Super Heros Two

I am a bad grandma.  I forgot one of my grandson's birthdays.  He is a super hero lover, too, so when I made the set of super hero toys for Joey, I cut out two sets of each figure so I could make a set for Jackson, too.  He is coming to visit from Penn. tonight, so I just finished his figures yesterday.  Here is his set.

Though they look very much the same, there are a few differences. This Spiderman is definitely better formed than the other and Batman's cape is smaller, but still looks nice. The other two are very similar to the first two figures.

I am really worried about my sewing machine.  The tension is all messed up and I cannot get it straightened out.  I am going to need to get it fixed.  I now have three sewing machines that do not work. One will only sew with a very tight stitch, one is jammed and will not move at all, and now my heavy duty machine has a messed up tension.  I was able to use my daughter's machine which I have at my house to finish these toys.  I will not be able to sew much until I get my other machines fixed.  Her machine is a very cheap model and is not good for doing a lot of sewing like I do.

Birthday Cakes and a Banner

After two nights of staying up until the wee hours of the morning, I have finally finished the things for the first birthday party which is today.  I finished the cakes last night, along with a banner for Joey's Minecraft theme.  I couldn't find one anywhere, so I had to get creative with the computer and toy packaging.  Here are the results of last night's work.

This is Lexi's Barbie cake. I bought the Barbie slide and pool toy set. I cut the shape of the pool out of the cake and put the pool into the hole and put the cut piece back inside the pool.  I cut out a little place in the pool cake and sat the Barbie doll with the lifesaver tube into the cutout.  Then I used blue icing to look like the water.  I used green frosting for the top of the cake to look like grass around the pool and I used pink frosting for the sides because Lexi really loves pink.  I used the candy cutout letters for the Happy Birthday Lexi.  The ladder and the slide clip onto the ends of the pool.  The set came with three little dogs and a doggie pool.  I just put them into the frosting and I did not put water in the doggie pool. I really love the way it came out and I'm sure Lexi is going to love it.

Joey's MINECRAFT cake is iced with two different colors of brown and two of green.  It is supposed to look like the cube that came with his Steve toy that goes along with the Minecraft theme.  Everything in Minecraft is square, the characters, the backgrounds, and even most of the buildings.  I came up with the idea of using sugar cubes to write the word.  It is supposed to be written as one word, but I couldn't fit it onto the cake that way, so I had to write it with two words.  I used the Steve figure, the pick axe, and the green and brown cube that came as a toy set. I wrote the Happy Birthday Joey in red frosting because red is Joey's favorite color.

As I have said before, it is impossible to get decorations to go along with Joey's theme, so I had to get really creative. I used a white plastic table cloth cut to the size of Lexi's Barbie banner.  I bought the Happy Birthday banner and taped it on. I went on the computer and printed three Minecraft scenes which I laminated and taped on.  Inside of the box that the Steve toy came in, there was the nice tree scene that I laminated and taped in the center bottom. The little shapes up in the left top corner are also from the inside of the toy box and look like the two colored brown and green cube and like the frosting on the cake. Not on this picture, I also found a couple more things from the inside of the box.  There was a square face that looked like Steve's and some more Minecraft logo names and Steve's name. I cut them out and added them to the bottom corners to fill in the banner.  I did that after I took the picture and I didn't feel like taking another picture.

Birthday Toys Complete

I got this idea to make Wizard of Oz dolls for Joey for his birthday.  He is having sort of a double theme for his birthday.  First, he said he wanted Mine Craft which is a video game spin off of toys and such. Then, he decided he wanted Wizard of Oz because his other grandmother gave him a book of it and maybe the movie, too.  Anyway, I had already started with the first theme by making his shirt and buying his presents that were Mine Craft related.  After I started to make the dolls, I found out that his other grandmother is also giving him the character figures which she found online.  I have now decided to give my dolls to Lexi because she likes Wizard of Oz, too, and she won't have a set of characters to play with.  That meant that I needed to come up with something else for Joey.  His mom suggested super hero dolls, so that is what I made.  I have designed the whole patterns for these dolls, from the doll itself, to the clothes they are wearing.

Iron Man is made all of felt and the mouth and eye outline are embroidered.

Captain America is also felt with the mouth and eye outline embroidered.

Poor Spiderman has a crooked head. He is made of cotton material and his lines and spider are drawn on with fabric marker. The spider is tiny, but he looks okay anyway.

Batman is made of felt with a vinyl cape and hood.  I put the hood over the head before I stuffed the doll.

This shows the awesome look of the back of the Batman cape.

All four of the superheros.

With a little imagination, you might be able to see Dorothy here.  I know the dress material isn't right, but it is what I had that was close to it.  Also, the dress is a little different, but this was easier for this doll than the one Dorothy wore.  I was going to leave the hair down, but Lexi saw a picture of Dorothy with the hair down and she said that it needed to have braids.  That worked for me since braids work better with yarn hair. It is hard to embroider a face that looks just like anyone in particular, but at least this looks like a girl.

I used the shiny material for the Tin Man that I used for Ezra's knight in shining armor suit that I made for him for Christmas. I added little joints on, but the rest of the doll is just all one piece.  I tried to draw the face on with a fabric marker, but because of the surface of the material, it would just wipe off.  It worked to at least draw the face on and then I could see it to sew it.  I also sewed rivets down the front and sewed in a collar which does not show up and sewed a line around the bottom of his top and around the funnel.

The lion is made from a fur material, with yarn mane and tail tip.  The face is felt and was embroidered.  This was a very difficult toy to make.  First, the felt frayed and became paper thin.  The stuffing was showing through, but since I had already sewed the face on, I didn't want to take it off and start over.  So, to fix that problem, I opened up the side of the face and pulled the stuffing out and put another piece of felt behind the top layer.  Then, I restuffed the head and sewed it shut.  The mane was the next big problem.  I am color blind to certain colors under artificial light.  If I do not see the color in the daylight, I cannot determine if it is navy blue or black or the other two colors that really throw me are dark brown and dark purple.  Well, I picked a ball of yarn under artificial light because it was night when I started to sew it on.  I went upstairs and sewed the whole thing on. The back of the head is also totally covered with yarn hair.  I wish I had just done around the face, but I didn't.  Anyway, I finished sewing the looped yarn onto the lion at 1:30 a.m. I went to bed and when I got up in the morning, I looked at the lion and wanted to cry.  It was as purple as purple can be.  I had to take out all that hair which is put on to stay. What took me at least two hours to sew on, took at least an hour to take out, and then I had to do it all over again with brown yarn.  He isn't my favorite, but he will have to do.

The Sacarecrow is not only my favorite Wizard of Oz character, but he is my favorite of the dolls, too.  I really like the way he turned out.  He and his hat are made of felt and his shirt and pants are made of cotton material.  His straw and his ropes are made from yarn. The ropes are just a crocheted chain stitch.  The straw is a single crochet with a long loop pulled through each stitch.  I then cut the loops to look like the straw.

We're off to see the Wizard!