100 Projects: #3 - Haahoo!! + Tutorial

Chelsea's favourite show is 'In The Night Garden'. She has loved this show since before she was 1. Her best friend in the world is her 'Upsy Daisy' doll - which is a character of the show. She once lost her Upsy doll, what an ordeal. You can read about that story on my other blog here.

Anyways, Chelsea is turning 2 soon. Her actual birthday is at the start of February but because Nick is heading away to the Army for 3 months on Monday, we have brought her birthday forward to this weekend. She won't even know, she'll just be excited about cake and presents.

Since I wanted to make her at least one gift for her birthday, I decided to make her a Haahoo (other characters from the show). As you can see from the pic above, there are 5 of them. I made the first one for her.

Here is how it turned out....

Here is a quick tutorial for anyone out there who has an 'In the night garden' obsessed child like me.

What you will need:

- Fabric. I got mine from spotlight and it's called 'Rainbow Dots' by Sugar and Spice.

- Toy fill/stuffing

- Felt for the eyes and mouth (or you could use fabric)

- Pins and a needle

- Sewing Machine, thread etc - your usual sewing stuff

- This Template (Body, eyes and mouth). I enlarged it, printed it out over 4 pages, taped it together then cut it out.

What I did:

1. Cut out 2 main body pieces using the template, 1 front and 1 back. Then I cut out the eyes and a mouth using felt. I cut out 2 black eyes, 2 white eyes slightly smaller to give black frame and then 2 pupils. If you wanted to, you could just cut out 2 white eyes and 2 pupils and stitch around the white with black thread. Up to you!

2. (Optional) As a personal touch, I wanted to add some embroidery on the back. We call Chelsea "Chel Belle" most of the time so I embroidered that onto matching fabric.

I cut around the words in a heart shape and then stuck it on the 'back' body piece and did an applique stitch around it.

3. I then moved to the 'Front' body piece and attached the eyes and mouth. I did an applique stitch around those as well. I use this stitch because it keeps the edges secured down.

4. With the main body pieces complete, I placed them together (right sides facing) and sewed around the outside. I used a 1/4" seam allowance and made sure I left a gap open to turn and stuff.

5. I then turned in the right way and ironed all the seams flat.

6. Once ironed, I opened the gap and stuffed it full of toy stuffing. Once stuffed, I hand stitched up the opening with invisible thread.

There you have it. One Haahoo. I am sure Chelsea is going to love it. She found a picture I printed for the template and carried it around for the day. Can't wait to see her face when she opens it.

This is my first ever tutorial so if there are some things that don't make sense, please let me know :)

Hope you have all had a lovely day, we went to the beach again which was nice. Thank you for reading!!

Tick and Tick...

Well I have been very busy all afternoon and actually managed to get a few more things ticked off my 'to do' list.

First of all, I got my SIL's birthday present finished. Her birthday was on Tuesday but I knew that I wouldn't see her until Christmas day so I put it off for a few days to get some other sewing done.

So this is what I made her.

A Make-up bag.

I used a Fat Quarter of Nancy Blues (28959) by Windham Fabrics for the main colour and a cream bold cotton for the lining and the bottom trim. I clipped and sewed the corners on the bottom to give it a bit of a box shape on the bottom.

I really like the way it turned out that I'm thinking of making myself one (maybe after Christmas though).

I have also finished another dress. This time it was for Chelsea. Her Christmas day dress.

I used the left over fabric from Sophie's dress to quickly whip this one up. It is a simple shirred dress but I made some armholes and only shirred the top part of the dress. I then sewed on some lilac bias tape around the armholes and up into some shoulder ties and also as a trim on the bottom of the dress.

This is Chelsea saying "lessee" (Let's see) which she says after EVERY photo I take. It has become a lengthy process taking photos of her now as I have to show her on the preview screen what the photo looks like. Kids!! hehehe.

Anyways, it is almost bedtime, hopefully I can finish my list tomorrow so I can relax on Saturday :)

As always, Thank you for reading and have a lovely Friday...

It's the final countdown!!

Not long now til Santa arrives...3 days to be exact. That means I have 3 days to finish a dress and make a top, pants, a clutch and some pillow cases. Should be do-able right?, maybe!!!

Anyways, I have finished my niece's (Sophie, 5) clothes for Christmas. She asked me to make her a dress for Christmas which put a big smile on my dial. (That means she must like the clothes I make).

This is not a great photo because it was late at night when I took it but this is what I started with. The embroidered cotton is a very light cotton and perfect for a summery dress.

I decided to make a pillowcase dress for her. I love how quick they are to make and they look so cute on. I think it will look beautiful on Sophie and hopefully it fits her. (It looked so big making it because I am used to making dresses for Chelsea who is nearly 2).

