DIY Magnetic Color/Shapes Game

For a few months now my two year old daughter is really interested in colors, shapes, sizes and matching things. And Stickers, those stinkin' fun things that little people use to decorate your furniture when you're not looking. So one afternoon I pulled out my ever growing collection of free fridge magnets to make this:

A magnetic color/shape/size game box.

This is a great craft that your toddler can help with and the game will provide hours of colorful creative fun, too. Here is what you need:

-fridge magnets, the flat "pizza" or "call your electrician" advertising ones (I don't know about you but we get them on our mailbox or door all the time. I save them, for crafts like this!) If you don't have anything like this laying around there are magnet sheets available in craft stores.

-stickers in different colors, shapes and sizes 

or alternative:

-white paper, glue and markers

-scissors

-a flat plain tin box (from chocolate or cookies, if you don't have a plain colored one you can spray paint a decorated christmas cookie tin or go buy yourself some fancy chocolate in a tin!)

or alternative:

- a fridge door (it's ok to leave it attached to you fridge)

you see those two-year-old hands trying to steal the tin box to check for leftover chocolate?

After you gathered all your supplies and ate all the chocolate... here is what you do:
Step 1. Pull off the advert from the magnet. Depending on the quality you'll either have several layers of white paper underneath or the whole thing will just come off and leave you with a plain black magnet. Either is fine if you use stickers (Go to step 3). If you want to draw your shapes with marker it is useful to leave the white paper on. Saves you step two.
Step 2. If the advert pulled off completely or uneven glue some white paper  to the magnet. (regular craft glue should do the job)
Step 3. Create your shapes by either sticking your shape stickers on the white side of the magnet or draw and color the shapes you like. (Both can be done by your happy crafty toddler)
Step 4. Cut out the shapes with sharp scissors.
Step 5. Play.

you can sort by color

or shape

or shape and size

or build a car... or cities, or faces, or flowers....

It's a great activity to take with you on long car rides, because it's magnetic the pieces won't fall down all the time. As said above you can use it on the fridge or any other magnetic board or metal door around the house too, but the tin box offers you storage and take away play board in one. Plus it can easily be split up for two kids, one can use the top, one the bottom of the box as play board. So yeah to triple-greatness!

The game can easily be adjusted or extended with whatever you come up with... I am thinking to add some face features like magnetic goggly eyes and some wider variety of shapes to make up more faces (like mustaches or glasses).

Tea Party

I had some fun stitching going on Saturday morning... and then we had some tea parties over here.

With six kinds of tea... lemon, peppermint, orange, camomile, strawberry & green tea

and a jar full of delicious cookies

 

chocolate chip, Oreo's and sugar cookies. They are DE-LICIOUS! want the recipe? all you need is some felt, a bit of embroidery thread, some seed beads for the sugar pearls (if you make this for little kids you can just embroider this part with french knots) and some time! cut out cookie shapes, hand stitch the chocolate chips and sugar decor in place, machine stitch two layers of felt together and you're done. For the Oreo's I used one black layer on each side and two white felt layers for the filling.

Week 29: Maternity Tankini (& some sewing tips)

There it is, my first homemade swimsuit. Or a maternity tankini, to be exact.



I love how it turned out, and believe me, it was much easier than one would think. And when I knew I would have a summer pregnancy and started looking around for maternity swimsuits, I could only find really ugly or really expensive ones. And since the price for this pretty spandex fabric was 5 bucks for the meter... there was no way I would pay 100 bucks for a pretty swimsuit I would only wear 3 months max. There is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to sewing a swimsuit, and you don't even have to buy a pattern to get this fabulous look. Since it was the first time for me to make a swimsuit, I didn't think to take pictures of the whole process, so I can't offer you a step-by-step tutorial, but I'll share some stuff I learned along the way:

Cutting/Pattern:
- I used the pants of a regular swimsuit as a pattern for the new one and I used a regular stretchy tank top that still fit me at 28 weeks for the top (I only had bikinis - so no actual old swimsuit to use as a pattern for the maternity one) To make the top maternity and actually fit around the belly, I simply added a tad bit extra to the width and about 10 cm/4 inches extra length to the bottom of the front piece (see pictures below) I also made the straps wider because I like it better.
-I needed only half a meter of 120cm wide fabric for this swimsuit, but you may need more.I am pretty small as you can see.

