Project of a different sort, storage bin seats

I never know what I am going to be asked to make.  My daughter is a school teacher and she saw this idea on Pinterest that she wanted me to make for her classroom.  They are storage bins with seats on the top so that they can be used in a reading center.  She showed me a picture and asked if I thought I could make them.  They didn't look too difficult, so I got started right away, as usual.  I bought the storage crates first.  She wanted four of them and asked for black. I luckily found some of the crates after checking in just two stores.  They are very popular around the beginning of school, but they have not been placed in the stores yet for that purpose.  I was happy to see that they had black because she is not found of bold colors like the crates often come in.  Unfortunately, they only had four crates.  Three were black, but the other was white.  I thought that might work because black and white go well together.  However, I knew that Cheryl would not like that three were black and only one white.  She would have been happy to have had two black and two white, so I was worried.  I bought the four anyway because that is all that they had.  I knew that I had one crate at home, but I couldn't remember what color it was.  I was really happy when I found out that it was black.  Now, I had four black crates with which to make the seats.

I looked around to find some wood to use for the seats.  I found an old shelf that would be perfect for two of them.  I found some thinner board that I wasn't happy with, but thought might work.  I knew it would be strong enough, but what I didn't know is that it would be too flexible and would not hold up along the inside lip that it needed to sit on.  I had to go to the store to get another board that would fit for the other two seats.  I found the perfect width, but just had to cut the length for them.  My son helped me cut the first four pieces, but my husband helped me cut the two new ones that replaced the thinner board that I tried to use first.

Next, I went through my material stash to find something to make covers with.  I found three pieces big enough for the four seats that I thought might work.  I had Cheryl pick the one she liked.  I'm glad she picked the one she did because it was a stretch knit material and worked perfectly for what I wanted to do to cover the boards.  First thing I had to do for the seats was to make pillowed cushions with a material that I knew would not be to her liking.  I stuffed the cushions and glued them to the top of the seat.  Then, I cut out a smaller black material for the back of the cover and a larger piece of the cover material.  I put in pleats around the edges so that the top would fit the back and be able to slip over the cushioned board, sort of like a pillowcase.  I left one end open so that I could slip the cushioned board into the cover.  Then, I stretched the end to cover the whole board and used a staple gun to hold it in place.  Before I could slip the cushioned board into the cover, I realized that the corners of the board would be too sharp and tear the material, so I got my husbands jig saw and cut off the corners and then sanded them so they would be smooth.  It worked really well and I was able to stretch the material tight without causing any holes.

I feel the project was a success that really didn't take that long to do.  It actually took me longer to get all the tools I needed to do the project than it did to actually do it.  If I had known everything I needed when I started, I could have saved time.  However, I often do not know what I'm going to need until I need it.

This is what the seat looks like from the side.  You can see the storage area below the cushion.

This is a top view of the four together sort of how they would be in a reading center, but probably with a table in the middle.

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!

Birthday Time Again

It is the time of year when Joey and Lexi celebrate their birthdays.  This year, Mom is having their parties early, so I needed to get started earlier than usual.  I started with the shirts.  Lexi is totally into Barbie right now, so of course, her theme is Barbie.  Joey loves the video game Minecraft, so he is having that as his theme.  In the past, I have put pictures of them on their birthday shirts, but this year, I am just putting the theme pictures with a catchy phrase to go on them.

Joey's favorite color is red, so I put his on red. The picture doesn't show up much in the photo, but it includes a couple of his favorite characters. It says: Now Joey is six       Minecraft is his fix.

Of course, Lexi's shirt had to be hot pink. Her phrase says: Lexi at five    Keeps Barbie alive.  The picture is actually of a cake topper with Barbie in a party gown.

I have not been doing any crafting for a few weeks since I finished the baby stuff.  I went to the store tonight to get yarn to start making the hooded sweater jackets that I am going to make for the granddaughters for Christmas.  I got the things to make the birthday shirts at the same time.  The kids will have two birthday parties, one at Team Works with their school friends, and one for family.  The family one is going to be first and will be the first Saturday in June.  I will need to make cakes for that party.  The Team Works cake is the second Saturday and I will have BJ's make the cake for that one like I did last year.  I will take pictures of them wearing their birthday shirts and have them put on that cake.

ABC Book and Some Clothes

Well, I finished a couple more projects.  First, I made a pair of bib overalls and a shirt.  Then, I got into a new project that I haven't done before.  It is an ABC book. It was supposed to be appliqued, but I had just finished doing the major appliqued work on the underwater play mat, so I didn't feel like going through all that process again.  It takes so much time to pick the right material, cut out all the little pieces, then heat bond things into place, and finally zigzag stitch them.  I felt like embroidering again, so that is what I chose to do with the book.  I thought it would take longer to do it, but it took less than two weeks to complete.  It is entirely of felt, except for the cover.  I found some perfect cotton print with ABC's all over it which I used for the cover.  I sewed two pages together with piping in between to make a nice border and to cover up the backs of the embroidery work.  I used quilt binding to go around the cover and the first and last page of the book.  My machine was giving me a little problem with button holes that I put in the middle of the pages to give a place to lace the book together and with the zigzagging around the cover.  I'm a little disappointed about how they look, but I am happy with the book, itself.

