Mickey and Minnie Mania

Several months ago, my parents bought a year-long pass to Disneyland and used it to lure their grandchildren to visit them in California. Since children under age 3 are free, we decided to celebrate Carmen's not-quite-birthday by flying out and spending a couple of days in the Happiest Place on Earth.

And it actually was happy! We had an absolutely wonderful trip - Steven chronicled it on his blog.

The real story, though, is the impression that those few days have had on our family. Because since mid-February, this is what my children have worn pretty much every day:

In total, I have made:

• 2 pairs Mickey Mouse shorts,
• 1 pair Mickey Mouse shoes
• 1 pair Mickey Mouse gloves
• 1 Minnie Mouse hotpad set
• 2 Minnie Mouse dresses
• 1 Minnie Mouse skirt
• 1 Minnie Mouse pettiskirt
• 1 pair Minnie Mouse bloomers

Olivia cried and cried when I told her she had to wear something different to preschool the second week. She has since complied, provided I style her hair into ears and put a bow in the middle of her head.

Carmen switches off between Mickey and Minnie...and Lady and Tramp and Cinderella and Aurora and Piglet and any number of other characters. They spend hours in their room playing dress-up. No one else is allowed in, and I am only summoned periodically to fasten buttons (although Olivia has gotten pretty good at that).

The funny thing is, with all this clothes-changing, we still occasionally see Carmen running around wearing only a backwards shirt. Well, fashion is as fashion does.

Clothing the world's smallest bottom

This summer I ventured (forced by nature, chlorine, and cheapness) into a new domain in sewing: swim suits. Midway through the summer, Olivia's swimming suit died - one day the lycra just decided it had had enough, and we walked away from the pool with Olivia's swim shirt drooping past her knees.

At that point, I could have bought her a new swimming suit, but everything in stores needs to be altered anyway to fit her 4T length and 18 month girth (no, that is not an exaggeration). I've heard there are stores that carry slim sizes, but I didn't have time to order and have it get here before the end of the summer, and I didn't want to pay that much.

Instead I went, armed with a 50% off coupon, to Joann's. Their selection of swimsuit fabric wasn't great (I'll buy online next time), but they did have pink, which is always satisfactory to Olivia. A couple of hours later, I had a suit that actually fit my daughter and with which we were both pleased. I based the pattern on Carmen's swim bottoms (made slightly smaller) and one of Olivia's nightgowns. I love that she's covered on top for modesty and sun-safety, but it still looks like a swimsuit (and it's a two-piece, so she can put it on and go to the bathroom by herself!) And I love that the bottoms actually fit her!

Altogether, I probably spent $6 and 3 hours on the suit (shopping included). Will I do it again? Absolutely. (But maybe not next year, because I already found some next-year clearance suits for $4.)

The last 2 months of my life

Steven already posted about this (and it's worth checking out his account of it, with more close-ups), but there's a reason I haven't blogged for a while. During the past couple of months, my life has been consumed with creating what may be the most important sewing project I'll ever make: a special memory quilt for my mother-in-law to commemorate the anniversary of my father-in-law's death.

When we were there last year for the funeral, I secretly (with the help of Steven's sister) went through Bob's closet and picked out several of his old dress shirts.

My original intention was to use the shirts alone to make up a quilt for Linda. My thinking was that if she couldn't snuggle with him any more, she could at least snuggle up with his shirts. But as I was planning the quilt, I realized that perhaps I could bring Bob even closer to her, through images that represented aspects of the 50 years they spent together.

Here it is.



The images represent reading together, their house in VA, dancing, traveling the world, their family, their daily walks, Linda's church callings, the Washington, DC LDS temple, Bob's church callings, music and piano, motorcycle rides, and electronics/HAM radio (one of Bob's passions).

The appliqued squares are made of fabric scraps from my, my sister-in-law Hyde's, and my grandma Anne's collections. (Grandma Anne also got to be friends with Bob and Linda during our wedding.) The piece work and pockets are from Bob's shirts. I asked my mom at one point if she thought Linda would recognize the fabric. She said, "Well, she ironed it for 50 years!" Good point.


I was pretty proud of this motorcycle. Not bad for a girl, huh? But can I tell you how hard it is to find grey cotton prints?!?


Some detail work on the radio. Yes, the quilt took hours. And hours. And hours. But as cheesy as it may sound, it was not tedious when I thought of my love for my in-laws and the joy it would bring to Linda.


The family may be my favorite block. Fabric selections were based on their family portraits - it seems like at least one of the boys was always wearing funky striped pants, and nothing matched. Ah, the 70s and 80s.


One of the pockets, from a work shirt. I left the pockets open and functional; thought it would be fun to put things in them. (My mom would surely keep Kleenexes in there.)

