August 21, 2010

My Hobbies

I have had the best time smocking and crafting this summer!  My dear friend, Lanier, taught me how to smock earlier this summer and I've made 3 outfits so far!  The first, a cute little blue gingham bubble with ducks on it for Chisolm:
Not the best picture of Chisolm, but you can see the cute outfit on him!
Close up of the ducks
Freshly finished outfit
















I also finished a loooooooong overdue gift for mother.  She is known as Lucky to her grandchildren, so I cross stitched some pillowcases with Lucky on them:

My next project was Louisa's birthday dress.  She wanted a fire truck birthday party, so at the beginning of the summer I went on a search for fire truck clothing for girls.  It doesn't exist!  Nothing, not one piece of even remotely girl-ish clothing with anything close to a firetruck.  So, I decided that I was going to make her a dress. I chose yellow rosebud fabric because her invitations were yellow with red wording and picture on them.  Well, this project got down to the wire!  I was actually hemming the dress as people were arriving!  But, I finished it (almost, have to add more flowers around the top, but basically...) and it was too cute!  Here are some pictures:
Cutie pie in her fire hat and dress
Not a great pic of Louisa, but a pretty good close up of the dress.
An action shot of Louisa running to pop a bubble!










I actually decided to make a firetruck outfit for Chisolm as well.  I just finished his.  It is a yellow gingham bubble with red piping on which I smocked a firetruck, and 2 hydrants and it turned out soo cute!  I have to say, smocking is waaaay easier than I thought it would be.  The smocking plate I had called for 3 fire trucks, but there wasn't room for all 3, so I decided to put hydrants on instead.  Well, I searched and searched for a plate with hydrants and couldn't find one, so I just made it up!  It took slightly longer than it might have otherwise, but was pretty easy.  If smocking is something you've thought about taking up--do it! 
What a little ham!
I've made burp cloths as baby gifts for a while now, I just recently added on baby wipes cases (thanks to the adorable wipes case Meg gave me when Louisa was born.  I've been looking at that for 3 years thinking, "I could do that".  Well, I finally just bit the bullet and made one.  A quick learning curve (I messed up the first one, but could have used it if I had to.  It is now Louisa's for her babydolls), it is super easy.  All you need is fabric, ribbon, a plastic travel wipes case (the Huggies travel case seems to work best), and a glue gun.  Here are pictures of the first one I did and the 3rd one.  I shipped the 2nd one before I remembered to take a picture, whoops!

You can see where I singed the ribbon by my finger on this one.













And here are some other things I've made over this year.  I've had so much fun making things, I just wish I had my very own craft room (Alex has his workshop, why not?!)
A Carolina quilt/blanket for Billy
fuzzy warm blankets for Reeves and Monnie
Monogrammed pillowcases for Monnie
Quilt/blanket for Liam
burp cloths
And more burp cloths

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