Fabric books and Angry Birds...

Its been a while, but as always, its because I've been busy. I really, really need to make up a "blogging" schedule. I'm crafting whenver possible but rarely post. Bad blogger! So... in my quest for baby crafts in the 24 hours before my son was born I stumbled across this beautiful thing called a quiet book. However, one thing I noticed was that people seem to call pictures books (with no activities) as quiet books. Call me upity or anal (I am both) but I define a quiet book as a book with activities. A book made of fabric (with no activities) is a fabric book. I know. I'm crazy.

Over the last few days of my winter break I started to make my son a colors fabric book. To put it kindly... it was a disaster. However, I didn't purchase a single material for this book. Everything I used I had in my stash.

The cover:


I used binder rings, button holes, and white cotton twill throughout the book.


I cross stitched the names of the colors and sewed them onto the pages (something I WILL NEVER try again).








Yes... I know I skipped white, but that was in all honesty, be being lazy. I intend to make him another one (that's less crappy). But there you have it, my very first - designed by me - fabric book (not a quiet book!) I am working on a quiet book for him. I've set a deadline of Easter for myself so that I can put it in his very first easter basket. He won't be able to use it yet, but I think it'll be cute.

Onto geekiness... my comfort zone. My husband is loves Angry Birds (See his birthday present here after the jump) and I wanted to incorporate that into Valentine's Day somehow. So I came up with this:



I stitched it on 14 count Aida and placed it in a 3" embroidery hoop. I sold one just like it in my Etsy shop. Haven't sold anymore since, don't think I will, and I'm okay with that. I do plan to release a pattern (though any experienced stitcher can probably figure it out by just looking at it) for free when I find sometime to convert it to the computer and upload it to google docs.

Coming up:
1. Birthday gift for the husband (yes, its in June and I do have a while to go but this year I'm def. outdoing myself)
2. A quiet book for the little man
3. Harry Potter cross stitch
4. Star Wars fabric book
5. Recipe book and menu planner

Keep your eyes peeled in the next few weeks.

Catching up: Part 2

In the previous post I mentioned that I had been crafting, but not posting. This is the second part of my "catch up" post series. Hopefully the last catch up post. I'm sure I've got all the photos tthat I need off of my husband's computer.

Here is the remainder of the diapers I made for my little man. I made these using the Babyville Boutique PUL with the dinosaurs, monters (my personal favorite), and yellow.















After making the diapers I had a bunch of extra PUL so I went onto Babyville's website in the hopes of finding some projects and I did. So for my little man I made some cubes (which I stuffed with filling). I made one with 5" squares and another with 3" cubes. For the 5" cube uses the dino PUL and the 3" cube uses the owl PUL.











Onto other things...

My mom had this tradition at Christmas that every year each of kids got a Christmas ornament (she still does it). Back in the day she used to cross stitch our ornaments every year. So I've started this tradition with my son.


I wrote his name and the year 2011 on the back with a fabric marker.

For Christmas, I made my son a monkey out of yo-yos. (Love those things!). I used a simplicty pattern that I picked up during a JoAnn's 99 cent sale. On the top it said "Simplicity Archive" on it, so I have a feeling this has been around for a while. He's bigger than my son:









... and that my friends, wraps up all the crafts I completed in 2011. What a year!

Picture Dump

I have been very busy crafting, however, I've been very bad about posting. However, I feel that being a full time mom, wife, teacher, and part time student earns me a little bit of a reprieve. Life has been busy!

My husband and I took the little man up north (where it was about 27 degrees outside) and he needed a winter hat and mittens! So on the drive up (it helped that we got stuck behind an accident - no one was hurt - that shut the freeway down for two hours) north I completed two hats and two pairs of mittens for him to wear on his adventure to see Santa.





Both of the above hats were done on the pink KK loom. All the blogs and tutorials online for knitting baby hats on the loom said to use the small one, but sorry, my son was born with a 14 inch head, there was no way this loom was going to make a big enough hat. It took some experimentation to finally figure out which size was good enough.

Next was the challenge of having to create mittens for the little guy. I couldn't find any decent pattners online for making infant mitts on the loom, so again I experimented and are quiet proud of what I created. Simple, but very effective.





I will draft up a pattern eventually for the mittens. If you've worked with the looms before you can probably figure out how I did it, it was really simple. Mittens were completed on the flower loom.

After all that, then I had to tackle Little Man's stocking for his first Christmas. I was just going to buy one, however, my husband instisted that I make his, since I made everyone elses.



A close up of the super cute fabric:



I made him several stocking stuffers (in addition to what I bought - he is such a spoiled baby!). The first batch is three different taggie toys:







The letter "A" is his favorite one I think. He's always grabbing for that one.

A few weekends ago I went on a diaper making craze. I wanted to have enough diapers to at least get us through a day. So I made several diaper stuffers and a few diapers.













I have many more photos to post but first I have to get them off of my camera.