A Busy Book for Master Fox

What is a busy book? Well its a book filled with activities in a hope to keep your little toddler busy! Who are we kidding right, this is going to work for all of about 5 minutes! 

I, just like i'm pretty sure all other mothers of toddlers have done, have used pinterest to find activities to keep your little ones entertained, but also with learning in mind. This is one of those examples and has been something which I have been collecting ideas for for a while now. They are usually handmade and sewn so this was definitely a project I knew I could do. 

My plan for this book is to keep it until baby Fox arrives and then it can be his special book which he looks at with mummy while I am breastfeeding. It will hopefully become special to him and will allow us to still have some bonding time and not feel neglected while I have to spend so much time looking after baby. 

I'm not going to lie, I pretty much stole all the ideas for the pages for this book from pinterest, so this is by no means unique or original, but hey when there are so many good ideas out there where is the need. Also I have made this for personal use, it is in no way going to be marketed or sold by me. If you want to have a look at my board of ideas you can find it here on pinterest. 

So let me tell you a little about the pages: 

Page 1: Felt carrots attached to ribbon which can be inserted into holes in the ground which have been sewn as buttonholes. The top of the wheelbarrow also remains open so that the carrots can also be put into the barrow.

Page 2: Animal beads strung onto ribbon which has been attached between two pieces of felt. The number of animals on each row increase by one and the beads can be moved back and forth to encourage counting. 

Page 3: A felt monster with a zip for a mouth which contains some pom poms. This page helps encourage fine motor skills in opening and closing the zip and Master fox will surely have lots of fun putting the pom poms in his mouth. Pom poms are one of our favourite non play play items. You can have hours of fun with these, including pom pom fights which seems to be a favourite game of his grandparents! I purposefully made this monster in blue and purple to match his favourite monster Sully!

Page 4: Three vehicles attached to ribbon which can be moved backwards and forwards across the page. A car, a train and an aeroplane. This again encourages fine motor skills and also imaginary play. 

Page 5: A whale with an open mouth and 3 fish attached to the page with poppers. The fish can be removed from the page and fed to the whale and then reattached. Master Fox loves a whale, and he has a Duplo one which he loves to feed so hopefully he will enjoy this. 

Page 6: This lovely little crocodile has a mouth that opens really wide to show off its sharp teeth. This is great for making snapping motions but the page also includes a toothbrush which can be used to clean the crocs teeth promoting good dental hygiene. The toothbrush can be placed back in the holder once used. 

Page 7: This brave little fireman has got into his lift to help put out the fires in the building. The lift is attached with buttons and buttonholes so that he can be lowered up and down to be closer to the fire. 

Page 8: The last and final page is the least sophisticated with some coloured pockets and some coloured wooden sticks. Not the most exciting page but an excellent one to help learn colours and matching skills. 

I really hope Master Fox likes his little book, I am really pleased with it and I am glad I finally got around to making it. I had loads more ideas for pages but I needed to finish somewhere otherwise I wouldn't be getting anything else done. 

Getting Some Baby Sewing Inspiration

Happy Friday! I am off out for dinner tonight (lack of kitchen) and Mocktails with friends so I am very much looking forward to it. 

The kitchen renovations appear to be going pretty well, they have already ripped it all out, plumbed, rewired and measured up half the cupboards. Hopefully we will have lovely new skimmed walls by tonight as well. I have to say though we are already fed up of the lack of kitchen and everything being in upheaval. I am also really not liking the fact I have lost the craft room to a make shift kitchen! its not good for my productivity.

So instead I have been purchasing an reading this new book from Lotta Jansdotter to get some inspiration for more baby makes. You are really not surprised are you. This book has some excellent ideas in it, my favourite being the rattles (what an excellent way to use up all those spare cat bells we get from the cat collars), the support pillow and the tag blanket. Though of course I can see me making many more of the things out of this book in the near future. You can get a look inside the book on the Amazon site to give you an idea of the types of projects in here but it looks like a great little book. I really can't wait to find out the sex of our little baby so I can start really planning some sewing. 

I hope you all have a fun weekend planned ahead, enjoy whatever you are doing, and I will see you on the other side. 

A Jade Prom Dress

 

Happy Easter Monday. I hope you still have some chocolate left over and haven't pigged it all just yet! Its been great having these days off., me and the Mr haven't done a great deal this weekend, just caught up with some stuff, seen the family etc. Its been nice just to have some time to chill out. One of the fruits of me having this time was that I managed to finish off some sewing. YeHa!

