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. 

Felt Dinosaur

 

This is Mick the Felty Dinosaur! Hello Mick. 

Mick is another pattern which I got from the second issue of Simply Sewing magazine. As soon as I saw this pattern in the mag I just new it had to be done. I mean it appeals to all my sewing whims. Plushie, cute, quick, perfect for the boy. He just had to get made. 

He is made from pure wool felt. When I saw the pattern I knew I had the perfect piece of material to make him out of. The body is a hand felted piece of fabric in teal and green, I hear you, its like it was made for this project. I've had it in my craft room for years and you know when you can't bear to use something because you know the perfect project will come along... well here's proof it does in the end. Because its hand felted real wool as well it gives it a gorgeous texture, its almost scaly just like a real dino!

The pattern was really easy. Its thankfully mostly machine sewn which just a few sections of the feet being hand sewing, perfect! The instructions were really clear and easy to follow. I also love the way the feet are sewn on so that it makes the dino stand up.

The Simply Sewing magazine, whilst not always being chocca full of things I would make, has at least always had really clear instructions, and with the pattern pieces provided this makes things a lot easier. I hate it when you have to upscale pattern pieces, I mean we don't all have access to a copier do we, and the idea of doing it on graph paper is just too much of a chore. I have had issue 3 through the door now, and this one is a little lacking in projects which interest me personally, but I suppose you can't please everyone all the time. It comes with a lovely felt pack, but again i'm not inspired by the projects included so need to rack my brains for a different one.

Anyway. I think I'm rambling!! I hope you like Mick (he was named by Mr Fox, don't ask me why Mick). I would definitely suggest giving him a go if you have a copy of the mag. If not, get googling for some felt dinosaur sewing patterns of your own!

Felt Finger Puppet Gang

Come and meet the gang.... Percy the Polar Bear, Henry the Hedgehog, Leo the Lion, Mr Fox, Kitty Mew Mew and Mr Dinosaur. I don't know why but all my soft toys have always been male, I'm not sure what this says about me? Do your soft toys (I would say did, but come on you know you still own some) have a gender? I would love to know I'm not the only odd one out there.

So anyway, it's been a while since I have played with finger puppets, but how cute are these little felt guys? You might be wondering then why I made them? Well now that Master Fox is 6 weeks with every day he is getting more awake and more inquisitive. To help him learn about his new world I have been looking for activities to do with him to stimulate and help his mental development. There are lots of great ideas from simply showing him things around the house to smells but of course my favourite activity was the one which featured finger puppets! I probably could have gone with a theme, say woodland or zoo animals or something but he doesn't know the difference. I just made up my favourite animals ;)

Little Felt finger puppets are so easy to make. All you need is some felt, scissors, needle and thread. Draw roughly around your finger onto a piece of paper but add about 1cm all the way around. Once you have done this cut it out and this is your finger template. From that you just need to cut shapes from felt to make little faces and features and sew them on with co-ordinating thread. Once you have finished with the features you then sew around the edge and top of the puppet leaving the bottom open. You can of course use glue if you don't want to sew them.

They took about 15 minutes per puppet which makes this another awesome project for making during baby naps. It took me about 3 naps to make these 6 little guys, not bad at all.

Have you ever made any toys for your little newborns? I am continuously hunting for ideas for playtime so would love to hear about them.

Felt Christmas Wreath

Christmas is definitely my most favourite time of the year and I love it when its time to decorate the house. I am one of these people who has to have the Christmas tree near the telly, and often find myself staring at it instead of whatever I am supposed to be watching. I am one of those people who gets excited early and its never too early to start making mince pies or watch Christmas movies.I think the build up to it is just as much fun, if not more than the day itself. I think its just all the family, friends, warmth, nice food etc. I love it all!

Most of our decorations are purchased (some handcrafted though) but one thing I do like to do is make a wreath. If you have had a nose around the blog you might have come across my wedding bouquets which I made using felt. I really loved these and its so nice to still have it to keep. Ever since making them I had an idea to try and make a wreath for Christmas in a similar way but using more Christmas themed colours.

The wreath itself is a polystyrene mold which you can get from anywhere on the net, I think mine was from amazon. And the flowers are made using this technique (youtube link). I hope you like it. I think it is a great little adaptation of the bouquets. Now I just need to think about what other applications I can apply it too!

I hope you are all ready and prepared for Christmas. Do you have any DIY traditions which you would like to share?

Crochet Baby Bear Hat

Who's been sleeping in my bed...? No one at the moment but it won't be long I'm sure till we have a tiny person trying to hog the covers as well as Mr Fox! 

Not having the craft room hasn't been a total disaster, I have managed to crochet this awesome little baby bear hat. Anyone that knows me will easily be able to tell you that my child is going to be nearly permanently in some fancy dress or another! You can't wait can you!

