Ellie x 2 More

I just couldn't help myself after the first time around with the Ellie Bag from Wee Wonderfuls (I wrote about that here), so I made two more.  The first one was given to my other niece:

I gave this bag a little felt flower embellishment with a (sloppy) blanket stitch.  This one has orange straps.  I think this one may be my favorite out of all three bags.

 For the third bag, I used the same exact blue fabric as the other two, but changed up the ears.

 I had a butterfly button to use as embellishment on this Ellie's headband:

So this bag was given to my eldest daughter on Christmas morning and she has not played with it once.  Maybe that will change, but what a waste of time if she doesn't like it.  Nuts.  

Number Four

I made these Retro Space Age Stockings from Tried and True back in 2013.  There are four designs:  rocket, alien space craft, robot and ray gun.  As you can see, I did three out of the four two years ago and since the family has added a fourth, I got to revisit these.

It took a while to figure out what color the cuff should be and what color the background should be.  I settled on the dark gray cuff and light gray background because of what I had done with the others.  Hopefully that cuff is not too dark.

As you can see, I have not centered the ray gun properly.  It is way too low.  I should have moved it up an inch, I think.  Upon my husband's advice, I only bejeweled the top of the lightning bolt.  I hope that's okay.  My instinct is always to give it more shine and sparkle, but he thought it was a better way to go.

My favorite little bit is this cute starburst sequin at the tip of the gun.  

In the original, the tip has a little round knobby thing (cue porno music), but I really messed up when I was cutting it out, so I snipped it off and gave it this sequin.  I think it works.

The Nightmare After Christmas

I really didn't want to ruin your holiday, so I held off posting about this book.  It will give you nightmares.  If you are squeamish or faint-hearted, then look away.  Avert your eyes and live in ignorant bliss.  This is my advice to you.  Are you ready?

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Is that enough space?  Oh, well...here it is:

"The Stick It, Stitch It and Stuff It Toybook" by Penelope Frith of 1974.  Why, people?  Why??  Oh, you can't see it?  Let me get a little closer for you:

OMG.  What was wrong with the 1970's?  Did nothing good come out of that decade (with the exception of yours truly and a few others I hold dear)?  These prints and color combinations...and those eyelids.  Why are they all half-lidded?  I am absolutely baffled and disgusted.

I know some lady got her craft on and published a book and all and I'm trying not to judge other crafters, but this is bonkers.

The scariest part:

The frakking monkey.  It doesn't get any better in the interior shots...black and white photos did it no favors.

Terrifying.  I will have nightmares this evening.

Forgive the jaundiced color of these next shots -- they were taken as an afterthought just now.

And then there's the Chinese doll named "Inscrutable Wong."  Seriously?  Inscrutable Wong?  Horrible name.

We have my mother to thank for this morsel of horror.   Now that we are past Christmas, I can start posting the things that I made this month.  Join me over the next week for the parade of projects!

More Ornaments

My mom sent some more handmade ornaments for our tree in her recent package.

For the girls:

Some super sparkly ones:

And some more besequined items:

I need a bigger tree next year.

Dorothy and Friends

My mom scored an old Bucilla felt ornament kit for Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion.  She has a friend who is a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs over the finished ornaments.  I think this friend my turn out to have some very sticky fingers, so she sent the ornaments to me for safekeeping.  Or maybe she just sent them to me because I think they are nifty.

Here's Dorothy in her signature red (?) dress and blonde (?) hair.  I wonder if they weren't allowed to do blue for some copyright reason.   Maybe it was just easier to give her blonde hair so they didn't have to package any special brown yarn that wasn't used anywhere else.

Scarecrow...so cute!  

I love that Lion is wearing long underwear.  That is just so weird.  Why didn't they just make him naked?

And then there's my favorite:

Adorable!  I really do love these old Bucilla kits and I know that I just made some unique elf-marble stockings, but my childhood stocking is hanging with them for lack of a better place to put it.

I love my elf-marble stockings, but these old felt kits warm my cockles.  Z was admiring this the other day and I felt a pang of regret that I did not go this way.  Nuts.

Fancy Dress Up

My model has not yet seen this dress in its completed form, so there's no way to tell if this fits her or not.  I know that it generally fit in the torso without a zipper, but I don't know about the hem length.  I also have a feeling that she's a bit more long waisted than the pattern.  Otherwise, here's her first fancy dress for dress up box:

I used Butterick's B4320, View B (minus the overskirt).  I messed up a bit on the point at the waist, but the yellow belt applique covered it up.  Speaking of:

Ack!  Blurry!  I visited SR Harris for the first time this summer when my mom was in town.  We found a ton of these sparkly applique things for $3.00 and under.  I picked up this yellow one and a matching blue one and maybe four other things to use as embellishments on play clothes.  It doesn't wrap all the way around, as you can see from this picture of the back of the dress:

Can you tell that I have not sewn clothing in a while?  Those waist seams do not line up at all.  

As for the fabric, here's a close up:

It's this weird, wrinkly polyester and I kind of love it.  It's old, I think, and it kind of reminds me of bathrobe-loungewear fabric.  I have a little bit more of this light blue, but I also have a dark blue.  I'm saving the little light blue applique for a dress with the dark blue fabric.  

