Summer Stitching Flashback

Oh goodness, folks. Summer is ruining me. Kids and I are having loads of fun and craziness and are trying to survive weeks of 100+ temps. I'm just not having much time to craft on my own and blog about it.


I actually have been working on some stitching projects in the last couple of weeks, but they're a little secretive, so no blogging them yet. Instead, I'm going to take you back a couple of years in my stitching. This is a little tooth fairy pillow that I made for my daughter back in 2007 when she started showing signs that her first loose tooth was getting close to popping out.

A little bit about the project: the floral fabric was scavenged from a mumu I found at the thrift store. Now, don't go spreading the word, but I actually covet a mumu. I'm all about comfortable home wear, and I have to admit that I've lovingly fondled mumus in discount stores. As of yet, though, I haven't been able to actually go through with the purchase of one. I thought this "vintage" mumu might satisfy my desire to wear a robe-dress around the house while being hip and retro at the same time. Sadly, it was too small, so parts of it became this tooth fairy pillow.

The embroidered image is actually from a Bambi coloring page. My daughter has always been obsessed with forest creatures (animals of any sort, actually) and deer - specifically "stags" - are at the top of her list. This was some of the most delicate embroidery I've ever done. I think I used just 2 or even 1 strand for the whole thing.


The sewing was not my finest work, but it did the job, and my daughter actually loved it. She's used it for every tooth she's lost so far - including the one where the tooth fairy forgot to show up and take the tooth! Ooops .... she remembered the following night.

Also of note is the wee pocket. I'm a frugal gal, and my whole life I only remember getting a quarter for a lost tooth. I made this pocket just big enough to hold one quarter. Nothing more. Even the tooth fairy is falling victim to the weakened economy!

Nothing beats the Classics

When my son was a newborn, we were big Happiest Baby on the Block devotees*. We swaddled him like crazy, and he loved it. I'd lay him down on the blanket to swaddle, and he'd get giggly and smiley. Sometimes, he'd be asleep before I even finished tucking in the last flap. It was dreamy. (for the record, our daughter had raging reflux and was a horrible sleeper, so don't think we haven't paid our dues as parents! ;)


Once he got to the point where he wanted to be swaddled with his arms outside the blanket, I noticed that he was playing with the tag on his favorite cloud-print fleece blanket. I'd somehow end up swaddling him the same way every time so the tag was popping out right at his head, and he'd just rub it between his little fingers as he fell asleep. Before long, he'd rubbed all the writing off of it, and it was pilled and threadbare.

He finally outgrew swaddling all together, but I could tell he still had a thing for a tag. Of course, I'd seen the Taggie blankets, but this happened to be around the time I took my first sewing class, so I decided to try my hand at making one**. I took some of Ben's favorite fleece swaddling blankets and used them to make small tag blankets so he could still get his tag fix. The first one I made was incredibly wonky, so it was - of course - the one he latched on to.

I had enough mom experience in me to know that having a kid attached to one item in particular can be dangerous. If you lost that item, or it gets destroyed, you can have a disaster on your hands. I thought I'd be smart and make at least three tag blankets for him, but he still just clutched on to the original. One day, we jokingly called them his "Classics," and it stuck. When he's getting ready for bed, or is stressed out, he'll run around saying, "My Cwassics! My Cwassics!"

And when he finds them, he buries his face in them and takes a deeeeeeeeeeeep breath. (we call that, "taking a hit off the classics") and rubs the worn out satin ribbon tags on his nose. It's hilarious. Of course, he likes them to get extra stinky. I've tried to convince them that they are best fresh from the dryer, and he likes them warm and clean, but when they've been tucked under his little sweaty, sleepy body for a week .... that's when he loves them best.


We actually lost them for a while a little more than a week ago. He didn't have the meltdowns I thought he would, but he did ask each night - when I handed him one of the backup tags - where his "Classics" were. I found them last night - buried in one of the never-ending piles of laundry that lives in my house. I washed them and tucked them in bed with him in the middle of the night. He woke up and acted like it was Christmas. Miracle of Miracles! "My Classics! My Classics!" He instantly took a big whiff and started rubbing the tags on his nose.


Some of the tags have already fallen off, and those that remain are pilled beyond belief. Several of the tags used to have little novelty prints - dots, frogs, camo - but that's been long rubbed off. I'm so curious to see how much life the "Classics" have left in them, and to see how long Ben goes nuts over them. I dragged my E.T. doll to college with me, so ....... who knows .....