It's still a couple of weeks till we find out the sex so I am still trying to craft neutral, Bears are a great way to cover this even if brown is not exactly my favourite colour. 

The main body of the hat was crocheted using the following Velvet Acorn pattern. The face was self drafted from felt pieces and sewn on with a blanket stitch. Finally the ears were self drafted. I did start off with two giant pom poms for ears but they didn't quiet look right so I made up a new set. 

Using the same wool and hook as the main pattern (you will have to purchase it for that info):

Make a magic loop and sc 5 times into the loop, do not join

Turning the work 2sc in each stitch around (10 sc), do not join

Turning the work sc in each stitch until you reach the last one (9sc), slip stitch, fasten off.

You then just need to sew them on to the body. I don't think mine are quiet equal but meh!

In other news: The Kitchen fiasco continues, we can't get a worktop for 2 weeks so they have had to put in a temporary fix and then they will come back and finish it off. Not ideal, but at least I can use the kitchen for now. We had a major storm, I should not have been laughing at us not flooding at the top of a hill, the garage was underwater, though nothing major so we are counting ourselves very lucky. Also Mr Fox bought a Harley! I am a little gutted I can't have a go until next year but I am really pleased for him, he was so happy!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. p.s. if you have any cute animal baby makes to send my way for trying please do... I probably won't be able to resist.

Major News Alert! (and Simplicity 1710)

Have you managed to guess what the major news is yet? For those of you who read my blog and know me in real life I apologise for the old news, but for those readers who don't know me, you guessed it, we made a Fox cub! You know how much we like to make stuff around here, well now we are making a person as well.

Of course I wouldn't be me unless I made this little announcement to the internets in the form of craft would I, so I introduce to you Simplicity 1710.

As soon as I found out the news of course I started searching for some sewing patterns and this one just couldn't be resisted. I have had the pattern for weeks but I didn't want to jinx anything. However as we are now out of the major danger zone I think we are probably ok to start crafting now (and crafting we will!).

The pattern pack has a lot of cute options, but we love cats in this house so it had to be the kitty booties, there was no question really. The pattern pieces are nicely sized to fit on a single piece of felt which is very helpful. Although the pattern is really straight forward these did feel like they took an age to make! I am really happy with them though, they are so cute!! I think its just that there is a lot of fiddly bits with machine sewing the faces on, but it was just time consuming, not difficult.

So you will now see why there has been a lot less garment sewing going on. This is mainly because I don't want to put my heart and soul into making something which will only fit me for a couple of weeks (and I am already out of most of my normal sized clothes unless they are made with plenty of stretch!). I do hope to be able to get on to some maternity sewing, but again, I am not quiet the right size for that either yet so I can't really test it out for fit. Watch this space though.

This does of course mean the blog will take a bit more of a turn towards crafting for babies/toddlers etc. I hope that's OK with you, personally I can't wait! I have always been drawn to crafting in bright colours and things so I can't wait to get my creative juices flowing.

I also need to get on the look out for some more kiddie craft blogs for my feedly so if you have any great suggestions let me know :)

And here is a little picture of the bubba for those more interested in babies than shoes...

Fit for a King (or Queen) Crown Tutorial

 

You will hopefully member my felt crown post here; well here is the long awaited tutorial and PDF so you can make your very own! 

You will need:

• Your pattern which can be downloaded here
• Some felt in main colour (yellow or grey are good crown colours but don't limit yourselves)
• Scrap felt pieces in either 3 or 5 colours
• Thread to match your main felt colour
• Interfacing
• Scissors
• Some Velcro, or poppers if preferred

Step 1. Cut out two pieces from the template on the fold using your main felt colour. You will also need to cut one piece in the interfacing.  On one of the felt pieces you will need to trace and cut out the holes, this will be the front piece and the one without the holes the back piece. Now attach the interfacing to the back piece. Be careful not to melt acrylic felt with the iron if using iron on interfacing. Sew in facing will work fine.

Step 2. Using I you scrap felt cut out 5 squares big enough to cover the holes and leave a bit of seam allowance. 

 

Step 3. Carefully top stitch around the edge of the circle on the front of the crown making sure to catch the scrap on the underside. You will now be able to see the colour of the scrap piece through the front of the crown like a little sparkling gem. 

 

Step 4. Place the front and back crown pieces together with the right sides facing out and the interfacing and scraps on the inside. Top stitch all the way around the outside of the crown piece to secure the front and back together.

Step 6. You might now find that your edges aren't totally aligned. Not a problem, just take a good pair of scissors and trim the edges so there are no uneven sides.

Step 7. Sew your Velcro to the tabs at the end with one piece on the inside and one on the outside so when they are out together you get a flush circle. I would recommend hand sewing these on so you can't see the stitches on the other side.

