This little one is a bit more recent. While at SIT, I bought this Kristen Doran embroidery pattern because it was just so darn cute. Then my boy asked me to make him a robot. I’m fairly sure he wanted it to be made of metal and have flashing lights but this is what he got.
He is so sweet he didn’t show a hint of disappointment. He is even good enough to take it to bed with him every now and again.
My blogging has been absolutely woeful of late and I’m pretty embarrassed about it. But I’ve decided to try something new and blog from my phone. The idea is to make it a bit more immediate and to use the proximity of the camera to its advantage.
So here goes.
A recent FO. For my boy of course. A simple play mat panel, with pockets for cars (and parachutes and soldiers and planes and helicopters) on the back and ties so it can be all wrapped up and carried about. Like all mothers of four year old boys I am always trying to find ways to keep him busy and happy, particularly when we are out and about.
I’ve had an idea for a kid’s present going around in my head and finally had the chance to give it a go. The two children of the lovely Donna have their birthdays close together and rather than giving more toys, I took the opportunity to try to get my idea together.
A while ago I bought some hamburger shaped bento boxes from an import store that was closing down. I can’t quite remember how many I bought but there are a few. They were cheap but lovely quality.
So I decided I needed to make a bag for the bento boxes to sit in which looked a bit like a paper bag from a well known fast food outlet. I made them out of a linen/ cotton blend fabric and just made it up as I went along.
I ended up with this:
Gryff was the guinea pig but he loves his as much as the two lovely kids did today. The bento boxes are not ideal for lunches as they don’t fit a sandwich easily but they are great for snacks and the kids like pulling them apart to see what is in the different layers.
The whole process was fun. It was easy and quick and I think the kids really like them. Watch out if your child is likely to get a present from me any time soon….
I know I’ve said it before but I really am back this time. Back in the saddle, back in a routine (well soon…) and you know, back.
I have heaps of things to show you but one of the reasons I feel so… back… is that my little boy starts Kindergarten next week. 5 days a fortnight and an extra day with my Mum (thanks Mum). So to get him ready, I have been labelling uniforms (with the fabric I had printed by Spoonflower, with his name on it) and making a set of sheets (with sheet fabric and the fabric I had printed by Spoonflower). I let him choose the print fabric and between rockets and robots, he chose the robots.
In that little pack is a fitted sheet, a top sheet (with robot and name fabric) and a little pillow to which I added some raw edge applique robots.
It took me ages but was heaps of fun. He loves them.
Sorry about the crap photos, they were taken with my phone. I can’t find the lead for our camera!
More soon – I promise.
As you know, I’ve been a bit Thomas Track obsessed lately. Not only do we now own the critical mass of track (and bridges, stations, engines, tenders, boom gates, houses, trees and signals) to make the most awesome of tracks, my boy now has a broken collar bone which means that a lot of our regular daytime activities are out of bounds. We play trains and lego a lot.
The thing I have found is that if you build the track as it is shown on the box, life is sweet but if you want to free form it the way we do;
you can end up with problems. Sometimes you end up with female to female track, sometimes male to male and the connectors that come with the Trackmaster sets to connect it to the Wooden Railway sets are just rubbish. For some strange reason, connectors are pretty hard to come by and they go for ridiculous money on the auction sites.
So I thought I could make some myself. I went to Bunnings to buy some wood. The very helpful staff could not help but laugh out loud – even calling over colleagues to share the joke. I continued. Cutting the wood and using my Dremel, I fashioned these.
The ones on the left are the original pieces, mine are those on the right.
They’re not perfect, in fact they are pretty rough and ugly – but they work beautifully. I think I will need a few more but now I have given it a go and moved out of my comfort zone, it will be a piece of cake.
Last Friday, Donna and I went to the Quilt and Craft Show and had a lovely afternoon catching up with friends, trends and a bit of shopping.
One of the great patterns we bought from Pauline at Funky Friends Factory was this cute little turtle.
I just had to make him straight away. I used calico, linen and vintage sheet. Not the usual fabrics for Pauline’s toys but I think it works really well.
I changed the eyes a bit to make him look a bit like a well known movie star turtle (dude!) and made a few mistakes (don’t look at the back flippers too closely). Still he was finished really quickly after my boy broke his collar bone on Sunday and I needed something to cheer him up. I think it worked
I have some ideas for a few more of this little guy.
It would have been great if I really had done a blog a day in Blogtoberfest, but life overtaking fantasy meant it was not to be.
Part of my problem in the last day or so is just nothing to blog about. But today, my mind was turned to a sticky question.
A (non sewing) friend of mine was in our downstairs play space the other day. Our play space is both the little boy’s and mine. We mix lego and Thomas trains with my sewing machine, fabric / yarn stash, notions, everything. She found a pin on the floor. She was HORRIFIED. How could I have been so careless? How dangerous was that? So … how dangerous was that? Really? I do admit to using Birch long dressmaking pins but my boy has never picked up a pin and stuffed it in his eye or his heart or punctured his ear drum. Most times he has found a pin and handed it back to me saying ‘mummys…’ ‘sharp..’ ‘more milk please…’ ‘ play thomas trains’ In that order.
Am I being a really bad mother? How many children have hurt themselves seriously with dressmaking pins?
I would appreciate your feedback, good or bad.
… used to be one of my favourite bands.
Now it is the only descriptor for our lives in Brisvegas at the moment. Thanks to the shocking weather, and continuing on from this post, here is what we have been doing ALL weekend.
I have learned over this weekend that it is better to build a very open track to allow for all the crawling that has to go on to get all the little engines around the circuit. Don’t try to build them too close together and don’t for goodness sake try too many clever bridges – they only fall down. Who’d have thought I had to reach 46 years old before I understood these important life lessons. Thanks Gryff for teaching me the very finer points of building ‘track’. Can’t wait for the next installment. I think we might be moving on to station location next.
But nobody noticed did they?
I’ve had a few fabulous op shop finds lately that I thought I should share. Apart from an additional number of vintage sheets that I don’t need, some Golden Books that I have no real use for (except to read the fabulous little stories to my boy) and some other knic-knacks that I have no space for, I have found a few really good things.
I think I have already mentioned a collection of feet for my overlocker. They are fantastic and I am just so lucky that they fit my machine. I am getting quite good with the gathering foot and the elastic gathering foot.
I also found this handy dandy little sewing machine – all complete and in perfect working order. It was very useful when I needed to sew up a few stitches on some curtains that I didn’t want to have to take down and try to wrestle around my sewing machine.
But I think today’s find gave me the most pleasure.
Beneath the misleading decrepit box, the set was complete. And there were a couple of extra engines thrown in for good measure.
It was $10. For anybody who knows anything about Thomas, that is just fantastic.
I have collected Thomas track, engines and compatible bits and pieces for the past 18 months or so. Picking up bits as I see them on sale or in op shops and so we now have a pretty good collection. The little boy is just getting to the age where he can really enjoy them. It is very satisfying.
so all you get tonight is a gratuitous family photo. Unfortunately not all together. What you get is a photo that I took of him and then the next photo is one he took of us. He loves that game – we play it a lot and he’s getting very good.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Yarnplanner's Blog 