Tea for Two... or Four

One of the projects that I completed in my time off from blogging was this wonderful tea set for one of the niece's birthdays. It was super fun to make, and while rather time consuming due to all the parts and pieces, it turned out beautifully. Hopefully my sister is not ready to string me up by my toes for invading their house with yet another toy with a million pieces. What can I say, I love felt toys and cannot stop myself once I get started on them. This project was inspired by my niece's love for all things girly and dress up. Her favorite colors of pink and purple are all over this set made just for her.

I got the main idea from the ladies over at Prudent Baby. I like the concept of the tea set that could be folded up in itself for storage. I found the cupcake fabric and purple dot fabric at the store and set to work. The sewing itself was rather straightforward and easy to do as their tutorial is very thorough with easy to follow directions. I did, however, use the serger to put together the double sided place mats as well as edging of the napkins. It was just easier on me to do it that way, so I did not have to iron under any of the seams. The rolled edges also gave it some contrast which I also liked.

In order to dress up the napkins more, I added a little applique style decoration. I used up some of the scrap from the cupcake fabric to add a little cupcake detail to one of the corners. Once I cut out the circles from the cupcake fabric, I simply zigzag stitched at an almost zero stitch length to cover over the raw edge. Doing this type of satin stitch in a circle can be challenging. Just go slow and take your time as well as perhaps adjust the bobbin tension a bit to ease around those curves. I liked this better for my personal project. It tied the whole thing together in a project specific way.

The tea set pattern was purchased from Ume Crafts on Etsy. She makes great felt food patterns that are just too cute to pass up. I have done several of her patterns, and this was just as high quality as the others. The only draw back to this pattern is the tea box. My nieces and nephew apparently really wanted a working lid on this. It resulted in much dismay when they could not put the tea bags back into the box. I don't think this is anything against the pattern, just a thing to consider if your particular tea party goers want super realistic functioning tea storage. I thought the tea pot was going to be difficult to put together, but it was just as easy as can be due to the wonderfully written directions. The set looks beautiful, and I love how it looks like a real grown up set versus the usual cartoon looking ones.

The other option about this set that is fun is the reversible sides. If the pink cupcake table cloth is too much for you on a particular day, flip it over and you have a more calm purple side. Then, you can flip over the place mats for a touch of the cupcake goodness. It makes the entire set look like a new toy, and I hope that keeps the kids extra busy with combinations of the colors and settings. This tea set also seems to have brought out the old cakes and even the sushi set that I made out of felt for the girls a few years ago.

Going with the princess and dress up theme, I made sure to add one more thing to the table, crowns and wands. I found these on the site of Lu Bird Baby. I tried to make sure that I had a color for everyone. There is green for the oldest as that is her favorite color, pink for the birthday girl, purple for Mom as I am sure she will be invited, and even this blue set for the younger brother or Dad. I was sure all would be roped into tea parties and wanted to make sure everyone had representation in the crown and wand category. The tutorial over at Lu Bird is also very easy to follow. This was a fun quick project that let me use up all sorts of odds and ends of saved ribbon.

All of these things can then get folded up into the table cloth that becomes a gigantic bag. The only drawback of the drawstring bag is the ribbon drawstrings. In order to make the strings long enough to gather up the whole cloth, they end up being way too long for practicality. Very whimsical, but also not super practical for the kids to use alone. Typically when putting this all away adult assistance is needed.

Overall I think this was a great project. The level of all the sewing/crafting on this is easy with a moderate for the tea set itself. The cutting level on this project is intense. I was very happy to have the Klick-n-Kut for this one. It makes felt crafting so much more fun due to not having to cut out all those little pieces. I hope this inspires you to put together something fun this weekend.

Jozef's Birthday Presents - The Crinkly Owl

I am always stumped as to what to make for really young children that are no longer infants but are also not big enough for all out toys. Looking over the internet for inspiration and ideas, I ran across this great tutorial by Susan Beal for a crinkly, crackly owl toy It was a great toy and easy to make. I did it basically in a few hours. I used her pattern as a jumping off point and put my own little spins on it.



Here is the front of my owl all pinned together and waiting to be appliqued together.



Getting his back contrasts put together



The owl gets his wings!



Oh No! Look out owl! Here comes the iron for one good last pressing!



