One of son’s friends had a birthday party at a bakery last weekend. The kids had a great time making bread and decorating cupcakes. In keeping with the baking theme, I made the birthday girl a little apron and some felt baked goods.

The apron is from the free tutorial by Meg McElwee at Sew Liberated. I added the ruffle along the bottom. I love the apple fabric. I’ve been saving it thinking I’d make myself a summer-y purse, but now that it’s almost winter I figured it could be put to better use.

The cupcake pattern is from UmeCrafts. The donut and cookies are my own design.

I am so excited to have a few Christmas crafts/gifts done so early thanks to Betz White’s Felt & Stitch Holiday online workshop.  My friend Annmarie signed up with me, and we had a great time getting together each week to work on our projects. Here’s a few pictures of my favorite projects.  The Santa napkin holders were the most time-consuming, but I really want to make another set.

The pinecone is made with a thrifted sweater and the others are made with wool-blend felt. This was my first real experience using wool-blend felt instead of acrylic craft felt, and I have to say, it was so much nicer to work with.

Here’s my latest craft project for the AP: a scalloped fabric bunting. I know there are lots of tutorials out there already, but I tried to streamline the process a bit by using circles cut in half, and by making the largest scallops I could using 1/4-yard cuts of fabric.

I actually made a longer version of the bunting to decorate for our apple-picking party last month, then tweaked it a bit to turn it into Thanksgiving decor.  But I’m already thinking about Christmas, birthdays and other celebrations. The links below will take you to a written tutorial as well as an audio slideshow with step-by-step instructions.

Thanksgiving bunting AP article

Thanksgiving bunting AP slideshow

Update: Here’s my little astronaut, heading out for some tricks and treats. Sadly, I am at home with the flu and won’t even get to shrug off any praise his costume attracts.  “Oh, that? Just a little duct tape!” I had imagined myself saying. Sigh. Hopefully I will be better by tomorrow when we hit the streets again. Click HERE for details of how I made this costume.

(UPDATE: Click HERE to see the final result in action)

I was all set to sew my son a fairly easy white jumpsuit to make his astronaut Halloween costume when I came up with what seemed like a great idea: turning a thrift-store snowsuit into a spacesuit. I figured a snowsuit would be puffier, more like a real spacesuit, and would keep him warm (Halloween in New Hampshire can be brutal… I still remember how upset I was at having to wear a TURTLENECK under my Wonder Woman costume when I was 5).

This would’ve been an easy and cheap plan, had I skipped ahead to the end result: DUCT TAPE. But no, I had to try to paint the fabric first. Yes, there is such a product as fabric spray paint, but it does not come in white. The only thing I could find was stencil paint. Four cans later, I had spent considerably more than the $7.95 I spent on the coat and snow pants and they still weren’t solid white. And they were kind of sticky. So I threw them in the wash. Big mistake. That caused the paint to stick to itself. Enter Plan B: DUCT TAPE and lots of it. (About 2 and a half rolls). Which actually worked great.

I stuffed the coat and pants with towels to make it easier to wrap the tape around them.

The helmet is made from a balloon and papier mache, I used the directions from Family Fun magazine. After it dried and I cut out the opening, I covered it with duct tape and taped an embroidery hoop to the bottom to make a collar. I also sewed and glued a beanie-style fleece hat to the inside in hopes that it would keep the helmet from wobbling around.

The only sewing involved was attaching the patches (purchased at our local planetarium) and a piece of felt I sewed around the collar so the rough tape wouldn’t be rubbing against his neck). I just wish I had thought of this sooner and could’ve shopped around for a bigger coat and pants. All I could find was a size 4, which is a bit snug.

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This little book is my entry into the Scrap Busters contest at Sew, Mama, Sew! Today’s the contest deadline, but I’m trying not to look at it as waiting until the last minute but rather focusing on, “I have finished a Christmas gift in October!” The recipient will be my cousin’s baby, who probably will mostly be interested in chewing on it for a while, but I figure he’ll like the bright colors even if he’s not actually “learning” them at this age.

Instructions:

1) Use a computer and printer to print the names of the colors and the book’s title onto iron-on transfer paper. I used red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black and white. I used Century Gothic as my font, at about 50 pt, but use whatever you find pleasing. Just make sure the letters will fit in a 3″ square.  Make sure you choose “PRINT AS MIRROR IMAGE” or whatever setting your printer has to print in reverse, so that when you iron the the words onto the fabric they won’t be backwards.

