A present for a relative

I took a break from all that sewing for myself and have been working on something for my mum's cousin over in England who just retired on her 60th birthday. There was a long countdown to this day so I wanted to make her something to mark the occasion. I also know she very much appreciates the thought put into handmade gifts, even simple ones and it is always fun to sew for those people. This is a simple hot pad with patchwork and embroidery made with bits of material I had in my stash.

Henry and I are back in our regular routine since getting back from the vacation. We are appreciating the scenery and the nature that's a short walk away instead of a 4+ hour drive.

Henry's really working on his vocabulary too. He learned boat (bo) and rock (waw) while we were away. He still gets plenty of opportunity to show us rocks around here and he did point out a boat to me in a picture in a book the other day. And he's really into noses. He's been pointing at ours for a couple of weeks now and just a day or so ago he found his own by running his hand from the top of his head down his face till he feels it and he says 'no' in the sweetest voice. It's my number one goal at the moment to get a good video or picture even of him doing this but it hasn't worked out so far. He also likes grabbing onto his ears and pointing at our eyes but I've only got him to say 'eye' a couple times. I usually am very firm about him not touching my glasses but when he gently moves them out of the way so he can poke my eye it is so sweet I just have to let him. Oh and door, he started saying door all of a sudden usually when he wants you to open it and let him outside.

Homemade Christmas Gifts Part 2

These are the gifts I made for Kevin and Henry this year.


This is my masterpiece that I started making for Kevin in October. It was a lot of work and used all my skills: sewing, embroidery, painting, woodworking. I was inspired by a painting we saw in an expensive baby shop that Kevin loved. The painting cost $300 and I thought I can recreate that. But since I'm not really a painter I thought I'd do it with fabric. All I painted was the Earth just using regular acrylic paint. It was really fun to figure out how to put it together as I went along. Briefly, here is how I made it. Maybe Kevin will even read it and gain a new appreciation for my work of art.

1.Got a piece of canvas (quite loosely woven to allow for easy embroidery), sprayed it black with fabric spray paint.
2.Using gold thread in my sewing machine, sewed on the lines representing the orbits.
3.Found various circular objects in my home the right size for each planet and the sun and traced them. Cut two circles for each planet, sewed them together, turned and top stitched them onto the fabric. (That is how I do applique, prefer it to other methods and feel it's much sturdier.)
I did add some embellishment to some of the planets like that big swirl on Jupiter and some sewn lines on Venus.
4.Sewed on small buttons to represent the dwarf planets.
5.Did A LOT of embroidery for the labels.
6.Using wood from 2x4s, made a wooden frame.
7.Stapled the fabric onto the frame.

And the other presents I made for them were matching slippers and PJ pants. For Kevin's slippers I used this pattern that I bought years ago, he needed new ones because the ones I made him originally were finally worn out. And this time I used some scrap yoga mat material that Len's Mill Store was selling for the sole so they are extra comfy. For the bottom of the sole I use fake suede upholstery fabric and that held up very well. On Henry's I added some vinyl to the sole to make them non-slip. For Henry's slipper pattern I just copied his Robeez. In these photos he is wearing just one slipper, we seem to have left the other one at Nana's.


And for the pants I just traced some of their existing pants, Indietutes has great instructions for that here. I put seam pockets in for Kevin because I know he hates pants without pockets. And the material is just a flannel sheet that the thrift store had for 50 cents and it has dogs and cats snuggling each other so I had to use it for something.

Homemade Christmas Gifts Part One

I want to do a post to record all the homemade Christmas gifts that I made this year.

I made the big bag from Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing for my sister in law. I managed to squeeze enough fabric out of a denim skirt and used a cool fly table cloth for the lining.

And a little zip up pouch to match.

I made a tote bag with a butterfly applique for my older sister.

And a couple of pillowcases for her too since she loves butterflies.

A little make up bag for my younger sister that I put a few homemade soaps into. I used this tutorial from Noodlehead.

We used our printer and some shrinky dink paper to make some magnets of the many faces of Henry for Grandparents and Aunties. We got the idea from here.

A Banana Republic Hat with mittens that I sewed up from this pattern. I sewed a pair from a knit material and a pair from fleece and put them together to make lovely lined mittens, didn't even need elastic to make them stay on.

An antimacassar to protect the back of my mum's favourite chair.

From left to right I made the Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap, Iceland Earflap Cap, Fancy Ribby Hat for Henry, Banana Republic Hat, and another Iceland Earflap Cap.

Christmas Soap Making

Kevin has been helping me make some soaps for Christmas gifts. First we made some peppermint soap. We used peppermint oil to give it a strong peppermint smell and I opened up a mint medley tea bag to give it some specs of dried mint leaves too which I think look really cool especially since they came out kind of different colours after the soap making.


I also wanted to use the dried marigold flowers that I had saved from our garden this summer. I matched it with some lavender essential oil. Marigold and calendula I think are the only two flower petals that don't turn black in the soapmaking process so it was nice we happened to have loads of marigolds.


I hung them up in the study closet to dry months ago. Then we pulled out all the dry petals (along with the seeds).


And I think the soap turned out really nicely. I already bought some nice ribbon from the thrift store to tie it up with.