Thursday, August 11, 2011

Hermione Costume

The middle child wanted a Hermione costume for her magic themed school assembly.  Naturally she decided to tell me this on Monday afternoon. The assembly was on Thursday.

I think we did okay though!

The cardigan, tights and hat she already owned.  The black shoes belong to her sister.  The white button up is mine.  The skirt came from a trip to the op shop on Tuesday (it cost me $3).  I made the tie and wand myself.

I was hoping to find a gold tie that I could add stripes to at the op shop but they had none, luckily I did find a gold pillowcase for $1 that I promptly cut up.

I used this Little Boys Tie pattern from The Purl Bee (although I do admit I did far less hand sewing than they did).

I cut out the pattern first, and then used masking tape to block out the gold stripes.  Those red stripes are an entire little tube of crimson fabric paint from a box of paints I've had in the cupboard for ages.  I almost didn't have enough to do the whole tie, so that's why there are a couple of patches where it's a bit light on.
The wand was made using paper and hot glue!  I followed these brilliant instructions.  It turned out really well, although there are a couple of spots with dodgy paint.  It's a bit of a dodgy brown because I didn't have any brown paint.  I had to mix it up using a combination of red, yellow and lavender.. Plus I was trying to do it in a hurry late at night, so didn't wait for each coat of paint to completely dry before I did the next one.  It turns out that not quite dry paint rubs off.  Crazy! ;)

All up, I spent $4.  Not bad.

If she'd given me more time I would have sewed a robe too!

Thursday, July 07, 2011

A Gift for my Mum

This was an idea I had seen on a few blogs, and filed away in my mind.


Just before Mothers Day this year I realised that my Mum now had the same number of grand kids as there are letters in the word Nanna.  Unfortunately it was about 2 days before Mothers Day, so we decided to do it for her birthday a few weeks later instead!

I went and bought an N and an A, painted them white, and we met up with my brother and his brood down at the park to take some photos.

The day we chose was pretty crappy, very overcast, we had a sleepy baby and it was occasionally sprinkling, plus our decent camera decided to kick the bucket so we had to use our little point and shoot Sony instead, but we did our best.

I took as many photos of each kid as I could so make sure we got at least one decent one of each of them, the middle child ruined almost all of hers because you could see her underpants when she was sitting on the ground (which I didn't realise at the time).  Luckily I took a couple of her standing up as well.


I spent ages making collages in picassa trying to get just the right group of shots together.. we ended up with a few different variations..

This was the only photo of the bubby looking, but we decided that the A didn't stand out enough against her dress.

 
I liked this one but my niece really wanted me to use the photo of her sitting down, rather than standing up..
So this was the final group..


I think it turned out pretty well!

Handbag Organiser Rolls and Coffee Cozys

Catch up post #3!

I have the tutorials for these bookmarked somewhere, I'll add the links when I find them!

These were gifts for a friend of ours, and one of my cousins.  And I have since made myself a handbag organiser roll too, very handy!

 On the left is a handbag organiser roll all folded up and empty, on the right is a coffee cup cozy.
 This is the organiser all laid out flat.  It's basically just a long strip with pockets of various sizes to put all your bits and bobs in.  There's one big long one for a wallet, and smaller ones for your phone etc.
 And this is how it looks with some random stuff from my handbag in it.
 The Coffee Cozy has insul-brite in it so no burnt fingers.. in theory, I've never actually tested it.  PS. Lets pretend that this glass that I used in this action shot was sparkling clean, not the one I was guzzling coke from while I was sewing.
Note the matching self cover buttons.  I love those things!

And these are the ones I made for my cousin.. I think.  Maybe I got that mixed up.  Nevermind, doesn't matter who owns it!

Do you like my hand drawing of a coffee cup?  Presentation! :P
I also put little rectangles of cardboard in each pocket of the roll with labels of suggested items for each pocket.  Blogger seems to think this photo should be sideways, I have given up arguing with it.  Just turn your head :P


And apparently I never took a photo of my one.  It looks just like those, but it has cute ikea animal fabric inside instead.  Very handy indeed!

Fold up Bread Basket

Catch up post number 2!

So, at some point early this year I made a little housewarming gift for some friends of ours when we went to visit them at their new house.  It's a fold up bread basket, with a little cloth that you can wrap around the bread when you want it covered.

I.. think I put a layer of batting in between the cotton lining and the sturdier exterior fabric.  Honestly I can't remember..

Ikea fabric on the outside.  When you untie the ties it is a flat square you can just fold up and shove in a drawer.

Naturally I filled this brand new bread basket with freshly baked dairy free choc chip muffins.  The purple you can see is the napkin I put under them so they didn't mess up the lining.

And this is how it looked all ready to go..
I seem to recall I made a minor boo boo when I was drawing the curves on the corners of the lining so the gap is a little bigger than I intended when it's all folded over, you can see some muffins poking out of the corners.. but I don't think that's a huge problem.

A Car Mat for my nephew

So I haven't put any of my craft on here for a while.  My bad.  Time for some catch up posts!

By the way, before we start looking at these photos I would appreciate it if you could just pretend that I had mopped my floor before taking them. Look at those sparkling clean tiles on the floor in your kids lounge room you could say! :P

So anyway, this is the car play mat that I made for my nephew for Christmas!

The idea came from here.   They don't give you much in the way of measurements so I just guessed how big to make it.

I also decided to add a little house instead of the pond.
As you can see, there is a monkey in the house.
The back is cord with construction pictures printed on it that I got from a remnant bin, but it wasn't quite big enough so I put a panel of chequered cotton in. I also had long ribbons that could be tied in bows like the one on the fiskars site, but I didn't like how they looked so I cut those shorter and added velcro.
 
And this is it all rolled up with cars in the pockets, ready to wrap.