Making The Faraway Tree

Welcome to The Making Of The Faraway Tree!

First, let me say that this is not a tutorial. It's more like a behind-the-scenes to its construction. Unlike sewing, which is better illustrated with detailed step-by-step instructions, building with cardboard isn't. Often a person can tell just by looking, how a cardboard thing is put together. 

Second, while I'd been letting the idea of a Faraway Tree model percolate in my brain for a long time, I didn't hit on the final layout until a month or two ago. Before that, I'd considered a swing-open style like this dollhouse, and a twisty Slippery Slip using some kind of clear tubing from a hardware store. All doomed to failure for all kinds of reasons. Then I saw this rocketship at a friend's house while on a playdate and it clicked. Incidentally, I also want to build the rocketship itself from cardboard (how easy is that?) but that would have to wait till I'd done the Tree. 

Looking back at the toys and playthings I've made for the kids, their favorites have been the ones that do something. They appreciate the aesthetics of something handmade, yes, but they also want to know how that something works. So if you've been reading this blog a while, you might have seen this trend in my toys - most of them do something beyond just being a softie, or a cardboard box. This Tree could have been just a static free-expression treehouse they could decorate with their markers, but it is a lot more fun with a working slide and elevator!

Well, enough talking already!

To begin, the main supporting pieces of the Tree look like this

and

They slot together without glue. Some Physics principle keeps them standing firm.

In the picture above, I cut a large central hole in each of the floors, to position the chutes. These holes would eventually be off-center, and I wanted some room to manipulate the chutes to get the best positions for a smooth ride. You'll have to do some actual testing!

When I'd marked the positions, I threw all those floors out and recut four new floors with only the final small holes in them:

The chutes were made from a robust inner tube of a roll of wrapping paper. It was halved lengthwise, cut into pieces and glued to the edges of the holes. 

Here you can see the zig-zag configuration of the chute:

With the chute done, the elevator was assembled next.

First, the roof of the Tree was glued on.

Then, a little basket was made, and holes poked into it. This was threaded through the stabilizing pole. If I had been bothered to leave the house, I'd have bought a long skinny dowel from Michaels and sawn it down to size. But instead I found a wire coat hanger and straightened it. Not as lovely as wood, but free. If you are making this, do not be tempted to leave out the pole. Without it, the elevator swings free, crashes into the sides of the shaft and gets stuck. Your kids will thank you for doing that extra step.

I cut the coat hanger to length, and saved the leftover wire bit for a crank. This was made by drilling a hole in the end of a short dowel and gluing the wire bit into it, then bending it to shape.

Next, I tied string was tied to the basket and wound the other end of the string around an old thread spool. The short dowel was threaded through the spool, glued in place and the spool suspended over a hole in the roof. The dowel axle rotates freely within a little cardboard tunnel. For visibility, I used short pieces so you could see the dowel under and between them.

And this is the final set-up of the elevator:

The working features of the tree finished, we moved on to the details:

Cut-away walls with doors and windows,

glued in place on different-sized floor circles to allow ledges to stand on;

a ladder for the Land portal;

leaves;

 a washing line

and little people:

Finished!

This took me three days (which is nothing) to make it - working only in short spurts whenever the kids didn't need me to serve snacks, or draw princesses, or read books. The completed Tree is about 30" tall. It's big, but it's cardboard, so when it falls apart, it gets tossed out without feeling like we spent a lot of money on it to take up space in our house. Emily has plans to decorate it in the near future. I don't care- I like the natural look, but it belongs to the kids now and it's out of my head at last, so I'm happy!

Meet BYD and SYD

I'm finally sitting down to consolidate all the ideas in the comments everyone left to that midlife craft crisis post! Again, thank you for taking the time to re-inspire me. It certainly started the wheels turning. I've made a rough list in summary of  curriculum possibilities, so at a glance:

• Mending
• Alterations
• Teaching Young Kids to Sew
• Teaching Teenagers to Sew
• Teaching Boys to Sew
• Teaching Beginner Adults to Sew
• Making products look more professional
• Techniques - zippers, plackets, binding, piping odd shapes, sewing curves
• Drafting collars 
• Drafting pants
• Process - from an idea in head to fleshing out the product
• Process - from clothing catalog photos to actual garments (new idea from me) 
• Working with different kinds of fabrics, particularly knits. 
• Interfacing/interlinings
• Curricula/classes on a particular day a week
• Adult slopers
• Laying out a pattern

