Happy Birthday, Hero!

My sweet little boy is 4 years old. His birthday was at the beginning of the month, and we celebrated for about a week with all the different parties. I didn't go all out for his because I went as a leader to my church's girls camp that same week and was gone for his actual birthday. But we did have cake:

And I made cupcakes. Hero wanted the strawberry mix, but I didn't want the cake to be pink, so I added most of my liquid red food dye and it turned out an awesome red. Add some sprinkles, and we were set.

And he got his first 2-wheeler bike.

I made this bicycle bucket following the tutorial at Noodlehead.

I made a few minor changes, mainly because I made it at midnight the night before he got it and I didn't have some of the supplies. First, I made my own double sided fusible stiff interfacing using stiff sewable interfacing and Heat 'n' Bond. Second, I applied snaps for the closure instead of Velcro. Both changes worked great.

I can't believe he's 4 already! I am a lucky Momma.

Oh My!

I was linked to on Babble!

It was a good 2 weeks ago, and I had no idea. I guess I should be paying more attention... Yay!

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!

Quilt Anxiety

I've got the front and back pieced together.

I've made my quilt sandwich (using this awesome tutorial that I was directed to by Noodlehead).

And now it's just sitting there. Waiting.

I'm nervous about this first machine quilting experience. It's a smaller quilt, and I'm doing a simple straight line design. I eventually want to do free motion quilting, but I need to work up to it.

Deep breath and GO! Wish me luck!!

Poor Injured Monkey

 I work with the Young Women at my church and we are getting ready for the summer girls camp next week! I know I've mentioned it before, but I used to work as a first aid lab instructor at the U of U. I was asked to be in charge of the first aid night. Rather than teach it myself, I reached out to my old boss and friend to come do it, because she teaches groups like this all the time and rocks at it!

So she came and taught us last night. It's always fun to see who gets it fast, who is squeamish at the gory pictures, and who is fascinated by them.

The girls learned some good skills and had fun practicing.

 
Learning to use a roller bandage:

As a thank you gift, I made up this monkey for her to take home to her adorable baby boy. I owed her one anyway, but to make it fun, I bandaged the little guy up.

The perfect sling and swath for injured arms and shoulders.

Sad injured monkey tail!

It was fun to relive this part of my life again with such a good friend! I've already seen pictures of her baby playing with the monkey (who has gotten over his injuries and had the wrappings removed). 

Parade! Yay?

I took my kids to our city celebration parade this morning. It's the first parade for both of my kids. I don't remember going to many parades growing up... I thought it would be fun for them!

I left in pretty good time, but I forgot to grab the shade for Pretty's part of the double stroller. I also forgot my camera, so these are from my phone. 

I parked in a neighborhood, and walked to try and meet up with a friend of mine. I never did get to her, because it was too far to walk to where she was from where I parked. So we stopped on the side of the parade route and sat alone.

And about 5 minutes into the parade, Hero asked to go home. . . then made this face for the rest of the time.

I had snacks and water for them, and Hero just played with his action figures he had brought. This is the only reason we lasted as long as we did. Pretty seemed to like it a bit more. She loves to wave at people, so it was awesome. Plus, she was a fan of the little flags that were given out. Hero rejected his, and Pretty was good with two!

In the end, we had to leave before the parade was over because Hero needed a bathroom and Pretty was tired of being confined. Luckily, we found the porta-potties in time, and Pretty fell asleep. This was the best part of the whole experience.

Today's adventure leads me to believe that the reason I don't remember going to parades when I was young is because my parents knew already what I discovered today: parades are boring. Next year, I'll hope to sleep in instead!

Starting to Sell!

I'm finally doing it! After a lot of research and some gentle encouragement from my sweet husband (and other family and friends), I'm starting to sell the sock animals I make. Besides the ones you've seen, I'm working on making a few other animals, like Giraffes, Frogs, and maybe a Bunny! If you have any requests, I'll see what I can do!

Let me be honest with you all. When I first started this blog, I had grand dreams of becoming an awesome clothing pattern maker. I would make up my own kid's clothes patterns that would be so amazing, everyone would buy them and make me rich!

And then I realized that I'm not all that great at making up new clothes designs... and I have no idea how to make great clothing patterns... so that's going to take me a few years to figure out, if I ever do figure it out.

But while sewing and creating for this blog, I've found a different talent I wasn't aware I had. And that's making toys!! I love making stuffed animals for my kids! However, there is a massive pile of stuffed animals in my house already. So rather than stop doing something that makes me happy, I'm going to start selling them so that they can find love in another child's arms. So please, check out my shop with the new sock animals for sale. They are all one of a kind, handmade by me. And they are all soft and lovable.

 My Pretty sure seems to like them all. She has hugged every single one.