She wanted a rainbow princess dress, so this is what I made for her.  Since she's now allowed in my craft room, I set before her a fun selection of fancy fabrics and asked her to pick out her next dress.  She wanted none of them and stared at a bubblegum pink cotton that was hanging with my stash.  I tried to explain to her that it wasn't fancy enough, but that's the one she wanted.  I told her it would be a pink and gold dress, so I think I'll work on that next.

All Together Now

Here they are!  They look pretty slick all together, huh?  The marbled fabric really makes them into a little family of mismatched stockings.  I'm rather smitten.

To recap, here they are as individual stockings:

The first one and here's the post about it.

Here's the pink one and its post:

And the purple one:

And the final stocking:

Ellie Bag

I've picked up a little momentum in the crafting department.  The girls are going to bed just a tad bit earlier than they used to.  Well, the older one is going to bed earlier.  She's stopped napping and we were able to drastically shift bedtime when daylight savings time hit.  Yay!  Not that I've taken full advantage of the extra hour, but I hope to in the near future.  

Anyway, my niece's birthday is coming up in a few days and, as per usual, the gift will be late.  At least it was finished before her birthday this year!  

I made the Ellie Bag from the Wee Wonderfuls book.  This came together super quickly.  That's always a nice thing.  Those topsy turvy dolls were also from this book.  I can't remember if I've made anything else from it. 

The head lifts up to reveal a secret neck/stomach cavity for storing very tiny things.

It's not super tiny and the hole is bigger than this photo, but I was trying to be stealth and not get my man hands in the photo.

Here's her little face:

I couldn't figure out how to neatly tie a bow on the purple ribbon (man hands, again), so I embellished with little sequins that will probably fall off in transit.  Oh well.  She will just be like  an Ellie Newton John Bag then.

The back:

Modifications to the pattern instructions:  They wanted me to sew the strap in that little ear fold/pleat, but that did not seem like a structurally sound place to put straps, so I sewed them to the head and tacked the ears down after that.  I also made my own strap because my kid had a meltdown which prevented me from going out to buy a long enough ribbon, so that saved me $3.00 or so, I guess.  I also added fusible fleece to the ears, because I thought they were going to be too floppity.

Last One

The fourth and final marbled Christmas stocking is finished!  Well, except for the bell, which the 18 month old promptly ripped off. 

So I didn't go with a total Vikings theme, because I saw a very, very slight hint of teal within the marble waves.  Can you see it, too?

No?  It's there.  I used this sparkly ribbon again for the loop.  I also wrapped it around the edge of the ribbon that bound the rough seams at the top.  The bottom of the ribbon was kind of rough, so the teal sparkles hid that.

OOOH!  See, in that section of marble you can see a speck of teal.

It's another skinny stocking, but it's my husband's and he'll probably only ever get little bits of chocolate in it, so that's no big deal.

The back is pretty.  I used an Asian floral that I had cut up for an aborted stocking design, so I was glad that I could put it to use.

Ugh.  I see that I need to go try and turn that heel out a little bit more.  It should be less boxy.  

As soon as I put up evenly spaced hooks, I'll take a picture of all four stockings together.  Yay!

Tis Nearly the Season...Again

As previously mentioned here and here, I have been working on our Christmas stockings using the marbled fabrics from my marbling class at The Textile Center.

For the third stocking, I used the piece of cotton that I marbled:

I was really lucky to figure out what to do with these small slivers of fabric.  They really are no bigger than a sheet of printer paper.  

I used the exact same pattern that I used with the purple stocking, because these two are for the girls and, from experience, I know that it is better to have stockings the same size when siblings are involved.  I don't want to listen to them bitching for the next 20 years that so-and-so's stocking is 1/8" larger.  Little stinkers.

I'm still trying to get that bow to perk up a bit.  I was going to wrap it around the top of the stocking, but when I finished the top with the gold shiny bias tape, that had more appeal.

The inside is a bright orange polyester, which complements the orange in the ribbon.

I love how the marble fabrics bring everything to life.  So fun.  It's cut off at the edge of this photo, but I used a sequin embellishment to patch a hole made by that rose satin.  Once that was tacked on, another hole appeared, so I added another strip of a different gold ribbon.  What a mess!  This all happened before I attached the backing and the lining, which was lucky.  

This stocking and the purple one have a fusible fleece lining, as per the directions.  It really makes them much less limp than the original stocking.  Anyway, I backed it with pink corduroy that I had to patch together in order to get enough fabric, which gives it some added stiffness, as well.

Do you see the slice of orange fabric, between the black and the marble?  That is the cuff of an old shirt -- you can even see the button holes.  I can't remember how that made it into my scrap stash.  Was it stained?  Ripped?  I thought about putting a sparkly button on the stocking, but I rather like seeing evidence of its past life.

Z chose the purple stocking, so this one belongs to Miss Trix.  Their names are not embroidered on them, so they can really switch them up every year if they want.

I have yet to make the fourth stocking.  I realized as I was writing this and looking over my original post about these marbled fabrics that I made a fourth fabric.  I wasn't sure how I was going to tie my husband's stocking in to the marble theme without taking another class or cutting up a nice fat quarter that was made by the instructor, but then I was reminded of this ugly piece:

Vikings!  I think I can make it into a pretty stocking with golds and purples and whites or silvers.  Maybe?  First I have to find it.  I doubt I would have thrown it out (I rarely throw anything out - Craft Hoarder!).