Homespun Holiday: Keepsake Ornaments

I'm very excited about today's post. Lizzie Jones, formerly a designer for Papertrey Ink, started her own company called Poshta Design and released a collection of stitching ornament dies. These were an investment, but I am glad I got them because they are SO fun! The collection is called Homespun Holiday: Keepsake Ornaments Kit. It includes dies to create four different ornament shapes, many different embellishment dies, felt, sequins, beads, needles, an inspiration guide, everything you need to start creating right out of the box!

I think my favorite way to embellish the ornaments was with this snowflake design. Isn't it gorgeous?! I used white thread and sparkly clear sequins and beads; it glistens beautifully in real life. 

When you purchase the kit, you pick a "color story" to go with it. This is a collection of felt in a certain color family with coordinating thread, sequins and beads. But for this ornament I actually used some MFT felt I already had because I wanted to make a pink ornament and the color story I chose didn't include pink felt. Any quality wool felt I think would work fine. Both the felt that came in the kit and the MFT felt cut beautifully. 

This ornament uses the "Frost" color story, which is a collection of blues and creams. You can add the beads and sequins anywhere you like. Once all my felt was stitched, it was so fun to play around with the sequins and beads to figure out which colors and placement looked best. 

You can see how different each of these three round ornaments look, just by changing which embellishment dies I used! This one uses the tiny snowflake three times across the band. In addition to the color story that comes with your kit, you can purchase felt rolls individually, which is what I did here so that I would also have some green felt to work with. It was easy to find DMC thread to match. 

My favorite ornaments tended to be the ones like this, that had a very simple color palette. I thought a single sequin and bead at the center was all this tear drop ornament needed. 

This is the last one I made. I was going for a more traditional color palette and used the thread as an accent color rather than matching it to the felt. All of my ornaments I sewed flat, instead of stuffing with fiber fill. But you can do either, and both my boys have requested I make them "puffy" ornaments next. 

I made these ornaments as gifts for close family and special teachers. I hope they bring happy memories as they put them on their Christmas tree each year!

Baby Soft Blocks with Ribbon Loops

As promised here are the soft blocks I made for my little man last week. These are a bit more complicated than the taggie blankie, but still totally doable if you can sew in a straight line. Look, Ma! A 3-D sewing project!

I followed a wonderful tutorial from Zaaberry. She walks you right through the process with step by step photos. Each of my four blocks has two sides of soft minky fabric, two coordinating cotton prints, and a variety of ribbons.

This project is a great ribbon stash buster.  I knew I was hoarding small ribbon remnants for a reason! It was fun to go through my pile of ribbon scraps and find different colors and textures that coordinated with my fabrics. I had a surprising number that worked with my color scheme!

When the ribbon was wide, I sewed in a single loop. When it was more along the lines of 3/8" wide, I sewed in two loops. Given that little man immediately grabbed one of the loops and started flailing it around as soon as I gave him a block, I'd say this project was a success! :)

Taggie Style Baby Blankies

My sewing machine has been working overtime this past week, and I've loved it! For a while now I have wanted to try making a taggie-style blanket for my little man. He chews on his burp clothes like none other so I thought I would give him a dedicated chew cloth. Ha! 

There are tons of tutorials online; the two I found most helpful were from Lil' Luna and Melissa Sews. I recommend checking out their websites if you would like to try making one yourself. It is actually very easy! For mine, I opted to use a soft brown minky fabric on one side and a cotton elephant print on the other.

The ribbons are white grosgrain and aqua satin. I purposely chose ribbons with different textures to increase the sensory experience. That might be too highfalutin for a 5 month old, but it made me feel like I was giving him an "educational" toy! :)

I also made these two to give to my cousin's new twin boys.

One is brown minky with chartreuse cotton. The ribbons are brown satin and more white grosgrain.

The other is white minky with chartreuse cotton. I wanted them to be different so each boy had his own, but also complementary.

