Grey skies and candlelights

Yesterday we lit the second candle on our Advent arrangement. Candles give such lovely light when the skies are grey and it's raining. They make even the gloomiest of days seem a bit less so. And though I know this post is at least ten days too late I had to share this image of our quick and easy simple little Advent arrangement with the world. Big Daughter and I collected these little pine cones a few weeks ago, but we planned to make an arrangement with lots of greenery. However on Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent I realized I didn't have any time or greenery to make it. So I asked Big Daughter to help me make it with some hazelnuts and walnuts we had. She was so excited. I gave her a little cake tray, candles and nuts and she arranged them. I just helped a bit (some cones kept falling off the tray). When it was all arranged she said we needed one more thing. She went out of the room and came back with a ribbon from my stash and told me to tie it around the candles. I obeyed. She looked at it and said: Now it's perfect!
We really love our simple candle arrangement because it was so quick and easy to make, it's so simple and I love it because it turned out to be a nice Christmas craft for my Big Daughter and me :)
So, enjoy your grey winter days with the warm glow of candlelights, but do not leave your candles burning if you leave the room!

Bye! Bye!

Long time no see

Time really does fly, doesn’t it? I could swear the Earth is spinning faster every day, well at least in my patch of it. This blog has been really very quiet for some time now, but life has been everything but.

Quite a lot of housework has been done lately of the building/ home improvement kind by my husband (that's why it is taking so much time) in the attic to turn it into new bedrooms for  all of us. Hopefully we will be able to move in upstairs by the time I go back to work next spring :)

The most important (even life changing) thing that hapened was the fact that our Big Daughter celebrated her 7th birthday and started school! Boo hoo, I was sad despite her excitement. Once again, time flies, doesn’t it?

And as for crafting, the following conversation between Big Daughter and me will tell you everything about it:
BD: Mum, you don't have a hobby anymore, do you?
I: Why would you think such a thing?
BD: Well, you don't knit anymore and you've given your jewlery making kit to aunt Ana.

It's all true. And I have to do something about it ASAP! However there was just a smidge of crafty time as well. Well, mostly back in September. Some chunky wool autumn kind of crochet during homework writing supervision time.

And a little bit of patchworky hexagon play.

Right. Now I've got to dash and try to have some housework done (nothing crafty about that, right?) while Baby Sister is asleep.

Free Hat Pattern Maker

I just had to pop in for a minute to share with the you what I have found. I was looking for a pattern for a sun hat for my daughter and found this programme Wild Ginger Pattern Maker. It is a great programme (and it is FREE) for making different patterns (differrent hat styles, bags and such) where you enter the head circumference you need, the depth of the hat and the width of the rim that you want and the programme creates a pattern for you to print out. I can't wait to try it out. I’ll come back to show you the result as soon as I sew the sun hat.I hope you will like it too. Bye!

P.S. There are written instructions on how to put it all together as well. Isn’t it great?!

Bibs in a row - my bib tutorial with the PDF pattern

My lovely baby girl is at that stage when her little hand is constantly in her mouth and she sucks at it with such gusto (I don't blame her - those little fingers are so sweet, but I hope she is not teething already) so she drools a lot and she also burps a lot, so we need lots of bibs. And we have plenty of them, it is just that I don’t like those that have to be tied at the back. I prefer the ones with the Velcro. So I decided to sew a few of our own. I searched the web and some books and I found several great tutorials, I tried one out, but I didn’t like the size of the bib, so I made a pattern of my own, because we need a bib to be a bit bigger and wider on the shoulders to get enough coverage. I made one trial bib from my very own pattern (that's the one with the owls) and I was satisfied. So I decided I need to make more of them at once in as little time as possible, and this is how I did it.

1. You choose your three fabrics: one for the front, one for the middle and one for the back of your bibs.
   
2. You cut enough fabric to make three bibs (or more) at a time, with enough space around them for 1.5cm seam allowance around the pattern for each of them.
3. You then iron the fabrics: first the front one facing the right side up; then put the back fabric on it facing the right side down and then iron the middle fabric on the top. They will stick to each other a bit and make next steps easier.
   
4. Tack your fabric sandwich.
   
5. Draw the pattern on the fabric.
   
6. Sew the bibs together along the chalk line leaving 3-4cm opening at the bottom for turning.
   
7. Now cut around the bibs leaving the 1.5cm seam allowance.
8. Clip the front bib fabric around the neck.
   
9. Pull out the tacking and iron the front fabric away from the back fabric to open the seam. It will make it a lot easier to make a nice edge once you turn the bib inside out.
   
10. Now cut the seam allowance down to only 2-3mm (if you cut it like that immediately, you won’t be able to iron the seam nicely), but leave it wider where you left the opening, so that you can easily tuck it in once you turn the bib inside out.
    
11. Turn the bib inside out.
12. Use something pointy but not sharp to push the seams out as much as you can along the whole bib to make the topstitched edge look nice and neat.Tuck in that extra bit of fabric where your openning is.
    
    
13. Iron it.
    
14. Topstitch all around the edge.
    
15. Now sew a piece of hooky Velcro on the back of the one bib wings or flaps or whatever they are called (I think it won’t scratch your child’s neck or get entangled into his hair if it is at the back) and the other part on the front of the other wing.
    
16. There you are. Try it on.

And here is my PDF bib pattern for you to print out and try.

P.S. If you have fabric with a sort of directional pattern, don’t make my mistake and turn it upside down. Sorry, I did it because I was so excited about tutorial writing and all the photo taking. Such a silly rookie mistake.

Another key ring

Just popping in to show you the second key ring. It is chubbier than the first one and in happy colours. I like it and so does my little big girl. She definitely needs a key ring for her very own house key because she starts school in September. I still can’t believe it. Anyway, here it is!

Key ring

I have realized that I need a key-ring for my car key and it has to be quite a big one, because I always have to fish for the key in my bag, which is terrible when you are in a hurry to take the big girl to the kindergarten, while the little one is already tired and screaming blue murder. So I decided to make one myself. And I actually got the idea from a piece of fabric that I have been playing with lately. It is this owlishly lovely fabric.

So, yes. I decided to make an owl key ring out of felt. But I also realized that while I do that I can play with my latest toy, my new Pfaff sewing machine. Although I have a 25-year-old trustworthy Bernina, it only has the very basic stitches, so I bought this one because it has 80 different stitches and I tried some of them on my felt owl. And here it is.

 If you look at the eyes and the belly you will notice those stitches I have been trying out. But I am not really happy with the end result. It is not chubby enough, because I used my sewing machine to put it together, so I couldn’t put enough stuffing in. But since my big girl likes it I promised to make one for her, and this time I will sew it together by hand and stuff it a bit better, and of course I will use girly colours.

And here is another picture so you can see the stitches a bit better :) 

 

Hair clips hanger

Don't you just love little girls with their soft hair and colourful hair clips. I do! But hair clips in our house seem to grow legs over night and in the morning when we are in the hurry to get ready for the kindergarten, we have to search for them all over the house. So I remembered seeing a sort of a hair clip hanger in a book somewhere. It was made of felt. It was a lovely flower pot with lots of lovely flowers and ribbons to clip your hair clips on. So I thought of my modest felt stash and decided to make something simpler. So here it is.

And here is a close up of the little cloud.

And here it is with some hair clips on.

Now that I look at it I think the ribbons are too long. That can be  fixed easily. I hope my daughter will love it.