Maisy

Jenna loves Lucy Cousins' Maisy and her friends. She has read quite 

a few of the Maisy books-owned and from the library and has watched 

her lone Maisy DVD over and over again. I generally am not crazy 

about characters but I must say that Maisy is a sweetheart. And we 

credit Maisy for teaching Jenna the entire alphabet. 

It wasn't easy as easy finding Maisy merchandise here as in the UK 

where she has a pretty decent following so I went online to see if 

Maisy softies existed. They did, but they looked nothing like the 

charming two-dimensional characters in the books.   

So in July I sewed Jenna a Maisy doll, which she has since carried 

around quite a bit. I was busy with other projects since then so poor 

Maisy was starkers for the next few months. Worse than the lack of 

clothes was my omission of her belly-button. Grr. This past fortnight, 

though, I rectified the belly-button thing,

gave her some clothes

and made her some friends! 

You can tell by the look on Maisy's face that it was 

all not a moment too soon.

Here's Charley

Eddie (my favorite) in his orange swimming trunks

Cyril

Tallulah

Little Black Cat

Ostrich

and Panda.

The dolls were made of fleece, as were their clothes, with the 

exception of Tallulah's dress and Maisy's and Charlie's shirts. 

All the clothes are removable, which seemed to be very important 

to Emily, who had been watching the progress of this project with 

great interest. The staff in JoAnn were probably not very pleased 

with me holding up the cutting line with my huge bales of colored 

fleece, wanting only a quarter yard of each. I used to like felt for softies 

but have since discovered that fleece is a fabric with much more 

give - the seams are smoother after stuffing. The tradeoff is that 

embroidery is tougher - the fleece tends to stretch, especially small 

pieces of fleece like the ones for Cat's and Panda's faces. I looked at 

Panda's sad, misshapen eyes when he/she was finally completed 

and felt a mixture of remorse and pity.

Here's the Bus Bag to contain them all. Maisy drives several vehicles 

in the stories and I thought the bus was easier than, 

say, a tractor or an entire train.

Lots of applique. Discovered I had an applique foot in my accessories 

box after all - came with the machine and I never knew. I am most 

gratified that the Bus Bag was made entirely of scraps. Apart from 

the interfacing and piping which I went out to buy, I used whatever 

was in the remnant box, including the zip (recycled from an old duffle). 

The bag, surprisingly, took almost as long to make as all of Maisy's 

friends put together -joining the scraps together, I suppose.

 I like to think of it as my version of a quilt.

Why did I finish this two whole weeks before Jenna's birthday? 

Arggh. 

It's all I can do to stop myself wrapping it up right now 

and giving it to her.

Here's another character I sewed a softie of in the pre-blog days. 

Last year I made Lowly Worm for Emily who loves Richard Scarry's 

Busy People stories. His red running shoe is removable too, as is 

evident from the wear and tear in the picture:

and because I had only two children then, I also made the apple car 

that he rides and flies around town in- yes, the windshield is 

transparent plastic. If I remember right, I cut up one of those bags 

that mattress protectors come in. 

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the car is biggish - 

Lowly himself is about 18" long.

Going to take a break from sewing toys for a while. 

Need to get back to my poor neglected family. Plus, it's

10 days till Halloween and I need to get started on Emily's costume.

Will post pictures of that when it's done and then 

I can finally begin the big sewing project for Christmas! 

More on that later. I get shivers just thinking about it. 

Two things that took my breath away

First, a quilt giveaway. Check it out!

No, people, I am not giving this away. I wish I were giving this away 

but I can't even quilt. Haven't got the gift of or gene for patience. 

But I appreciate a beautiful project that takes as long as something 

like this does. And this gorgeous quilt (yes, a QUILT!) is being given 

away by Elizabeth at Pigtails and Snails. Leave a comment by Friday 

on her blog to enter. 

And here's something else that left me speechless when I first saw it 

earlier this week. A dress made entirely of selvedges - the parts of 

fabric that are usually tossed. But look what Jodie from 

Vintage Ric-Rac has done with it - it's recycling at its best, 

not to mention absolutely tasteful.

Fabric Buckets and Stitched Art

My sister-in-law and mother-in-law recently celebrated their birthdays 

and a curious little idea had been brewing inside my head for their 

birthday presents some months before. It stemmed from the evolution 

of Emily's recent drawings which had me both astonished and slightly 

melancholic that she was all growing up. Add to that my insensible 

need to freeze bits of the present and this project was conceived. 

