Bow Holders for My Girls

Last year before we had our sweet baby girl I was looking for decorating ideas on Pinterest. I found a fabulous tutorial on how to make bow holders that look like tutus. I fell in love, pinned it and set it aside.

Then last fall when I was getting the supplies I needed to make for the CTR shield, I decided to get enough to make the bodices for the bow holder too. Initially we were going to just go with pink bodices, but we really liked how the green coordinates with bedding in the girls room.

I took photos of most of the process. You can see the original tutorial here. I will post my pictures and give additional notes on the project.

First of all, I got waaaay too much fabric. After some digging, I found the comment where she says the bodice is about 12" high for a large bow holder.  Plan accordingly. 

I think my neck opening needed to be a little bigger so I could pull the fabric well.  I think trying to work in a tiny space added to the puckering.

Closeups of the green "dress"

Before I decided on the flowers, I played around with my options with ribbon and center flowers.  I personally like the top one the best, but my oldest daughter really wanted a combination, so in the end, that is what we did. 

 

 

To tie the bow ribbons into the bodice more, I hot-glued smaller roses on the end of each ribbon.

This is the pink one in her room. The fabric is the same as her CTR Shield.

Remember I said I got too much fabric?  I made another one for her friend.  This time I was smart and the flower on the bodice is actually on a clip (and attached to the ribbons via the clip).  The above "dress" has a glued-down flower. 

I Have a working Vinyl Cutter!

I haven't posted any vinyl projects in quite some time.  Mostly because I did not have a working vinyl cutter.  There was a problem with my old computer, running the software on a newer computer and versions of windows, the lack of a LPT port (yes, my original vinyl computer was that old!), and so on.  

We tried some solutions which included running a virtual machine with an old OS on a newer machine, but nothing worked completely.  In the end, it was cheaper to get a Silhouette Cameo than to pay $600 for an upgrade to my software.  

I miss not having the full width of vinyl like I did before,  (It was tricky loading my roll of white I already had on hand), but the bonus is being able to cut vinyl AND card stock, fabric and being able to make fabric stencils.  It was too difficult to change my blade depth before.  

I will be posting a tutorial of how to do this at a later date, but here is a quick sneak peek at my first vinyl project in years.

Christmas Has Come Early!

I'm so excited!  After thinking about it for some time, I've decided to plunge into Project Life scrapbooking.  Several of my friends are doing it, and the idea of finishing scrapbooks quickly really appeals to me.

I plan on tackling old photos and memorabilia.  One advantage I can already see is the interchangeable nature of the pages will make it somewhat easy to do any rearranging if I find a box of memories that needs to be included in a chronological spot.  You can't do that with whole scrapbook pages!

I'll try and post some pictures of my pages in the coming months.

For now happy scrapping!

Modifying a baby outfit for an American Girl Doll dress

I am trying to get through my laundry basket full of mending. In it was this little baby outfit that I accidentally let oxyclean sit on for too long.  I didn't really think to take a "before" picture, so the best I can do is show you the cut off bottom piece next to the jumper.  If you look closely, you can see those enzymes had a grand ole' time eating through the bodice and the legs in particular.

Some time ago, I came across this tutorial on how to convert a baby dress into an elegant dress for your 18" doll. I hate to let things go to waste, and I knew this outfit was too far gone to remake into anything useful for a baby, but I thought I might give it a shot for making it into a doll dress.

After I cut off the bottom of the jumper, I did a simple hem that would hide most of the uneven flaws.

I then put it on the doll and figured out how much I would have to take in the sides.  I pinned the dress where I wanted the new seam.  I probably would have been easier to put the doll with the reverse side showing first.

The pinned sides.

I did a simple basting stitch up the sides I started about an inch up from the hem--I wanted to take advantage of the fullness of the skirt. 

Then I began to trim away the excess...

The excess is trimmed off and it is ready for a finishing stitch for knits.

The finished stitch. 

Final product!

CTR Wall Art

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I can't.  I think it is a variation of the baptism towels I've seen on the web.

This project began as a "Souper Saturday" project in the fall.  Quick Primer: "Souper Saturday" is a play on "Super Saturday" which is the name female members of my church congregation  lovingly give to the day in the fall when we can sign up and make multiple crafts in one day (about four hours worth).   In my congregation, we also bring potluck soups to share. 

