Hip hop hippo

I'm not a big holiday person. I do get kind of jazzed about Literacy Day, and I'll admit I get a little gooey on Valentine's Day. But having a little dude to dress makes Halloween a whole new ballgame. I especially love that he has no idea what's going on, so I can dress him however I want. I kicked around the idea of a baby Dwight Schrute, or maybe the old guy from Up, but really, let's give the people what they want.

Small children dressed like animals.

I mourn the fact that I never dressed Henry in a fluffy bear suit, or even in a pumpkin costume. He seems a little too old for both of those things now (eating ham by the fistful will age a person), so I needed to come up with someone that was both adorable and fit his personality.

Hippopotomus it is.

Did you know that hippos are some of the most dangerous animals in the world? And that a non-walking toddler with a penchant for death-defying dives into the side of the bathtub can give a hippo a run for its money? OF COURSE I had to make him a hippo costume. I started with a basic Simplicity Halloween pattern - it could be turned into a bear, a mouse, a dinosaur, a devil, and an angel (we will not be needing that one). I pinched the ears with safety pins and tada! Hippo:

(I didn't finish the headpiece because a) he wasn't going to keep it on and b) lining it would have probably made it too small. )

He's too little to trick-or-treat, so we went to Boo at the Zoo for his grand unveiling. He generally doesn't care about the zoo - he's never really interacted with any of the animals, or even really seemed to notice them. Once, when he was only eight months old or so, he showed a little interest in the hippos. Since then, nothing.

But when one is dressed like a hippo, one must commune with the hippos.

Hippo, meet hippo.I'm not really a hippo. I'm a little boy.Hippo is not impressed.I learned so much sewing this costume. I'd never successfully sewn a garment before, and I'll be the first to say that I kicked ass on this one. Set-in sleeves, ribbed cuffs, and even a neckband were all executed to the highest levels of mediocrity. I couldn't be more proud. I'm itching to make him some real clothes that don't require headgear.

Serger: 1, Kristin: 2

Let's not kid ourselves -- I'm still kind of afraid of my serger. I bought it off Craigslist for $85 a few years ago, then took it in for a tune-up because, until that point, I'd never even touched a serger before. It's an older Singer but still works great. I took a class on how to use it and then...it sat. And sat and sat and sat. Over the winter, I attempted a flannel blanket for Henry, but I forgot that rounded corners are hard to do on the serger. So that was a bust and the serger went back on its shelf.

I knew what I had done wrong, and I had some fabric that was just itching to become new sheets for Henry's crib. I pieced together a few tutorials (including this one), and I was off to the races. (Note: you don't need a serger to make sheets. A sewing machine is perfectly fine. I just felt the urge to serge. Urge to serge!)

Thankfully, I did some test swatches before I actually started on the sheets. There are two problems with sergers:

1. They look like sewing machines. They are not sewing machines. They don't work like sewing machines.

2. They cut things.

After more than an hour of troubleshooting and trying to understand my ancient manual, I realized that I had not been putting the presser foot down. That makes a REALLY big difference.

A day later, Henry had two new fitted sheets.

 For when he's feeling a little 1972.

This one didn't turn out quite as well as the second, namely because I jacked up the cutting of the corners. Next time, I should probably use scissors to cut out those corners, not my rotary cutter. It still works, but it doesn't fit as nicely.

My one big change to all of the tutorials out there is that I cut out the step of pressing, folding, then pressing, folding, and sewing to make the casing for the elastic. Instead, I serged a casing in one step. This book showed me how (and it's only $2.15! How can you live without it?) and it saved me a lot of time.

The short version is that you fold an inch or so (whatever width you want your casing to be, plus a little more) to the back, then take that folded fabric and fold it back to the front. It's kind of like making a paper fan. Serge, and voila! Easy-peasy, and very neat looking.

The second sheet is my favorite:

(I took off the front breathable bumper for this picture. Somebody likes to stick his fat little legs through the slats of his crib and then gets stuck.)

It's hard to capture this fabric on camera, but it's really lovely:

I used two-yard cuts for each of the sheets, and had a little left over from each one. Most of the tutorials out there say to use fabric that's wider than 44", but I used my regular quilting cotton (pre-washed), which is probably only 41" when all is said and done, and it worked out fine. I'd really love to make him more sheets because they're so much fun, but we already have a bunch of store-bought white and patterened ones. But this would make an excellent baby gift...

I actually finished something. And then we had to put it away.

I won't bore you with a mosaic of my finished projects of 2011, mainly because I finished next to nothing. It would be a two-frame mosaic of Henry and that enormous quilt. Maybe some knitting - I can't remember. I'm lucky I know what day it is. (Monday. Right?)

But I did manage to finish something for the holidays. The last stitches were put in on Christmas Eve morning, ready for Santa to fill them:

New stockings! (The dog sleeping in the sun is not new, nor is her stocking. Don't give me any grief about not making her a stocking, because her stocking is 10x more awesome than ours, and it was passed down to her from my childhood golden, Maggie, who was the greatest dog on Earth, godresthersoul.)