longer front piece and straps

back piece, normal length

Sewing - set up:
-before actually sewing my swimsuit I cut a small pair of swim pants for my 2 year old daughter to do a little test sewing to get the feel for spandex fabric. I tried different stitches (straight, narrow zigzag) to find the best settings for my sewing machine. I used the narrow zigzag stitch with relative short stitches (2 or 2,5 I don't remember) and a 75 ball needle. I also used the build in walking foot on my Pfaff, but this is not a requirement. You can totally do it without a walking foot. The test sewing was a good thing to do because it really gave me the feel for the fabric and I learned that pinning is a good thing to do because two layers of spandex are pretty slick. If you don't have a two year old who could use a pair of swim pants, you can just use a scrap and sew a few lines with different stitches to see which will work best.

Sewing -:
-sew front and back piece of the pants together, hem all edges. You can add lining to the pants if you want to but I didn't it is just fine.
-for the top, I first sewed the straps to the front piece
-next I hemmed the bottom of the back and front piece as well as the neckline including the straps. You could do this later also.
-then I sewed a basting stitch (straight stitch, length 6) from below the bust to the bottom hem on both sides of the front piece in order to gather up the extra length around the belly area.
-next I pinned the front piece right sides together with the back piece - first pinning the upper bust area straight in place as well as the bottom hems. Than I evenly spread the gathers around the belly area and pinned them in place and sewed everything together. After everything was sewn in place I removed the basting stitches (be careful with a seam ripper on spandex) I just pulled it out by hand.
-if you want a basic halter neck  top you are done now, if you want actual straps put on the top and get somebody to pin the straps in place on the back piece. Than sew in place. I intended to have regular straps, but than I liked the halter neck version, so I ended up leaving the straps attached only to the front piece.

-if you like to create a ruffled bust piece (like I did) you'll need to cut an extra strip of fabric to make the cord and a rectangle about 3 x 10cm/1,5 x 4 inches. (You might need a longer rectangle if you have larger boobs and your bust piece is longer.) Fold your top to find the middle of your front piece and attach the rectangle to it with 3 straight lines - one in the middle that lines up with the center of the top and one on each long side, leave top and bottom of the rectangle open. You should have two small tunnels on the inside of your top. To create the cord just stretch a strip of spandex fabric until it rolls up. Insert the cord into the tunnels so both ends of the cord are coming out on the top (one end from each tunnel). As you can see below, I didn't sew all the way down on the middle seam, so the cord is hidden under the rectangle piece.  I added plastic beads to the ends of the cord and tied a knot just for a pretty detail. Now when you pull on both ends of the cord your bust piece should ruffle up, you can adjust this according to your liking. Pretty simple thing to do to create a cool detail on any swimsuit.

the tunnel with cord

Oh, one more thing. I didn't iron at all in this project, since spandex can only be ironed on very low temperature it didn't really have a visible effect. I just pinned a lot more than usual to keep things in place while sewing hems and stuff.

Overall feeling: I loved sewing with spandex fabric, even though it seemed tricky at first. It doesn't fray, so you could easily leave raw edges if you like that (I might actually do that with a second pair of pants for this swimsuit). And it is forgiving and lovely stretchy. And just so much cheaper than buying swimsuits. Now off to spend the summer at the beach!

Week 27 & 28: Tiered Skirt and Simple Maternity Top

Technically I am now 29 weeks, but heck, I've been sewing a lot clothes lately (mainly because I owned hardly anything that fit me anymore...) But between sewing, wearing and washing not much photographing took place. So here two late projects... the tiered skirt in a lovely coral colored lightweight super soft fabric that is a dream to wear in the summer but not so much a dream to sew with. It's woven pretty loosely and frays like hell... if you need to use a seam ripper you might as well just cut of the seam incl. fabric with scissors. Anyways I like the skirt!

