Pretty's New Birthday Toy

My little Pretty turned 2 a couple weeks ago! I can't believe it, but then don't we moms say that about every birthday our kids have?

On the day of their birthday, Jake and I like to have a large bag of balloons blown up with a new toy in the middle of it all for the kids (like Hero's birthday pig). For Pretty this year, it was this new set up.

Last summer, I found a listing for these three wooden toys for $5. Total score! I'll share the make overs of the other two later, but today it's about the ironing board.

It was in rough shape. It looked like it had never been painted, just primed, and not even all over... And the previous owner had colored on the top with pencils.

So, I sanded it down,

and spray painted the whole thing white with a combo primer/paint spray.

It sat in our play room like that for the past six months. Then, one day while I was ironing a ton of fabric for curtains, Hero told me we needed an iron for the toy ironing board. I considered making one, but found this awesome homemade wooden iron on Etsy for a good price! (She's got a ton of cool wooden toys, you should check it out.)

I decided last minute to make this simple cover for the board out of flannel I had hanging around because the thought of the wood rubbing on the wood made me worry about it scratching.

Man, she is adorable! But she was so busy jumping with the balloons that this fuzzy picture was all I could get of her with the iron before the hopped off again!

Happy Birthday, Pretty!

Why I feel a little bit selfish...

See this book? It's rockin' awesome. I found Closet Monsters by John Murphy by chance when looking through the craft books at the library. I borrowed it and just loved looking through it. I made plans to make something from it, so I renewed it the allowed 3 times before taking it back without making anything.

And then I did that 2 more times. This is my fourth time checking out this book and I finally made something! This book is great, because besides showing you how to make the creations specific to the ones he made, he shows you how to make each element individually so you can mix and match to make your own monsters! I really just need to buy this book for myself.

For my nephew's 2nd birthday, I decided to make this one:

I had the perfect old pair of PJ pants to do it with. I've owned these for 6 years, and I got them free at a swap meet. They are the most comfortable pants I ever owned. I wore them all through both pregnancies and they were a staple for me after I brought each baby home. They have stains from where I got paint on them, they were loved. They finally wore holes between the legs that could not be fixed. That was a sad day.

So I cut them apart and started making the "closet monster." Since the instructions where for cutting up a sweatshirt, I just estimated and dove in.

And here is the monster I gave my nephew.

I'm sure there are some questions going on in your head, so let me explain. I got about halfway through making the closet monster from my old pants and realized I couldn't give them up! I'm so selfish! But I just couldn't! Those pants were special... So I stole an old sweatshirt from my MIL and whipped this guy up in about 2 1/2 hours. I finished him by hand stitching the hole closed on the drive to the party.

And that's why these pictures are taken in the car.

He turned out super cute, and fit with his new owner perfectly.

My little brother said he looks creepy, like he's going to come to life and night and get you. My little brother is 21 years old... and dead wrong. That face is cute!

So what happened to the pants? Meet Chills. I finished him up the next day and I love him.

I lined up the stripes off center.

And he is huge! He makes me so happy, it's a bit pathetic!

His face is bigger than Hero's.

Hero agreed to take pictures with him, but neither of my kids really care about him. But I have plans for his role in our family.

When I was growing up, my family had a large teddy bear that was kept up in Mom's closet. If you had a nightmare, you could ask to sleep with Big Bear. Big Bear scared away the bad dreams. I think Chills will be perfect in this job. He can scare away the nightmares and the other monsters. He is a Closet Monster, after all.

The selfish feeling is passing... I'm in love with Chills, don't tell my husband!

Talina's gift.

I promise that I am working on the details of each of the decorations from the Library baby shower, but in the meantime, here's some pictures of the Straight-Jacket Swaddler and 8 burp cloths I made for Talina to go with the books I got her.

I bought 1 1/4 yard of the green, and 1 yard of pink for the back of the burp cloths.

I messed around with the fancy stitch options on my machine and did a different one for each burp cloth's top stitching.

This vine with leaves is by far my favorite.

Bright Robots for a Baby

A good friend of mine just had her 3rd baby, a sweet little boy. I wanted to make her something useful, but cute. Because this is baby #3 and boy #2, I knew it didn't have to be super baby-ish. I went to the store and when I found these robots, I had to get them! 

I used the yard of flannel to make one Straight-Jacket Swaddler, and three burp cloths. It would have been two, but I found some orange flannel floating around in my stash!

The swaddler sews up so fast, it really is an easy gift to make.

And it's so useful. My friend's husband loves it, and without knowing I called this already, dubbed it the straight jacket! Great minds think alike, right?!

The burp cloths are simple, I copied my sister who made me 20, (yes 20!), when I had Pretty. Just cut the rectangles 20 in x 8 in, sew right sides together, flip, and top stitch around the outside. She also sews a line down the center, going the short way, so the fabric doesn't shift with washes.

 I love how bright it all is!! Who says baby things need to be muted or pastel?

Congrats, Heather, on your adorable baby!!

Birthday Card Quilt

Wow, it's been a good while since I posted anything. I have excuses, but the most relevant one is that I'm busy enjoying the summer with my kids. But I did want to post about this project.

At the beginning of the month I mentioned that I was machine quilting my first quilt. Well, it was this big "Birthday Card Quilt" for my mom. 

As you can see, my mom just turned 50. Our family always has a pot luck breakfast to celebrate the 4th of July. This year, we turned it into a surprise birthday party for Mom! 

Everyone ate, played and of course, signed the quilt.

It was my mom who taught me how to sew and to piece quilt. I knew she would appreciate the work it took to make. It was a fun project for me because I was able to take ideas from blogs I love and sketch out a one-of-a-kind blanket just for Mom.

Don't you love the crazy scribbles of sketching? Ignore the math...

After I figured out just how I wanted to do it, I made the back first. I kind of based it off of this beautiful quilt over at Noodlehead. (I actually took a lot of advice from this post by Anna, about her quilt.)

And the front was based off of this adorable baby quilt by V and Co.

I used picnik.com to print out the letters. There were large enough, and enough of them, that I needed two pages. The first one, I printed normal and had to trace on the back of them to get the backwards on my Heat 'n' Bond. But then I remembered that picnik has a feature where you can reverse the images. So I did that for the second page. It just makes it less likely to mess up if they are already backward for you.

Anyway, I traced the letters backward on the Heat 'n' Bond, then ironed them onto the wrong side of my fabric.

 Then I cut them out, peeled the back, pinned and then ironed them into place.

Because Heat 'n' Bond will eventually dissolve, I stitched the letters down with the blanket stitch function on my machine.

I used the sandwich tutorial from Oh Fransson! to make this:

So many safety pins! I used regular safety pins, instead of "quilting pins".

I then used this tutorial for straight-line machine quilting. I used masking tape, and spaced them 2 inches apart, because it was easy with my 2-inch-wide ruler.

I sewed along the edge like I was told...

When it came to the words, I taped right across them, and then just back stitched at the beginning and end, just skipping over them.

For the binding I used this tutorial by Crazy Mom Quilts. The tutorial was easy to follow, and I chose to hand quilt it for a nice clean look.

Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you!