This is the complete outfit.  It looks a little wide, but it is the hanger that makes it look that way.

The shirt is a very soft stretch knit material.  Hard to sew, but so soft. Getting the stripes lined up was a little bit of a challenge with this shirt, too.  It isn't perfect, but it is lined up close enough to look good.

The overalls without the shirt. Here, they look a little slimmer.

I know sports things don't usually go with overalls, but these buttons are the best in my stash that went together.  The straps were supposed to have buckles, but I didn't have any on hand and I wanted to finish them without going shopping again.

The cover of the ABC book.

The bear shows up better in the book than it does in this shot of it.

The eyes on these two took more effort, but it gave something highlighted for the animals.

Again, the envelope is lighter in the picture than in reality.

If you look close enough, you can barely see a hand for the H. The giraffe is easy enough to see, but took a lot of time to do.

I had to laugh when Lexi read this page. She said, "J, pants." She usually says the sound of the letter which should have been for J, but she looked a little confused because pants didn't sound the way J sounds. She liked jeans better.

I wasn't sure how to do the lion's mane at first, but I tried doing the long lines like this and I think it looks great.

This is the center page of the book and I think it looks fine with its simple lines.

I probably should have chosen a lighter color to do the Q in, but it does look better in the book.

I was planning on stitching USA on the rocket in red, white, and blue, but I sewed it together before I remembered to do it.

My tree got cut off and so I had to adjust the side.  I had to trim some of the pages because as the book got thicker, the inner pages needed to be smaller than the outer ones so they would not stick out when the book was closed.  I didn't realize when I was trimming this page that I was actually cutting off the edge of the tree. That is why it has a little dip in the right side of it.

Another miscue for Lexi.  This time she said, "V, flowers."  That is understandable because I needed to put something in the vase. I tried not to make the flowers more noticeable than the vase, but I guess I didn't succeed for a five year old.

I tried to use all the colors of the rainbow in the xylophone page, so that is why the one yellow key doesn't show up very well. All the other things look okay.

This is the only page with something sewn on instead of embroidered on.  I had this perfect little zipper that fit so well, that I decided it would be much easier to use than to embroider a zipper.

I really do think that I am finally finished with all the things for this baby.

Something New

Like I said in my last blog, I might just make some more things for the baby.  I wanted to do something new and I found this really cute whale print flannel material.  I thought I might just make a receiving blanket, but then I found this pattern that I had that I had forgotten about.  I made one years ago before I started blogging, but had forgotten.  It is a hooded wrap.  It can be lined or not, it can have legs for easy car seat buckling or not, and it is all one piece.  I chose to line it and put the legs in.  I never did either with the first one that I made. This really looks nice and should be very convenient and useful.  I didn't want to buy any more material, so I searched my stash and was able to come up with only one piece of fleece that was big enough to use as the liner.  It is gray and not what I would have chosen, but it will do.  It is soft.  I also had a problem when I got to the binding around the edge.  I wanted to use a blue that would match the blue whales, but all I had in extra wide double folded bias tape that would be enough to go around the whole wrap was yellow.  There are little gold stars in the print, so I figured it matched well enough.  It also makes it brighter.  Yellow would be no problem if the baby was a girl, but it is a boy.  I guess a boy can have something yellow, too.  After all, yellow is supposed to be a color that promotes intelligence.  That's what I have heard anyway,  and besides, I often dressed my boys in yellow snow suits.  When my babies were born, we didn't know ahead of time what the gender would be, so we often got yellow and green given to us as presents. I actually had a snow suit of each yellow and green. I think the yellow one was a little larger which I used for TW and the green one for Marty.  They were just a year apart, so I needed two just a little different in size. Marty also used the yellow one when he grew into it. Here is my newest creation.

This is the wrap snapped shut.

This shows what it looks like opened up. This way you can see how it is really just one big wrap with the legs stitched in the middle.  Because the hood has darts and the legs are sewn in, the legs and hood had to be sewn separately for the liner and the cover, but the ribbed front of the hood and the edge were sewn as one big piece with the liner legs just stuffed into the cover legs. It has snaps to hold the cover shut tight when the baby is snuggled inside. The wrap is intended for babies from newborn to six months.

In this shot, you can see how one side is folded over and snapped and then the other corner is folded over and snapped on the other side. I really think the designer of the wrap is very clever.

I have some other things that I am working on for the baby.  I have a pair of bibbed overalls and a blue and red striped, stretch knit shirt cut out and ready to sew.  I also am going to make an alphabet book.  I cut out the pages in felt and stenciled the letters and pictures onto the pages.  I will embroider the book.  It was supposed to be appliqued, but I already did a lot of that with the play mat, so I wanted to do something different.  It will take awhile to do, but I think it will be nice when it is finished.  It is going to be super thick because of the felt, but I couldn't find a material I really liked to do it any other way.