitely cannot work on my sewing machine with him in a sling in front of me. Well, in the end I started to panick ... but really did not want to let go of the idea of making this shirt. (At least I already had a white shirt!) I also had a stash of embroidery floss and figured ... I know how to embroider and I can do this while walking around with him in the baby sling. I was sceptical of the outcome ... but in the end I only had the choice of trying this or letting it go completely. So I tried. And I had FUN and so loved the result!!!

It took me a few attempts to copy the writing onto the shirt. In the end it was really easy - I just put the printed out words underneath the shirt. The black writing shows through the fabric and I traced it with a water soluble pen. Worked great!
And then I started stitching ... I am not too proud of the first letter. But it has been YEARS that I did some embroidery. And the rest of the letters turned out great! After a bit I even got adventurous and figured I should try some new stitches. I already knew the chain stitch, the stem stitch, the back stitch, and the running stitch. So I started googling .... and thanks to the blog Primrose design I learned the twisted chain stitch, split stitch, portuguese stem stitch, couching, interlaced running stitch, coral stitch, and the whipped running stitch (it's a variation of the running stitch). She has a "Stitch school" at the right side of her blog - if you are looking for stitches check it out! They are very well explained!!!

Edited: The owner of the blog Primrose Design opened a whole new blog called the Stitch School. Check it out!

*** IF you would like to make your own embroidered shirt - check out my mini-tutorial! ***






*This post has been entered in the "Best Creative Craft Ideas from 2009" contest at Flower Showers Crafts.*

Lovely letters

As I wrote earlier I write many notes to my daughter lately. And as I already made her a mailbox for the notes I thought that I should write proper "letters". Up until now I just wrote a few words onto a slip of paper. I figured my daughter might enjoy it to get "real letters" in an envelope with a stamp and address label. :-)
However, since I write quite a few notes a day using regular paper envelopes seemed too wasteful to me. Even though I really liked the "mail kit" ...
So I thought why not make an envelope out of felt?! I still got loads of felt lying around ... :-) and I figured I could make little address labels out of felt as well and stamps and attach them with velcro. Well, and that's what I did.

If you want to make some for your kids as well - it's really easy!

To make the envelopes:

Figure out how many envelopes, address labels and stamps you want and what colors you want to use.

If you make more than one envelope it probably helps to make a cardboard template. At least if the envelopes are supposed to have the same size. :-) If you want to make a regular sized envelope the easiest way to do this would be to use a paper envelope for making your pattern. I made two very small envelopes and therefore just made my pattern up.

You use your pattern to cut the felt.

Now you have to figure out what size your address label should be. Of course you can do this using your template. But if you did not use one - the easiest way to do it is pin together the envelope and establish where the label should go and what size it should have.

(In the picture you can see one of the address labels I made. I just couldn't wait until I finished the envelope. :-) You don't actually have to make them before the envelope. You can start either way - as long as you figure out the sizes of the envelope and the label beforehand.)

Where the label is supposed to go you sew a bit of velcro. You also sew a bit of velcro where you want to put your stamp later on. When you're done it should like this:


or folded up like this:
Now you can sew the envelope togehter. Because my template was very simple I only had to sew two sides and I used a running stitch. But you can use pretty much whatever stitch you like.

Done! You can embellish your envelope which ever way you like. Depending on what you want to do it might be easier to actually do this before you sew it together. But I did it afterwards. I also added a button at the back to close it. You don't have to do this however, you could also use velcro or just make an envelope that gets "tugged" together.

To see a picture of the back of my envelope just scroll down to the end of this post.
To make the labels:

Basically all you do is cut out two rectangles out of felt for each label you want to make.

To one piece of felt you sew the other bit of the velcro - so it will stick to the envelope later. On the the other piece of felt you embroider an address. I just used the names of our family members and our dog. :-) Again you can use any stitches you like. You can see the front sides of my labels here:


After you're done with this you sew the two pieces together - so the front will show the embroidered address and the back will have the velcro and will stick to the envelope. This is what the back of the labels should look like

To make the stamps:

This is basically the same as the labels. Even easier. You just cut your stamps out of felt, sew a bit of velcro to the back and embellish the front. I did not even cut out two pieces of felt for each stamp. Of course if you want to make it really pretty you can do this.
Here you can see the envelope - not embellished yet - and one stamp and one address label.


And you're done! :-)
This is what mine looked like ...

when taking the picture I had only finished one envelope but I was planning on making a second one. That is the green bit of felt in the photo. :-)

And here a picture of the backside of the envelope.

I am really curious what my daughter will think of them! :-)






*This post has been entered in the "Best Creative Craft Ideas from 2009" contest at Flower Showers Crafts.*