I ended up not working on my own crafts so much, but helping others work on their vinyl projects.  And silly me, I forgot to take pictures of them.

This last weekend, I decided to get caught up on my projects.  I completed this picture mat project, and some church-related activity books.  I then wanted to tackle this project, but could not find a tutorial online.  I had forgotten the instructions in the nearly six months since I had picked up my fabric at the store.

I decided to create a tutorial for everyone else.

Materials needed:

2-3 types of fabrics.  You'll want one of the fabrics to be big enough for your background.  The green shield is on a background slightly larger than 8x10 so I could tape the sides to the mat.  The pink one is adjusted or the larger frame and mat.

2 types of interfacing.  You want one sided interfacing for the background fabric to give it stiffness.  The second type needs to be two sided to act as your glue" between layers.

2 copies of the CTR shield.  (Find it here).

x-acto knife

sharp scissors

Iron

Damp cloth and dry cloth

For this project, I used three fabrics.

1)  Either create a mirror copy of the shield on a copy machine, or trace the lines with a pen on the back.  I did the latter.

Original

Mirror version in pen

2)  Using your double-sided interfacing, trace the backwards shield in three parts. You could trace the just the 1/2 inch shield outline and the letters, but I thought it was easier to trace the small shield, the large shield and the letters separately.

3) On the second paper copy of the CTR shield, use your x-acto knife to cut out the letters and part of the shield.  You'll need this later.

4)  After you've traced everything, do a rough cut of the interfacing and place on the backside of your iron fabric for pressing.  Press with a hot iron for a few seconds--just long enough to adhere the interfacing to the fabric.




5) Cut the "fused" interfacing and fabric with sharp scissors. This is reason you needed to trace the letters backwards.  Do this for both the large and small shields as well. 








6)  On the background fabric, iron on the fusible web using a cloth to cover the web and fabric.  (The kind I used was like plastic-like and would have melted if it had come into direct with the iron). 

Before

 Using the cloth

 After

 7)  Peel the paper backing off the large shield and center it on the background fabric.  Press.  Some types of double-sided interfacing require you to use a wet cloth over the top. 

8)   Check the fit of the smaller shield.  Make any cutting adjustments while the paper is on.  If it looks good proceed to the next step. 

9)  Peel the paper backing off the smaller shield and position it for ironing.  Press.

10)  Using the second paper copy we cut and set aside earlier, place it on top of both shields for correct position.  

11)  Peel off the paper backing on the letters and position then on the shields.  Press
 

 12)  Voila!

13)  Center the piece in your frame or behind a mat.  I used another mat.  

A close up of the background fabric.  It says, "Faith, Hope, Love, Charity" all over it.   How cool is that?

 The finished project!  I hope you enjoyed your visit today!

Cake Auction for the Scouts

Recently we had a spaghetti dinner fundraiser for our boy scout troop.  It included a cake auction and the boys were asked to donate a cake they had made.  Some of the boys made desserts, but clearly some of the parents helped out as well.

 

 Pretty sure this guy's mom helped him out juuuuuust a little, the frosting job is pretty good for a 12-year-old.

 This is a cinnamon roll cake my oldest boy made.  He found it on Pinterest.  Here is the link to the original recipe. 



 

I decided to help my second-oldest boy out by making a back-up batch of cupcakes to donate.  My friend who was in charge told me themed items seemed to raise the most money last year, so I decided to try a variation on a fun idea I'd seen on YouTube.  I found red and white polka-dot cupcake liners, and baked dark chocolate cupcakes in them.


 

While they cooled, I covered a cut and taped cereal box in aluminum foil.  (Don't you love my beat-up table?  Someday I'm going to refinish it.)


 

Next, I used double-sided tape to wrap a red polka-dot grosgrain  ribbon around the box





Then I used my Mickey Mouse punch to punch Mickey heads out of black card stock.  I affixed those to the box using the double-sided tape.  (You can really see the glory of the table in this shot.) 


 


I frosted the cupcakes with a dark chocolate and pushed mini-Oreos in for the ears.  I used plenty of frosting, so I didn't need any toothpicks.  I left some of them like that, but I also sprinkled crushed Oreos on top as well.


 

The finished product. I'm pleased to say they raised $50 for the troop.  We had just enough left over for each family member to get one and they were a hit!