And that's it. Now you can give the crown to your little prince or princess who can happily play dress up. Please note that I have a tiny head and this doesn't fit on mine. If you need to make the crown a bit bigger my suggestion would be to increase the size of the end tab to 4 inches to allow for more head to go inside :) 

Thank you very much for visiting, show me pictures of your crowns when they are done. I would like to see the different colour combinations people go for. 

Easter Project Craft: Round Up

Project Craft is now done for Easter and we raised over £500 for Improving Dementia Education and Awareness (IDEA) which is absolutely fantastic. I want to send out a huge thanks to colleagues who invited me to be a part of this with them. It was immense fun doing all the prep, seeing other peoples craft, and working selling the items to eager donaters. 

But I should also send out a big thank you to all those who donated home made cakes and tasty treats to the cause, as well as all the people who came along and bought from us. I hope they all enjoy their little treats and I am sure that the money will be going to great use. 

You can obviously see some of the items in these pictures but this doesn't even begin to cover what we had for sale. I would post a picture of my purchases but I have a bunny loving family member who I might need to keep this a secret from for now!

I will tell you something though, I forgot how much hard work it is running a craft stall. I always thought it was the fresh air, but I was absolutely shattered after doing this. I am looking forward to planning ahead for our next event which will hopefully be towards Christmas, but not before a well deserved rest!

Some of the things we had for sale: Felted eggs, chicks in eggs, flowers. Knitted hats, scarfs, cushions, chocolate egg cosies, decorations and mug hugs. Glass bead magnets, rings and necklaces. Sewn bunting, bunnies and bags. Along with cards, plants and gifting chocolate (pretty much everything Easter related you can imagine!) 

So given the success of this its pretty much onwards to Christmas. Is April to early to be thinking about Christmas? I know I have had my tree up in August before but this feels a it much! 

Needle Felted Flowers

The last couple of weeks Ellen, my lovely boss, has been kindly sharing her knowledge of needle felting with a group of us at work by showing us how to make our very own needle felted flowers.

The reason for showing us this technique is to make flower brooches which can be sold as part of our charity craft event running at the beginning of April to raise money for dementia. Realising of course that these would make lovely mothers day gifts we have been given the opportunity to donate up front and take our lovely creations away with us.

The process of needle felting is actually very simple (and can be a great stress reliever!). You start of with some pure, dyed, unspun wool known as 'roving'. This can then be mixed together using a method called 'carding' so you get a mottled effect, or single colours can be layered on top of each other, both creating beautiful effects. You then use a felting needle to repeatedly stab the wool which bonds the fibres together allowing you to create shapes. The needles have little notches on them which is what helped the fibres to fuse together. For creating flat shapes it is easier to work on a piece of sponge or foam, repeatedly turning, but you can hold the piece (being careful not to stab yourself) to make 3D shapes and sculptures.

I think these turned out really great, especially as a lot of us had never used this technique before.I would really urge you to have a go at this if you are able, its a really satisfying and quick little project. I also had a quick go at machine stitching over a felt shape to make this little leaf (which was meant to be a feather but still!) I think its really cute and effective.

Fabric Flower Workshop

Check it out... I managed to teach some lovely people how to make lovely pretty things!

We had our work team away day this week and our boss decided it would be quiet nice for us to do something fun for the last part of the day. She shares my slight obsession with craft so we decided it might be nice to all be able to make something on the day. We decided that some sort of fabric flower would be an excellent choice because not only are they pretty, but they are also simple enough to be able to teach in a short time without needing any specialist equipment. So I was tasked with researching different types of flowers which I could teach to a small group. I am really pleased with how well everyone's flowers came out, they all did an amazing job.

In the end I picked three different techniques to teach. Firstly, I of course went for the same felt flower which I used to make my wedding bouquets. I love making these flowers, they are so simple to do and yet so effective. We had a great discussion about how lovely it would be to make a bunch of these on floristry wire to give as a gift on Mothers day.

Next up we did some lace and button flowers. I got the idea for this one from a brooch which I bought at a craft fair years ago. I love that brooch, but on looking at its construction it is really very simple. The idea is to get a length of lace trim (about 50cm maybe) and just do a simple running stitch across the bottom edge of the trim. You then pull and gather the trim until it is tight and join  the two ends with the remaining thread. You will have a little gap in the middle but this is covered up by sewing or glueing on a cute button or bead to make the centre of the flower.

The last flower we did was a lovely pom pom fabric flower. I have bought so many of these as accessories in my life I can't believe I haven't tried this sooner. Rather than me explain there is an excellent tutorial right here

Aren't they all excellent. I am really pleased with how it all well and I would love to do this kind of thing again, I am thinking maybe a clasp purse workshop? I really want to do a knicker making workshop but that would require patterns and sewing machines and a lot of materials so this one is probably a little way off yet. If anyone wants a better description of any of these flowers let me know. There are however a million (slight exaggeration) tutorials out there already for these types of flowers (where do you think I found them) so I didn't see the point in duplicating them here.

