The Perfect Father's Day Present

Back before Father's day, I was trying to find the perfect gift for my geeky husband. I knew I had found the perfect gift when I saw this on thinkgeek.com. I knew I could make one that better fit my husband for a better price.

I took our daughter shopping and she picked out a large, orange towel. I was going to use a beach towel, but we ended up preferring the bath sheets. After a bit of messing, I figured out how to flip words backwards for printing onto the sewable heat-n-bond adhesive. I cut the paper into 8.5x11 inch pages and printed it out on the paper side of the adhesive.

I ironed the paper onto the wrong side of my letter fabric, being careful to follow the instructions. Iron-on adhesive can be picky, so really do follow the heat and time instructions. I've learned this the hard way.

I cut out the letters, peeled off the paper backing and worked on getting the positioning right. I worked on the lower word first because I thought that would be best. Once I had that right, I ironed it down and moved on to the upper word.

All ironed down and ready to sew!

I used black thread for the letters, but orange thread for underneath so that it didn't show up too badly on the back of the towel. If you're doing this, it's important to have your tension as close to correct as possible so that the upper black thread doesn't show through on the back side. :)

I used a zig-zag stitch that was pretty close to the buttonhole settings. I liked it nice and close. Here's how the letters turned out...

The back of the towel.

And the finished front!

My husband loved it. I hope that I can come up with something as perfect for next year! But maybe some of you can use this idea for your husbands or dads for the coming year. :)

~Regina

Summer Fun

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Between keeping up with our 2 1/2 year old, completing some much-needed sewing projects, and having my parents come to visit, I'm pretty exhausted. :) But on to the goodies...

Every afternoon, I've been trying to do some "big" activity with our daughter. Three times a week, it's swimming, but the other days it's something creative outside. Stuff like sidewalk paint...

 To make sidewalk paint: combine equal parts cornstarch and water, mix well, add food coloring or liquid watercolors...

 Regular painting on big sheets of paper...

 And liquid water colors...

 Which can be turned into fun things like butterfly garlands!

I've also had some fun sewing projects, like my husband's Father's day present: a "Don't Panic" beach towel! I learned how to machine appliqué with this project--time consuming, but not difficult.

 A new nightgown for our daughter. I had a pattern for this style, but the sizing was too small, so I used a stretchy fabric and used the pattern simply as a shape guide.

 I think it turned out wonderfully and can't wait to make another one for her! :)

 And curtains for our living room. I've had this fabric for over a year (lived in 3 different houses since buying it) and finally used it!

 The curtains turned out nice, but the slightly stretchy crinkle cotton was a pain and a half to work with. BUT I did learn how to use my rolled hemmer foot while sewing them, which I'm thrilled about.

And, finally quite a few cooking or baking projects, like homemade strawberry jam using apples and lemons for pectin rather than store-bought pectin.

 Mmmmm! I made this jam a month ago and we've already eaten almost 3 out of the 4 8oz jars.

And a totally random zucchini coffee cake using bisquick. I put 3 cups of grated zucchini into the bisquick recipe for an 8x8 pan. Next time I'll only do 2 cups of zucchini.

 I even put zucchini into the topping, too, which made it really wet...

 So I swirled it into the batter.

 I also had to bake it 15-20 minutes longer than called for (totally expected). So it bake for a total of 40-45 minutes. Oh, and yes, this is a 7x11 pan and I wouldn't use a pan any smaller for the zucchini-added cake.

 Yummy! The very bottom of the cake has that slightly pudding-y feel to it, which is nice, but I think that means I put in a bit too much zucchini.

So, there's a sampling of what I've been up to over the past month. Busy, busy around here!

~Regina

Alphabet Bean Bags!

My daughter is obsessed with the alphabet, so for her birthday (which was actually 4 months ago) I decided to make her an alphabet toy that she can really play with. She also didn't have many toys that she could throw inside, so I thought bean bags were the perfect solution!

It was a pretty simple project, though somewhat time-consuming. Making myself a template to cut along helped a lot. Mine was 4 inches square, but I think that I might make them slightly larger if I make a similar project again.

I re-used t-shirts that my husband and I don't wear any more for whatever reason. I did make sure they were in good condition.

Black fabric for the consonants, red fabric for the vowels. I cut a few extra of each color just in case I messed up later.

