Think Crafts Blog - Craft Ideas and Projects - CreateForLess

Returning Guest Blogger Gillian from the Blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

As soon as the first hint of warm weather comes my way, I find myself pulling out sundresses and sun hats and scarves and sandals for my daughter that have languished at the bottom of dresser drawers all winter long.  At two and a half, she’s already a serious dress diva, which is good, because I love to make dresses. And with the arrival of spring comes the arrival of spring fabrics. I go into the fabric store for buttons and I come out with yards and yards of “it was just so cute!” fabric for summer projects.

My all time favorite dress to make is the Sew Baby Dress. This pattern has a lot going for it, first of all, it’s just so darn cute on little girls of all sizes. It’s reversible, which means that when my daughter spills something down her front I can just turn it around and poof! Clean dress. It takes a minimal amount of fabric and it’s one of the easiest patterns I’ve come across. I’ve used it several times when teaching friends to sew because as long as you can cut out a pattern and sew a straight line, you can make this dress. This summer will be my fourth go round with Sew Baby and I’m in no way bored with it.

For my first dress of the spring I chose to pair a dark green print (hides the dirt) with a nice cheery orange floral and found some fabulous buttons to match each. With my last few versions of this dress I’ve been using snaps rather than buttons and then sewing oversized or funky buttons on either side of the straps for decoration. It makes the project faster, easier and cuter since I’m not limited on my button choice by the width of the straps.

The pattern, by the way, also has a great and very simple pattern for bloomers. And if you’ve never made them before, are WAY easier than you think and can absolutely make an outfit. This time around I tried shirring (well, faux shirring I suppose, with elastic string in the bobbin of my sewing machine) on the waist and legs rather than using regular elastic. The effect was very charming giving the bloomers a nice ruffled edge without being too frilly. My daughter also seems to like them better for the lightless of touch that sheering gives over elastic bands.

Of course, none of that really matters, what matters is that my twirling, tutu wearing, dress loving girl spins and smiles whenever I make her a new outfit. And that is why I sew.

So, what projects does the coming of spring inspire YOU to start?

For more of Gillian blog posts, read them here.

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Returning Guest Blogger, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming around town and I’m in the mood for some embroidery!

I’m not, as a rule, an embroiderer. I lack the patience that it takes to finish a project of any size and have a pile of half done cross stitch/embroidery projects in my sewing box to prove it. But when I received the book Sublime Stitching as a gift a few years ago, it opened my eyes to a  new world of embroidery. The book, and its successor The Sublime Stitching Craft Pad, is packed with cute, slightly funky patterns for projects that you can use to embellish just about anything. And for me, there’s nothing like stitching a little something special to a store bought outfit to add some “awwww…” to my kids’ wardrobes. So far we’ve done cowboy patches on worn through knees, Scottie dogs on a bland dress or two, Siamese kitties to turn a little boy coat into a little girl one and a rocket ship tie that was the hit of the school concert. The tie was, in fact, such a bit hit that I’ve been commissioned (and paid in kisses) to make another, this one with dinosaurs.

Kid’s ties are hard to find and when you do, they are usually plastered with cartoon characters in garish colors. But ties are also remarkably easy to make. No, really they are! I used to make them for Christmas gifts for my teachers when I was in elementary school. I wonder if Mr. Koep still has the jungle with glow in the dark eyes tie I made him all those years ago… Kid’s ties, are even easier, since they require less fabric and don’t need to be perfectly smooth and tailored.

For a pattern, I used one of my husband ties that I had put on my son, adjusting it so that the narrow end was the right length and the wider end was too long. With a pin I marked the spot on the front of the tie where I wanted the length. After I’d removed the tie and ironed it I set it out on the fabric I planned to use and cut a rough pattern using the length and width as a guide. Keeping in mind my seam allowances I embroidered the dinosaur of choice. The rocket ship tie was fully line which made it a little thick so this time I only lined the ends before stitching the seams closed and giving it a whirl. The result was a perfectly proportioned tie that my son is excited to wear anywhere he gets a chance, which, given the fact that he would stay in his pajamas all day if allowed, is saying something.

Have you embellished a store bought piece of clothing with embroidery? What projects do you go stitch crazy for?

To read more of Gillian’s posts, click here.

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Returning Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the blog “Dried Figs & Wooden Spools”.

This weekend our town, in a fit of adorableness, will be holding it’s annual Mother-Son Prom in honor of Mother’s Day. Lest you fathers out there feel this is unfair, rest assured that we also have a Father-Daughter Dance every fall so everybody gets their turn. So this week I’ve been dusting off the one dressy dress I own (a full skirted little black and white polka dotted number right out of a fifties sitcom), ironing the three piece linen suit that was my husband’s when he was seven (no joke, it’s vintage seventies and my son looks ready to leap into Saturday Night Fever in it) and because I really want one and I can’t count on the boys in my family to think to get one, I’ve been making a wrist corsage.

Fabric Wrist Corsage

I’ve got a thing about wrist corsages. They are elegant and romantic and I love them the best of all the wearable flowers. But this project could be made into a pin for your dress, fastened to your waist, or worn in your hair. And it takes all of about twenty minutes to make.

Start with some sturdy but not stiff fabric (you could use paper as well but you would want to be careful with the folds so that it doesn’t end up totally flat, I choose corduroy because I happened to have it in red) and cut two large circles and four smaller ones out with pinking shears. I used the top and bottom of a short drinking glass to make my circles. You want the smaller ones to be about three quarters of the circumference of the bigger ones. If you don’t have pinking shears thats fine, they do add a nice texture but this could also be achieved by scalloping the edges of the circles.