And here he is all stuffed with crackly recycled shopping bags and fiberfill. This tutorial was great and easy to follow. I made mine much more involved by giving him wings and also appliqueing the eyes, nose, and feet on. In the tutorial you just sew them on using felt rather than fraying cotton cloth. She also suggests the possibility of using buttons for the eyes, but Jozef is only one, so cloth only for him. I hope you all go and check out her tutorial and perhaps even her book. If you have seen the book or read it, what did you think?

Holiday Wrap Up Day 4

One of my favorite projects this holiday season was the toy I made for my nephew Craig. He is the youngest of the set of children my sister has. I decided on a pelican project and went to work on it. I loved working on this. It had so many great little details to it. I also learned through the project how top stitching can so dynamically change the look of things. Here the pelican is right before he received his wings:



Once I got the wings and feet on the pelican, I put his eyes on. I found that the eyes on this bird really did look sly. I placed him under our tree and kept thinking that the bird must be up to something. Dan agreed that he had a sly look about him. I guess the reason he looks so sly is his secret beak. The pouch under his beak is a nice little holding area for a color and number learning set of fish. It zippers closed so the fish cannot escape and get lost when the pelican is not being played with. Here he is eating fish number ten:



I also did not sew the eyelid of the pelican in an upright position. I like to let some things be loose for kids to explore and play with. I decided that the ability to make the bird awake or asleep should be up to the person playing with him. Here he is after a large meal of fish taking a nap:



Just like this was my favorite toy to make this year, it was one of the favorite things I made this year with the adults. I have already been told by Kathy that one needs to be made for Jozef when he is old enough. Jozef's present will be tomorrow's little show and tell.

Today on the slate I have my first day back tutoring at 826 Valencia after the holiday break. It will be good to get back to working with the kids and getting to brush up on my 5th grade math further! :) I am also going to work on my knitting on the train and try to get some parts of the tutorial photographed today. We will see how much gets done before I head out. I also have this dream of making cannoli for dessert tonight. Time will be the judge of these things.

Holiday Wrap Up Day 3

Yesterday was pretty productive on the whole. I continued knitting on my project for Da, and the house cleaning came to an end. It was a tough job that took two days for me to be satisfied that it is clean, but now I am thoroughly enjoying a clean abode. So the English muffins are still waiting to be made, and I am going to start a new craft tutorial today since the cleaning is finished. I also have to make a trek outside to pick up some tea and other dinner supplies. I really wished our neighborhood had a small grocery store in it, but alas it does not. I will be relying on other places to acquire my supplies, mainly a World Market and BevMo. Let's hope I can get everything I need there. I am also going to cave in and take a nap since this cold is not going away. I need to get better before I fly out in two weeks.

In the holiday wrap up today are the gifts I made for Claudia. She is Brenna's younger sister who loves art, read as coloring, and is less into running around like her older sister. I decided to make her an I Spy bag. It was rather simple and helped me keep my goal of using up and buying less in the way of supplies. I used some pieces of red fleece that were leftovers from a shopping cart cover project for Jozef. I had to buy a bit of clear vinyl for the window, and this was my first time working with the stuff. It went pretty well, I just hope it holds up. I filled the interior with small pieces of plastic that are used for weights in stuffed toys or bean bags. I had those left over from a snow people project I did for my sister one year. I also had to buy the objects for her to find in the bag. I found these interesting buttons and button covers at a craft store that were on sale, so those became the objects. Some of the buttons were animals, some were farm related objects, some were food, and still others were beach things. It made for good variety. Here is the finished project:



I also made her a crayon roll. I found a great tutorial from Sew,Mama,Sew's Blog and their handmade holidays series. They do a great job of compiling great easy to finish projects for handmade gifts. They had a tutorial from Skip to My Lou. It was very easy and straight forward. The pictures were great and the directions were very easy. I made this entirely out of things I had except for the iron on vinyl. I made the interior fabric from scraps from Craig's gift, that is tomorrow's edition, and the puppet theater I made for Brenna's birthday last year. I also trimmed it with left over rick rack from an old Advent calendar project. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of it when I was done. I did make mine bigger than the tutorial so it would hold 24 crayons as well as a small pad of paper. I also did not put the iron on vinyl on the entire back piece after reading about how it made the crayons slip out. I made sure to keep two inches of the fabric uncovered. I figured any crayon marks on that part would not be seen any way due to the front of the pockets. Well that wraps up her homemade gifts.

Now I am off to work on a new craft tutorial for the blog. I hope to have that done and out to you once the holiday wrap up is over.