Teacher Christmas gifts

Between my four girls, they have a total of 12 school teachers so I had to come up with something inexpensive and easy to make for them all.

For the girl teachers, I made homemade bath salts. They are super easy. You just mix 1 part Epsom salt with 1 part sea salt, add a few drops of essential oil to make it smell good, and put it in a jar. Then I attached an ornament and a tag and they were good to go.

For the boy teachers, I made an easy batch of homemade caramels. I had to taste test them first and they were super yummy. I found the recipe here.

Scrappy Blues and Tans

I started this quilt in the spring. My goal was to finish it by the time summer break was over. That didn’t happen but at least I finished before fall break started. It’s a fairly big quilt (72 x 88 inches) so I used up a lot of my blue and tan/brown scraps. I even did a scrappy binding. I hand quilted it with #8 Perle Cotton thread with the same big, chunky stitches that I used on this baby quilt. While the hand quilting is what took me forever to finish the quilt, I love it.

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http://tatertotsandjello.com/

A Baby Girl Quilt

I made this one for my oldest daughter’s amazing chorus teacher. I wouldn’t ordinarily go through this much trouble for a teacher that she only spends about 45 minutes a day with, but she is truly an awesome teacher. The quilt was a super simple strip quilt made with Children at Play by Sarah Jane for Michael Miller Fabrics. I absolutely adore every single fabric in the line. The backing was all white with the exception of one strip of some pinwheel fabric in the line.

When I was learning to quilt, I always heard that if you hand quilted, you had to use these teeny tiny stitches that are perfectly uniform and, in my opinion, impossible to achieve. Recently, I have seen some quilts where the quilter used big, chunky, not so perfect stitches and I loved the effect had so I did that on this quilt and am so happy I did. 

The bib is made out of the same fabric

and the same chunky stitches.

Where was this fabric when I was having babies? I’m seriously in love with it!

Donkeys in rain boots

I found this fabric on Etsy and had to have it. How can you not love donkeys in galoshes? So I whipped up a new skirt for my four year old this morning. Kennady loves it and can’t wait to wear her new skirt to preschool tomorrow.

The donkey fabric is Jack and Jenny in Water by Laurie Wisbrun for Robert Kaufman and the orange chevron is Medium Chevron in Orange by Riley Blake.

Hailey’s cake

I haven’t really had time for much craftiness lately. I haven’t completed a project in what seems like forever. Last night was my daughter’s 12th birthday party and I even seriously contemplated buying her a cake this year. It has been a crazy week, but I just couldn’t bring myself  to not make my own daughter’s cake. So I went the super easy route copied a cake I found here. It is a basic round cake with textured frosting, which is SO much easier to do than smooth frosting. I added the basic rolled fondant flowers and called it a day.

It did look pretty sitting on the covered cake stand.

Road Trip Pillowcases

Anyone who has been on Pinterest in the last few months has probably seen these road trip pillowcases by Amazing Mae pinned all over the place. When I saw them, I just had to make my girls some for our upcoming road trip. Rather than making the actual pillowcases, I used  a couple of pillowcases I already had from a sheet set I bought on clearance and used the flat sheet for the back of the T-shirt memory quilt I made. I then bought two more pillowcases from the cheap bedding section at Wal-Mart. It was cheaper than buying the fabric to make them and saved me a big step. All I needed to do was make the pockets with the girls’ initials and sew on a handle.

It will be so great for each girl to be able to carry their own pillow and their books, crayons, etc. and still have extra hands to spare.

Baby Boy Shower

A friend and I hosted a baby shower for another friend. Her gift also served as a shower decoration. I made the bib, blanket, onesie, and burp cloth. The pants and the shoes on the cake were on clearance at Target.

I didn’t have the time or energy to make edible shoes, so I compromised and used real ones. Even after many reassurances that they were clean and new, my kids were pretty concerned about the shoes getting the cake dirty. I was more concerned about the cake getting the new shoes dirty, but everything worked out just fine.

Simple skirts

I found some cute fabric at Hobby Lobby a while back and decided to make the girls skirts with it. They still love matching because they like the attention they get for being twins when they do. People don’t notice as much when they aren’t dressed alike. I wonder when they will grow out of that.

Rag Doll

My youngest daughter has a birthday party tomorrow and I wanted to send her with a handmade gift. I found this tutorial online and went to work on my first rag doll.

Here she is in her undies.

Here she is fully dressed.

I love just about everything about her, but one of my favorite parts is that her painted on maryjanes and socks.

I also made the birthday girl a hair bow and skirt so she can match her dolly.

The fabrics are darling 1930’s reproductions. The little kids on the bikes make me smile.

Road Trip Count Down Poster

I wanted to do a count down with the kids for our upcoming road trip. We are pretty excited and the kids keep asking how many more days (still way too many) so I figured a count down would help them. I wanted something a little more original than your basic paper chain so I made a suitcase out of butcher paper.

I found pictures online of old fashioned luggage stickers, printed them, cut them out, and numbered the backs.Everyday, they get to add one sticker to the suitcase and once the stickers are gone from the stash, our suitcase will be filled up and it will be time to go on our road trip.

The kids loved the idea but were disappointed that I didn’t find stickers that specifically correspond with the places we are going. I really didn’t feel like putting that much time into a disposable project, so they are just going to have to deal with it.

Maxi skirt

A few weeks ago, I found this dress on the clearance rack at Old Navy. It’s a maternity dress and I am not currently pregnant, nor will I ever again be pregnant but I liked the bottom of the dress and it was super cheap so I bought it anyway.

When I got it home, I whacked off the top of the dress,made and attached a wide elastic waistband.and had myself a new maxi skirt.

Vintage Pillowcase Apron

Several years ago, I bought a bunch of vintage embroidered pillowcases from an antique mall with the plan to turn them into aprons. I finally made one this week for a friend’s birthday gift.

Here is the pillowcase I used. It even came with the lace trim already sewn on the edge.

Turning it into an apron is super easy. After determining how long I wanted the apron to be, I just cut off the the top part of the pillowcase, gathered it slightly,  and attached a very basic waistband and ties. That’s it.

Memory T-Shirt Quilt

I finished the T-shirt quilt that I’ve been making for my grandma out of my uncle Mike’s t-shirts. He passed away earlier this year and I asked her for some of his old shirts so I could make her a memory quilt. She  is one of those people who is always cold (I can totally relate), but soon she will be able to wrap herself up in a warm, snuggly quilt filled with memories of her youngest son.

I used a featherweight fusible stabilizer on the inside of the t-shirts  before I cut them out. This helped the squares keep their shape while cutting and piecing them. Some of the leftover backs were used to make the superhero capes for my nephew’s birthday.

I used flannel for the sashing, backing, and binding so it is extra warm and cozy. I had to hand quilt it because it was too bulky for my cheap-o sewing machine to handle, so I kept it extremely basic and just quilted around each square. It’s a simple quilt filled with lots of love and memories.

A few more just for fun

A bookmark for clowning around—These totally make me smile!

A ballerina bookmark:

I’m linking up: