Small World and Sleeping Beauty Bags

I wanted to make something to keep some of my girl's toys organized. Instead of reinventing the wheel I went to the always-inspiring Dana of MADE. She has a great tutorial for her Hobo Sacks, with some fun variations. I figured if I was making one for Ivory's new Sleeping Beauty toys I might as well make another for her Small World little people.

This Small World fabric from Alexander Henry is one of my favorites. You've seen it on some bibs I've made, and eventually you'll see it on Ivory's Small World quilt, if I ever remember finish the binding! (She's been sleeping with it for a year without the finishing touches. I just ever remember to finish it and take some pictures!) The striped and polka-dot fabrics are leftovers from the quilt.

 I got the Small World toys from Disneyland. They are adorable! I bought them when I was pregnant with my Girly-o. There are 3 more little characters... somewhere. I need to search her closet! If only we had had this handy sack from the beginning.

Ivory likes opening and closing the drawstring ribbons of the sacks. 

I love her little tongue sticking out as she concentrates on putting her toys away.

Next up (and the reason I started this project in the first place)... a bag for the Sleeping Beauty toys Ivory recently got for her 2nd birthday. I had this small panel of Sleeping Beauty fabric that I got years ago for some unknown future endeavor. It was perfect for this project! I love that it's a still from the actually Sleeping Beauty Disney movie: none of this Let's-put-all-the-princesses-together-and-make-Aurora-pink business. Flora the fairy may disagree, but to me Aurora's dress has to be blue.

I don't remember where I got the green paisley fabric, but the flowery blue fabric is actually from some cloth napkins I bought at Target years ago. (Yes, I do hang on to stuff.)

Here are the characters toys. I also love that this set came with Aurora in her Briar Rose clothing (Who I was sort of named after, by the way). Now where have Flora and Sampson the Horse gone too? They were missing BEFORE I made the sacks. I'd just like to point out that we haven't misplaced any more since. You may have guessed it, but I got this character set before I had a girl, and possibly even before I was pregnant with one! I had been saving it.

The square Sleeping Beauty panel prevented me from turning down the drawstring casing any further. It ended up fairly narrow so I could only fit one drawstring through. But check this out: I made the drawstrings from the hem of the cloth napkin. I just twice-folded the raw edge and stitched it down. No turning required! There's even a right angle on the drawstring where the napkin had a corner!

Ivory thinks this bag makes a good hat, too. I love 2-year-olds.

Xmas Gifts 7: Felt Pizza

Ahhhh... pizza. Our family loves homemade pizza. Monkey One loves playing "imaginary pizza party" where we send out invitations to our imaginary friends, make pizza together, play games while the pizza is baking, then eat the pizza. I thought I'd make my kids a felt food pizza set to make these pizza parties even better. I actually had been planning on it for quite some time, but I had a difficult time deciding exactly how to do it until this Christmas. I didn't want a ready-made pizza for play eating only. Most of the fun is in putting on the toppings! But if the pizza is whole — better for the making aspect of the pizza — then I sacrifice some of the eating aspect of the pizza, which would be better with slices. I finally decided to compromise on whole mini pan pizzas. They're small enough to just eat, or they can be pretend sliced. I think of it as encouraging imaginative play.



The play pizza is a huge hit pizza! But which is real and which is pretend? Both can be rolled...



Both have sauce, sliced fresh mozzarella and a variety of yummy toppings...



Both are so much fun to make that even a kid can do it...



Well... maybe this kid should only make the play pizza...



And now both are ready for the oven, decked out in our favorite toppings!


(Why is Monkey Two sad? I stopped giving him olives and pineapples to snack on. I almost cut him out of the picture entirely, but he was too cute, even when he was crying.)

One thing is for sure. Your real pizza doesn't keep well. The pretend pizza keeps very well in this handy drawstring bag with individual pockets for every topping you could want and more.



Future additions to our play pizza set:

• Whole green olives (they are cut out, just not sewn)
• A 1"-ish wood dowel rolling pin and a pizza slicer made from the dowel and a wood 2-3" disk
• Canadian bacon with some felt I purchased after Christmas
• Maybe new pineapple pieces from the lighter yellow felt I also found after Christmas
• Perhaps some felt pizza party invitations?

Everything was made from wool-blend felt (all except the black olives, for which I only had acrylic craft felt and the white bag, which I didn't want to spend that much money on). I realized a few weeks later when slicing real bell peppers for dinner that the red ones have three sections, but the green ones have four. Shhhhh, don't tell my kids!

P.S. This finishes off my 2009 Christmas Gift posts.

Family Mailbox

When I was little my mom made us an indoor family mailbox. It looked like a little cottage home with slots on the back for each family member. We sent each other notes and items we had ordered from each other's mail order catalogs throughout the year, but the busiest time for our family mailbox was Valentines Day. A few years ago I bought a paper mache house to make my own family mailbox. Since Valentines Day is right around the corner I thought now would be the perfect time to paint it.



I tried to make the coloring and style look a little like our own house. Wouldn't it also make a fun toy house to play with a little wooden peg family?


What's inside? Two Valentine cards!


I thought the house would be so cute photographed on our front lawn. Then I remembered that it's January and all we have is footprint-covered snow. I tried it on the snow, but the white washed all the color out of the pictures, and my little monkey wouldn't stop throwing snowballs at it. So the Christmas tree skirt and my front porch steps will have to suffice.




