The tutu bag

Hello, and welcome. If you've been visiting a while, you already know I love to make bags, so today I'm showing you my latest project - the tutu bag:

I made this bag as a gift for a little girl turning eight next week. Because I was a bit pressed for time, I didn't take enough pictures to create a complete tutorial, but the bag is sewn and assembled in exactly the same way as the 20-minutes lined tote bag I posted here a while ago.

Back to School Printable Name Tags

If you've been visiting for a while you already know that almost every year I design new printable name tags for my kids to use on they school books, notebooks and other school materials. 

As my kids grow, the designs grow too and this time my son told me he didn't want his name tags with little kids images anymore - yes, because eleven is sooooo old... This is what I came up with: 

Travel ID tags for kids - free printable

The first time I had to travel abroad with my kids, I admit I was a bit stressed. English is not their first language, and while they do have some basic knowledge, they are by no means proficient. To add to that, English wasn't the first language of the country we were traveling to, which could be and additional difficulty. And finally, I would have to spend at least two days alone with both kids in a strange town. Compounded stress. 

My main concern was what would happen if they got lost in a crowd or if for any reason we were separated. Looking back at it now, maybe I was exaggerating, but at the time it seemed vitally important that they could have some sort of ID on them, with their parents phone numbers clearly stated.

Sea Life Memory Game - free printable

Once in a while I design simple printable games for my kids or their friends. These games are great, especially in the upcoming summer season, because you can take them on trips, to the pool or the beach. They are light and easy to pack, inexpensive, and if few pieces get lost - no problem, you can just print more or move on to the next game. 

So, precisely thinking about summer, I created the sea life memory game.

DIY Fabric headbands tutorial

Hello and welcome to another week. This time I'm going to show you my latest destashing project: fabric headbands. In three different versions and entirely made using fabric scraps, of course.

Find out below how to make them.

Felt penguin key chain

Have you ever needed a gift on the go and didn't feel like going shopping? It happened to me this weekend. We were invited at the last minute for an Easter gifts exchange on Saturday and I had to come up with something really quickly.

As only the kids were supposed to get gifts, I decided to browse my Sizzix dies for something I could use. And I came up with the penguin key chain:

Spring-perfect rainbow hair clips

(and a how-to-make-the-perfect-bow tutorial)

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm going to show you the rainbow hair clips I made for my daughter, and also how you can easily create perfectly shaped bows.

My daughter loves anything and everything with rainbows. Most of her drawings (and she draws a lot) include at least one rainbow. So when I found a rainbow ribbon at the craft store, I just knew I had buy it. 

 

DIY bunny ears headband

Hello and welcome. today I'm sharing a very quick - and cute - project for Easter. I've been seeing bunny ears all around lately, so I decided to make my own. Because, of course, I'm terrible at following other people's patterns and instructions and much better creating things from scratch.

I didn't manage to take a lot of pictures of the process because my kids were too impatient to get their respective bunny ears. And after I was finished with each set I just had time for a quick snapshot before they took them away. My daughter even used the bunny ears when we went to the grocery store last Sunday after church - actually, she asked if she could wear them to church before...

My original plan was to make both ears in gray felt and then have the inner parts of the ears in pink and blue, for a girl/boy version. My kids raided my felt scraps, though, and decided on totally different colors. Since I was making the bunny ears for them anyway, I just went with the flow.

Here's the tutorial if you want to make them too:

How to mend pants without knee pads

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to mend pants without knee pads.

A bit of background first: I have a boy that tends to come home from school almost every day with his pants torn at the knees. I have no idea if this happens with all boys or just with mine, but over the years I've developed several strategies to deal with it. It's either that or having to new pants every week. 

  

Of course knee pads are the most obvious choice in this case, and the best ones are those that you can iron-on and don't even need to sew (although from my experience they may need to be reinforced after being washed several times). But even if you make your own knee pads instead of buying them, they don't work on every pair on pants. 

DIY Play Food - felt chocolate cookies with filling

Hello and welcome to another installment of the DIY play food series.

Today I'm showing you how to make felt chocolate cookies with filling. Almost as delicious as the real ones, but with zero calories...

Here's the tutorial:

DIY Doll Diaper - tutorial & pattern

Hello and welcome. Today I'm back here to show you how to make cloth diapers for your little girl's dolls. They come together so quickly and are so easy to make - why buy when you can make your own?

Here's the tutorial:

DIY Play Food: cloth napkins & napkin rings

If you've been visiting this blog for a while you already know I have a soft spot for play food. I love creating new items for my kids and I'm dreading the day they tell me they are already too old for play food.

Today, however, I'm not exactly sharing play food, but an accessory. Dishes, glasses and other play kitchen stuff are usually easy to come buy, and while they obviously be made at home, usually kids -especially girls - get them as gifts at one point or another. But one thing was missing in our play kitchen: cloth napkins. So we set out to make them. With cute napkin rings to match, if course.
 

These can be made in next to to nothing and are so easy that the kids can help in the process too. 

(And as a plus, this project counts towards my goal of destashing in 2018, as it was exclusively made from leftover fabric and ribbon scraps).

Here's the (brief) tutorial:

My Little Girl Bag made the top 100!

I'm so happy, I just got an email saying that one of my projects made it to the AllFreeSewing's Top 100 sewing projects list for 2017. 

There are lots of amazing projects there, so I'm really proud that my Little Girl Bag was included!