2) Cut ten 3.5″ inch squares out of white fabric

3) Following directions on iron-on transfer paper, transfer the names of the colors to the squares. Transfer the book title to a small strip of white fabric measuring about 1″ by 3″

4) For each page, cut three 3.5″ squares out of scrap fabric, using different patterns and textures to add variety. So you will have three different red squares, three orange squares, etc.

5) Cut eight more 3.5″ inch squares out of different colors for the front and back covers. I used red, yellow, green and blue for the front cover and orange, pink, brown and black for the back cover.

6) Each page of the book will consist of four squares: one white square with the name of the color and three squares in that color. To end up with a book in which the words always appear in the top outer corners of the pages, lay out your pieces so that the red, yellow, blue, pink and black words are in the upper lefthand corner of your 4-square arrangement. For the facing pages, lay out your pieces so the orange, green, brown and white words are in the upper righthand corners.

7) Sew the top two squares of each page together, and the bottom two squares of each page together.  I like to lay out the four squares, then flip the pieces on the right on top of the pieces on the left, with right sides together, and then sew a 1/4″ inch seam along the right-hand edge. If you do all your flipping the same way consistently, you can stack all the pieces, carry them over to your sewing machine, and chain piece them by just taking the top two pieces, sewing the seam, grabbing the next two and doing the same thing without cutting the thread in between until you’re done.

8 ) If you’ve chain pieced your squares, cut in between the sewn pieces. You should now have 24 pieces consisting of two squares sewn together. (20 will make up the book pages, 4 are the covers)

9) Press each two-square piece, alternating the direction in which you press the seams so it will be easier to sew the top and bottom of each page together. For example, if you press the seam to the right, away from the word “red” on that strip,  press the seam to the left on the other red strip.

10) Sew the strips together in pairs to create four-square pages. (orange with orange, yellow with yellow, etc). Sew the title onto the front cover. I used a zig zag stitch around the edges.

11) If you’ve maintained a perfect seam allowance, you can skip this step. But I had some tension trouble with my machine back on step 7, had to re-sew all the pieces and ended up with some pretty wonky blocks. Ideally, you should have 12 6.5″ squares (including the covers). I ended up trimming mine to 6 inches. Make sure you trim evenly.  I find it’s easiest to lay the block on my cutting mat, with the vertical center seam lined up with one of the grid lines. Then I measure three inches from that center line on each side and trim off the excess. Turn the block 90 degrees and do the same thing.

12) Lay out your blocks in order. You’ll be sewing the following blocks together: front cover/red, orange/yellow, green/blue, purple/pink, brown/black, white/back cover. Place the two blocks together, right sides together and sew together on three sides. Leave the side opposite the lettering squares open. This will become the spine of the book.

13) Turn the squares right-side-out and press. Stack them in the correct order, with the cover on the top, and sew along the left-hand edge, close to to the raw edges.

14) Cut a 6″ by 2.75″ strip of fabric for the binding. I used orange but use whatever you like. Fold over 1/4 inch at either short end and press, then fold the strip in half lengthwise, wrong sides together, and press. You’ll end up with a folded strip of binding with the top and bottom edges tucked in.

15) Lay the binding along the left-hand edge of the book, raw edges to raw edges.

16) Sew 1/4 inch away from the raw edges. Fold the binding around to the back of the book and sew by hand.

17) If you’re like me, fret about how the pages aren’t even and then convince yourself that a 10-month-old baby won’t care.

Here’s the centerpiece I came up with for our apple-picking party and harvest dinner earlier this month: a needle-felted pumpkin. I took small pieces of wool roving, maybe 1/4 inch wide and a few inches long,  jabbed the ends into the pumpkin and then wrappedthe roving into a spiral to make circles, needle felting as I went along to keep it in place. The balls surrounding the pumpkin are wet felted. The larger ones are felted around styrofoam balls.

I was crunched for time so just did the one pumpkin, but I think this could be a cute idea for a whole bunch of pumpkins… you could spell out BOO! or other words, or use black roving to make spooky silhouettes.