Month: July 2013

 

My niece and nephew just turned 8 and 9, and since I know they love Harry Potter (and I’ve finally broken down and started reading the books myself), I decided to make all their gifts related to the books.

First, I created a Hogwarts-themed design using my Silhouette machine to make them t-shirts. The golden snitch is a shape purchased from the Silhouette online store. I used contact paper to make the stencils, and I’ll admit, it was a bit tricky to get the skinny little pieces in the “Hogwarts” lettering to cut cleanly and stick in place. I wanted the design to look distressed, so I brushed the paint on lightly, and left some bare spots.

The rest of their gifts were all about Quidditch. I ended up purchasing a dodge ball for the Quaffle and making the bludgers and snitch, using a pattern in Abby Glassenberg’s new book, Stuffed Animals: from Concept to Construction. The bludgers are made out of black fleece, and filled partly with poly-pellets to give them a bit of heft.

 

And I made a sack to put them in:

The Quidditch hoops/goals were a bit tricky. I was inspired by the awesome Harry Potter party ideas at Razzle Dazzle Your Kids. I bought the hoops at the dollar store, and my husband picked up the PVC pipe. (I think he ended up with 10-foot lengths for just a few dollars each). The main problem was that the hoops were narrower than the opening in the PVC pipe joint, so they wobbled. He suggested going out to buy some heavy duty epoxy, but we didn’t have much time, so we ended up squirting hot glue in the joint. It seemed to work OK.

 

And finally, the brooms! The inspiration came from a message board/forum HERE. The broom handle is actually an inexpensive ($9) replacement handle for an axe. For the “thunderbolt” version, I used some kind of long grass I bought at Michael’s, but it was really tricky to work with. I basically created the shape I wanted out of a styrofoam ball and some cardboard and tape, glued that to the end of the handle and then tried to wrap the grass around it. But it took more grass than I thought, and the extra package I bought had shorter lengths that kept popping out of place. Frustrating.

For the “Nimbus 2000,” I used raffia instead. Which was both cheaper and easier to handle, though the finished product is not as sleek.

I used my Silhouette machine to cut the lettering out of vinyl (I only had silver, so it doesn’t show up that great. For the flames, I colored over the vinyl with a Sharpie). 

Here’s my adorable niece!

I realize I’m several years behind in jumping on the pennant/bunting bandwagon … but after years of seeing pretty quilts, pillows and other projects, I’ve finally made a few myself. First, I made a sunglasses case for my best friend’s birthday:

Once again, I used a modified version of the Snappy Bag tutorial at Just Another Hang Up. And the bunting/pennant inspiration came from the Bunting Kindle Case tutorial on the same site.

Here’s the “snappy” part in action:

My other pennant project was a picnic blanket. Some of our friends just moved to a new house across the street from a park, so I made them a picnic blanket to take along as they enjoy the park. While there are several tutorials online (including this one), I mostly just made this up as I went along.

This was another great “use it or lose it” project since it is made entirely from scraps and fabric I had on hand. I started by just cutting a bunch of triangles, then I used a a piece of yarn to layout where I wanted each “swoop” to be. I then drew the line on the fabric using a disappearing ink marker. Since I seem to have ruined/bent nearly all of my straight pins making my living room slipcovers, I ended up using strips of Stitch Witchery to hold each triangle in place. That actually worked great, and made it easy to sew. I just sewed a straight stitch along the tops of the triangles first, and then went around and sewed close to the edge of each pennant. (I did this in one long zig-zag, rather than stop and start for each one). The result is a frayed-edge applique, which I think is fine for a picnic blanket.

Instead of batting, I just used fleece for the backing. And I kept the quilting to a minimum, just quilting the swooping lines along the top of the pennants and then a few more criss-crossing the quilt. I was in a rush, so I did a machine binding, which came out pretty messy, but again… it’s a picnic blanket.