Laleh's new bed

A few months ago a friend of mine brought me a bag full of clothes she no longer wanted. The bag she brought them in was a gift wrap bag from Target.com, from when she got a baby shower present. I made this dog bed out of that gift bag.

Actually, I made this dog bed slip cover out of that bag.

The inside is a pillow I made out of an old padded mattress cover for the shell, and the stuffing is pollyfill from an old frog chair that had rips and chocolate milk stains.

It's approximately 6 inches thick.

It's really comfy & getting enjoyment from every animal in the house, and even the kids. ☺

Here's the tutorial.  Sorry I didn't take pictures.  The tutorial was an after thought.

*Decide how large you want the bed to be and cut that size circle out of your fabric.
You need to cut 4 of these.
*Cut a strip of fabric 8 inches thick and long enough to go around the circumference of your circles.
You need two of these strips.

-With right sides together sew one long side of the strip of fabric around one of the circles.
-Then do the same with the other circle sewing it to the other long side of the strip, leaving enough room to turn the pillow right side out and stuff it.
- Once the pillow is stuffed sew the opening closed.

- Follow the same instructions as step 2. Sew your circles to the length of your 8 inch strip and leave enough room to turn it right side out only this time leave it even bigger so that you can fit the pillow you just made inside the cover.
If you choose you can secure it closed with buttons, hook and loop tape, or snaps.

Delsin's halloween costume

This year I only made Delsin's costume and my cloak that went with my costume. 

Delsin wanted to be the prince from Snow White.  Not the prince from Cinderella, not the prince from Sleeping Beauty.  He said he only liked the prince from Snow White.  So funny to me, because I never thought my son would be so influenced by these Disney princess movies.  However, the boy talks all the time about wanting to grow up and become a prince charming and save people.  Sigh....  He's a real sweet heart and I love him sooo much.

Backpack

Someone saw Delsin's backpack and asked me to make one for her son!

I'm very excited about that. I decided to switch the colors around so that it would still be a one-of-a-kind.

Delsin's New Backpack For School

I wanted Delsin to get a new backpack for school, even though we are homeschooling. We were tinkering with the idea of sending him to Pre-K since he's been begging to go to "real school", but with each passing day as it gets closer I know I'm not ready to let him go out there into that world. So in an effort to make homeschool just as exiting I'm doing everything I can to make sure we get him some "back to school" things that will be reserved especially for school time. He helped me design this backpack along with inspiration from some other backpacks we had seen for sale online. We made our own pattern with inspiration from a tiny backpack pattern we already had. We are really happy with how it turned out.

Embroidery for a diaper bag

Our friends recently had a new addition to their family and I was asked to embroider a patch for a bag that could be used as a diaper bag. I was happy to do so and this is a picture of how it turned out. Instead of making a patch I left the top open so that it could be used as a pocket if she wanted to. I can always sew it shut up top if she doesn't like it that way, so no worries about that.

Kai got a new Bohemian skirt and blouse today

Posing next to our squash plant.

I am so happy to finally get this project started and finished today. I've been wanting to make this for Kai ever since I bought the fabric at Walmart's fabric sections "going out of business" sale a month or two ago. She loves it and I think it turned out great. I used a pattern by Simplicity for the top and made the skirt without a pattern.

She also got a new hair bow to match.

h.

Our scarf, 1st knitting project.

I put this on Delsin and Kai's art page too, but since I helped a great deal and did most of it I'm putting it on my page as well. Thanks to Nanna giving us a knitting machine I can now knit! (snickering) I can knit with a knitting machine! It's a neat little gadget. You thread the yarn through it then turn a crank this way and that until you get a section as long as you like. Finally you can attach those sections to each other to make a blanket or whatever. We used the flat panel option to make this scarf, and I am so proud to say that it was Delsin and Kai's idea and they did quite a lot of work on it. They did as much as I would let them do, which really is a lot. I had to patch holes too 'cause we need more practice with the machine, but we had so much fun making this. We can't wait till cooler weather and we're gonna make more things as soon as we get the chance.

New seat covers with matching tablecloth

For Christmas we got Delsin and Kai this cute little table and chairs. Well, it didn't look like this.

Below is a picture of it Chrismas morning, before Kai ripped holes in one of the chairs and the table top. The table top is for dry erase markers, so we decided that instead of recovering it we'd just make a table cloth for it.

Luckily I had some fabric I've been moving around with me for the last 13 years, never used. It was fabric I had promised to make seat cushions out of for someone else, but got frustrated when I realized I didn't know what I was doing. I never made those seat cushions. I feel bad about that, and I'm no longer friends with that person. So now my children are enjoying their custom tablecloth and covered chairs.

My summer dress

Simplicity patterns aren't supposed to take 3 days to make. But then again you really aren't supposed to buy a size 14 pattern for a person that is less than half that size. The thing is, I can almost never find my sized patterns. Anything that is cute is for a size 10 at the least. It really irks me. I might be able to do better without a pattern at all, but I don't know. Anyway I stayed up till 2 am today trying to put the finishing touches on it. I wore the dress yesterday, but could never take a deep breath 'cause I made it a little too tight around the top. Now it's better, not perfect, but better. Maybe the next one will be even better.

I've been wanting some more long dresses. I just love wearing long dresses and skirts. I made another skirt recently that I'll post soon. This is two different fabrics. One is the print that looks like several different fabrics sewn together. That's what I used for the skirt part. The top is matching stripes.

Today I hope to start on a bohemian skirt and blouse made from the same fabric, for Kai. Then I want to make a shirt from the striped fabric for Delsin, if I have enough. If not, I may use scraps to trim out a shirt from another fabric. We'll see.
Here is the pattern I used.

Delsin's first Halloween

I love this picture!