I took a while to find a good font for the letters and, unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the one I used--it wasn't one of the common ones, though. I found the right font size (they printed 2.5 inches tall, I believe), set them to print outlines only (save ink!), cut my freezer paper to 8.5x11 inches, and printed the letters out on the NON-SHINY side of the paper. (Be careful not to print on the shiny side or you'll have a yucky mess. This also will only work in inkjet printers--laser printers will melt the freezer paper.) Then I cut them out, being careful to safe all the centers.

I ironed them on (medium to high heat, no steam).

Yay, ready to paint!

And started painting. What I found with the jersey material (and vivid colors of the fabric) was that the colored fabric paint (I use Plaid folkart) would soak into the fabric and not show up very well. I ended up doing a coat or two of white fabric paint first, before putting the color down.

What I should have done, I realized after completing the project, was to put down a layer of the intended color to soak into the fabric and fill in gaps under the edge of the freezer paper and THEN put down the white on top of that first layer. This would get rid of the white outline and edges that I ended up with on my finished letters. Oh well, live and learn!

All the colors down!

They look so pretty! I let them sit and air dry for 24-48 hours, then ironed them (per the instructions on the paint bottle) to set the paint.

Then it's time to sew them together! Make sure that the upper and lower case letters don't get flipped upside down in relation to each other. I used about a 1/4 inch seam, leaving a gap for turning and filling, and clipped all the corners.

Turning them was pretty easy, but filling wasn't. If I had been using rice, then filling would have been a breeze, but I was using kidney beans and a home-made funnel (from paper--no pictures, sorry) and it took a bit of work to get the bags filled. Be careful not to overfill the bags or you'll have a hard time stitching the gap closed. I did not topstitch around the entire edge of the bags because I felt like that would be a huge pain.

All finished! No logical order to the bags in this picture, just colors. If you click on the picture, you should be able to see the bags in more detail (including the white edges that some of the letters ended up with).

My daughter loves them and I'm pleased with how they turned out. I may make a few more later on so that she has extra letters to spell her name and other common words.

~Regina

What I'm up to...

I don't have a real blog post for this week, so I thought I'd just show off a few completed projects.

Spit-up cloths, a space theme...

Another set of spit-up cloths with Tigger, frogs, cars, trains, and robots...

A cute bag for a friend...

And I've begun a second bottle of homemade vanilla. Mmmm!

Maybe a real blog post next week!

~Regina

Cloth Training Pants!

Just to warn you, this is one looooong tutorial.  I thought about breaking it up into two but it wasn't quite that long...

My almost two-year-old daughter decided that she no longer liked diapers and started refusing to wear them.  So we decided to gently introduce her to the idea of potty training.  To aid with that, I decided that she needed some training pants so that she could work on the concept of keeping her "panties" dry.  After much googling, I finally found this free pattern that I really liked.  It comes from the Nappy Network--DIY side of the site.  Here is the specific Wee Weka Knickers pattern in PDF format.  You can also get to the pattern by clicking on the Nappy Network link, scrolling down to the bottom of their page and finding their link that says "Wee Weka Pull-on training Knickers."

So, go print off the pattern, measure your kiddo to see how he or she compares to the pattern and modify the pattern accordingly.  For my daughter, I made four modifications:
1. I folded over the waist to make the elastic casing rather than sewing on a separate band--my daughter preferred a lower waist.
2. I cut the leg holes a little wider--she liked them to be looser.
3. I did not add cuffs around the leg holes--same reason as the above.
4. I added a small absorbent liner in the crotch area--my preference.

It took making 3 different panties to discover what my daughter liked. I highly recommend making one and modifying the pattern, making another one, modifying it, etc. until you find the right fit for your kiddo.  Here is my final pattern.  You can click on any of these pictures to see them larger.

I used fleece for the panties, but you can use any cloth that has a slight stretch.  Lay the dotted side of the pattern on the fold of your fabric and cut it out.  Make sure that your fabric's stretch runs across the pattern.  I tried to stretch (haha!) the fabric I got by cutting a few panties out with the stretch running the other way and my daughter refuses to wear those.  They just don't fit the same and seem to be too snug.  So don't be like me.

