A baby shower, Dino Dudes and Ooga Booga!

Last night I hosted a baby shower for a friend from church. It was lovely out, thankfully, so all 32 of us could sit outside in the backyard instead of being crammed in the (very warm) house.

This was baby Lyncoln's gift from me:

Details
Pattern: #7 Panda hooded jacket from Ottobre Summer 3/2012
Fabric: Michael Miller's Dino Dudes interlock and coordinating ribbed knit that I won from Fishsticks Designs a couple of years ago
Size: 62 (3mo)
Modifications: The only modification I did was to add a little reinforcement layer at the back neck, also perfect for size label. (I love that my set of stamps by Night Owls Menagerie includes birdie tracks, in this case, dino tracks!)

Really enjoying working with knits again! My serger is not though - it really needs a tune-up, but I have a hard time letting it go for 2-4 weeks because I use it constantly. It's skipping stitches and has a tension disk issue. Anyway, I made it work.

Abigail "needed" another dress, so I finally cut into my hoarded Ooga Booga (also from Bonnie's giveaway). She is very pleased with her "pitty dwess".

Details
Pattern: #5 Little Elephant hooded tunic Ottobre Summer 3/2013
Fabric: Purple and Pink Ooga Booga interlock, coordinating interlock for binding
Size: 74 with length cut at 86
Modifications: Same back neck reinforcement/size tag:

The Otto patterns I've sewn so far have been wide and short, so I chose the size that matched her chest and waist most closely, then the length for the size she should be in for her height. Ended up being more a dress than a tunic, but that's ok because the body is a bit roomy still so she can grow into it as a tunic. I think it will be adorable over skinny jeans and a long-sleeve top this winter!

Walking Bitty Baby

The elastic in the hem could have been a little tighter I think. My sewing machine does NOT like clear elastic tape. Took me nearly 2 hours to baste it into the seam allowances. Maybe a teflon foot would help. I love how it turned out, overall! I have some more knits that I've been hoarding - hoping to cut out some hoodies for all three kids soon!

Happy 2nd birthday, Abigail!

Can't believe it's two years already, baby girl!

Outfits with little books from her brothers for Bitty Baby

Birthday girl - waiting for the guests made her cranky. "Tuptake NOW, pease!"

Skirt details
Pattern: Insa skirt from Sewing Clothes Kids Love
Size: 86 (18m-2T)
Fabric: Andalusia by Patty Young, black tweed-look cotton, solid red cotton.
Notions: grosgrain ribbons, red rickrack, black baby rickrack

I went with a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme for her party. There is certainly lots of ideas linked through Pinterest on this theme! The cake/cupcakes was something I saw in many parties. I found free printables for the foods, shrank them and used them for cupcake toppers.

Cupcake!

Tiny purse made by Suzanne!

Green Eggs & Ham

Last finish for the Pregnancy Care Centre Sew-Along!

This is one of my favourites! It was super fun to put together, using mostly a Green Eggs & Ham panel by Robert Kaufman and other Dr Suess fabrics donated by FatQuarterShop, and a few coordinates from Suzanne. Fairly straightforward, except that the panel was printed a little crooked so each piece needed to be trimmed quite a bit.  I'm hoping this one can be used as a baby quilt and transition to a toddler quilt, as it's a fair size at 33" x 46", or even a play quilt.

The back is all the leftover pieces pieced together! You can really see my quilting on the back of this one - white on red. I did some straight-line quilting, corner to corner on the rectangles, zigzagging back and forth up the quilt, then filled in a diamond shape in each section, and then did free-motion spirals in the centre of each diamond.

Disappearing 9-patch

When we had our local quilt retreat back in February we asked everyone to bring two 7" 9-patch blocks, done in blues, greens, and white/cream. When Suzanne and I got to the piecing, we weren't sure how to give it a cohesive look. Suzanne came up with the idea of a disappearing 9-patch - new idea for me! Basically you cut all the blocks in quarters and rearrange them. The only "rule" we used for the layout was alternating light and dark corners on the blocks. Worked out pretty nicely!

The blocks before:

Finished quilt:

She cut them all, and then we did assembly-line style piecing - I stitched and she passed and pressed and laid them out. The backing was pieced from some donated fabrcis, and Suzanne quilted with a large meander. I just finished the binding yesterday! Dimensions: 27" x 40".

Ready to add to the stack of things for the Pregnancy Care Centre!

Flannel Rail Fence Quilt

Another finish!

This one was so super quick I could barely believe it myself. Ingrid from QuiltEssentials in St. Albert very generously gave me some beautiful quilters' flannel pieces for the Pregnancy Care Centre Sew-Along. Several of the pieces just happened to coordinate well and there was just enough to do the rail fence blocks for this quilt! In the space of one evening I planned (with Suzanne's help), cut, and sewed together all the blocks. The tone-on-tone orange border is from Fabricland and the binding is the trimmings of the backing for my Wonky Stars. Dimensions: 28" x 40".

I also love the back of this one. I had a few strips leftover from the top, so I made some extra rail fence blocks and pieced them together with the leftover stripes from another donation! Even the batting was leftovers that I pieced together. I meandered this one also - getting lots of practice!

A Curious Benjamin Party

Benjamin turned 4 today!  Last year I found Curious George party hats/plates/napkins for really cheap so Curious George was the theme.

The cake and cupcakes from the ideas here. Thanks to my mom for rescuing my near-fail icing attempts on the cake! I used mini Chips Ahoy cookies instead of mini Nilla wafers for ears - yummy change-up.

The monkey face expressions were so fun to do!

The backdrop is a yellow party tablecloth with red duct tape in stripes (idea here). A few yellow and red balloons, a card string, and two circle buntings completed the decorations. I printed some of the beautiful free papers by MelStampz here, cut them in two sizes of circles and layered them, with letters printed to size in a fun font for the top bunting, then the leftover papers for the longer one. I strung them through slits in the edges on a long length of curling ribbon - nice and sturdy, so we can use it again.

Benjamin helped me cut out monkeys from a google image search result to decorate the treat bags, as well as a bookmark for each bag (a pbs printable).

Lots of fun!

I-Spy Quilt for PCC

Yay!! First quilt done for the Pregnancy Care Centre sew-along!

FatQuarterShop very generously sent us a box of fabrics to use for this sew-along - these are a lot of random boyish prints from that box! This I-Spy quilt went together very fast. I bought a 5" square ruler which made it super easy to cut out the 90 squares, and then it was just piecing. I threw in a few scraps of my own to round it out. Also got to try meandering on a larger quilt - with great success!! Only had my thread break four times and no bobbin snarls at all. So happy it worked out! Dimensions: 39"x43".

The back is cute too - part of the same panel as the little trucks and trains on the top, pieced with a length of black kindly provided by QuiltEssentials here in St. Albert!