Creative Mending

I love the excitement of creating something.. the low whir of the sewing machine joining fabric pieces together.

I'm not so big on 'mending'. It's so bad that I could go on for months, not wearing a shirt if the button came off.. *hangs head in shame*

But then they did say that children can really motivate you to do things.

See, when dear husband went to the States, he went on a shopping spree at the outlet store.. Lil Miss and Lil Master were recipients to many wonderful clothes. Out of all the clothes Lil Miss received, she loved this really comfortable salmon pink dress from DKNY. It's a soft stretchy cotton jersey knit.. simple design.. with an A-line-ish skirt. But the piece de resistance was the chiffony tiered outer layer skirt. Lil Miss is all about girly twirly skirts.

Alas, with wear, there's tear.. :(

The chiffony part was beginning to fray too.. When Lil Miss saw the tear.. she came up to me and asked me to sew it back for her. Something about the lil puppy dog eyes made me say OK.. probably a little too fast.

The tear was small.. but yet, how to do it elegantly?

I took thread.. and I handstitched.. satin stitch like stitches.. (and I'm horrible with even stitches).
The end result is ugly noticeable stitches.. clearly patching a tear.

What am I to do...

What else can I do but to ransack my stash :)

I found a thin cotton lining material in red (it was meant to be sewn as lining to a blouse I planned on making for CNY.. but that's another story).

Cut two long strips, folded it together, sewed and ruffled..

I then formed a simple rossette with each ruffled strip. Sewed up the bottom of each rossette, making sure I catch all layers.. and slowly place it over the mended tear on the dress...

Tada!

Showed it to Lil Miss... she approves.. :)

Party Dress & more

My daily routine at work is
1. Check emails
2. Check craft blogs.
3. Repeat
:)

Nearly everyday, I would find a new inspiration or a new tute that I want to remake. One of them was this lovely party dress from The Cottage Home.

The contrasting sash, classic and oh-so-cute.


I had this fabric, intending to be made into a dress for lil miss.. but alas.. I didn't manage to because there were just too many elements for the party. Feeling guilty, I made sure it was made into a dress for Christmas.

Lil miss wanted a very twirly dress, so I made a semi circle skirt instead of the gathered skirt in the tutorial. Why not a full circle? ..  Erm.. let's just call it a cutting accident.. *blush*

I really hit jackpot with this dress. Lil miss was twirling the entire time she had it on. She even cried when she had to take it off before going to bed.
Annoying coz we had to coax her to change into her jammies.. but so 'heart-melting' that she loved something I made for her so much.

So what's the 'more' in the title?

Well, after making the dress, there was some fabric left. And I really liked this cotton.. it's thin, airy and very comfortable in our humid weather. So I made a flirty lil blouse for lil miss.

Hey, you even get to see her modeling it this time.

(sorry, the blouse was wrinkly coz it was fresh out of laundry.. and I wanted to capture the picture in natural light.. gloomy skies and all)

Picnic Dress

 

Have I mentioned how much I love border prints? 

Well, I love border prints :) 

Especially uber cute ones like this Kokka Cotton.

The moment I saw this fabric, I knew I had to make a dress for lil miss. It took ALL I HAD to hold off buying this fabric till I had a sewing machine and is more comfortable in sewing wearables. So finally, after many many moons.. I purchased it.

At first, I thought I'll make the dress for Chinese New Year, but hubby said the fabric looked more like Christmas. 

He's more of a traditional RED for Chinese New Year kinda guy. 

I had this Japanese pattern book that had this A-line dress pattern in it and it was really easy to whip up (a link to the book on Amazon can be found at the end of this post)

Plus, it really helps to show off the cute pattern at the border. (Yes, that's the selvedge you see at the hem.. I left it there so that it won't fray.. and yes, I'm that lazy)

 I loved the pattern so much, I even cut the bodice from the border.. and made buttons from characters found on the border..

I would definitely make this pattern again. It's so simple, and has plenty of room for lil miss to grow into.

Fabric bought from Fabric Fanatics

Linking to these parties

Time Flies...

Can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post.

I have busy .. my first born turned 4 recently. We decided to have a birthday party and that means mummy gets to do some crafty stuff *grins*.

Remember the obsession Lil' Miss had with the penguin called Pororo?  That obsession became the theme for the party.

