Doll nappy / diaper #2...quick 'n' easy project

So, you may remember that last year I blogged about a teeny weeny nappy (or diaper) for dolls...
As time goes by, I am acquiring a bit more experience with the sewing machine (as it is obvious) but also, I'm cutting corners to make the little time I have go a little further.
So, here it is a quicker and easier version of my tutorial to make a doll nappy.


Who would have said that the brave little mouse needed a nappy????

These are the materials you'll need, slightly different from my previous tutorial :

Materials:

• Old small bath towel (or a small piece of knitted fabric, easier to work with and less bulkier than towel. I've used an old baby bodysuit) - for the internal part of the nappy
• A little cotton fabric of your choice - for the external part of the nappy
• A strip of Velcro, 1 and a 1/2 time the length of the wider end of the nappy
• a doll / teddy to put it on (please note: I based this on one of Little Miss' doll, which is long 26 cm head to toe and has a 22 cm waistline; if your doll / teddy is bigger / smaller you'll need to scale the measurements given to suit)

Follow the instruction in my previous tutorial to measure and cut yourself a paper template, according to your doll's size.

Cut the cotton fabric (for the external part of the nappy) following the paper template you have made.

Now, the easy bit: cut roughly a square of the knitted fabric, a bit bigger than the cotton fabric piece. Lay the cotton fabric on top of the knitted fabric WRONG sides together. Pin in place.

Sew the two piece of fabric together following the shape of the cotton fabric, using a zig-zag stitch (that would allow some elasticity and stretch to the nappy), leaving one of the short sides open for turning inside out.

Cut the excess knitted fabric all around and turn the work inside out. Press and top stitch all around for a neater look, making sure you fold inwards the open end beforehand.

Sew a strip of Velcro (soft half) on the front, at the narrower end of the nappy (this will be the front of your nappy) as illustrated.

Then sew two small squares of Velcro (rough half) internally, at both ends of the wider side, as illustrated.

And that's it!!! How easy was that???

Happy playing! :)

 

 

Spring is here! A flowery brooch to celebrate

My little monkey's key worker (so they call the girl who looks after her at Pre-school...at my time it was "the Teacher") is moving to pastures new. Nothing special there, a part from the fact that my motherly anxiety has kicked in...it is already difficult to leave your child with somebody that is not family for 8 hours a day...then you realise pre-school staff are also human beings, and that actually that is a JOB for them...but I really liked and trusted this girl! so the penny dropped this week, which is the last one at little monkey's pre-school for this sweet girl, who has been truly amazing in the last year and a half and a reference point for my daughter.
I have been thinking about her leaving present since when it was announced she was leaving, and I even bought the fabric to make her a little purse...until I decided to make a flowery necklace for her, which in the end became a brooch ;) - by the way, am I the only one who changes her mind one million times before finally sitting at the sewing table? Sometimes I feel like I'm going to the cinema and I'm not quite sure which movie I want to watch...that same excitement that precedes something good...
Anyway, cutting a long story short, this is the brooch I made for Chelsey this week:

I got inspired by some beautiful hand felted and fabric jewellery I found online. And for the first time, I hand-felted a few little balls of wool. It was surprisingly easy and quick (a couple of minutes per ball) and I just followed one of the many tutorials there are on the web. Check this tutorial out, for example.
I also used sheet of craft felt, various fabric scraps and a button. I started with the polka dot fabric rose, just rolling a stripe of folded fabric on itself to make it look like a rose bud, and fixing it with a couple of stitches when I was happy with the result. But again, if you want a more precise result, there are lots of tutorials on the Internet for fabric roses (this one for example). I then laid and twisted a few felt and fabric circles next to the rose, as a sort of calla lilly and added a felt ball at the centre. I repeated the same with a different scrap of fabric and felt and added a button and a machine finished leaf to the lot.
All finally stitched to a piece of felt on which I attached a brooch pin. This flowery brooch is hand stitched a part from the leaf.

I hope Chelsey will enjoy her flowery brooch, which I hope will remind her of my little monkey and will probably sit pretty on a bag or a coat...and good luck to her for her next adventure!

