captain underpants

 well, my oh so grownup 16 month old girl is just starting to use the potty a little bit.....(well, that's not entirely true; she also used it between 3 and 8 months  old when we practiced EC, but that all stopped when she started walking.)

Anyway, we have kept a potty around and encouraged her to try it out every so often, but she hasn't been too interested until last week.

needless to say, it only took a couple successful pees for this mama to get very excited and dig out of our "too big box" a couple pairs of training pants for her to wear instead of diapers. but low and behold, these size 2 underwear, handed down from a 3 year old who only just outgrew them, do not quite fit our giant girl. she's big!

I figured it wouldnt be too hard to try sewing some for her, and they turned out so cute!

although, really, i think everything looks cute on this little one. and pink hearts are just inherently cute. maybe that is why i keep adding them to everything i make these days.....i cant seem to help myself.


we probably have a good ways to go before she is fully toilet trained, (and actually, this time of year she is naked most of the time anyway) but i am so pleased with these little underpants, and the little girl who is wearing them!  :)

stripey pants revisited

I am really going to try to start posting more regularly here! Here are some pictures of Zeffie's cute little stripey pants I threw together (so fast!) with my new (someone else's old) serger. It has been really exciting to use this machine. I love it so much. I had never quite figured out how to set up my sewing machine to happily work with knit fabrics, and the serger is just incredible with them.

 

 I was super lucky that my mom happened to see an ad for a older serger in good working condition for just $50, and then amazingly found another ad (that very same day) on craigslist for a FREE serger, sewing machine, and boxes of thread and other sewing notions. The free stuff all came from the son of an elderly woman cleaning up her stuff that she was no longer able to use. We felt like we won the sewing lottery that day.

 These pants were using a bit more of this fun pirate-y fabric I was given a while back. I'm really into stripes on the baby these days I guess. I actually made Zef a pair with this fabric way back when she was just 6 months old, as part of her outfit for a wedding we attended. I'll have to find a picture to put up here...

I'm back....and i've been sewing!!

it has been a long while since i posted anything here. several months, it seems. there has been lots of distraction and even a little upheaval in my life this spring. keeping up with my wild little rock star munchkin fills my days pretty full. but recently i have really been in a wonderful sort of sewing frenzy so i felt it would be good to come back to this space and share what i am doing.

 

i think i have finally figured out how to make a good little pair of baby pants. toddler pants now, i guess. i've made several wonky and a couple cute attempts at simple, patternless pants for my daughter this past year. after lots of trial and error, i now feel fairly confident with basic, elastic waistband pants. 

my learning style with sewing, as with many things, is to just plow into it without taking the time to fully read the instructions. this doesnt always work so well for me, but eventually i figure it out in my own roundabout way.

luckily there are tons of great, free tutorials on the internet these days. and making pants for baby, it turns out, is really not so hard. here are a few helpful resources if you want to give this a try!

http://www.rookiemoms.com/make-some-easy-kids-pants/

http://www.dana-made-it.com/2008/07/tutorial-knee-pad-pants.html 

http://www.prudentbaby.com/2010/06/pants.html 

anyway, these pants that Lil Z is wearing in these pictures are one of my latest creations, and i must say that i am quite pleased with how they turned out!

i wonder if i am conditioning her to become some kind of too-cool-for-school hippie raver type, by dressing her in black pinstipes with little mushrooms on the cuff? actually we have been wearing a lot of pink these days, so this is probably a good balance.

oooh, and i even have a picture to share of my favorite new pixie hooded sweater refashion ...in pink!

This was an adult sized cardigan that i cut up and resewed to fit Zeffie. I was inspired by this tutorial and added a big pointy hood for extra fun and cuteness. i made this with the help of my new Serger (!) but more on that next time. Adios!

too busy to blog

I am happy to report that i have been craftin' away, although i haven't done so well blogging about it lately. I kind of feel like there is lots for me to catch up on here, with all the crafting I have been doing! Throughout the busyness of the holidays I found peace by practicing needle felting every spare moment i had... it is so fun, and once you get the hang of it you can get such quick results, which is great for someone like me who doesn't always have the patience to follow instructions. I even got my dear friend and her boyfriend hooked when they visited us for New Years! We all made little owlies and went to bed at midnight. :) The photo is of me and Zef on a hike we did with these friends during their visit. Zeffie is wearing a fleece dinosaur hood/hat that i made her a while back. Pics of recent creations will be coming soon!

I also jumped out on a new limb in this bloggyland by signing up for the Creative Every Day Challenge that i stumbled upon and was inspired by. This idea fits so perfectly with how i am hoping to live this year (and every year), taking some time every day to do something creative! so far i am feeling great about what i have been able to do. Our family had a sweet little vacation for the first 10 days of january, closing our Cafe for the first time in over a year to recharge our batteries....it was much needed, and a perfect opportunity for me to get back into the swing of crafting and creating.