I hope I haven't left anything out. If I did, please feel free to say so in the comments, OK? Now these are all excellent topics to tackle and we can do one of several things with them over the next year (or two):

1. Some of these have already been extensively covered on many, many other online sites. Among these: zippers, piping, working with knits, sewing around curves, different fabric types, mending. No point reinventing the wheel, so I will refer you to those sites - when I find good tutorials on specific topics, I'll link them here.
2. Some of these can be found in books. Among these: drafting (adult slopers, collars, pants). Again, I will refer you to these books, hopefully with specific titles, which will explain them much better than I can.
3. Some of these things I have no idea how to do, let alone teach, like interlinings. I have not worked with them yet, but when I do, I'd be happy to share what I did, and the ghastly mistakes I made.
4. Some of these will be fun to dive into this year and next. I already have some ridiculous plans lined up, so those should keep me busy!

Three other interesting things:

The first was a Q&A idea: readers could send in a question/photo/problem and I could try to help. Like an agony aunt for fabric, sewing and crafts. I love it! For instance, a couple years ago, I thought of having a regular feature on the blog called What Not To Sew. Readers would nominate hideous fabrics from their stash and you and I would attempt to turn them into something non-hideous. Could be very, very funny. And we all love makeovers, right? But so stressful, because some fabrics are truly so awful that they shouldn't be given a second chance. And I would be morally insincere and ethically irresponsible to the sewing community to salvage them. Plus, most of them will probably be prints i.e. you'll not get very much inspiration from me in that area. That idea went out the window quickly! But a normal Q&A thing, with actual issues we could take seriously, would be fun. Let me think a bit more about how to make this work beyond just a Help Column in which I lazily refer you to other people's sites for answers.

The second was Holly's idea of learning to use commercial patterns. Now that would make an interesting experiment, like reality TV. It's so crazy I might just do it!

The third was....... hm...... let me first tell you a story.

I'd like you to meet BYD and SYD (pronounced Bid and Sid) - short for Big Yellow Drum and Small Yellow Drum. I've had them for years, and I used to play them - not as well as I'd like, of course. I also had a friend teach me, very casually, and I can only play the basic tumbao, which is this. Now, I bought them because I was deeply interested in playing percussion, even though at the time the plan was to buy bongos (more portable). Instead - and I still don't know what happened - I left the music store with BYD and SYD. I remember getting home and telling my brother (plays excellent blues guitar) in a haunted sort of voice that I'd completely lost my mind. I mean, I couldn't even play the congas yet, for cryin' out loud, and I'd just spent all that money on these hulking,  foreign things that would probably sit conspicuously in the corner of my room and rot. Worse, anyone who visited me and saw them would assume I was this cool percussionist chick and I'd have to disclaim, "No, no it's not like that at all!" and they still wouldn't believe me, and they'd think I was being modest, and I'd have to actually play my wretched drums to convince them that I was hopeless. (Grabbing head in claw hands) What had I doooooooooooonnnnnneeee?

Miraculously, I did learn to play them. I only had two unofficial lessons that I remember, and the rest was practice, practice, practice. Eventually, I got to play them as part of the band during a couple of worship services in church. I was scared stiff, though, that the pastor would come up to me midway and whisper, "Sister, I feel led to share that the Lord would have you minister through other gifts." while looking up at the sound booth and drawing his finger across his throat. 

Nothing like that happened. True, nobody came up to me after the service testifying that they'd been instantaneously delivered from a crippling drug addiction by my magnificent playing, but nobody keeled over dead, either. So I kept practising the 'official' rhythms, and trying new and unorthodox things whenever I felt especially reckless. I played them because I loved how they sounded, with music and without. I played them because it was so therapeutic. I played them just because they were something utterly new that I'd never done before. 

Then just as I was beginning to enjoy BYD and SYD, I moved here to go to grad school. Obviously they didn't fit in my suitcase (and neither did my sewing machine) so for the next few years, even when I'd returned to Singapore, I didn't play them. We finally moved back to the US five years ago, and BYD and SYD came with us. They live in our basement now and I've started playing them again - badly (see the photo: I'd even positioned them in reverse - BYD is supposed to be on the right). On my way to the sewing room, I like to stop by and whack out a quick rhythm. Occasionally I get carried away and miss the phone or doorbell because I'm being so loud. And sometimes when I'm upstairs cooking, I mysteriously hear them, so I know the kids are thumping away, too. 

