Curtains for Liam's Room

I finished these just before the baby came but haven't had a chance to post them until now.

Just plain inexpensive muslin embellished with pleats and fabric covered buttons.

Because Liam and Teagan will be sharing a room, I needed something that would work for both a boy and a girl. The pleats add a little femininity for Teagan but the tailored look keeps it masculine enough for Liam. In my mind anyway.

I rarely come up with stuff completely on my own. I copy and combine. Here are the curtains I found online at Sears (I think) that served as inspiration for this project:

Paw Mittens

Halloween is a BIG deal in our home. I start thinking about costumes at the beginning of each summer hoping to be ahead of the game and finish them in August. Do I ever? No, but I still enjoy thinking about them. I guess I just didn't get my fill of costumes as a kid.

This year there are four of us, and Liam is getting old enough to pick his own costumes so this may end up being our last themed Halloween. :(

These days Liam is WAY into pretending. I answer to the name of "Penny" more than I answer to "Momma," and I'm constantly reminded by a certain three-year-old, "No, not Liam...Bolt." So Disney's Bolt was the obvious choice for this year.

As Liam also reminds me, Bolt has paws, not hands. (It's amazing the chores that can't be done with Bolt paws, by the way.) I used this pattern for Liam's paws:

http://afghansforafghans.org/mittens.html

Then, I sewed on the "paw prints" made of craft felt by hand. Just a sort of Lima bean and some circles.

I Finished Something!

(Tutorial can be found here.
Patterns for the appliques are below.)

Yay! I accomplished something other than just showering today. Not that I'm saying showering isn't a HUGE accomplishment for me most days, but it was nice to have something else to add to the list today.

1. Change a million diapers
2. Transform robots again and again
3. Get the mail (True, the mailbox is next to the front door, but it gives me such joy to retrieve it.)
4. Blog hop
5. Rush Liam to the potty frantically
6. Do yet another load of laundry (Where does it all come from? Mutant replication process?)
   
7. *Shower* (Sigh.)
   
8. Finish a project AND blog about it!

I started these bags on a whim just before Teagan was born. I finished Liam's just in time to send it off with him to Nanna's and rush to the hospital.

Did I mention he likes Transformers? Oh and the color red. All our red crayons are about an inch shorter than the other crayons. Do you think they'll develop a complex?

Making four was a simple as making one thanks to this fabulous tutorial (seriously the BEST tutorial I've ever used), so here are the other three for a friend's children:

(Outside Pocket)

(Inside pocket)

I pretty much followed the tutorial word for word, but added a couple of extra lines of stitches on the inside pocket to accommodate pencils. I also made the straps adjustable.

I used freezer paper stencils for the plane and transformer ones and the branch on the owl one. I used fusible web to applique the owl and guitar ones and then stitched around the edges using the buttonhole stitch on my machine. Here are the patterns I made for the owl and guitar ones:

(Click on the thumbnail pictures below to open up the pattern files. You will need Adobe Reader to see and print it. It's free, and you can download it here. )

The pupils and leaves on the owl one are buttons. The butterflies are folded ribbon.

The pegs on the guitar are buttons and the strings just straight stitching.