I like to think of it as one of those odd things that happens when 

motherhood and a sewing machine violently collide. It began with 

a little help from my sister-in-law, who got her children 

to do some self-portraits

and these fabrics to which I alluded in an earlier post

which became these fabric buckets

using this excellent tutorial for the buckets themselves. 

It was a lot of fun to turn line art into embroidery - 

I used the sewing machine, of course, since I don't have 

the patience for hand embroidery right now.

I got Emily to draw portraits of herself, Jenna and Kate 

for a similar present for my mother-in-law.

In her drawings, each sister has an accompanying doll below her 

which, for sheer laziness, I omitted from the actual stitching.

Ah, fun. 

And the best part was how thrilled Emily was to have had 

such a big part in this - her rendering of herself and her sisters 

that crazy mom went and sewed onto cloth. I hope I am this 

sentimental when Jenna hones her marker skills to the point 

of recognizable creatures. And little Kate - what will be 

her choice medium? 

Hm. Time will tell but I am in no hurry to find out - 

let the children stay young for just a little longer.

Speaking of young, here is an ancient and rather different sort 

of fabric bucket that I made almost 20 years ago before I even knew 

what they were called. It was made with my then-favorite material

- 600 denier black waterproof nylon. I used it in everything 

except garments. Ah, those were the days before bibs, and 

when my fabric shopping took me beyond cotton and flannel. 

I remember wanting this bucket to be a sort of shape-shifter 

and having grand plans for it as a hand tote, defensive weapon 

against muggers, haberdashery storage etc. It's faded and ratty 

now and in its twilight years has been home to the kids' 

Mr Potato Head parts. Today while getting ready to do this post, 

I saw it sitting in the living room with its plastic innards all around 

it where the kids had dumped them out. Said to myself, 

"Hey - prototype fabric bucket! Made without (the currently 

very "in") fusible interfacing, besides!" 

So here it is in all its configurations- enjoy.

How to Make an Adjustable Chef's Hat for Kids

This is a tutorial for the third and last part of the Kitchen Ensemble 

playwear - the chef's hat. No pleats in the crown of this one, though - 

just simple gathers. The headband is made adjustable with velcro 

straps. This is not an easy project to sew, and even harder to explain. 

I apologize for making the process more complex 

than it might have needed to be.

You will need:

• Half a yard of fabric that has some weight- maybe something between quilting cotton and home decor fabric, cut into
  

        -- A circle 17" in diameter (shown folded in half in the picture)
        -- Two rectangles 23" x 4"

• A piece of fusible interfacing 22" x 3" 
  
• 2 pieces of velcro 2.5" long (loop)
  
• 1 piece of velcro 2.5" long (hook)
  
• 4" of 1/4" bias tape in a color that matches the fabric
  
• Measuring tape

Part I

The Headband

Step 1

• Place the interfacing shiny side down on the wrong side of one of the rectangles so that there is 1/2" border of fabric all around the interfacing.
  
• Run a hot iron over the interfacing, bonding it to the fabric.
  

Step 2

• Turn the rectangle over and place the two pieces of loop velcro so that 
  

-- they are on the right side of the fabric
-- they are parallel to the long side of the rectangle
-- they are 3/4" apart and equidistant from either of the long sides of the rectangle
-- their ends are 3/4" from one short side  of the rectangle

In the picture below, this is the top rectangle.

• Sew around the edge of the velcro pieces to attach them to the fabric.
  

Step 3

• Place the other fabric rectangle right side up.
  
• Place the piece of hook velcro parallel to one short side of this second rectangle. Position it 3/4" from the short edge and center it vertically. 
  
• Pin and sew the edges to attach it to the fabric. 

In the picture below, this is the lower rectangle.

Step 4

• Lay it aside (hurrah).
  

Part II 

The Crown

You will be working entirely on the 17" fabric circle now.

Step 5

• Take the 4" bit of bias tape and sew it onto the circumference of the circle like you would attach bias tape to any raw edge. It does not matter which section of the circumference you pick. This will be the part of the circumference that will be eventually be exposed within the adjustable region of the headband, and you want it to be finished rather than fraying.
  

Step 6

• Set your stitch length to the longest possible (6 on my machine) and sew one line of stitches 1/8" from the edge and all round the circumference except where the bias tape is. In other words, start sewing just next to where the bias tape ends, and go round till you reach the other end of the bias tape and stop.
  