What is the point of this story? It's this: I am a beginner conga-player. I bought BYD and SYD in a fit of impulsiveness the way some of you might have bought your first sewing machine. I walked into the music store feeling completely intimidated by the staff and all the other bona fide percussionists sitting behind drumsets, trying them out and comparing tones and talking about snares and hi-hats and bass and brushes. I dragged a mildly musical friend along for the moral support because I had no idea what to even ask for, apart from color. And I learned to play them only after I bought them. I know one, maybe two rhythmic sequences like some of you know how to sew just one kind of seam. I don't know the terminology the way some of you don't know woven from knit. And now that my friend -the one who taught me to play, not my shopping buddy - lives in a different country and formal lessons here cost money, not to mention time away from the kids, I have only the internet for instruction. Thank goodness for youtube! Congas are much better learnt via video demos than print materials. Just like sewing. All that to say, fellow beginners, we have more in common than you think! For some of us it's fabric and zippers; for some of us, it's noisy drums. Let's keep practising and let's keep learning. We can only get better.  

But there's a second point. In one of the comments to that Midlife Craft Crisis post was a suggestion to go learn something from someone I admire, master it, and come back to share it here. Spot on! Instead of sewing/crafting though, I thought of BYD and SYD. Now I don't know about mastering anything, let alone sharing drum rhythms on this blog, but I do know that I have a lot of conga learning ahead of me, which is a Very Exciting Feeling. I haven't felt this same Very Exciting Feeling with sewing/tailoring/drafting/quilting in a while, in spite of all the things I still don't know about those. And frankly, the modern sewing movement -the one with all the shortcuts and elastic - while liberating in many ways, is still such a paradigm shift for me that I can't relate. Oh fuddy-duddy that I am! 

So it may be that I'm not going to learn a whole lot of revolutionary sewing stuff from the internet anytime soon. And I don't think a quilting circle is my thing. And knitting/crochet/brand new art form isn't what I want to invest money and space in right now. Yet my mind needs to learn something Very Thrilling to stay alive. Maybe it's time to think seriously about dressmaker's school! 

Or conga lessons. 

And I know which one costs less!      

Vet Clinic

Jenna took this photo of Ginger, her little (stuffed) cat.

Ginger went to the vet today because he was sneezing a lot. 

In our home, we are partial to crafts that take an entire day or more. Those are the crafts that the kids really get involved in and, more importantly, which end up engaging them in really good play for days after. The final product doesn't always reflect the time put into it but the it is the process that fascinates the kids -  it's rich in learning experiences and opportunities for adding new layers and details. Our Busytown autombiles and the Art Museum were recent examples. The kids made up stories, played for a long time after and occupied themselves. And I got to sit and drink tea and watch. Today's vet clinic is along the same lines.

One of the challenges of pretend play scenarios is the protagonist often has all the fun. Everyone wants to be the Teacher, the Doctor, the Princess, the Queen, the Hero, but no one really wants to volunteer to be the students, the patients, the courtiers, the serfs, the damsels in distress. When Emily declared she wanted to open a vet clinic, I groaned inwardly because I knew everyone would fight to be the vet. Obviously, we needed more roles.

Like The Receptionist.

For her, we created patient forms:

Patients bring in a menagerie of pets and she, Empress of The Check-in Counter, screens them. She hands out pencils and these forms on clipboards and drawls, "Please indicate what sort of animal you are bringing in today, and tell us its name." 

Then she shoos them back to the waiting room to read magazines.

When the doctor is ready for them, The Receptionist barks out the patient's name and hands the patient form over to the doctor. In the examining room, the doctor checks off what ails the patient, scribbles a treatment plan and/or prescribes medication.

Meanwhile, The Receptionist pulls up her Tally Sheet

and records each animal that was seen that day.

When the doctor is done with the patient forms, Ms Organizing Guru Receptionist files them alphabetically

in colorful folders like these, which we made by folding a sheet of construction paper in half, and sticking a label on the top for a tab.