Once your circles are cut, lay the two big ones on top of one another and then fold the four smaller ones in half, layering them over one another until you form a circle with these half circles. Center this on the bigger circle and put in a couple of stitches at the corners to hold everything in place. Now, with a contrasting (or not) color fabric, cover a button or a penny or something round and stitching this to the center. You could also use a pretty round pin if you have one laying around. Fluff the edges of the flower until you have the look you want and your done!

If you want a wrist corsage, stitch a coordinating ribbon to the center of the back, otherwise throw on a hair clip or pin. These would look great bunched up together and fastened to a purse, a belt or even on top of a gift. I also added two loops of green ribbon to the back for “leaves” but you could also use the leaves from a silk flower for more punch.

Although I didn’t do this project with kids, it would be an easy one for them to help out with so pay attention dads; this project might just save your bacon if you have forgotten to buy the all important Mother’s Day gift. And if your town happens to have a Mother-Son Prom and your son will condescend to wearing a boutonniere, you could make a smaller version of this flower for that as well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the one I made him will find itself pinned to his little white coat come tomorrow night.

Did you make something for your mom for Mother’s Day? What craft can you not wait to give your mom this year?

To read more of Gillian’s posts, Click here.

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Returning Guest Blogger, Gillian, from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

A few years from now, I’ll be teaching my daughter Evelyn how to sew. We’ll embark on stitching tiny dolls clothes or making a skirt out of fabric that she chooses herself. I’ll teach her about buttons and zippers and seam allowances and seam rippers. Probably a lot about seam rippers. Like me, she’ll choose a pattern with too many tiny pearl buttons and cry with frustration when I won’t just do it for her. She’ll skip steps and I’ll make her go back and rip out seams and iron them before proceeding. I might even make her prewash her fabric, even though I hate doing it myself. I have all that to look forward to.

But I also think it’s important for boys to know how to sew. When my husband and I were dating, I taught him to sew a Hawaiian Shirt. Other than the sleeves that I had to put in because he was beyond frustrated and the fact that he cut half of the fabric out upside down when I was setting up the machine resulting in the left half of the shirt’s palm trees pointing down while the right side pointed up, it turned out OK. And I can rest easy knowing that he knows how to fix a seam, sew on a button and even mend a sock in a pinch. Not that he does anymore, he’s more likely to hand it off to me. But at least I know he can. So along those lines, I decided to teach Briton, my son, to sew this week. Well, let’s say I started to teach him to sew.

Briton's first sewing project

Knowing that Cabbage Patch Kids clothes or lacy dresses weren’t going to be up his alley, I let boys be boys and we set out to make an, um, interesting, stuffed animal. I let him flip through the book that came in a Plush-O-Rama kit, watched him weigh the benefits of his favorite specimens (he decided to make it for a friend who’s birthday was coming up, a girl, so it had to be a little girlie) helped him trace out a pattern and away we went.

Plush O Rama - Curious Creatures for Immature Adults

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Returning Guest Blogger, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”

My grandmother had a rack of spools over her sewing desk in the spare bedroom of her house when I was growing up. Every summer I would spend a few weeks at her house and every summer she would take me to the fabric store, almost as soon as I arrived, to pick out a pattern and fabric to learn during my visit. I spent hours each summer in the room affectionately known as the waterbed room with it’s green and white butterfly papered walls, it’s wall size shelf of family photos, and my grandmother’s sewing table. When I wasn’t in the kitchen learning how to stew figs for drying or experimenting with pudding and gelatin or out in the back yard trying to work up my courage to attempt my aunts famous “death drops” off the swing set, I was in the sewing room working on increasingly difficult patterns and never fully understanding the valuable skills I was acquiring.

The sewing room was a haven from the Redding, CA heat. The shade from the house next door, the dark walls, perhaps even the waterbed itself made the room cooler than the rest of the house. In the cool quiet I could pin and cut and stitch, or lie on the undulating mattress of the waterbed, or in my tween years, watch Days of our Lives on the tiny black and white Television that was perched on the bedside dresser.

Sometimes in a fit of teenage self-righteousness I would do nothing but spin the spools of thread on their wooded pins or finger the gold stork handles of the delicate sewing scissors that hung from a ribbon on a hook. The wooden spools were always my favorite. It seemed she had hundred of them, but it was probably no more than a dozen, plastic spools were already taking over by then. When one of the wooden spools ran out of thread we made them into dolls or furniture or animals or spool crochet sets. My grandmother’s imagination was endless and she always had something new to make, to teach, to show.

When she moved out of her house after my grandfather died, a pair of wooden spools was among the treasures I took away with me. I have carried them across states and oceans and they now sit in one of the mason jars of thread on my sewing table, a reminder of the lessons of those long hot summer days of my childhood. Of sewing dozens of tiny buttons down the front of a dress and sneaking dried figs out of the freezer in the family room, of my grandmothers dried apple kitchen witch and the thumping of the dough hook on her beloved mixer beating away at her bread.

My Grandmother, who now lives in a second floor apartment and uses the Internet and has a Judi Dench haircut, continues to amaze me, to inspire me. And every time I sit down to sew or slide dinner in the oven, or set out on a new project, I am reminded of those summers, the rows of wooden spools and the cool of the waterbed room, and of my grandmother.

So what crafts have been handed down in your family? And what skills do you plan to pass on to the next generation?

To read more of Gillian’s blog, click  here.

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