I also made a set of soft blocks this week (I told you I had been a busy sewer!). Stay tuned to hear more about those in the coming days!

Bassinet Skirt

As I mentioned in my previous post my husband and I are expecting our first baby soon. There is a wonderful old bassinet that has been in my husband's family for years. Every cousin from his generation and every child of those cousins has slept in it, and each precious baby name is recorded on the underside of the bassinet, making it a very special family heirloom. My in-laws brought the bassinet down to our place a few months ago so that our baby could be the next to use it. Along with the bassinet came a lovely skirt and liner that his grandmother handmade for it years ago for her first grandchild. However, the idea of using this heirloom skirt terrified me. I didn't want to be the one to ruin Grandma W.'s antique bassinet skirt!  So, with no prior experience in this sort of sewing project, I decided to make a new one that could get spit up on or have diaper leaks on and be none the worse for wear. We'll use Grandma W.'s skirt for some keepsake pictures, but then change it out for the one I made which can get ruined in good conscience. 

Like I said, I didn't really know what I was doing when I embarked on this ambitious project. I looked up tutorials online and used the original skirt as a sort of template, and winged it from there. When skill or knowledge gave out, "Enthusiasm!" was the battle cry! This tutorial ended up being the most helpful. I won't attempt to tell you what I did, for fear that people that really know how to sew would cringe at my exploits. But above is a picture of the finished bassinet skirt!

The skirt was made from a pretty tan-colored cotton fabric. The inside liner was made from some ivory quilted fabric that resembled the liner from the original skirt. Oh, and I also made the navy bassinet sheet because the mattress was an odd size. But that is another story.

Getting the rounded corners done correctly was the hardest part for me, again because I didn't exactly know what I was doing. It turned out okay, but it isn't as snugly fitted as I could wish. Ah well.

I had enough of the tan fabric left over to make matching ties for the nursery curtains. They were a relief to make after the dangers the skirt. Hurray for straight lines! :)

Baby Denim Rag Quilt

Do you have lingering projects? The kind that you have the best intentions of doing someday and accumulate the supplies for but never quite get around to doing? Unfortunately I have many of those. One such project is a denim rag quilt which I have been meaning to make for years. Toward that end I have been diligently saving all of my old jeans and the old jeans of family members. I have even moved across the country with this pile of old jeans. Finally, last year, I started cutting down the jeans into squares for the patchwork quilt I intended to make. I had also planned on backing it with a pretty flannel print, but when I started looking at fabric stores it seemed flannel was fairly expensive for the size quilt I wanted to make. Yikes! This was supposed to be a thrifty project from recycled jeans! So again the project got put on hold. Finally, thanks to a suggestion by my sister, I ended up buying a flannel sheet set instead. Much cheaper! So now I had my denim squares cut, and my flannel fabric procured. And that is where things stood for quite awhile. 

Well, something happened to refocus my attention and give me a deadline. My husband and I are expecting our first baby! Nothing prompts a flurry of activity like that kind of deadline. Must finish quilt before baby arrives! It also changed the scope of the project. Rather than the full sized quilt I had originally envisioned, it turned into a baby quilt that our little guy can play on. And at long last it is done!!

Here are all of my squares laid out. I didn't have enough of the dark denim to have a complete checkerboard pattern, so there is a border of the lighter denim all the way around. Each cut square measures 6"x6", but was sewn with a 1/2" seam so that the final square size was 5".  The quilt measures 7 rows x 7 rows, so the finished size is approximately 35"x35". Perfect for baby!

Here it is sewn together. After sewing each row together I clipped the seams to encourage fraying in the wash for the classic rag quilt look. It was easier to clip as I went, rather than clipping the entire quilt at the end.

I sewed a 1/2" seam around the entire border to finish it.

And here is the back side with the cozy flannel. Our baby's nursery is done in navy and white, with red accents, so this ended up matching perfectly! Hurray for a completed project! :)