Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from my family to yours!



May we all remember the reason we celebrate Christmas.
“God has given a son to us.” Isaiah 9:6, NCV

Flowers of Fabric

Today my son and I worked on his gift to my Mom, his MaMa. We used the tutorial found here for fabric flowers.

I let my son pick out the fabric from my scrap box. I pinned the flower outlines to the fabric, and he traced the outlines. I also let him iron the fabric - VERY closely supervised, of course. I did the machine sewing, and my son picked out the buttons. When it was time for the final assembly, he was in charge of the hot glue gun - again VERY closely supervised. He also poured the beans into the jar (which was a Pace specialty salsa jar until just recently).



I think these flowers turned out wonderful, and my son is so very proud of his work! I know my Mom is going to love them.

Reduce...Reuse...Recurtain?

I think it is really great how a job that could be boring or dull can suddenly become fun when children are involved. So it was last week when I decided to organize my fabric stash. The kids had a lot of fun going through each piece of fabric, sorting it by color and imagining things we could make out of it. My son was super excited when we came across this fabric:



He immediately declared that he wanted me to make curtains for his room out of it. Well, more accurately, he hugged the fabric close while dancing around singing a song about how wonderful the fabric was. It was after the song and dance that he let me know he wanted curtains made from it.

I couldn't argue with the need for curtains in his room. You see, last month I finally took down the curtains we put up before he was born. I had not anticipated the emotion that taking down curtains could bring forth, but it really was an emotional experience. I suppose it was because it brought back so many memories of when I was pregnant for the first time. Memories of how I looked through books and the internet until I came up with an idea for curtains I loved. Memories of how my parents, my best friend and my husband worked so hard to make my son's room as cute as could be. Here is a picture of the curtains as they looked shortly after we hung them over five years ago:



It was a laundry day theme - the little birdies holding a clothes line where clothes were hanging. It worked well at the time, but for a five year old? Not so much. So, last month down they came, and down came some Mommy tears too.

I was happy to make curtains for my son out of the whale fabric, but I was concerned by the amount of the fabric. He has two windows in his room, and I knew there would be no way to make curtains using the whale fabric alone.

Enter the reduce, reuse, recycle theme (from Bob the Builder, you know?). I decided to use the blue fabric from the "baby" curtains. I still wouldn't be able to make full length curtains, but after measuring everything I knew I could make shorter tab top curtains for both windows.

I started working on the curtains earlier this week, and it took me several days to finish them. It's not that they were hard to make or should have taken a long time. It's just that when you have a 5 year old, an almost 3 year old and a 6 month old time just gets away during the day and doesn't leave a lot of time for sewing. I did get the curtains finished last night, and my son is thrilled with them. As I always say, he is my biggest fan! Here are some pictures of the finished curtains:





Oh, and yes that snowflake has been hanging in my son's room since we made it last year. What can I say? He loves snow!

Bitty Baby's New Nightgown

This morning Bitty Baby got a new Christmas nightgown that matches the one I made for my oldest daughter.



I reduced the pattern on my printer by 60% hoping it would work out. I found that it was still too big, though. My son said "well, she can just grow into it". Now I know they do make some stuffed animals that grow, but poor Bitty Baby isn't going to get any bigger. I made a few adjustments, and now the fit is better - not great, but better. My daugher is happy with it, and that is what really matters, right?

Christmas Nightgown

Today I was able to finish a Christmas nightgown for my oldest daughter using some more of the fabric I bought last year. I have enough fabric left over that I think I will attempt to make a matching nightgown for her favorite baby doll. I don't want to tell her about that plan, though, in case it doesn't turn out. Hopefully it will be a nice surprise for her.

The nightgown is too big. I used Simplicity 9296 for this nightgown. I used the same pattern for a project last Fall, and that's how I knew it was going to be too big. Thankfully my daughter has grown enough in a year that it is wearable. I do not have talent in the area of pattern alteration, so I went with what I had. It is wearable, and she loves it, and hopefully it will fit her next year too.



While I was taking her picture, she dropped down and said a quick prayer. Maybe because my son and I told her that she would look like an angel when she wore her new nightgown she was feeling especially angelic. She prayed "Da dou for Nanny and Pa and MaMa and P-Paw. Amen", and then she was up again ready for me to take more pictures.

Christmas Pajama Top

Yesterday the kids and I were in the basement looking through some Christmas fabric that I bought last year. My son found some fabric he really liked, and asked me to make pajamas out of it for him. I only had enough of the fabric to make a pajama top, but that was o.k. with him. I almost didn't have enough fabric to make the top which is why the yoke is made out of a solid red fabric.

Today I was able to get the top cut out and finished, and he loves it!


He loves it so much, in fact, that he was inspired to grab his guitar and sing a song about it:

A Few Projects

I just logged into Photobucket to upload a picture, and saw pictures of my son's birthday cakes that I forgot to post. My son turned five at the beginning of the month, and he wanted a pirate cake and a treasure chest cake. I did a google search, found some examples to follow, and my husband and I managed to create these two cakes for him:





On a different topic, yesterday, the kids made a tree as a way to reinforce what God made on day 3 of creation. We went outside to gather fallen leaves, and then I let them paint a tree trunk and glue their leaves onto the top. I think it came out really cute, and we chose to hang it in the kitchen so everyone can enjoy it:



Have you visited Sew Mama Sew lately? I hadn't until the other day, and boy oh boy do I have a list of projects that I want to work on! They are having a scrap buster contest, and there are so many fun projects that have been posted. I have a lot of fabric scraps, so some of these projects will be just perfect! Two, in particular, I want to work on soon are the coiled basket and the alphabet magnets. I think both of these will make great Christmas gifts for some people on my list, and the best part is I already have all the materials I need so I won't need to spend any money. We are going to have to be very creative with Christmas gifts this year as 6 months of unemployment have left us with no budget for gifts right now. I am so excited about the possibility of making some cute gifts with materials I have on hand!