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Crafting with kids: magnetic paper dolls

Can you believe it's the end of March and today it snowed again?!
SO fed up with this weather...I'm not one to go out when the thermometer goes closer to zero, so what to do with my little one in an afternoon like this?
Paper dolls!
When I saw some cute paper dolls on Pinterest, a few days ago, it reminded me of when I was little and used to *LOVE* this simple game of dressing up bi-dimensional dollies with different dresses, which had tags to fold over the paper doll to stay in place.
So, here it is my family, paper doll-style:

Materials:

• Paper
• Pictures of your family members or friends or celebrities or whoever you like; you only need the face, alternatively, you could use a picture of the whole body, rather than drawing it as I did
• Magnetic photo paper (I use the Pound Shop's one = extremely cheap!)
• Scraps of fabric
• Other craft accessories / decorations (optional)
• Sharpie or other black fine tip marker
• Glue stick

So, first step is to cut the faces out of your pictures and stick them to a piece of paper. You can cut the individual figures but I wanted the family to be together. Then, draw the bodies under the faces.
Be creative: you can draw animal bodies or cartoon bodies or just, like I did, some sort of body that resembles reality - well, almost, I do have some more curves than this!
I also made a little mistake, as you can see, drawing Little Miss' body...never mind! I was rushing to get finished before making dinner :) You can obviously colour the bodies, and draw underwear if you wish, as I said, I didn't have much time for the details...

Next, lay another sheet of paper on the first one, and draw the templates for the clothes. You should be able to see through the paper because you used a dark sharpie...so it should be easy to trace the clothes' contour around the bodies.

Cut the clothes' paper templates and lay them on the fabric scraps to trace and cut the shape of the clothes. I haven't traced them, actually: I cut out the fabric straightaway using the paper template as an approximate indication. Be creative, again: I made an awful green stripey dress with sparkly yellow ruffle and a pair of cords for myself, and even a little beanie for Little Miss. My husband has a choice of two T-shirts and some jeans. If you have time, you could make different clothes for different occasions...or even little dress up clothes!

 

Here even the younger kids will be able to help: take the fabric clothes and glue them on the white side of the magnetic paper.

Cut out the little clothes.

Now, fix the paper dolls to your fridge door or other magnetic board, and let the fun begin!

Sunday morning crafting with kids: homemade fishing game

Since my life has turned much more crafty (and I have a toddler to experiment with!), I make a point of doing some simple crafting on a Sunday morning, especially since this is the time I'm on duty with my little Miss, while daddy catches up on sleep. So silent games are the best at this time of the week.
This morning I didn't know what to come up with, though. Last week we did a giant butterfly collage, the week before we did a poster with all Christmas cards she received as a keepsake (you'll know if you are following me on Facebook...), but this week my tired mind really didn't have a clue... So, I picked up a book I bought in a charity shop ages ago called "365 things to make and do" by Vivienne Bolton. It's an old 1990s edition, but still a useful reference for parents when they run out of ideas to entertain their kids.
In this book, I came across a game I *LOVED* to do with my little brother when we were kids, the "fishing game". At that time we had a "sophisticated" version, it was a set of little fishes which had a magnet inside their mouth, in a rotating plastic pond; the scope of the game was to catch the fishes with little plastic rods with a piece of metal at the end of the rope. If you are about my age you'll know what I mean!
The one I saw in the book was the homemade version, using cardboard to make the fishes and paper clips to do the hooks. I happened to have some cheap Pound Shop materials that keep on turning very useful these days: magnetic paper and coloured foam sheets. These seemed perfect for what I had in mind.