• Leave  at least 4" of thread trailing from the bobbin and the needle when you cut the threads. You will need this length of thread for gathering the fabric later.
  
• Sew a second line of stitches about 1/4" from the first (and further in from the edge) all around the circle, again avoiding the bias tape. Again leave 4" of trailing thread when you cut.
  
• Adjust the stitch length back to normal.
  

The picture below shows a section of the circumference with the two lines of stitching.

Step 7

• With one hand, take either the upper or lower threads from one end of both lines of stitching and pull gently, while gathering the fabric with the other hand so that the edge of the circle begins to pucker and curl inwards. Work till you have gathered the fabric evenly around the circumference - the section with the bias tape will alone remain ungathered. It might help to do half the circle at a time, pulling the threads from both ends of the double line of stitching to gather the whole circle.
  

• The aim of this step is to turn the flat circle of fabric into this shower cap-looking thing:
  
• You can see the long trailing threads on either side of the bias tape section where they've been pulled to gather the fabric.
  

Step 8

• Measure a section on the bias tape that is 2" long as shown. Mark the boundaries of this 2" section. Try to make it as centralized as possible i.e. with about 1" on each side of the marks (shown in red).
  

Step 9

Because this crown (aka shower cap) needs to fit the headband (22" long) we sewed in the earlier steps, we need the circumference of the gathered circle to be 22". 

• So with the measuring tape, adjust the gathers so that the circumference is 22" around from one red mark to the other. Pull the long trailing threads and gather more if it is too big, or loosen the gathers if it is too small. The picture below hopefully helps illustrate what is needed:
  

Step 10

So now you have this shower cap thing that has a 24" opening: 22" of it is gathered fabric, and 2" of it is a bias-tape covered straight edge, right?

• Knot the trailing threads (the ones you pulled to gather) in such a way that the gathers can no longer be loosened. You want the opening to stay 24".
  

The crown is now finished!

Part III

Attaching the crown to the headband

This part is fast but could be confusing. This is a good time to make a cup of strong tea (or coffee) and wash it down with vast quantities of high quality dark chocolate.

You are going to sandwich the crown between the two rectangles that form the headband. The important thing to remember (and which will save much gnashing of teeth later) is that the velcro ends have to be opposite. Perhaps the picture below might help explain: ignoring the pins - they are there to keep the fabric from separating inappropriately - one rectangle (the one below) has velcro at its end and the other (peeled back) does not.

Grr.. dare we continue?

OK, here goes:

Step 11

• Take one rectangle with the interfacing and, beginning with the end with the velcro, place against the outside of the crown as shown so that
  

-- the right side of the rectangle is facing the crown

-- its long edge is lined up with the gathered edge of the crown

-- one red mark on the bias tape is 1/2" from the short edge of the rectangle (the blue pin is 1/2" from the edge of the rectangle)

• Pin all the way around the edge of the crown so that the other short edge of the rectangle ends 1/2" beyond the other red mark on the bias tape.
  

Step 12

• Take the other rectangle and, beginning with the end without the velcro, place it against the inside of the crown so that
  

-- the right side of the rectangle is facing the inside of the crown

-- its long edge is lined up with the gathered edge of the crown and the edge of other rectangle

-- the same red mark that you began with the first rectangle is 1/2" from this short edge of the second rectangle. In other words, the two rectangles are lined up but one is outside the crown and the other is inside.

• Pin all the way around the crown.
  

The picture below shows a close up of the three sandwiched layers: inner rectangle, gathered crown, outer rectangle.

Top view

View of top and side, showing the interfacing

Step 13

• Sew a line of stitches 1/2" from this edge all along the length of the rectangle, stopping 1/2" from either end.
  
• Remove the pins and fold the rectangles down so that their right sides face out. The hat should look something like this: 
  

You should have 

• a crown that has all its fraying edges tucked into the headband
  
• the headband going all the way around the crown except for the 2" section that has the bias tape
  
• the headband that has velcro on opposite ends
  
• the headband that has one long side sewn and the other long side and both short sides unsewn.
  

So far, so good.

Step 14

• In this step, you are going to sew up the three unsewn sides of the headband by folding a 1/2" hem all round and tucking the raw edges of the fold between the two rectangles. 
• Fold in the corners as neatly as you can.
  
• Top stitch all round these three sides. The picture below shows the edges folded in 1/2" and stitched over.
  

The hat is finished, believe it or not -

with the adjustable opening open

and closed

and worn by a 4-year old