I'm happy to say that my mother-in-law was able to open it on Dec. 5, the anniversary of Bob's death. Gracious person that she is, she loves it, and it makes me feel good that I was able to do something to make her feel happy and loved. I feel like I put everything I had into this quilt - all my artistic abilities, all my creativity, all the skills I learned from my mother, all my capacity for love and service. It felt good to try to be the kind of person who would do that, and helped me to become that person.

Another T-shirt Transformation

Last year I got the girls some cute Halloween tights on clearance, only to realize this year that they have nothing to wear with them.

So, the other day at CVS I bought one XL t-shirt for $2.

When I was done with it, it looked like this:

And now my girls look like this:

Squee! (Can I say how much I love having two little girls, one long skinny and one short roly-poly? They are so cute together I can hardly stand it.)

Unfortunately, I was too excited putting them together to make a photo tutorial, but I'll tell you how to turn a big t-shirt into one (or two) little dresses:

You need:

1 big t-shirt (long enough for the dress, plus a little more)

thread

1 button

loose-fitting child shirt and knee-length child dress to use as a patterns

Cutting:

1. Cut one 2-inch-high strip off the bottom of the shirt, going all around

2. Cut one 1-inch-high strip off the bottom of the shirt

3. Lay the pattern shirt on top of the t-shirt, towards the top, and fold the sleeves in. Lay the pattern dress on top to make sure there's enough room to make it long enough (once you put the ruffle on, it will add a couple of inches)

4. Take the dress off (you've already measured the length) and cut 1/2 inch around your pattern, extending the length to the dress's length. DO NOT CUT SEAM ALLOWANCE AROUND NECKLINE. You now have a front and back to the dress.

5. Fold one sleeve of your fabric-shirt in half. Lay pattern sleeve on top of it and carefully cut out around, including seam allowance (this should make 2 already-hemmed sleeves, since the fabric is doubled)

6. From remaining fabric, cut strip 1" x 7.5" ("finishing strip")

Sewing (1/4 inch seams - you made your allowance bigger on purpose):

1. Facing right sides, sew shoulder seams. Leave sides open.

2. Facing right sides, pin open sleeves to arm holes, and sew (this will be pretty easy since the sides are open)

3. Facing right sides, pin dress sides and sleeves together and sew all the way up the dress. Your basic dress shape is done!

4. Gather or ruffle both 2-inch and 1-inch strip 1/4 from raw edge

5. Pin 2-inch ruffle to front of the bottom of the dress, sew (it's already hemmed, yippee!)

6. Cut 2-inch slit down from the neck in the back of the dress. Pin 1-inch ruffle around the neckline (going down a little lower in the front), sew. Trim seam as needed

Button hole: Pin finishing strip to back of slit, and sew 1/4 inch in all the way down both sides (it should stick up 1 1/2 inches on one side). Flip strip around and fold in, stitch all the way down, including on sticking up part. Flip extra around to form loop, and then stitch. Add button on the other side. Finished product should look like this:

To make 2 dresses, I just cut more strips off the bottom of the shirt initially, and positioned the patterns so I could cut 2 dress bodies. I also ended up cutting all the sleeves from 1 sleeve of fabric (I wasn't sure yet if I'd need the other for something else). It means I had to hem the sleeves and ruffle on Carmen's dress, but not a big deal.

Knit's very forgiving, so go ahead and try it! You know you want to...

Hungry Caterpillar Tutorial

Probably my biggest recent project was Olivia's 3rd birthday party! The theme was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and I got massively geeked out about it. I made cute invitations, my SIL made an AMAZING birthday cake, and we ate all the foods the caterpillar ate through (although, plums not being in season, the kids got prunes. It was not the most popular item on the table).

Anyway, Steven is a much better blogger than I am, and you can read and see more about the party here. (You're even welcome to comment - I promise that Steven is much nicer than me). However, one thing you WON'T get on his blog is a tutorial on how to make the central point of the party: my Very Hungry Caterpillar party favors!

These were totally my favorite part of the party - I dreamed them up one night and was just giddy about giving them out.

MATERIALS

Sewing machine and thread (I used green)
Scissors
Pins
Marker
Paper to make patterns
Glue gun
3 colors of knit (old t-shirts work great!) - 6" x 9" each. (I tried it first with cotton. Knit is MUCH better.)
cotton fabric for butterfly wings - about 6" x 9"
2 pieces grosgrain ribbon, each about 3" and beveled at the ends
4 eyes (I used google eyes, you can use buttons or even draw them on)



Step 1: Wings

Fold your paper in half to cut out a pair of butterfly wings that are about 6" wide and 4" tall - you can see how mine look. (I was going to upload it for you to print, but figured if you can't make your own paper butterfly wings, sewing them is totally out.)