This is from the birthing class reunion. These are the babies of the other students in our class. It was so funny because the whole time we were sitting around the babies were just hanging out like they were all so mellow and loving everything. Then someone said, let's put their costumes on them and get a picture before we leave. Well everybody else reluctantly bought a costume for their babies, before the meeting, and got something small almost like a sleep n play. I spent a week sewing this larger than life costume together. Complete with wiskers and all. Delsin had tried it on before and was ok with it, not loving it, but ok. This time we put it on him and something about it just upset all the other babies. Whatever it was, everybody started crying. It was really funny, and I still feel kinda bad about it. The funniest part to me is we were so different personality wise from the other people in our class. So this was like icing on the farewell cake.

After that, he refused to wear the hood on Halloween night. We didn't trick or treat anyway. But you couldn't even get near him with it. I think he was afraid he was gonna start hearing crying babies and not be able to see them, again. Scary! LOL!

Cave Baby Delsin.

This diaper and the picture on the right was featured on the front of a cloth diaper website for at least 6 months before I stopped going there to check it. Now that site has been moved, so I can't share a link with you. But it was really cute and they had a blurb about it.

I made these diapers to match his first Halloween 2005 costume in the next post.

I made three or four. I had several mothers ask me to make some for them, but I never actually did it, 'cause one of the moms in our Mom's group said she would report me to the pattern maker for selling diapers using her pattern without a license. She had her own diaper making business and I guess felt a little threatened by my weekend warrior diaper making fun. But we had fun with ours, and I've had requests for them still.

Kelly's purple pagent dress

This is a dress I made for Kelly to be in a beauty pagent in 2004.

I remember taking this dress with me on airplanes and working on it in hotel rooms trying to get it ready for the big day while still working as a Regional Training Manager for the company I used to work for. It's funny now to think about how that dress went every where with me, including my board meetings.
I just remember thinking I wanted Kelly to feel like the most beautiful girl in the place, so I added some rinestones around the neck, embedded in gold colored squares. I had enough left over to make her a matching bracelet. She wore the bracelet on her left hand that night, so it can't be seen very well in these photos.



I thought it was a beautiful dress.
And Kelly looked amazing in it.

I would like to make her another one if I get a chance to.
I love making these kind of dresses, especially for my sisters.

Easter Outfits!

Let me start with Delsin's outfit. It's a cotton off white. It reminds me of flour sack material. I used some of the aqua stripe out of the fabric I used to make Kai's dress to trim his shirt at the collar and at the bottom and the sleeves, as well as the bottom of the pants. I used sea shell buttons I had taken off of something else a long time ago.

For Kai I got the fabric from fiber on a whim in Sandy Springs, Ga. By far the most expensive dress I've made for Kai. Each of the prints you see are $9.99 a yard and I used 2 yards, plus she got a matching backpack purse that was made from the same fabric as Delsin's outfit (which was I think $1.00 a yard) & a scrap of the pink print cut into the shape of an egg and applique'd onto it.

I made her crinoline by making a pair of bloomers and attaching the tulle to the outside of the bloomers. I like the idea, but as you can see it had a tendancy to show at the bottom of the dress. I plan to educate myself about how to actually make a crinoline slip by the next time I make her another dress like this. She also got a matching hair barette from a scrap of left over fabric too. I was very pleased with how everything turned out.

Funny note. We ate spagetti at G.G.'s house. Of course the kids got some sauce on their clothes. So I pretreated the stains with spray n'wash stick and liquid ALL when we got home. It bleached Delsin's outfit! So Daniel says I should go back and use the stain stick like a crayon to color the whole thing so that it'll match. I can't decide. I'm afraid I'm going to somehow mess it up worse! Oh well. I can laugh a little about it, since he got to wear it at least once when it looked good. It seems to me that I mess up the kid's clothes more than they do. LOL!

Into the Archives - Luggage tags for Grandma and Grandpa Bill

These are luggage tags that I made for Mom and Bill for Christmas last year.

Mandy had given me the fabric. It was the bottom of a skirt. All I had to do was embroider the initial, cut the fabric and sew it together on one side. Then sew some cord to the ends for tying onto luggage and print up some pictures on iron on transfer paper and iron them onto the backs of the tags. They refuse to use them on their actual luggage. But I guess that means they like them more than I thought they would.

They needed some new PJs for the warmer weather, so I found some flannel I had in the back with monkeys on it. Perfect for my little monkeys! Kai has a nightgown with monkeys on it that's for 12 month olds. And it's time for her to retire it. Delsin's been wanting some PJs with monkeys too, so this worked out very well. I decided to try mix matching several different prints on Kai's nightgown to see how it would turn out. Turns out I don't have a good eye for matching fabric prints. Which is exactly why I'm scared to make a quilt.
I have enough flannel to make PJs for the rest of their childhood.

I bought so much when Joann's had a sale and I had a hankering for making cloth diapers. So if you have any ideas for what I could make with lots of 1 yard pieces of flannel, please pass those ideas on to me.

Delsin's Kilt

Adding something to my blog page for the first time in aeons. Maybe today I'll add some more of the things I've been working on for the past few months.


Delsin has been asking for a dress. Who can blame him when he spends his days with two girly tom boys? And nearly everything I make for him is something I've made for Kai, except for dresses, and I think he's been feeling left out. After I made her easter dress he was wanting a pretty frilly dress, but yesterday he settled on this style and this fabric. I used this website to guide me in my kilt making. But what I ended up with is more like a cross between a kilt and this (which Delsin really liked, but wanted a "more scary color like green". He decided on this small plaid print. I like that it's long and if he chooses it can grow with him. I didn't leave enough room in the fabric to make pleats all the way around.

I'd say he ROCKS this look!