First, there was a Fishing Area. The characters in the cartoon would go and fish in the icy lake.. and thus this became the party pack.

I sewed some inexpensive blue chinese brocade like fabric into fish shapes and attached a ribbon at the opening. Each fish was 'stuffed' with some balloons, a toy car, a cute paper clip and some chocolates..

I'm still kicking myself for not taking more pictures.. but juggling with work, 2 kids and trying to churn out these babies.. photo taking kinda took a back seat.

Anyways, 20 fish later, they were all put into a basin with some packing styrofoam. We had 2 balloon sticks that were converted into 'fishing rods'.

come and get me..

The next station was a bakery. Loopy, the pink beaver in the series loves to bake cute cakes.. and so this was a spin on that. Each cake slice was made of felt.. and it had an opening to so you could put stuff into it.
See the strawberries and cream on top? .. They're interchangeable :) ... It's stuck on with Velcro.. so the kids could play 'decorate' the cake.

Care to have a slice?

I can't leave out Loopy right?.. So I cut her out of felt, and used a Sharpie to outline. Hot glued on features like eyes, nose, mouth, ears and tum (all cut out from felt too) Once Loopy was done, she was double sided taped onto an easel that we had.

Felt flowers with the rough side of a Velcro stuck at the back became the item to 'pin' on Loopy.

Help me pin my flowers

The party would not have been complete without the main character, Pororo. So I got to take a walk back memory lane and did somne papier mache. After it was done, I hot glued felt of different colors to create...

PORORO!

 Is that all? you say.. the final piece de resistance

Here's looking at you, kid.

The Pororo cake. Basic butter cake with chocolate chips and covered with fondant.

Phew.. boy am I tired.. but I have so much more to do before my upcoming trip..

I love to play all day, Come join me all my friends

Title taken from lyrics of opening song of Pororo


Children have different phases in life where they would have different 'favorite' characters.
When Lil' Miss was younger, she was ga-ga over Pocoyo (link). (I would love to have a picture here, but I'm not sure if I would be infringing any image rights.. so for now a linky would suffice).

In summary, Pocoyo is a little boy in blue outfit in a vast white world ... it's white everywhere you don't know where the horizon is. I guess the 'whiteness' of the background makes the characters more interesting and colorful.

The Pocoyo phase lasted about 2 years.. and now she's into a new phase. Oddly, it starts with a 'P' too.. and ALMOST the same spelling. PORORO (link).

It's not a boy.. but a blue penguin who lives with a baby dinosaur in a snow capped village. Yes, BLUE again. I'm beginning to think it's her favorite color. (hehe It's mine too).

Anyways, she is so crazy over Pororo, she watches the DVD EVERY DAY.. NON STOP!

One day, out of the blue.. she said

'Mummy, can you make me a Petty bag?' .. Petty not as in nit-picking, kinda petty. Petty as in the character Petty in the Pororo series.. she's the pretty little girl penguin. (link)

I thought to myself 'Well, it's basically a circle with some simple features in it.. so why not?'

Thus began my adventure in making a 'Pororo/Petty' bag.. (coz both the characters had circular shaped face)

I pieced Petty with the base of a circle, cut out of an old polo-t of my husband's
Eyes were black felt, and a cute little beak made of yellow felt.
Petty's face is further accentuated with a cute fringe pattern, made out of blue felt.

Finally the pretty little face is framed with purple satin cloth.

All from my scrap pile.. Yay!

Pororo's base was from the same material as Petty's.

Again all features made from various colored felt (you gotta love how versatile these stuff is).

After that, I cut out same sized circles from some batting and also a polka dotted cotton.

This made both the faces oh so soft and cuddly.

Then it was finished off with a rectangular piece of fabric (same as the backing of the faces).

walah!..

A finished bag.

Lil' Miss loved it so much, she slept with the bag that night..

Now, that made it all worth it :)

Quickie : Children shorts

Since I made something for Lil' Master, I made something quick for Lil' Miss as well.

Granted, it's not as complicated as a backpack.. but she loved it!

Who can resist the cuteness of Hello Kitty?

Whipped this up in 30 minutes.. used an existing shorts for pattern. No frills.

Now she wants a matching blouse... what should I make?