So, if you want to do the same, this is what you need:

• Crafting foam sheets (you can substitute with cardboard, but this way the fishes are a little more resistant)
• Magnetic paper (you can use simple paper clips to do the hooks, but this way it's so much better!)
• Scissors
• String
• Sticky tape
• Two pencils or pens or chopsticks or any safe sticks you have handy
• Colours to decorate your fishes
• All purpose glue (this is slightly more toxic than kids' paper glue, but more effective in this case, so I suggest an adult does the glueing, rather than a child)

All you need to do is to cut the foam in little fish shapes (I cut a couple of special pieces as well, a sea star and an octopus: if you are playing with points, these could be worth more); I didn't follow a template or drawn the fish on the foam first, I just quickly cut the shapes, but of course you could download some templates off the Internet and do a much more professional job. I was after "quick-fun-who cares lets be quick so we can play with it". The limitation with foam is that you can't really decorate the fish (although my little Miss has drawn eyes on all of them; older kids could also do the cutting, glueing and assembling), but if you decide to use cardboard you can let your creativity go wild!

Once the fishes are all cut and decorated (I made an odd number of fishes so that there will be always one winner) you can cut little pieces of magnetic paper and glue them on the fishes, with the non-magnetic side to be glued on the fishes.

Now, the last part: making the fishing rods. Just cut two pieces of string of the same length, then tie each one to the end of each of your sticks (or pencils). At the other end of the string, glue or fix with sticky tape a piece of magnetic paper, slightly larger than the pieces you used for the fishes (the string should be stuck on the non-magnetic side of the paper).

That's it! Now put your fishes in a plate or tray and start playing by catching with the magnets at the end of the fishing rods as many fishes as you can in a minute. At the end of the minute, wins the player who caught most fishes. If you want to add another educational element (apart from the eye / hand coordination needed to play this simple game), number the fishes or write a letter on each and for example pick the fishes in numerical order or so that you form meaningful words.
Happy playing and happy Sunday! X

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More upcycling: Mr Tango the Sock Monkey

Still on the theme of toys made with simple household materials, let me introduce you to a new friend for my (not so) little sister...Mr Tango, the sock monkey!

I pinned the sock monkey tutorial ages ago, but never made any sock monkeys because for some reason I didn't think they were cute enough for toddlers to be interested in them. Wrong, obviously. You should have seen my Little Miss playing with the body BEFORE I added ears, eyes and mouth...she was basically playing with a stuffed sock with legs...but, for once, the finished toy didn't end up in kids' hands. Instead, Mr Tango bravely flew a few thousands miles today to reach my little sis as a birthday present. :)
If you want to make your own sock monkey, good, step-by-step instructions can be found on Craft Passion's blog here.
This is a fun, one-evening project that can be easily done with used or new socks (I used new, Pound Shop socks, simply because my husband's socks are all block coloured and I was looking for stripy ones). I had fun deciding the expression of the monkey, all really down to the eyes, so I suggest you try a few eye types / styles (buttons, felt, big round, small embroidered...) and experiment a bit, until you are happy with it.
I also added a touch of femininity with the scarf, made out of a piece of particularly fancy ribbon. Another slight change from the tutorial I followed was not stuffing the tail; I just couldn't face stitching along the whole length of the tail and then turning the tail inside out...I think it turned out pretty sweet anyway.
Happy birthday Cele, love you loads... I know you'll make Mr Tango happy! X

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Earphone tidy and cosy...how to solve the tangled wire issue

Dear friends, isn't it wonderful when outside it is snowing and you are on the sofa, ready for guiltless rubbish TV?? What happens when, instead, your TV only shows you THREE channels, sort of 1950 style, due to lack of signal in your area and the most interesting programme of the lot is a snooker match??? What do you do? Well, in my case, I came up with a earphone tidy and cosy! Since I made my iPad cover (yes, I know, I still have to write to you about it...), the "tangle earphone wire" issue has been bothering me big time. I failed to think about a closure to the back pocket of my iPad, so the earphones, which I keep there, often fall in my bag and become a mess in no time.
So tonight, while a very exciting snooker match was shown on TV, I took all my scraps of felt and started thinking how to make an earphone tidy and cosy. I was inspired by this little rabbit tidy, but sort of made my own along the way.
So here it is, my earphone tidy and cosy. It looks a little like Little Red Riding Hood to me...