* I've often said that if I ever meet Dr. Karp, I'd kiss him full on the mouth ... and I'm totally serious. ** Tag blankets may be easy and fun to make, but Taggies have a copyright on their version of the product (which has been safety tested and specially developed) and pursue folks who sell copies vigilantly.

A peek into the future of crafting

I'm often asked where I got my craftiness. I imagine for most folks with crafty inclinations used to craft with their mother or another influential female (maybe male!) adult in their lives. Strangely, I didn't have any influence like that in my life. My mom never really crafted with me or my sister. She did sew clothes for us, but never around us. And it turns out that she was totally crafty in the 70s. She was obsessed with embroidery (a-ha! that's where I get it!) and macramé and decoupaged anything she could get her hands on. But as for doing those things with me ... that just never happened.

I'm not sure why mom and I weren't crafty together - we were (and still are) best pals and spent tons and tons of time together. I can't think of many other people who would have been crafty influences on me except for my friend, Lara's, mom. She was crazy crafty and brilliantly artistic. But because I wasn't in her Girl Scout Troop, I didn't get to do much crafting with her.

So where on earth did I get my crafty vibes? I have no clue. I have a feeling my mom's crafty ways were somehow genetically passed down to me. That can happen, right? I also think that most of us have that innate need to create and we just spend a lot of time repressing it. Fortunately, I've busted my need to create wide open. I think I repressed it so long, that now it's just gushing out like I'm a diet coke and someone shoved mentos down my throat. I spent most of my life proclaiming my "non-craftiness" and swore of crafting. Who knows why. I don't remember many opportunities to explore crafting, and until the DIY-resurrgance of the last 10 years or so, crafting seemed a little ... ok, I'll say it .... dorky.

Now here comes the irony: I've experienced this explosion of crafty goodness, but I haven't been very good about sharing it with my daughter. Part of what I love about crafting is that it provides a nice little break from the dredges of everyday life as a mother. Don't get me wrong, I adore my kids, but most of my day is taken up with the minutiae of just keeping us all alive and moving forward. Laundry for four. Cooking for four. Cleaning for four. Shopping for four. Heck, just driving my kids too and from school eats up a good hour and a half of my day.

So my crafting time is my creative time. My time to have fun and create ... by myself. Quite frankly, having my kids join me in my crafting time just kinda ... ruins it for me.

I know, I know! But really, it's just my thing.

But I also know how wonderful crafting can be for a child. I know how important it is to encourage their creativity, to give them opportunities to try new things and to make stuff. And I know that if crafting has made such a difference in my life, it can do the same for them. I can't deny them that chance.

Because my daughter sees me do embroidery all the time, it wasn't surprising that stitching drew her interest so grandly. Several months ago, a group of her friends were playing at our house. I think it was raining or too hot to play outside. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves stuck inside with nothing to do .... or almost nothing. I decided I'd whip out my embroidery hoops and some felt and floss and let the kids have a go at stitching. Even my son got in on the action. Most of the girls thought it was fun, but didn't stick with it very long. One of my daughter's friends, though, really took off with it and did an amazing job. She even went home with a handful of floss and transfers imprinted on felt so she could continue stitching at home.

The kids were stitching some simple designs from the Sublime Stitching book. I had a ton of felt squares, so that's what I stamped (even though stitching on felt is one of my least favorite things to do). They had a blast.

When I heard about Jenny's book signing this past weekend at Ginger's Needlearts shop (which was an amazing place - more about that later) I knew it would be fun to take my daughter and her friend to meet Jenny. I explained that she was the artist who designed and drew the projects they had stitched. Aside from the fun I have seeing Jenny (just getting crafty star struck and enjoying her warm and friendly personality) I really felt it was important for the girls to see a woman who was following a passion, who was creating and incorporating art in her career, and to see and support small businesses (Sublime Stitching and Ginger's).

They were excited to meet her, though they got a bit shy. Jenny was very sweet to them and examined their embroidery they brought with them, and sat for a picture of them. I know they may not have thought much of it at the moment, but I really believe it could have a profound affect on them in later years.

Ah, that I could have had some kind of great crafty community support and inspiration as a kid! Perhaps I would have started this fun crafting journey a long time ago.

Speaking of supporting future crafters, Kathie Sever of Ramonsterwear and Austin author, Bernadette Noll have started an awesome project called the Future Craft Collective.