Henry and I picked up this fabric at Jo-Ann's back in October. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do. I went completely off grid with these bad boys, and I'm proud of say that with the exception of initially putting the lining together backwards, everything went pretty smoothly. Justin did have to help me draw the stocking shape because I kept ending up with a letter J. (Side note: file folders make very nice pattern pieces.)

Construction is very basic. I cut two stocking shapes out of leftover batting, then sewed my pieces directly on one at a time. Trimmed to make it pretty, did some decorative machine stitching, then sewed the two outside pieces together. Then I did the embroidery (chain stitch for some dimension and oomph), followed by the lining. And of course I lined them - what do you think we are, hobos?

I love them. And for the first time in history, I'm sad Christmas is over because we had to put them away. I will always remember this Christmas for being the one where we finally had awesome homemade stockings, even though Santa only put chapstick in mine. Neither Henry nor Gracie had anything in theirs, but Justin made out like a bandit. We'll be revisiting our priorities next Christmas.

Bubble, bubble, toil and...

I'm still exhausted and I have far too much work to do to be blogging, but my crafting mojo is slowly coming back and I'm just too excited about this upcoming project to not talk about it.

I'm a member of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. I'm not very good at being part of a group, but this group fits me to a T. I've made awesome friends and I'm so inspired after every meeting. Last night, Paula taught us the six-minute circle, and I swear to God, my brain did some flip-flops and she completely blew my mind.

Last night, Jacquie unveiled an enormous pile of charm packs from Robert Kaufman. I am such a solid fabric kind of girl, and just seeing all those colors together made me slightly giddy. Our next guild challenge is to take one of the five color stories and make a quilt. We can add as much fabric as we like, but it all has to be solid, and we have to use every color in our charm pack. My mind is SO full of ideas and I can't wait to start.

I'm not very good at documenting my crafting process, so I thought I'd give it a whirl with this project. Let's start with the colorways (pictures from RobertKaufman.com):

The Brights were my first choice. Those greens just reach into my heart and give a good hard tug. And the orange? The orange is magnificent.

But I didn't want to go with my first instinct. I wanted a challenge, a pallete I wouldn't normally use.

The Classic pallete. Those purples! The hot pink! Too close to my comfort zone.

The Pastels. Listen, the last thing I am is a pastel girl but these colors all together...they're dynamite. Hannah picked this colorway, and we agreed that it's the orange that really makes it sing. I can't wait to see what she does with it.

The Darks. Aren't these dreamy? But I worked with a lot of navy blue Kona last year, and this was kind of the pallete for my parents' quilt. So that left...

The Dusty pallete. This is definitely out of my comfort zone, and these are shades I haven't really used before, not even in my knitting. Also, I think it'll look really spectacular with our new couches. They're kind of a creamy beige. In this palette, I think I'm most uncomfortable with the rose. For someone who really likes hot pink and red, I'm not into rose and mauve. It reminds me of a parlor, maybe like the one Almanzo's family had (you know, Famer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder's husband).

So! That's what I'm starting with. I am so, so excited about this challenge, and I can't tell you how grateful I am to the folks at Robert Kaufman. Thanks for being so generous.

Next up: sketches! And I'm not a confident artist, so this will be SUPER FUN.

Weekender Bag, v. 3.0

How many times am I going to make this bag? As many as it takes to get it out of my system, I guess. While I was making my mom's bag, I thought that her friend Pat would probably want one, too. Less than a month later, I get a call from my mother asking me if I would make Pat one for her birthday. I love Pat. She's crazy and carries an eye patch in her purse and performed our wedding ceremony.

I started more than a month in advance, but of course I let it languish until two days before I had to deliver it. When I picked it back up, I was tired and not feeling well, and the instructions didn't make any sense at all even though I'd already made the bag twice before. There was a lot of ripping of stitches that night.

It all worked out in the end. Phew.

The main fabric is a Kaffe Fasset home dec print, and the binding and lining is actually from a home dec fabric store. I never even considered getting bag fabric there, but man, it can be a lot cheaper than getting fabric from the quilt store. A lot more options, too.

I made the straps four inches longer for over-the-shoulder ease, and instead of using thin interfacing for building the bottom panel, I used some scrap quilt batting. Genius! Much easier to wrangle and it provides a little more stability. But really, I didn't feel like looking for interfacing that night, so batting it was.

Is this my favorite one yet? I'm not sure. I do love the fabric, and the more times I make it, the easier it gets. I love my original, and I fixed the straps before our trip last week so I could sling it around the airport. (I also noticed that I had only basted in the lining, which was quickly becoming a hot mess. I sewed that bad boy in by hand on Thursday night, and I used such stiff canvas for both the lining and bag that my thumb was numb for three days afterward.) But there are places where I didn't catch the seam allowance, and it's maybe starting to show a little wear. And I sure do have a lot of scraps left over...