What’s Up Wednesday

Hello everybody. Seems like a long while since I’ve chatted to you here on the blog. I’ve had a fun time off just doing whatever last week and now it’s back to the sewing game!

What’s Up this week are a few items you can PRE-ORDER for your Christmas shopping as I get myself prepared for the silly season. I normally don’t make anything in the last 2-3 weeks before Christmas as I get myself organised for my own Christmas shopping/making and overall winding down prior to Christmas.

So I thought I’d get myself organised and prepared to get My Teeny-Tiny Dolls® & other Cook You Some Noodles® creations ready for your viewing.

To start off with, here are 3 items you can PRE-ORDER (there will be more items to come) BUT there will be limited offerings as some of them I only have a limited amount of fabrics.

First, Mary Jane Christmas Stockings

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They are available in 3 colourways: Green/White Stripes with Red Mary Jane Shoes, Red/White Stripes with Black shoes and Black/White Stripes with Red shoes. Each are made from cotton canvas fabrics with pure new wool felt shoes embellished with buttons on each side. If you want to swap the colour of the shoes, you can e.g. Black/White Stripes with Black shoes. Each are $28.00 each + shipping (11″ My Teeny-Tiny Doll® sold separately).

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Next are these new MTTD Sleeping Bags

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These Sleeping Bags are great for you 11″ My Teeny-Tiny Dolls®, as well as your 8″ Lil’ Sis/Bro MTTDs. They are made from flannelette and fleece fabrics and are available in 3 colourways: Pink Floral/Mint Green fleece lining, Blue Floral/Baby Pink and Yellow Floral/Pink. They are $15.00 each.

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And finally for today, we have My Teeny-Tiny Doll® Tabitha

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She is $42.00 + shipping. If you want her to have a different hair style/colour and skin tone, just let me know and I can customise her for you. Check out my Facebook photos here for inspirations.

Theses 3 are available now in the shop and remember, limited fabrics are available, so make sure to secure which one you want before they sell out.

Please allow 7-10 working days for items to be made before shipping. Happy shopping!

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Christmas gifts for school friends and teachers

I made a few things this year for the boys’ school friends and teachers.

For Zach’s preschool and daycare teachers and his OT, I’ve made them each cute little make-up bags, which totals to 13 make-up bags (the ones below as well as in different prints)

These are made from Michelle Patterns

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For Josh’s school friends as well as other teachers who’d taught him along the year, I took a picture of him in a red t-shirt and asked him to stand in front of our Christmas tree fabric. Then I used picmonkey to erase the graphic that was on his tee and replaced it with the “Merry Christmas 2014” text, as well as added the Santa hat and rosy cheeks.

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I placed 4 copies on a single word document and had it printed at a printers (to save my own ink at home), bought candy canes and cut out 2 slots near his hand and inserted a candy cane in each card so it looks 3D

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And finally, I made his Year 1 teacher a Christmas stocking, which I thought turned out pretty good (yes, I do surprise myself sometimes)

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I chose a nice font from picmonkey, printed it out and cut each small letter on felt and glued and sewed each of them on the fleece part of the stockings. I also cut and sewed Ms Goode’s first name on the other side, so she can either use it in class or at home.

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Josh’s original Year 1 teacher went on maternity leave in August and this is what I gave her for a teacher and baby shower’s gifts – blogged about here

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Tomorrow is Josh’s last day of Year 1 … where has the time gone? It seems like yesterday that I took this photo of his first day of Year 1 (left) with his last day of Kindy 2013 (right)

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Then on Friday is Zach’s last day of daycare and then starting Kindy next year … aaarggghhhh! Happy and anxious time for me! 2 boys in big school!

Boys’ Christmas Stockings

Okay 11 more days before Christmas and I really have to start thinking of the things I need to make for our Christmas.

Started thinking of the boys’ Christmas stockings for this year. The ones I made last year were only little and I wanted to make them ones that are big enough to have a little toy in there + little treats.