Below is the link to the original post (click on the image): 

And here is the link to the AllFreeSewing project page: https://www.allfreesewing.com/Bags-and-Purses/Little-Girl-Purse-with-Flap

Great way to start 2018, right?

Education.com Worksheets - free download

Hello and welcome. Today I'm taking a break from sharing craft tutorials to let you know about Education.com. 

 

I don't home school my kids. I know it's a great fit for some families and I really admire that, but even if I didn't work full time out of the house I don't think it would be a good fit for me. Actually, after a few years of experience (I have a 5th grader and a 2nd grader) what seems to work best for us is having the kids work by themselves with supervision. I can't be with them all the time while they are working and studying because I just lack the patience to do it. It's not an easy confession, and I've been improving along the years, but it's the truth. So, for them to have some time of supervised studying at home I usually search for free worksheets, let them work on their own and then I just check the results, correct if necessary and provide an explanation if they have questions. 

When I became aware of Education.com and their resources, I jumped to the chance to try them. There are lots of worksheets to choose from, but you can find below an example for you to download. Clicking on one of the images below will allow you to open a zip file which contains one worksheet and one correction sheet.

Jump into fun with this Autumn leaves division worksheet. The learning continues over at Education.com with awesome division resources and more!

Happy Tuesday,

This post was written in partnership with Education.com. Images come from the Education.com website and as such are not owned by me. I was provided with the free pdfs of the division worksheets to share on the blog. All opinions are my own.  

DIY Play Food: Lettuce Leaves

Hello and welcome to another installment of the DIY play food series. Following up on the felt play hamburgers, and the cheese slices, today I'm showing you how to make lettuce leaves for your kids to play with (and maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to convince them to eat the real ones - or so I keep telling myself).

Here's the tutorial:

DIY Play Food - cheese slices

Following up on last week's felt play hamburgers, today I'm showing you how to make simple cheese slices for your kids to play with. Because when it comes to toys, keeping things simple is often the best.

These can be made in next to to nothing and the kids can help in the process too. 

Here's the tutorial:

Two Toned Elephant Softie

My kids are growing up but their love for soft toys doesn't seem to be decreasing so far. So when my daughter received her first sewing kit on her birthday, she decided she wanted an elephant softie. Off we went in search of an easy pattern - we printed a few but in the end I decided to make our own.

And then I asked her if she wanted a boy elephant or a girl elephant. Well, she couldn't decide and then said she wanted one of each. So we compromised with a blue and pink elephant (it's blue on one side and pink on the other).

Here's a small tutorial in case you want to make one too.

Materials needed: 

• soft felt in two contrasting colors (you can also use fleece)
• the pattern - download here
• sewing thread
• two buttons for the eyes (if you're making this for a baby, replace the buttons for a small circle of felt in the color of your choice and sew it tightly)
• polyester filling 

Instructions:

• print and cut the pattern 
• place the pattern over the felt and trace all around
• cut the elephant pieces
• sew the ears first - make sure they mirror each other

• place the body pieces one on top of the other, wrong sides together, and sew with a simple stitch or a blanket stitch, adding the filling as you go. 

I usually prefer to sew all around and leave just an opening for filling, but in this case due to the size of the trunk and the legs, it's easier to fill them while you are sewing for better access.

This elephant is still nameless, but has been following my daughter everywhere so I'm guessing she's happy with the result. And proud too, because she helped with the pattern drawing and cutting and with the filling as well.  

Happy Monday,

DIY Felt play food - hamburgers

When it comes to play food, there are two approaches you can use. One is to make your pieces a work of art, and there are many examples of those on Pinterest. The other is just to assume that these will be things for your kids to play with and therefore, as long as they're minimally realistic, they're just fine.

As I'm always pressed for time, you can guess that I don't follow the works-of-art approach. So today I'm going to show you how you can make simple felt hamburgers. These can be made in less than ten minutes and the kids can help in the process too, which doubles the fun.

Here's the tutorial:

DIY bunny garland

Remember when I told you about our new pet bunny and how my son decided he wanted a bunny themed birthday party this year? Well, in addition to creating a bunny t-shirt I also made a bunny garland to decorate our dining room. 

A new bunny T-shirt

Earlier this year I made a bunny T-shirt for my daughter. It was a huge hit, she used it for Easter and has been using it ever since too. With the addition of our new pet (we now have a real bunny at our house - you can see him here in case you missed my wordless Wednesday post last week) my son decided he wanted a bunny birthday party. 

So last weekend we hosted our very own bunny party. We had a bunny cake, a bunny garland (a DIY project which I'll be showing here another time), a bunny tablecloth and bunny napkins. And I made a new bunny t-shirt, this time for my son. 

I used my Sizzix to cut a bunny shape from a piece of iron-on fabric (my son picked the pattern). 

 

After ironing the bunny over a plain t-shirt, I secured it with a zig-zag stitch all around (it may be me, but I'm always afraid these iron-ons won't survive being washed more than a couple of times). 

Then I added the pom-pom and embroidered the eye of the bunny, although I'm not very happy with it yet, as it doesn't stand out much from the pattern of the fabric. My son didn't want to add a button for the eye, so I may need to embroider it a bit bigger or with a darker thread. 

Still, overall, it was another hit and the perfect add-on to our bunny birthday party. 

 And here are the two bunny t-shirts side by side:

Happy Monday,