As you can see from the cutting board's measurements, each panty takes about a 15" by 11" piece of fabric.  It will take more if you are doing a separate waist band and leg cuffs.  To figure out the shape and size of the liner, I laid out my cut panty on a blank sheet of paper and traced the leg holes.  Then I rounded out the shape and cut it down a little so that it fit nicely inside the crotch area.

This is what I came up with: a little pad-shaped thing that is about 4" by 7".

I cut out a whole bunch of these from two old sweatshirts of my husband. I used two of these liners per diaper, but I could easily have done three for more absorbency.  I also made them fairly small, you could easily make them larger.

The liners are the first thing to get sewn in. Pin them...

And stitch them in!  I used my longest stitch and went around them twice.

I don't know if it really helps them be more secure or anything like that, but I really like how it looks from the outside of the panties.

Then I pinned up the sides and stitched them at 3/8ths inch seam allowance (rather than the 1/2 inch called for in the pattern). I wanted them to be a little looser than the original pattern's.

Also note that I used a straight stitch. Since I'm using fleece, it won't unravel, so I didn't need to zig-zag the edges.  If you are using a fabric that will unravel, make sure to zig-zag or serge the edges. Or you can do what I did with these to make them more pretty: a sort of half felled seam. 

This is a felled seam.  Basically, you stitch up the seam as normal, then cut one seam allowance shorter than the other, fold the longer one around the shorter and turn under the raw edge so that all raw edges are hidden. Then you stitch it all up.

What I did was stitch up my side seams as I just showed you and trimmed the back panel's seam allowance to be significantly shorter. Then I folded the front panel's seam allowance back over it, but I didn't fold the raw edge under.  I stitched it down just like that.  One raw edge is still showing and the other is hidden. I did this because I wanted the side seams to be a little more finished and flat so that they wouldn't bother my daughter's sensitive skin.  She's very sensitive to the way clothing rubs, so this flattened the potentially annoying seam so that she doesn't even notice it.  It also adds a nice finished touch to the panties.  Make sense?  Probably not, it was hard to catch with photos. Feel free to comment with questions!

Once I had the side seams all sewn up, I started on the waist band.  I simply folded the fabric over on itself about 1/2 inch and stitched it. I didn't do the separate waist band because I wanted the panties to be lower-cut.  But after using these for a while, I think that next time I make them, I will either add more height to the pattern when I cut them out or I will add the separate waist band like the original pattern tells us to do. These are cut just a bit too low. Or maybe my daughter grew since I made them, you never know!

I had the front of the waist band dip down a bit more to go under my daughter's little belly. I definitely like how this worked out.  Once they were all pinned, I stitched them up at 3/8ths inch.  Make sure to leave an unstitched hole in the waist band. This is where you'll thread your elastic!

So...your panties are basically all stitched up. This is what we have left to work with: panties, elastic and buttons.

Let's start with the buttons. I had 6 panties that my daughter needed to be able to tell front from back on. So I laid out my many colors of buttons and started choosing which ones to use.

I stitched them on with a zig-zag stitch, trimmed the thread, and dabbed fabric glue onto the threads to protect them from tiny hands that like to pull on threads.  Why did I do so many colors? Because I'm a glutton for punishment and love changing the thread out on my machine...just kidding. I just wanted lots of colors--nevermind that it was rather annoying to switch the colors out for the various buttons...

Then cut out your elastic.  I cut these at 14 inches for my daughter's 20-21 inch waist--they're a bit tight, so next time I'll cut them a bit looser.

Thread them through the waist band using a safety pin...

And stitch them!  I used a zig-zag stitch and went back and forth over them several times. I took the needle you see there out before I really started stitching. It was there to keep the overlap in place until I could get it under my presser foot.

My lovely elastic stitching job....

Stitch up the hole in the waist band and you're done!

I keep mine stacked in a convenient spot in our living room--right next to the cloth diapers/spit-up cloths that are used to clean up accidents.

And here's my little one (well, part of her) modeling her panties.  So cute!

There you go: how I modified a pattern to make my own cloth training pants.  Our potty training kind of isn't going anywhere, but hopefully yours will move along much better than ours!  My little girl seems to think her panties are cloth diapers and prefers them over our typical disposables.  I comfort myself with the fact that we're saving money on the disposables.... ;)

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions! The comments are moderated so I will see the questions no matter how long ago I posted this.

~Regina