Fabric-Covered Headbands

 {Handmade hair accessories week}

Today it's fabric-covered headbands… For these I went to Sally Beauty and bought a set of 3 headbands called Style It Up Glitter Headbands. I removed the glitter fabric covering, so I would have just the plastic headband. For these particular headbands I suggest cutting 1.75 inches of fabric on the bias maybe about 15 inches long. With right sides together sew about a 3/8 or 1/2 inch seam allowance and cut off 1/4 inch of the seam allowance, turn it right side out and slip it over the plastic headband. Cut off any excess fabric, tuck in the ends and hand sew the ends shut.

 These could definitely be worn as is, but look how cute they look with the felt bows and the fabric bow hair ties! So many possible looks with just one headband!

 The first 3 will go with her striped dress.

 The last one will go with her Gabriella dress.

And it just so happened that I already had some bias strips cut out (or at least some fabric already cut on the bias) from scraps from these 2 dresses, making this a super duper quick and easy project. Keep that in mind when you are cutting out a pattern that requires bias strips, why not cut out enough extra bias strips to make a fabric-covered headband?

It was fun to make all these hair accessories this past week, they are definitely instant gratification projects (so much quicker than sewing a dress!)

Bow Hair Ties

{Handmade hair accessories week}

More hair accessories… the previous days I shared ones made with wool felt: the felt bow hair clips and the felt-covered barrettes… now moving on to fabric. Following the Oliver+S free bow hair tie pattern and tutorial, I went digging through my fabric scraps looking for leftovers from outfits I've already sewn for my girl, you know, so that her hair accessories could match or coordinate with her clothing. I sewed 7 so far, tied them to elastic ponytail holders and voilà!

PS She won't be wearing them all together like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)

Felt-Covered Barrettes

{Handmade hair accessories week}

Well this is embarrassing.. I have been meaning to make some of these felt-covered barrettes for several years (they come from an Angry Chicken blog post from 2007)! These are cute little felt sleeping bags for plain metal barrettes. Most of them I hand sewed a button on, but for the light blue ones I sewed on 3 teeny tiny jingles bells. Fun and easy, try making some yourself if you haven't already.

PS She won't be wearing them all together like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)

Felt Bow Hair Clips

{Handmade hair accessories week}

We're getting ready for back to school and my studio has become a busy little factory for making hair accessories. Did I ever mention that my now 6 year old daughter has never had a hair cut? With her extremely long hair, something needs to be done with her hair to keep it out of her face, every morning before heading off to school. So these felt bows on hair clips should do the trick. I dug through my stash of wool felt (most of the wool felt came from here) and whipped up 7 bows following the Oliver+S free felt bow pattern and tutorial. Unfortunately my girl looses a lot of her hair accessories at school, and although I'd be disappointed if she lost some of these, I would only be a little disappointed as they take just a small amount of felt (of which I have plenty more in my stash), they are super easy and take only a few minutes to make. Now I'm off to make different hair accessories…

PS She won't be wearing them like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)
PPS Looking for hair ideas? I did this post a while back about summer hair and Babes in Hairland has a lot of great ideas.

Hanami Tester's Blog Tour

 I had the pleasure of being a pattern tester for the Hanami, a new mix and match pdf pattern offered by An of Straightgrain.

You can purchase the Hanami in An's shop.

 The Hanami offers many choices:

• top or dress
• without or with slim peter pan collar
• tulip or regular flutter sleeves
• crossed back or invisible zipper back

I let my daughter pick what combination she wanted and she chose:

• dress 
• collarless
• regular flutter sleeves
• zippered back

 The fabrics:

• Jay-Cyn Designs for Birch Fabrics, Mod Basics 2, Organic, Poppies Sun. I won 2 yards of this fabric and can you believe that this dress used only one yard of fabric? (so now I have 1 yard remaining for a future sewing project!)
• Bodice lining is 100% cotton voile in white, I decided to do the lining for the flutter sleeves in the main fabric, instead of the lining fabric

 The instructions include very thorough charts with everything you would need to know about the amount of fabrics needed, dimensions of the finished garment, is in both inches and centimeters.

I'm so pleased with how this dress turned out. I sewed a size 4Y and the fit is perfect. I only used 1 yard of fabric which is exactly what the chart said was needed.

 My favorite things about the pattern:

• Very nice attention to details like understitching so the lining will stay in place
• I learned a new sewing skill: how to stitch a bodice lining to the zipper tape ~ love that! And will definitely use that again in the future
• I like the way the bottom of the invisible zipper is sewn into the skirt/bodice seam

My modifications:

• I did the lining for the flutter sleeves in the main fabric (instead of lining fabric)
• I decided to do French seams for the skirt side seams
• Instead of serging the skirt and bodice seam, I did bias binding on it
• I added a hook and eye closure above the invisible zipper

Be sure to visit Straightgrain August 19-28 to see all the variations the pattern testers sewed.

Junebug Dress

 Over a month ago I bought the Junebug Dress pattern and I just finished sewing up this little dress for a little girl using that pattern.

 The Junebug Dress offers a few options: dress or tunic, with or without sleeves. I sewed the dress version with sleeves in size 2T using gray cotton from Hancock and 6 white buttons from JoAnn. By following this pattern I learned a new way of constructing a bodice, it's always fun to learn something new.

 And inside there is a little surprise with a pop of color ~ some pink bias binding on the skirt/bodice seam.

I hope it fits the little girl, but if it's too big, she can always grow into it, right?

Off to start my next sewing project...

Cat and Art Birthday Party

 Another summer, another birthday party... this year the birthday girl wanted a cat + art birthday party.

So we made our own invitations... I had my teenage son lightly sketch an outline of a cat in pencil on watercolor paper, then my daughter painted them in with watercolor paint.

 White paper bags were decorated with a cat by simply tracing a cat image found here.

 The white paper bags were for holding the piñata candy. I got the idea for making a cat piñata here. And got the idea to use a beach ball here.

 My husband did papier-mâché over 2 beach balls, the second beach ball was one step behind the other just in case the first one did not work out (that way we would not have to scramble at the last minute trying to make another piñata from scratch). The first beach ball piñata did end up working out, so now we have another beach ball piñata for another time.

 My teenage son painted the piñata and gray felt ears were glued on. Then it was filled with 5 pounds of candy!

 Each of the 10 kids got to whack it with a stick at least once. The piñata was a big hit with the kids!

 A dozen gray cat cupcakes were baked and decorated by linnycakes.

 Simple cat plates were made by taping cat shaped paper ears to a paper plate.

 White paper was wrapped around an apple juice box, again decorated by tracing the cat image found here. The cat cookies we bought at Trader Joe's.

 My husband drew cat faces on balloons with black permanent marker.

 Going home with each child was a cat zipper pouch. I sewed 10 of these using the Straight Stitch Society feed the animals coin purses sewing pattern. 6 in pink, 2 in orange...

 The orange ones were lined in white with golden stars... the pink ones in pink with white polka dots.

 One blue cat...

 lined with gray with white polka dots...

 and one gray one...

 lined with gray with white polka dots.

 And it would not be a cat + ART birthday party without art... the party took place at an art center and an art teacher read the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" then all the kids used watercolor paper, cray pas, and watercolor paints to create their art project.

 And here is the birthday girl's masterpiece.

Thanks for coming to the party with us!

PS If you are looking for more birthday party ideas, in the past we have had Princess Rapunzel, Ballerina, Octopus, and Yellow LEGO themed ones.