I wanted to make her something else as well. So I made her a tunic top too. It will look lovely paired with a pair of shorts in the summer and great with some tights and a t-shirt underneath in the winter.

So there is Sophie's Christmas pressies sorted, now on to finishing all the rest of my sewing.

Are you organised for Christmas yet or are you a last minute person like me??

If I don't post again til after Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS and enjoy the festivities :)

Charlie's Party

This is an update on yesterday's post - (Lemon Shirrr-bet).

I didn't have enough time to make some PJ's last night like I have originally wanted so this morning when I woke up, I knew I had just enough time to whip up a skirt instead.

I brought a Fat Quarter pack from the fabric shop ages ago and it was 10 FQ's of 'Spotty Negative' in various colours. I decided to use the purple one and paired it up with some plain white fabric and made a 'Market Skirt' using the tutorial from here. I have made a few Market Skirts and just love how easy they are and how cute they look.

Here is the one I made my niece Charlie to accompany the 'Lemon Shirrr-bet' dress...

She will look adorable in them both.

Charlie's party was great fun. The kids had a lovely time and it was held in a park that has Rock pools beside it. While getting the kids in their swimmers before we left (ready to go straight into the rock pools when we arrived), they decided that TV was way more important than me dressing them and this is how I found the 3 of them...

Cheeky right?? ha ha.

I must say, parties that are held at a park where all the kids can run around and burn off the copious amounts of sugar that they have just eaten, are my favourite parties!!

Playing ball with Uncle Chris.

A lovely Sunday indeed.

Lemon Shirrr-bet.

Hello there,

Remember me?? The slack one!

Well the boys 5th Birthday Party has came and gone and I didn't even have the decency to do a post-party post or even tell you how everything I made turned out. Well, I will do a post on that in the coming days (I will!!) but for now, this is a post on a little dress I made for my niece for her 1st birthday which is Monday.

I have been busy for ages..*ahem* 3 kids lately with lots of things going on and it wasn't until yesterday that I thought to myself..."I better get cracking on making something for Charlie (niece), her birthday party is on Sunday!".

I put my thinking cap on and came up with an idea to try something I haven't tried before....

Shirring.

I bought some elastic thread to do so a long while ago but never got around to experimenting. Yesterday was the day.

First of all, I went through my fabric stash to see what I could find and voilà....found the perfect fabric for the job. I am a sucker for seersucker (ha ha pun intended) and found some on special at Spotlight a few months ago at $2/metre. Can you believe it?? I just love a spotlight sale!! Anyhow, that's the fabric I used.....Yellow Seersucker.  

The dress itself was very easy to make. I wound (by hand) the elastic thread onto the bobbin, threaded up my sewing machine and I was ready to roll. I measured around Chelsea's waist and used her measurements because although my niece is only turning 1 and Chelsea is nearly 2, Chelsea is quite petite and Charlie is quite big for her age. I took that measurement and doubled it. It worked out to be roughly selvage to selvage so I went with that. I then measured from Chelsea's chest down to her knee and got 43cm (17in). I ended up with a big rectangle like this.

Next, I hemmed the top and bottom of the rectangle then drew some lines on the fabric with my magic fabric marker 1/2 an inch apart. I drew 10 lines altogether like this....

Then the best bit...shirring. The shirring was rather fun. I back stitched the start and end of each line and it was cool watching the fabric bunch up after each stitch.

After sewing 10 lines, I was happy that it looked good. I then folded my bunched up fabric (right sides facing) and sewed down the side seam. I also overlocked the side as well to tidy up all the threads.

I then ironed my side seam and also ran the iron with steam over the shirring. It makes all the elastic gather up tightly.

I turned it in the right way, put some straps on it and I had a cute little dress for my niece. Well so I thought.....

I tried it on Chelsea to see if it was a good size and looked OK...which it did! She looked adorable... but then she wouldn't let me take it off her. She was having that dress. She was twirling and posing in it. It was hers. So back to the craft table I went to make another one.

The second one was so quick and easy to make as I was no longer a shirring virgin. I did make a slight change though. For the second one, instead of just hemming the top and bottom, I hemmed the bottom and made an elastic casing on the top. After shirring my lines (dropped it down to 8) I threaded elastic (waist measurement) through the casing, securing at each end and then sewed it together in the side seam. It made the dress look a lot neater. I then added some ties and topped it off with a lovely yo-yo.

This is how the second one turned out.

I still haven't managed to get the first dress off my daughter's back so I thought I would just take a photo of her chilling out on the sofa wearing it...

Doesn't she look cute?

Anyways, I am off to hopefully find enough time before tomorrow to make Charlie some PJ's as well. If I don't manage to get them made, at least I have a lovely dress to give her :)

Thank you for reading and I'll be back soon...