Then fold your cotton in half with right sides facing, and trace your pattern onto one wrong side.


Sew right on the line all around the wings.


Make sure that you have a big enough corner, so when you trim the seam and turn it out the fabric won't unravel.


Trim about a 1/8" seam all around, making sure to clip all the way in to the corners (as shown).


Then, pulling the fabric away from each other on the inside, make a vertical cut in one side of the wings, big enough so you can turn them outside out.



Then turn it right side out.



Now set the wings aside for the moment.

Step 2: The body

Layer your knits like so:
Caterpillar fabric: right side up
Butterfly fabric: WRONG side up
Cocoon fabric: right side up



Line them up, then sew them all together across one long end.

(Note - when I made a bunch of caterpillars, I just sewed long 6" high strips of these, then cut them into 9" lengths afterward.)


Next, separate the butterfly layer from the rest, and use your marker to put a line 1/4 of the way in (in the middle of what will be one side of the body).


Now pin your wings there with the cut side down...


And sew them on, then trim your strings.


Now take the ribbon and pin it on in an X right above the center of your wings. Fold them up and pin them shut as well (so they won't accidentally get sewn into the body). Then bring up the green layer again so it's behind the butterfly body layer.


Fold all layers in half (your wings are inside). Pay no attention to the gnarled looking toes. (I've heard it's a Danish thing.)


Now, on the folded side, start at the base of the green (where your long seam is) and sew a 1/4" seam all the way up the side...


Curving around the top, stitching over the antennae...(Note: if you're not confident with your curving skills, make a rounded body pattern out of paper and trace it onto the knit, then sew over it, just like with the wings.)


And then all the way down the side, so it looks like this.


Trim your seam to about 1/8", being careful not to cut the antennae.


Now, starting from the open end of the cocoon, turn the whole thing butterfly side out, being careful not to stab yourself on the pins. Then take them out of the antennae...


And the wings...


And unfold the wings!


Use the glue gun to put eyes on the front of the caterpillar and the butterfly, and you're done! (I didn't put on a mouth because the kids can kind of make one with their fingers and the caterpillar eats things.)

So, here's the caterpillar (with the cocoon tucked inside)...


You take out the cocoon and wrap it around the body...


Then turn it inside out, and it's a butterfly!


Hooray! Let me know if you have any questions.

Another surgery

One dark night a few weeks ago, tragedy struck our family.

Due to the gross neglect of one male member of our family who shall remain nameless, our darling Marianne was involved in a terrible car accident that left her eyeless.



Fortunately, a recognized specialist in kitty eye transplants is doing residency here. But before the surgery could take place, we needed an eye to transplant.

A city-wide search (of thrift stores) was conducted to try to find a suitable donor, one who had 9mm blue round acrylics. (This yielded only a green-eyed frog that Olivia took a shine to.) We finally turned to the black market (craft stores) and found grotesque packages of body parts…but alas, the only blue eyes were 12mm, too large for Marianne’s dainty features.

Finally, in an act of supreme charity, Marianne’s larger (and less beloved) sister White Tiger offered to sacrifice her own blue eyes in exchange for a surgical enhancement of larger blue eyes. With some misgivings, the eye surgeon agreed to proceed.



WARNING: the following graphic photographs of the actual surgery may be disturbing to some sensitivities. Viewer discretion is advised.

Dressed out for surgery


The kitties with their IVs




Performing the delicate procedure





Resting up in post op after a successful surgery




We are happy to report that the transplants were successful (as gauged by Olivia's not rejecting them). While Olivia still doesn't care as much about White Tiger, I must say that because of her unselfishness, she now holds a much dearer place in my heart. And of course, we're all glad to have Marianne back to normal.

Decorative toys

I've been meaning to post about some of my newest projects for a while.

Just before Halloween we went to a pumpkin patch where I saw some cloth pumpkins much like these:


I don't often get cuted out by crafts, but for some reason I just really loved these pumpkins, so I had to go make some the next day.

Even as much as I loved them, it wasn't until after I'd made them that I realized how perfect they were: not only were they a fun project, but they are washable, indestructible decorations! Perfect for a house with a toddler and a mobile baby.

With this in mind, I used some of the same principles and came up with my favorite holiday craft this year: stackable snowmen.



Fun to mix and match:


Fun to stack and un-stack (this picture looks kind of morbid):


Lots of character.


Olivia loves them. She snuggles them, carries them around and dances with them. She also likes to have me sing "Once there was a Snowman" while stacking and unstacking them. Carmen loves to rip them apart and chew on the arms and noses.

I'm still working on some details (they're kind of wobbly), but even now they're a favorite around here.