Trick or Treat Totes

 LeAnne's Trick or Treat Totes have been on my list for the last two years so I am happy to say that I finally made them this year.

While I was at JoAnn's before Halloween I noticed that all of their Halloween fabric was on sale (40% or 50%) so some of it was super cheap. I bought some Halloween fabric for the first time in my life with the intention of making these... and hopefully a few other fun Halloween things in the next year or two. The kids loved picking out their favorites of what I brought home. Buddy wanted the green bat fabric and Bella picked out the purple trick or treaters and my two favorite fabrics were the black/silver/sparkly spider web and candy fabric. So I put those together for the baby. I had fun cutting the shapes out of felt and doing a little embroider work. And I won't lie - sewing the spider onto the bag was a beast. It was worth it though because I love it and Bella decided it was her favorite. I think they are so cute though and the kids loved them. Even little Lou grabbed onto hers when we got in the car and didn't want to let go.

These cute Halloween totes made our Halloween even sweeter! Thanks LeAnne for the great tutorial!

XO

Maren

September Challenge

Hi! It's Maren here and I am going to post our challenges for this month. I can't believe it is September already!!

I am so glad that Celia included LeAnne's Trick or Treat Tote in the challenge last month because that is on my list to do before Halloween. I was scrolling through some of her tutorials and remembered that she also had a cute felt Halloween banner which would be another fun Haloweeny thing to whip up for a decoration this Halloween season.

Since I have girls I am going to post a few links of some girly things that I have been working on or that I have been thinking about working on. They are great for either the little girls in your life or for yourself.

First: Fabric Hair Rollers from Life with Monkey. Have you ever tried those pink foam ones. Well check out this little girl's hair using rollers from this tutorial. WAAAY better results. I think I will be wearing these to bed.

Second: Shirring. I have been hit by the shirring bug. And I have LeAnne to thank for this! She did a tutorial for a cute little summer dress and tipped me off on some patterns that were for sale on etsy. I manged to snag a few patterns before the shop closed forever and I really have enjoyed them. I'll post more about them later. I think that LeAnne did a great job with her dress tutorial and the great thing about shirring is it is so easy and so cute and so versatile. You can add wide hems of coordinating fabric, ruffles, different types of sleeves. wider strips for cap sleeves, ribbons, spaghetti straps etc. You can even make a top for yourself as well!

 LeAnne also did a great tutorial on shirring. I am so glad that she included a picture of what the elastic thread should look like. Months before I started shirring I picked up some elastic thread at JoAnns because I knew at some point I wanted to give it a try. My thread was on a plastic spool. I kept hearing that it has to be on a cardboard one. I went back to JoAnns to find the stuff that I needed and could NOT find it. I even asked someone and they were pretty clueless as to what I was even talking about. The label on the thread I got said it was meant for shirring so I used it. And it worked. However, The first day my daughter wore her dress I noticed that some of the thread broke and now I will have to go back and do it again! Not Fun. So I will be finding another way to get the proper elastic thread. Just a word to the wise.

Third: I have really been wanting to make my oldest daughter some cute flower hairclips/headbands to wear to preschool. I love these kinds of projects because they don't take a lot of time and you can make a whole bunch in one sitting. Here are a few tutorials. These flowers can be used for anything - brooch, clip for a purse or bag, gift topper etc. No sewing machine necessary! (sorry I was not able to get any of the pictures up - but go ahead and click. You won't be sorry)

Felt Peony
Felt Flower - the scalloped roll method
Felt Flower - the glue method (love the button center)
Satin Flowers - the candle method - I soooo want to do this one
Rolled Fabric Flower
Fabric and Paper flower roudup from Little birdie secrets -I love the painted newspaper flowers. It would be a fun one to do with  kids to give away to someone special (Mother's day, Valentines day, birthdays etc)


 Recipe: Triple Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I love fall desserts and I love this one. I made this on a couple of different occasions. Once for my son's first birthday and now that I have an October birthday I think I am going to make it for my baby's first birthday next month. It is very yummy. I have done it with three layers, but it would also be yummy as cupcakes or made in a regular old cakepan. Delish!

XO

Maren

Maren's Bunny Baskets

I'm finally finished with my bunny baskets. I used this scrap fabric basket tutorial for the construction. I wanted it to be bigger though so I made it bigger. I figured out how big to cut my main squares and then how big to cut the corners. It is really simple to figure out how big you want to make it. I wanted my basket to be 7" so I multiplied that by three (bottom and two sides x the desired length/height - 7" in this case). So I cut a 21" square and cut my corner squares 6 1/2". Anyways, not that I needed to explain all that, but it took me a couple of minutes to figure it out so I thought I would share.

I also opted for long floppy ears to tie up to be used as the handles. I saw that idea last year and LOVED it so I thought I would give it a whirl. Unfortunately I bookmarked it on my old computer and can not find it anywhere online.

Things I would do differently. One. My interfacing is not nearly as stiff as I would like it to be. I tried to find just the right thickness but could not find it at my JoAnns. I should have done two layers of the interfacing for this size. Two. Try linen. I LOVE the look of linen and am starting to look for it in the remnant section every time I am at the fabric store. I would have loved to have done some in gray too.





Now for headbands!!!

XO
Maren

Heart Garland

I really enjoyed this craft and it was as the name suggests, super easy. In fact, after I cut out all of the hearts I sewed them together with Bella on my lap at the sewing machine. She liked choosing which colors to use next and passed me a heart every time I needed a new one. I used 7 different colors of wool felt and I only used 1/2 sheet of each color(1/2 sheet divided into 3 stips). A little goes a long way. And as you can see this garland is super long. I love how it turned out. I love all the colors and I love all the different shapes and sizes of hearts. So fun. And so cute!




Here is the link again.

As a side note, I probably mentioned this already but I have a really hard time finding cute felt around here so I bought most of this wool felt on Heather Bailey's online store. For those of you in Utah, there is no shortage of cute fabric shops (so jealous!). Material Girls is one in South Jordan that I hear is really good and I beleive carries great felt - ya know, if you are interested. I'm just jealous I can't go there myself. And I will admit, since I know I am not the only one, that I used to hate (and I mean really hate) fabric shopping. Now it is one of my favorite things to do.

For this project I am sure you can use regular felt as well. It would be a little bit cheaper, but I must confess that I have become a felt snob. I love wool felt. It really is much nicer than the regular stuff. That being said I do still use regular felt - especially for felt food. Anyways...

XO
Maren