A Foxy Friday Treasury

Someone on Facebook linked the most amazing handmade Fox sweater dress today and I love it so much it promted me into a bit of a Foxy Etsy spiral. So I made this treasury to not only share this amazing find, but also lots of other amazingly cute Foxy things which you can find on Etsy:

 

The Treasury can be found here

Top Left - Right: Fox Dress with Ears, Crochet Pattern-Flint Fox Cowl, Woodland Fox Iphone Case, Nursery Art Print; Fox family

Middle Left - Right: Plush toy sewing pattern, Red Fox Shoes, Fox Scarf Kids, Fox Ring

Bottom Left - Right: Fox Mask and Tail, Fox Stud Earrings, Fox Felt Purse, Cloud9 Fanfare Fox print fabric

I hope you like my little foxy treasury. I am glad I now have some of these are bookmarked for later! I have a real hankering to make some pjs out of the cloud9 fabric, but its quiet expensive for just lounge pants really.

Christmas Pudding Decoration Tutorial

Today I am going to show you how to make your own awesome Christmas Pudding tree decoration.

I came up with this design for a little stuffed pudding a couple of years ago when making stuff for my Monster Magic stalls at Christmas. Its very quick and easy to make and looks lovely when all finished up on your tree. Its a great little project to make as its quick so you could have a whole ton of these made up in time for that special day.

You will need:

Brown Fabric (anything will do, I used Fleece)
White Felt
Sewing Machine and or Sewing Needle and thread
Stuffing
Pins
Paper
Skissors
Pen/Pencil
Small piece of ribbon
Green Felt
1 Button (preferable red, pink, orange or purple)

Step 1:

Using an upside down mug or glass draw round the edge on to a piece of paper, make two circles this way. Once you have your two circles draw a wiggly line across the center of one circle, as above (this is to look like icing/cream/brandy sauce yum!). Cut out the full circle and the top half of the wiggly line semi-circle.

Step 2:

Get yourself some brown fabric (I used fleece but you can use whatever fabric you have lying around) and some white felt. You can use brown felt for the main body, but I find that it doesn't have much give in it to make a nice plump pudding. Fold both fabrics in half, pin the full circle to the brown and cut round it. Pin the half circle on to the white felt and cut out. You should end up with two brown pieces and two white pieces.

Step 3:

Pin one of the white piece on to the right side of the brown fabric (good side of the fabric facing outwards) and top stitch along the wavy line. Do the same on the other piece of fabric.

Step 4:

Fold your small piece of ribbon in half and pin it onto the front of one of your circles, try to get it as central as possible. You want to try and have the raw ends poking a bit over the edge of the circle as above to be sure that you are going to catch with with the seam. Be careful where you place the pin as you are going to be sewing around it. 

You then want to put your two circles on top of each other, with right sides facing each other. Make sure that you line up the white sections as neatly as possible. 

Step 5:

Pin all the way around the circle, but you are going to need to make sure that you leave a gap for turning the seam the right way out. I like to mark this section with two pins so I know where to start and stop. You also need to make sure that the ribbon is not going to get caught in the seam. The best way to do this is by making sure it sits inbetween these two pins. You can see mine just poking out above.

Step 6:

Machine stitch (you can hand sew it) around the edge of the circle. It is a good idea to do some back stitching over the ribbon to make sure it is secure. Once you have done trim and snip along the seam so you get a nice circle.

Step 7:

Turn your pudding the right way out and stuff with soft toy stuffing. If you don't have any stuffing you can just use some old fabric scraps. 

Step 8:

Hand sew the opening closed using ladder stitch (here is a YouTube video) You should use matching thread but I was fighting sunset so I am using the wrong thread for speed!

Step 9:

Finally, cut two tiny holly shapes out of green felt and hand stitch these on to the top of your pudding along with a shiny red button. 

Voila! you have yourself an awesome looking Christmas pudding to hang on your tree. You could make these for your tree or as last minute stocking fillers for your friends. Its a great little project which is really quick, and you could have a go with your kids, either learning to use a sewing machine, or if they are a bit younger helping to pick out the buttons.

If you make one of these up I would love to see it.

Its my birthday tomorrow so I am not going to be wishing you Merry Christmas just yet. I have been baking my little socks off since finishing work for Christmas on Friday in preparation for some family and friends coming over. I made my first ever Christmas cake, many batches of mince pies (using my Aunties home made mincemeat! Yum!), and I have some dough rising for pitta's and bread sticks. I hope tomorrow brings me lots of lovely crafty things to share with you all.