So I bring you my jade lace prom dress which I have been making ready to wear to a wedding in the summer. Now I promise you this was a pure coincidence, but when I was pinning this together I realised the wedding is actually the wedding of our friend Jade, and my dress is Jade! How perfect is that! I swear I couldn't have planned that if I was doing it on purpose!

About the Dress:
Pattern: Prom Dress from the first Great British Sewing Bee Book
Fabric: Jade Cotton Sateen and Black Stretch Lace both from Fabricland
Size: 12
Adjustments: Shortened the straps by about 1.5 inches and removed 2 inches from the bottom

I love this dress pattern, its a really good pattern for a beginner and the fit is great for me with minimal adjustment. There are few pieces and they fit together well and in a logical order. I seriously recommend that anyone who owns this book should make up a version of this dress. I love the way it hangs in the front. I do think that I could have done with it being taken in a little bit under the arms but its not at all noticeable with a shrug on. Having made up a toile in a more sturdy fabric I do think the dress lends itself better to a stiffer fabric that I have used here  so it would be a perfect dress to make using a cotton poplin or cotton lawn for summer, or some drill/twill/brocade for winter.

This version of the dress is made using two layers of fabric, the jade cotton sateen with a layer of black stretch lace over the top. In order to make sure that the pieces didn't slip whilst sewing I decided to (painstakingly) overlock the two layers together around all the pattern pieces before I started to construct the dress. This was a big faff, and it took a while, but I do think it was worth it because I had very little difficulty sewing it up, there was very little movement between the two layers which helped a lot. I really liked working with the cotton sateen, its the first time I have ever used it and its got some great stretch to it. This would have been perfect for a version of the georgia dress.

All in all I am really pleased with this one. I have my concerns that its actually quiet thick and so it might not be perfect for a summer wedding, but if all else fails I have another wedding to attend in October so it will be perfect for that one if its too warm in July.

I will leave you with one final image of me prancing around... did you notice I don't have my hands on my hips once in this post!!

New Year, New Dresses!

This year I will be ringing in the New Year in my new hand sewn Velvet Prom Dress:

The dress is the prom dress pattern from the great British sewing bee book. This is the first time I ever bothered to make a toile before just hacking straight into my nice expensive fabric. I have to admit it was a good idea given that I have never inserted an invisible zip, or used my new invisible zipper sewing machine foot. The toile came out pretty well for a first attempt and I actually think the fit on this version came out better then the finished one. The material is some thick cotton I was given a whole roll of for free and has a black strip in it. Its pretty think and heavy with just a slight stretch to it held the shape of the dress really well. I actually think I need to hem this (and hide the white zipper!) as its not a horrible dress. I might even be more inclined to wear this one that the velvet one in the future :/

For the actual dress thought I purchased some gorgeous 4 way stretch velvet from the internet specifically to make a dress for New Years. Its the perfect time for velvet, its warm and luxurious, with just a hint of extravagance.I have read some horror stories about working with velvet fabric, but actually this wasn't too distressing at all. I have a walking foot for my machine and I think this helped a lot as i really didn't struggle. The only difficulty I came across was not being able to press the seams easily, but as the fabric is so soft it didn't matter too much. Also, as the hem is a circle, and i can't press it I decided to omit a hem seam. I know this isn't the most professional finish, but the fabric doesn't frey and acts a lot like jersey so I am going to get away with it. It is slightly on the large side, which I am going to blame on the stretch and the weight of the fabric. The fabric acts a lot differently to the stuff in the toile but I can chalk that down to experience for next time. Sorry about the pictures, its a really dull day, and the fabric is not the best for showing off the seams.

The pattern was really simple to follow. It is down as something for the more experienced sewer but I think as long as you have some common sense about it this one is really easy. The pieces fit together well and there are not too many of them. I have to admit that I omitted the interfacing (you can't iron it on to velvet, that and I didn't have any!). I also didn't include the boning because after cutting it up and tacking it on to the bodice i realised the fabric was not firm enough (too stretchy) to hold it and it just made the bodice an odd shape. I would definitely make this again, I even have some leopard cotton I might use. However I have to admit I would prefer straps rather than a halterneck (a bra is an important thing to me) and I would prefer a centre back zip to a side one. But I would recommend giving this pattern a go if you have the boo, its very versatile. I have visions of leopard bodices with black skirts, or sequined bodices with a black skirt. There are endless possibilities here to use different fabrics and colour combinations.

Thank you for checking out this post, and if you got this far, I want to wish you a very happy New Year xx