From their web site:
The future craft collective is about inspiring children to get crafty, to create beauty, while simultaneously teaching them ways of minimizing our impact on this earth. It's about understanding ways of recycling, reducing, reusing, and at the same time, making some really cool stuff.

How fantastic is that? They have some great classes and projects going on for kids, and I can't wait until my daughter is old enough to join in. I highly recommend checking out their web site and classes and camps. Even if you aren't in Austin (and their site mentions that they hope to spread to other cities some day) they have great inspirational posts about what they are doing with the kids.

All of this serves as great reminders that as much as we enjoy our crafty time for ourselves, it's imperative that we share the gift of creative time with our kids, however we can.

Spontaneous Crafting For my race-car crazy little dude

A couple of years ago, my nephew went through a major NASCAR phase. He would only play with toy cars that had numbers on them, he knew every car/driver/sponsor, and my sister was DVRing races so he could watch them on demand.

I relentlessly teased my sister. We are so not NASCAR folks, and it was hilarious to see her spouting off about Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and the like.

I should have known that would come around to bite me in the ass. Now it's my son's turn to be obsessed with all things NASCAR. He's the one refusing to touch a car that is without numbers. He's the one asking to watch races on tv 24/7, and I'm the one who knows who Jeff Gordan is and what number his car is (24, if you care.)

It came as no surprise, then, that my son requested all the tracks be removed from our playroom train table so he could use it as a race track. For months, he's been gliding his cars over the faux landscape that adorns the train table pretending it's a race track. Finally, I gave in and offered to pop the panels out, flip them over and transform them into a true race track.

Earlier this week (before my guts got wrecked by some mystery illness) we had a sunny afternoon with no plans. The kids were restless, and I knew I wouldn't be getting any work done. I finally threw my hands up and said, "We're moving things out side." On the spur of the moment, I dug out my acrylic craft paints, lugged the panels outside to the backyard, and declared the race track transformation would be completed that night. It was a little ambitious, but armed with my disdain for perfection, I set to work.

I didn't sand (couldn't find the sandpaper), didn't prime (didn't have any primer) and didn't have much of a plan. I grabbed the kids' little table off the porch, flipped it upside down on top of the panels and used the circle as the template for the track. Other than that, I just winged it. I knew if it came out truly hideous I could always just flip the panels back over.

I was actually able to get it mostly done by dinner, and finished the rest after the kids were in bed. When Ben came downstairs the next morning, he was so stoked about the table I could hardly get him to stand still so I could take his picture. Since then, if he's awake and in the house, he's playing on the track. He hasn't commented on the total inconsistency in the size, length and placement of the road marks. He doesn't seem to care that the Piston Cup I painted in the "middle" of the table is completely off center (and not in a cool, graphic way) and
he hasn't complained that there isn't an actual "start" line.

Spontaneous crafting is such a blast. Going in to a project with no plan can often leave you truly, pleasantly surprised with the end result. Sure, it's not the way to go on every project, but sometimes you just need to jump on to an idea and run with it. How many projects have you thought about, but not started because you haven't been able to "plan" them accordingly?

What could you get done by dinner tonight?

Crafts from the past: The Pinkalicious Stick Horse

This week has been nuts for me because my son is out of school for Fall Break. It was an unusually busy week for work and other stuff, so I haven't had much time for crafting and posting about it. You guessed it - another installment of Crafts From The Past.

Don't laugh, but here in Texas, our kids get out of school for Rodeo Day.

Seriously, I said don't laugh!

It used to astound and confuse me, until I became a teacher and learned that so many kids (especially in the small-ish West Texas town where I grew up and was teaching) would be absent on the day of the rodeo, that it made economic sense to close the schools that day.

Quit freaking laughing at us!

Anyhow, March always signals Rodeo time, and last year at my daughter's school, they had huge Rodeo Day festivities. Parents were asked to bring a stick horse for their child for things like mock barrel racing and calf roping. (seriously) I don't know when or why it struck me to make one for my uber-girlie daughter, but I did. And I was really happy with how she turned out.

My daughter's been playing with the stick horse (hobby horse? I like stick horse) a lot lately. She's in a HUGE horse phase. We watch The Saddle Club every.single.day. I actually like it. (shhhh!) She rides the stick horse everywhere and does horse shows with it out in the back yard. My son and nephew have now requested stick horses of their own, and I'm thinking those will be Christmas gifts. We'll see.

Enjoy the stick horse - the project that spontaneously came together, and has been one of the most loved, most used, most fun projects I've done.

I also posted this project to Craftster when I first made it.