shark attack

Is this not the cutest hat/balaclava ever? Since I am still too sleep deprived to make anything for mr. toby, I’ve been purchasing things off of etsy instead. The gal who makes this has a bunch of other ones in her shop, but this one was definitely most our style. As you can see, it’s a little bit big on him since it’s meant for a 9 month old, but it’s still super cute!

On the sleep thing, we are starting to see the light at the end of tunnel. We’ve gotten him off of the pacifier and night feedings, and the nap schedules are starting to go longer, closer to 2 hours instead of the 30 mins. Last night he went from 7 – 11PM, did an 11PM dreamfeed and then went until 5AM. After which he hung out in his crib by himself for an hour without crying (I know because I laid awake in the bed next to him waiting for him to go back to sleep). Yay for no cry it out sleep training. If you ever have a sleepless baby, I highly highly recommend the baby whisper book.

I’ve gotten a few emails asking me where I got the onesie with the alternate color sleeves in the Toby turns zero post.

Well, guess what? I made that. Not the whole thing of course, I’m just a tad too busy for that. I had purchased all these short sleeve onesies for my baby shower, but it’s still a bit cold for Toby to be laying around in short sleeves. So I decided to add some sleeves to them, it’s super easy.

Want to see how?

1. Determine roughly how long and how wide you want your sleeve. Cut a piece of fabric twice the width and the length plus 1 inch. With the right side of the fabric facing each other, sew down the long side. Flip one of the widthwise raw edges over and sew that down. I did this with a combo of a serger and a sewing machine, but you can really even do this by hand since there is so little sewing.

2. With the sleeve still inside out and matching the cut edge with the edge of the onesie sleeves, feed the sleeve through the neckhole of the onsie.

3. Match up the cut edge of the sleeve with the edge of the onesie sleeve and sew it down.

4. Trim threads and flip the sleeve inside out. Yay, you have a onesie with one long sleeve! Now, you can leave it like that for the one armed 80’s look or repeat this on the other sleeve.

As a side note, I found the fabric markers to work better than the fabric paint. Even though the colors are not as vibrant, it stayed smooth on the shirt, where as the fabric paint dried up super clumpy and rough. It was harder to put those next to baby skin and it also took much longer to dry.

This one is based on a professional sling that a friend gave us. Basically it’s a long piece of cloth with two O-rings attached to it. See? SUPER simpler.

What you will need.

Now, what you will want to do is to fold up one end of the fabric. Bringing the sides to the middle and then repeat. Ignore the wrinkles, there is no time for ironing, I have a newborn!

In case the top picture is not clear, here’s the fold done in paper. Easier to understand?

Feed the folded end through your two rings. If you want to be precise, you can pin the layers down and feed everything through carefully. Don’t poke your fingers like I did.

Flip the end over the rings, and sew it down. I’ll have to take a picture of this soon.

You are done! To wear, feed the other end through both rings and then again through one ring. Here’s an action shot of the sling.

to

I love this little guy so much already!
He’s starting to sleep in slightly bigger chunks (I never thought I would say that about 2.5 hours), and that means I might have a little more time to do things like writing posts, tutorials and crafts! So, look for more things from me soon.

He was so happy about his new PJs!

A student’s tote bag from Tote-A-licious

Well, the third trimester of this pregnancy has hit me much harder than the first two,  I did miserable at the thing a day challenge this year.   But here’s a good effort for the last day.  I even made a tutorial for this.

Book Purse/Clutch

A purse for the librarian in you.  (Update:  If any of you makes a book purse, please send me a pic!  I would love to post it.)

1.  Find an old hard covered book with an interesting cover.

2.  Use a X-acto knife and cut out all the pages of the book.  You
should now have just the book cover. I know, I know, this part is PAINFUL…  But you can maybe make some pretty book art from it.

3.  Cut a piece of fabric the same size as the book cover, fold the
edges in 1/2 inch and iron.  Uhhh…. I forgot to take a picture at this step, so here are some cherry blossoms from Tokyo instead.

4.  If you are making a clutch, you can skip this step and go onto step 5.  If you want a purse, this is the time to dig out your purse handles.  You can buy purse handles in a lot of places nowadays.  Just google it.  These handles I have here, they each have a little slot for attaching it to a purse.  Your purse handles could be totally different, so you have to get creative by yourself here. But the basic idea is to use some of your fabric to create straps for attaching your handles to the inside of the book.

Sew the strips with the right sides facing each other, turn them inside out, fit them through the handles and sew the straps together.

5.  Glue the fabric straps to the book (Of course, you don’t do this for the clutch).  And also glue the piece from step 4 onto the book.   I use E6000, which is like the mother of all craft glues for this.  Be warned though, it also smells like the mother of all craft glues.

6.  Now set that aside to let it dry and we are going to make the insides of the purse.  Get out a large piece of paper, or just tape two together like I have done half-assedly here.  Trace the cover of your book on a large piece of paper, making sure to MARK both ends of the spine of the book on your paper.

7.Measure the width of one side of the book, and draw a line that is that same length about 75 degrees from where you marked the beginning of the spine.  This angle controls how wide your purse will open.    The smaller the angle the wider your purse will open.

8.  Now you are going to duplicate the line to the other side by cutting out the line and the fold the paper over width-wise.

9.  Now do the same lengthwise, so you reproduce the triangle on the other side also.

10.  Cut two pieces of this out of the fabric for the lining of the purse.

11.  Take one of the pieces of the fabric, with the right sides of the fabric facing each other, sew the edges of the triangles to the edges of the square.

12. Repeat with the other piece of fabric.  Turn one of them inside out, you should now have something that looks like this picture.

13.  Put the right side out piece inside the wrong side out piece, and sew around the top edge.  You need leave a hole big enough for you to put hand though.

14.  Put your hand through the hole you left, and turn the whole thing inside out.  Stitch down the hole.  You should now have something that looks like this.  (I also topstitched around the top edge for a cleaner finish)

15.  Sew velcor onto either side of the purse.

16.  The end is near, can you feel it?  Glue the insides to the book frame you created earlier.  Hopefully, the glue will be dry already from the earlier step (if not, you should really wait for it to dry, this is advice coming from the world’s most impatient person, so trust it!)

17.  Done!!

18.  Variations: Some people find that the velcro doesn’t do a great job of keeping the purse closed.  I think it depends on the thickness of the spine of the book, but you could always make a clasp closure of some kind and glue it at the same time as the handles.  You can also obvious decorate the surface of the book if it’s too plain for you.

A simple child’s toy that I learned to make in Japan.  It’s basically 16 strips of paper (I used a metallic pearlescent paper here, anyone know what it’s called??), stuck to some circular stickers (I just cut them out of avery stickers), and then the whole thing poked through with a bamboo skewer.  There’s a bead glued on the top of  the skewer and another one about 4 inches down to prevent the paper from flying off.   When you twirl the whole thing back and forth, it makes the pretty pattern you see here.