If you want to make one, you'll need:

• The free template I have made for you (not for commercial use please!)
• Scraps of felt; I have used red for the outer and yellow for the inner part, pink for the hair, white for the face and blue for the heart appliqué
• A little piece of sturdy but flexible material; I found the perfect material in a plastic disposable bowl. Or you could use some cardboard
• Thread to match
• Pinking shears
• A pair of snap fasteners (or Velcro)
• All purpose glue

First, cut two hearts out of felt using your pinking shears, one out the red piece, one out of the yellow.

Then cut the plastic bowl; shape it to make the inner support part of the earphone cosy using the template.

Cut the hole in the red (outer) heart through which the face will show.

Cut the face out of white felt; this will be slightly larger than the hole to allow it to be sewn at the back.

Sew by hand the white circle to the red heart; I used a simple running stitch.

Now have fun embroidering the eyes and mouth of Little Red Riding Hood...

Cut and stitch the heart appliqué (or any other appliqué you like...) on the front of the earphone cosy, and the hair. For the heart I've used blanket stitching, for the hair I have used again running stitching.

Now place the two snap fasteners on the yellow (inner) part of the cosy, so that they can snap easily leaving space for the earphone wire in the middle. Stitch them to the felt.

Glue the plastic support to the back of the red heart, centring it so that some space is left all around to stitch the outer and inner felt parts together.

Then glue the support to the yellow (inner) part.

Now stitch all around the felt to secure the two pieces together, using a running stitch.

And that is it! I hope you have enjoyed my first tutorial with template; and if you make an earphone tidy and cosy, it would be great if you could post a picture of it on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/virtagegetscrafty... and don't forget to like it! ;)

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Last minute DYI Christmas Cards

HO HO HO! It is that time of the year again...I don't know you guys, but I found myself with lots to do still, and Christmas is only 10 days away...
If you are super-organised, and have already done everything you had to do (presents, baking, decorations, packing, cards...) then this post may NOT be for you - however, you may get inspired for other occasions, like birthdays. But if you, like me, are a last minute person for most of your life, please read on...

Today I'll tell you how I made some really nice Christmas cards, involving my two-year-old as a little crafty project, in just a few minutes and for very, very little money.

So, you'll need:

• ordinary paper
• cards - the size is up to you (you can buy blank ivory cards and envelopes for a few pounds, or you can cut your own cards from A1 card sheets, which will cost less but it's a little more hassle)
• scissors
• watercolours and paint brushes 
• stick glue
• a child (optional)

I wanted to make delicately coloured paper flowers, so I asked my little monkey to paint whatever she wanted with the watercolours on a piece of plain A4 paper. At the end you'll need a coloured square piece of paper, so you may want to cut it square before you (or your child) paint it. In my case, I cut it after.
This are the sort of things my little monkey paints at the moment:

I let the colours dry and then I cut two squares out of an A4 'painting' . For ordinary-sized cards (A6) you can first cut in half your A4 paper to obtain two paper flower decorations per sheet. I didn't measure anything, I just folded on a diagonal the short side of each piece of rectangular paper, on the long side, like this:

Now I had two colourful, square piece of paper, I folded and cut each of them following the Martha Stewart's paper snowflake tutorial. However, I wanted to make it a little more intricate, I found this paper flower on Pinterest and got inspired by it (apologies, but I can't find the original link):

The basic concept is, after you fold your square in eight as illustrated by the Martha Stewart's tutorial, you can have fun cutting your flower / snowflake the way you want, and be surprised by the results!
(P.S. I loved this technique so much  that I stuck a few paper snowflakes on my kitchen window = instant Christmas feeling)
I cut a few paper flowers like that, then I glued them on the back of my cards, with the centre fold of the paper right in the centre of the fold of the card. Be careful to stick the flower from the centre out, pressing carefully so that it glues flat on the card and doesn't lose its shape. Tip: use a ruler to press it flat; if you use your hands, the glue will get dirty and will stain the card and the flower, plus you won't have the same neat result.

I finished my cards off by writing a greeting message.
Done! Isn't that super-easy and cute?

And since Christmas is very near, let me wish you a bright, cosy, wonderful time with your loved ones - with a special thank to my mum who provided the image below of one of her wonderful cross stitch works.
Lots of love xxx