Here were 2007 and 2009’s X-mas stockings

2007 – crochet stockings for Hubby, me and Josh.

 

2009 – stockings made out of felt with Josh and Zach’s initials.

 

So for this year I wanted to make something big enough that’ll last them for a few Christmases, or atleast until the toys they want from Santa get too big.

Remember the Christmas Mary Jane Stockings I bought the pattern for and make and sell in my etsy store – I wanted to make ones like them but with sneakers or something.

 

 

Then last night, about 12am, I thought of making Converse style high top shoes Christmas stockings. So I got sketching and started cutting up the pieces. Here’s a collage of some of the stages of creation.

For Josh’s stockings, it had to be green (it’s his favourite colour). I made the shoes green, added a red felt star, red ribbon trimming and black ribbon for the black “rubber” bit on the bottom of the shoes.

 

I have a lot of those white studs so they were just perfect for the shoe lace holes and that 2 ventilation holes at the bottom of the shoe.

 

For Zach’s stockings, I made the shoes from red felt, added green star and used thin black elastic for the trim of the shoes (I didn’t have black ribbons thin enough to give it a nice contrast with the thicker black ribbons on the bottom of the shoe).

 

It was getting very late, or rather very early in the morning. I contemplated staying all through the night (it was already 5am at this stage) but I thought no, don’t want cranky Mum about today. So this is where the stockings were at 5.30am this morning.

 

When I showed Josh what I was making for them, he looked at it a bit puzzled. I told him the green one was going to be his. Then he insisted that the green one had to have green stars aswell. At first I told him the green shoes had to have red stars and the red shoes with green stars. But no, you can’t argue with a 3 year old. So the green shoes had to have green stars aswell (lucky I had only sewn on one at the time). So after unstitching and sewing everything together, here’s the final result.

Josh’s Christmas stockings 2010.

 

Zach’s Christmas stockings 2010.

 

Just need to get shoe laces for them for the finishing touch. In the meantime, here they are hanging above the telly for me to enjoy looking at.

 

I will make a pattern for it soon and offer it either as a free tutorial or to sell. Okay, 1 item off my Christmas To Do List – now for the other 100.

 

EDIT Here are they are with laces.

Christmas is Coming

I am really enjoying the Christmas holidays again. I remember it when I was younger when the whole family and relatives would spend Christmas at a different relatives’ place each year.

When my cousins and I wait would patiently for whose present would be next to be pulled out from under the tree. Of course, we never got to open presents until after lunch and the parents have rested and cleared up a bit. All the kids would chant “Present time, present time” until the adults couldn’t take any more of it.

Then I remember a recession during the 90s (I think) when it wasn’t affordable anymore to buy presents for each member of the family. Instead, you would just buy one present for the whole family. This of course made Christmas a little bit boring for the children.

Then when the cousins got older and started earning money from a casual jobs, we then had secret Santas. I enjoyed that time as I always got presents for the house – a table lamp from my cousin Eleonor one year and a handheld Bamix mixer from another cousin Henry another year, both of which are part of my family home now and are used regularly.

As the oldest of the cousins, I liked it when the younger ones became of legal drinking age as we would take one of the wines the parents had brought to the gathering, would polish that off and have the giggles for the rest of the day from being tipsy.

Then as we all grew up and had separate lives, Christmas gatherings were just about the food and eating too much.

Now as a parent, I’ve rediscovered the joy of Christmas, especially now that Josh is more aware of the anticipation of opening presents.

I told Josh the other day we would be putting up the Christmas tree soon. He was very excited and began to tell me how we were going to set it up and what things we would be hanging on it.

So that feeling got me thinking about Christmas for our family and of course for the shop too.

I saw this great pattern for a big Christmas stockings with Mary Jane shoes from sewlola.

Photo courtesy of sewlola

 

I have made 2 so far and they’re now available in my etsy store.

 

Bring Christmas on!