Suddenly everyone was fighting to be The Receptionist. Haw haw! It's absolutely marvelous what a little marketing can do.

The kids had so much fun preparing the sheets and folders and learning how a filing system works even before starting to play. And they didn't even realize they were learning and practising letter-recognition, writing, reading, sorting and categorizing, counting and Math. Sneaky mother!

We talked about how doctors diagnose patients according to their symptoms. 

"How do you tell a patient is sick?" I asked.

"The thermometer! They have a fever!"

"And how do you treat that?"

"Give medicine!"

Over-simplistic, but there's some good logic and cause-and-effect in there.

With an injured patient, though, it was a little tricker. So we made X-rays.

These were simply images of bones drawn with white crayon or pencil on black construction paper. The doctor gets to pompously hold these up, pronounce with a flourish, "Ah, we have a fracture!" and mummify the patient in copious amounts of flannel strips. Fun.

"And what do you do for a patient who's having a baby?" I asked.

"Dunno." 

More discussion, then the final consensus: "Give them food!"

So we made food samples -  sorta like the formula samples and prenatal vitamins that we expectant moms get from our ob/gyns, but for animals. 

We rolled colored paper around a dowel

and cut them into little pieces -

different kinds for different animals-

which ranged from the traditional

to the more exotic.

We made our packets out of printer paper sealed on all four sides (you can use glue, staples or the sewing machine). They rip open easily to dump out their delicious morsels into little feeding bowls.

One last idea - although this was made in a different context a couple of years ago - little cardboard kennels for the pets that needed to be warded for observation.

Feel free to use our patient form and tally sheet to recreate your own vet clinic at home! We designed them so that most of it could be filled out by even the littlest, non-reading ones among us. Enjoy! 

Overalls - Adaptation for Girls

Welcome back to Adapt-An-Overall!

Today we're going to adapt the basic shortall for girls. If you're a regular reader of ikatbag, you might have noticed that recent tutorials are skewing towards process rather than product. It's something I like talking about, and something you asked for, so maybe a win-win for both of us. 

The first - and easiest - adaptation is color:

This pink-overload version uses three pink fabrics: a pink ticking on the outside and a pink print cotton for the facing. You can find ticking in the utility/home-dec/upholstery section of fabric stores. 

The third fabric is a low-contrast pink checked seersucker for the hem facing,

traditional-shaped patch pockets,

 and the lining for the inset pockets. 

For a little more contrast, the pink cotton was used to trim and edge the pockets 

and the waistband. On hindsight, I should also have edged the top edge of the waistband. 

The overall look: sweet, mild, low-contrast pink.

Here is another, unpink version- slightly more pop with the greater orange-blue contrast:

You can download the pattern for the original boy version in this post.

Adaptation #2 is the pinafore:

Same bodice - but the pants have morphed into an A-line skirt. 

You start with the same short-alls pattern here, and redraw it for a pinafore:

You can lower the hem even further than 2" if you prefer.

Without the crotch, the center line of the pinafore templates is completely vertical, so the templates can be laid out on the fold of the fabric, and the front and back body pieces cut out whole.

The facing follows the same shape as the upper part of the body pieces - 

the side seams will be slightly more flared now. However, the lower edge of the facing (i.e. its hem), remains the same as in the original shortall pattern.

As before, three fabrics are used: an outer yellow ticking, a yellow striped cotton for the waistband and pockets,  

and a yellow print cotton for the facing, 

which was also used for the pockets. Purely for interest, the bib pocket and hip pockets have their outer layers and linings reversed. Instructions to make faux-flap patch pockets like these can be found here.

Because there was a lot of yellow, I added grey/taupe piping throughout the dress and grey/taupe buttons for a second color.

The bottom hem was finished simply by folding it up and top-stitching on the outside. 

The overall look: modern, high contrast, lots of pop with just two colors.

I want to point out that the lining fabrics of both the pink and yellow outfits above are quilting cotton. See- I do use them in my garments! I know I've gone on and on about not using quilting cotton for garments and I hope you're not frightened off sewing forever. Please keep using and enjoying funky prints if you love them. And quilting cotton if you love it. But I meant that if the opportunity presents itself, also try linen. Or twill. Or chambray. Or corduroy. Or poplin. Or knit interlock. I think you might just love the difference it makes.