For the top I harvested some fabric from leftover XL T-shirts. I used a top that fit me for orientation but made the front piece about 10cm/4 inches longer than the back so I could ruffle it a bit for a better fit around the belly. It has still room to grow which I will need...

No Sew Kids Craft Apron

This is technically not really an apron more a general cover-up, but it's a 5 minute T-shirt recycling project that will keep your toddler's clothes clean from glitter, glue and paint! It could be the perfect (and way cheapest!) solution for a playgroup, Preschool, Sunday school or any other toddler (group) doing crafts. I know there are really cute crafts apron pattern out there and also tons of cute fabric, but really how much time and money does one invest in something that will only get dirty and spilled on, especially if you have to make 20 or more?

All you need per apron:
-one old men's T-shirt in size M or L (XL might so huge that you'll actually have to sew it smaller)
-two 15 cm/6" pieces of 1/4" elastic

You'll also need a pair of scissors, 2 safety pins and a few minutes of your time.

First get your toddler and hold the T-shirt up on him/her to check if the size is good. The T-shirt's width from sleeve to sleeve is about the same as your toddler's wrist to wrist measurement. Most likely a M or L will fit any toddler, XL will probably be to big and you'd have to sew the sleeve a bit shorter but I won't go into that here.

Turn the T-shirt inside out. Find where the seam meets the hem on the sleeve. We'll use the folded hem as casing for the elastic. To do this you have to cut 2 small holes through the inner layer of fabric (the folded bit on the hem), one hole on each side of the seams, but make sure not to cut the seams open. (see pictures below for clarity).

Pin one end of the elastic to the sleeve using a safety pin. Attach the second safety pin to the other end of the elastic and insert into the casing, all the way through. The sleeve will start gathering up a lot, that's why we pinned the one end down so it won't slip through.

Now you should have both ends of the elastic next to each other peaking out of the holes like this:

Tie the two ends of the elastic together with a double or triple knot (or sew the two ends together, but hey, this is a no sew project!); and remove the safety pins. That's how the finished sleeve looks like:

 Repeat on second sleeve. Turn the shirt right side out and put on your toddler to see if it fits. The sleeves should be snug around the wrist protecting any other shirt underneath from getting all dirty. The shirt will be pretty long on the toddler, protecting his/her pants, knee-length is the best, protecting most of the clothes but not getting in the way of the little feet. Most likely you can just leave the shirt as is, but if it's way to long cut off a bit from the bottom. And you're done!

Now put the shirt on your toddler and start the crafty fun...

5 Minute Shirt

  This is probably the simplest and quickest shirt I've ever sewn. I needed something new to wear  in the last minute... So that's what I came up with:

cut 2 identical rectangles of fabric

sizing: 

height - measure from shoulders to hips (or longer if you wish) 

width - i took a different boring regular wide T-shirt and measured from sleeve to sleeve

my rectangles were each 50cm x 65cm (about 20 in x 26 in)

Cut out a rounding on both sides of each rectangle and on top according to the sketch. (You should now have two identical pieces of fabric looking like the darker shade of blue in the sketch) :

Pin the two fabric pieces right sides together and sew along the rounded side edges and the two straight edges on top (the purple dotted lines on the sketch).

Believe it or not,

You've got a new shirt!

Well, you got a shirt with raw edges... you can always finish off the edges with a regular hem or whatever else you like... but than it might take you 10 minutes to finish the shirt :-) I only finished off the edges on the sleeves in my version in order to hide the selvedge of the fabric that was showing on one side. It looked odd to have one sleeve with a wider stripe of the light blue color...

Some notes:
- If you use a striped fabric like I did line up the stripes when cutting the fabric and before sewing the fabric together line the stripes up again and pin in place.

- Add a matching fabric flower for a fresh look!

Shanah Tovah!

Today we celebrate the Jewish New Year - Rosh HaShana.

So I made this little simple felt garland with my daughter. It includes the Hebrew version for a Happy New Year and the seasonal fruits -apples, pomegranates, pears and some leaves for variety. I simply cut out the fruits and letters from felt and sew them together in line...