Now the Cafe is reopened, so it is a little more challenging to carve the time out of the day, but so far so good. I even did some painting the other night for a first time in quite a while, and i'm sort of happy with the results, although it is very different that how i used to paint! I'm noticing a bit of a theme emerging since my daughter was born....i'm making things with lots of pink and light blue together... and sparkles...interesting that i am so drawn to these classic baby colors now, that i never would have gone for before. I'll have to share some pictures soon of these funny creations of mine, and the needle felted creatures too.

Alrightly. so my plan is to post something here at least once a week, and hopefully even more then that, so see you again here soon!

i am so happy to say that i actually did some sewing tonight! {actually, a few nights ago now, its just taken me this long to find time to finish my post!} i guess that list i wrote helped to motivate me, because tonight i was just determined to make something. it also helped that zeffie went to sleep and stayed asleep when i put her down.

she stayed asleep long enough for me to make this:

and this:

the bag is not quite finished. its just a simple tote made out of old jeans from the thrift store, and i want to decorate it a little more. The shirt has a bit more exciting history to it.

we have a little friend, ayla, almost three years old and very sweet with zeffie. they are good buddies, and whenever ayla comes over she likes to look through zeffie's clothes and try them on. of course, zeffie being only 9 months old, most of her clothes do not fit ayla so well.

the last time ayla was at our house, she found these pink butterfly pants that zeffie had recently outgrown, in my give-away pile. she just loved them, so i decided to try to re-purpose them into something she could wear! i'm pretty excited about how they turned out, and can't wait to give them to ayla, cause i think she's love them too. so much fun to turn old clothes into something new!

a little list, to get me going

well. my heart and mind are so eager, so yearning to create so many beautiful and simple things...

alas, i have nothing to show you today. i have not managed to do much of anything craft or sewing related for the last few days. fair enough, i had a good little crafty spurt about a week ago, and have been very busy with other responsibilities the past couple days. but i am itching to jump back in again, and tonight i want to write a little list to get me going, while all these great ideas are fresh in my head. (i've spent the past couple hours stuck here on the couch with a sleeping babe at my breast, surfing some very inspiring blogs).

1. waldorf style doll.  i found a fantastic tutorial here here and have a few sweet little children in mind who i would love to make a special doll for.)

2. freezer paper stencils.  oh the possibilities! i've never done it yet, but it sounds so simple and fun. here's a good tutorial .

3. upcycled sweater clothes. for zeffie, or course. i have a small pile going for this purpose. {i actually have a sweater i made for her a couple months ago out of an old (lovely pink cashmere) sweater of mine that is too small already and i am considering taking it apart to upcycle it yet again! (up-upcycle?)}

4. simple tote bags. with pretty fabric. maybe some patchwork or applique embellishments. you can never have too many cloth bags, and these are an easy, satisfying project for someone like me!

5. natural pencil/crayon caddy . i just love this. maybe my dad will let me use his bandsaw.

6. pants for me. because i need some. and i have the fabric and i know what to do.


okay, i think i had better stop now. this is the kind of list that could just keep going and going and i should be asleep in bed right now. i can always add more later. and maybe, hopefully, my next post here will include one of these things, that i hope to attempt to do in the next week!

the evolution of rainbow snake

                                                meet rainbow snake:

(also known as snake-y.)

i made him a few months ago.

as you can see, he was a great idea, but poorly crafted. his forked snake-tongue was cheap doller store felt, and zeffie pulled it off in no time. i never finished sewing up his tail (just tied a little knot instead), and his poor skinny neck can barely hold his head up.



because i am a lazy sewer without the patience to follow patterns, these things happen sometimes, and i am okay with that. i knew that rainbow snake would only be the first of many, and that much like humans, each generation of rainbow snake-ys would shed the skin of their forefathers shortcomings, and evolve towards the ultimate snake-y creature.




so, here is a glimpse at rainbow snake number two. now, isn't he a handsome fellow? button eyes aren't everything, but they sure help.







i better show you the two of them together to you can really see the New And Improved-ness of this second snake.

bigger. fatter. longer. stronger. one of the coolest things about snake-y number two is that he is an Actual For Real Genuine Rattlesnake. because there is a little jingle bell inside his bum. i think that snakes dont really have bums, but he does, and there is a bell inside it.

it will be interesting to see what improvements will be made for the next snake-y creature, yet to be born. maybe we will see a little coiling action. who knows?

but however improved these new rainbow snakes may be, they all suffer the same fate at the hands of a certain little zeffiebear.