Homemade Gifts: Car Playmat

I got this awesome idea for a DIY car playmat from A Girl and a Glue Gun and just went to town making this for Owen's Christmas present. (ha, I just looked back at hers and realize I kind of made mine into Crazy-Town.. as my husband says "um, it sure is busy..") Anyway, I think Owen will love it:

I wanted to just keep filling it in, adding more animals and trees and stuff and my husband just told me "stop."  Probably a good idea :)

I'm a little on the fence about the animals--my son did see this while I was making it and he loved playing with the animals, but in the end I decided to glue them on anyway.  Not sure if I should have done that or not.

so yay! I am so glad its done!  But don't let my impatience deter you from making this...  Mine is kind of big, you could do one the size of a card table that would be awesome, and just add a little bit at night for the next week or so and you would have an awesome pressie for your kid!  A Girl and a Glue Gun also has good ideas for girl themed mats!

sharing with these websites:

Felt Food Friday: No Frills Orange Slice Tutorial

Yay! Its Friday!  I'm so glad I committed to making more felt food, with the holidays coming up I have way too many projects going on and this one is kind of going to the wayside.  But I still figured out how to make an orange slice and I wanted to share it with you.  There are a few very lovely fancy orange slice tutorials out there (see here and here, but when I started this project I was still hand sewing (but my machine is back now!) and I couldn't get those slices to look cute, so I thought I would just do a plain old orange.

You can make this by hand or by machine.  In addition to the needle/thread you will need:
orange felt
paper and pen
pins
something to stuff the orange with

First create your pattern.  I traced around a soup can.  You will need one circle and one pointy oval that is a bit bigger than the can.  To give some perspective, my circle was about 3" across and the oval 4 1/4", however the oval was slightly too long, which I easily remedied by trimming the end during the pinning process.

Cut out your shapes.  Leave about a quarter inch for seam allowance.

Find the middle of each piece and pin them together.

Continue to pin around the orange and sew. I would show this completely pinned but apparently not being able to use your sewing machine for a year causes you to lose all your supplies... all I could find were four pins. I stopped sewing before I got to the 2nd pointy end so I could make sure my fabric was lined up right.

I began at the middle and ended about 1 1/2" from my starting point. 

Turn the slice right-side out and stuff.  I used the batting of an old couch pillow, you can use pretty much anything.  Close it off with a blind stitch.  I am not showing a picture of this because I am bad at it.

Optional:  I prefer a crisper look to my orange so I pinched the sides of the top together and stitched across it.

And you are done!

Also, when I handstitched my orange, I kept my stitches on the outside because I thought it helped make the orange more orange shaped:

If you have any felt food projects please share them with me!

Quick Toddler Slipper Tutorial

My husband has been complaining that Owen doesn't have any slippers to wear around the house.  This past weekend I came up with an easy idea to make slippers that I thought I would share with you.  Owen had a pair of fleece footie pajamas that the zipper had broken on.  So I turned them into slippers.  My sewing machine is in the repair shop so I used the glue gun, but it would be much better to sew them, and I plan on doing so once I get my machine back.

Before:

First cut the feet off of a pair of pajamas.  Leave several inches at the top, so it looks like a boot.

Second, cut strips of the fleece (or use another fabric) long enough to wrap around the ankles of your child.  I didn't measure, and I should have, mine were too short at first.  I also found that my fleece had less stretch when I cut vertical strips (but they didn't look as cute with the pattern...)

Sew (or glue) velcro to the strips.  Make sure that you are attaching the velcro to opposite sides of the fabric.  Put the loop velcro on the front of your strip and the hook velcro on the back of your fabric.

If one of the legs of your slipper has a zipper in it, stitch it closed.

Attach the strip to the back of the slipper.

And thats it!  Wrap the strip around your child's ankle and secure the slipper in place.  Fold the top over and you are all done.  My son, who takes his socks off constantly has not removed these once.  Although maybe your child is more of a genius than mine...

Also--now that you have your materials out, you should get out your child's mittens and make strips for those too!  I did, and it would have been awesome, but 1) they were too long and 2) the glue did not hold because of all the stretching.  But once my sewing machine is back in business I will definitely make some ;)

linking to these sites:

Felt Food Friday!

Yay, welcome to Felt Food Friday!  Its going to be a new feature over here, figured I might as well make it a set thing since I plan on making a bunch of it...   Also I want to see what felt food YOU have made.  Share with me! Hopefully this will keep me inspired to keep creating;)  Hope you don't mind I am a total novice!

 Oh I have been in love with felt food since.. forever!  I kept thinking I should make some but put it off until a later date because I didn't have the materials or I didn't have the time or my sewing machine was broken (well now its in the shop, but the sewing machine repair man said he didn't know if it could be fixed!  sob, sob, this breaks my heart...)  Anyway, now I have piles of felt for that car mat I keep mentioning but seldom working on so I started making food this week.

I didn't really use patterns but I will share the websites I got inspiration from!  First up was a pancake, inspired by Homemade by Jill. I figured this would be such an easy start since its just a circle.  Don't tell anyone, but I've been doing some illegal stitches... whip-stitching really tightly because its easy and I don't have the stamina for more finished, complicated stitches...  Anyway, I stuffed this with one layer of fleece I had leftover from way back when I made Owen newborn diapers so I put that in.  It was so easy!  He was very excited..  "pancake?"  until he realized it was fake, lol.  But I showed him how to pretend eat it and he did a little fake chewing and "num numming" and was super adorable...

Since I was on a roll I made a fried egg.  I don't eat eggs, but I think they kind of look like this...  Making these foods is making me feel like a bad mama cause Owen doesn't know what all of them are either.  Anyway, I just free-hand cut two layers of eggwhite, again stuffing it with one layer of fleece, and sewed the yolk on top.  The pancake and eggs are awesomely simple intros to felt food, my friends! (oh, why didn't I make butter and syrup, you ask?  Because I am mean and Owen eats his pancakes plain.  So I figured he wouldn't know the difference.)

What better to have with your pancakes and eggs than a strawberry? Also so so easy, I used this free pattern and it took no time at all.  If you don't have stuffing, find something around the house--fabric scraps, cotton balls, etc.  I pillaged an old  couch pillow since my husband always complains we have too many of them. Oh, I am also digging this pattern, I love the leaves on it

This carrot was basically the same idea as making the strawberry--  I used this tutorial

Then onto more difficult tasks... The banana in the peel.  I took a peek at this tutorial and then made my own, except I didn't have cream felt and I didn't want to line the peel because, A) waste of felt (for me, since I never get out shopping and never spend money) b) too much work!  Well, my banana turned out mediocre... its overstuffed and doesn't really close properly, but you can totally tell what it is and I think its super cute!

Now I am working on orange slices and a peel... If I figure out how to get them right I will make a tutorial for next Friday..

Here are some sites that have free tutorials or pictures you can get ideas from... Seems like once you get the basic ideas down then you can basically make anything--Apples, oranges, tomatoes and such all seem like they are very easy if you aren't making them to open up and  have slices in them...  Anyway, here are the links
The Petite Cafe
Helping Little Hands
Craftster
The Olsen Family Journal

If you have done any felt food projects post a link and let me know--I would love to see them and maybe show them off in a future post!