Lunch Boxes

 I felt really silly on my daughter's second day of playschool/playgroup. I forgot to buy her a little lunch box to take with her, so I had to send her in with one of my old purses with her lunch inside. She thought it was super cool to have one of mama's purses, but when I saw it lined up with all the other cute lunch boxes, I felt embarrassed! Clearly my issue, not hers. But I decided anyway that a lunch box was what she needed, so I did a search on the net for ideas of making your own lunch box/bag and this is what I came up with. There were various tutorials that weren't actually very good, so I just decided to put something together by eye, with some oilcloth I had already had on hand from previous projects.

                                          

Some of the projects I liked from other bloggers were cute, here for example, but they left the edges of the bags raw and I wanted something more durable and tidy. There were lots of little things I would change if I were to do it again, but I think the general idea came out just right.

Can you hear it?

Yep, this quilt ROCKS.

Made from my two-year-old pile of scraps.

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Backed in soft yellow flannel and quilted around various stars.

Another layer of warmth for my daughter's bed this winter.

Make New Clothes but Refashion the Old...

One is silver and the other gold! Cheesy, but appropriate. It has gotten unseasonably chilly around here and Isabella has totally outgrown most of her warm pants/trousers from last winter/spring. We're talking major high-waters here. During the past couple of years, I have squirrelled away a lot of my husband's unworn clothes - mainly t-shirts and sweatpants - waiting for the ambition to turn them into pants for my toddler.

It's such an easy under-25 minute process, that there really is no excuse when I'm making much more complicated, and less useful garments for her. I find it easiest to use a pair of pants that already fit her well, then simply trace around the pants as they are folded (outer-thigh to outer-thigh). There are plenty of online tutorials for this, but you this site has a particularly elegant version.

Fall skirt

This week, I have commited myself to making more things for my daughter. At the same time, the weather in our part of the world has turned chilly - a sign autumn may already be on the way. So I was doubly inspired to make my girl a fall skirt. I whipped this beaut in less than 30 minutes. The fabric is medium weight, but paired with thick textured tights and little boots or her leather maryjanes, and she'll be ready to help rake leaves. Well, maybe not in this skirt.

Scrap quilt sneak peak

Since I began sewing, I have kept just about every tiny cast-off that is left over from any given project. I hate to throw things away so I have been organizing them into little bags over the last year and a half. I was absolutely inspired by this post, so I finally whipped out those scrap bags and set to work on my own interpretation. The original pattern is meant to be funky, but I wanted to go a step further and be totally irreverent about it - more overlapping lines and wild color.

All of my scraps came from projects that I made for friends and a few that I sold on etsy. This is my way to keep a little bit of all that hard work for myself. I just finished the quilt top and haven't assembled all of the layers yet, so when I do I will definitely be posting the pics!

Oh the aprons!

new to the shop, tulips!

and only a small part of my wholesale order - unfortunately I'm out of most pictured prints now

Getting creative again

I have been swamped with work on a large wholesale order, family visits, and travel so I have had little spare time to make room for creative sewing for my daughter. After all this stuff ended recently, I finally pulled out some interesting striped jersey fabric and was inspired to sew a circle skirt with it. I found some fabulous online tutorials (links in my twitter stream) and got to work.

My girl has a thing for little yellow chicks, so I freehanded a little tweety bird that turned out very partridge family. I love it. This skirt took me less than an hour to put together. The waist is elastic so she should get quite a bit of wear out of it - at least through next summer.