I was having a lot of fun painting the jasmine plant climbing up the side of the house. Then it suddenly reminded me of a Thomas Kinkade painting so I immediately had to stop. The other side has a birdhouse and agapanthus plants. Hmmmm... I wonder if it would work to paint flowers on the side of my real house to make it look like I have a garden. Do you think my neighbors would notice?


Here's the before picture. House purchased from Hobby Lobby.


My oldest little monkey and I have already exchanged several letters with each other using our new mailbox. A new (old) family tradition!

Xmas Gifts 4: Horse of a Different Color

Do you remember Rainbow Brite and her horse Starlite back from the '80s? I had both toys as a kid. Several years ago I got rid of the horse by giving it to one of my nieces. It recently turned up when my mom moved. Mom showed up on my doorstep all pleased that she had found it for me.

It was dirty.

And it had rainbow colored hair.

My youngest little monkey took to it immediately, tucking it under his arm and blowing raspberries (that's his horse impersonation). But as much as I love looking at rainbows in the sky, seeing one on a toy horse's mane in my son's arm was a little disturbing. I hated to throw it away and waste it, especially since the kid liked it so much. So a master plan began unfolding in my mind: I'd give the horse a makeover. I wouldn't be wasteful, it would be a fun challenge, my son would have a "new" toy horse for Christmas, and it would be cool to think that it was the toy that I once played with.




I covered the hoofs by sewing little caps of black stretch velvet and stretching them over the glue-covered old hoofs (FYI I used flexible fabric flue). Later, close to the end of the project, I hand-sewed the hoofs in place to the bottom of the newly covered legs.




I made small triangles for the ears, then hand stitched them in place around the base. The next step was the to cut out the body pieces of the gray velvety fabric to fit onto the horse. I used the seam lines from the original horse as a guide. I machine stitched the fabric for the horse's back from behind the ears to the tail, then pinned it in place. All the other pieces were first pinned (or rather stabbed) in place then hand stitched.





These pictures were taken at various wee and not-so-wee hours of the morning on Christmas Day while everyone was asleep. Jane Austen on the DVD player kept me company. It was almost dawn when I went to bed. The horse was still hairless and had pins sticking out in a few places, but I wrapped it and put it under the tree anyway, then finished it up later after it was unwrapped. A 19-month-old child doesn't know the difference, right? Just as long as he can open a present on Christmas morning?



I really would have like the horse to be brown, but I couldn't find the right fabric in the little time I had to look (It was a busy season). So the color gray had to do. The fabric is so soft. It's some sort of velvet, though I don't remember exactly what. The black hoofs are stretch velvet, and the mane and tail are simply yarn. I'm happy to say that my little monkey loves the horse. And now I do, too.

Indian Family Peg People

I remembered to take these pictures before I put the finish on so there wouldn't be a glare. The woman's clothing is from a painting in a library book about Plains Indians. The little boys' clothing is from a costume pattern we are using to make real costumes for the boys.




My son and I made these as a homeschool activity. I keep finding them in his pants pockets. These would be fun to play with together with the Little House on the Prairie play people I made for my niece.

Animal Brothers

Completed May 2008

To help welcome Monkey One's baby brother last year we made this little stuffed giraffe. (Inspired by these animals from Target)

Monkey One (then 3 1/2 years old) helped out quite a bit...


He did some (limited) cutting and pinning...


...sat at the sewing machine with me, and helped hand-sew on the wooden bead eye.


Then came the waiting (this picture). Finally, on the day of Monkey Two's birth, Monkey One gave his brother the gift.


In return, Monkey Two "gave" his big brother this corduroy monkey as a surprise.


The animals (and the brothers) proved to be a good pair.


Here's Monkey Two at four months old with his giraffe. I don't know if you noticed, but both giraffe fabrics were also used on Monkey Two's zoo blanket. I love how the giraffe's neck is twisted. It gives him character, though it was really just my sad sewing skills that did it. I was much happier with these animals than I would have been with the ones at the store I almost bought. Besides, they are really special since they were homemade by mamma and brother. What do you think?

Christmas 2008

For his first Christmas Monkey Two got a zebra to go with the growing homemade animal collection. Monkey One also helped with the zebra (along with the zebra's twin, who went to a cousin). What's next? An elephant?

Little House on the Prairie Play Set

Completed December 2008
My family has a tradition of giving ONLY homemade gifts to each other. It started one year when I was eleven or twelve and we were short on Christmas money. We had so much fun giving and receiving homemade gifts that we kept doing it year after year. I think it helps emphasize the giving rather than getting aspect of Christmas gifts, downplays the commerciality (I don't think that's a word, but you understand my meaning, right?) of gifts, and it's a great excuse to get your creative juices flowing. I would say most of the crafting/sewing I do is for family gifts, and a big chunk of that is Christmas. So here's my first (of many) Homemade Phesine posts featuring Christmas presents. Of course, these are all on Flickr already if you can't bear to wait for my blogging.

This gift was probably my favorite gift I made from this past Christmas. It's a Little House on the Prairie play set for my six year old niece, who is really into pioneers right now and loves to read.

 
The Ingalls family with their little house and a handy calico storage bag. The house came from Hobby Lobby, unfinished. It stores flat, which is ideal for mailing across the country.


Baby Carrie, Laura, Mary, Ma and Pa. I tried to make the characters true to the Garth Williams drawings in the books. My four year old laughed out loud every time he looked at Baby Carrie's expression. He helped paint the blue on her dress. I wanted Ma and Pa to be slightly taller than the girls, so I glued stacked wooden disks (for Ma's petticoat) and hearts (for Pa's boots) to their feet.


I thought the bonnets, aprons, and Mary's "golden curls" turned out cute. 

 
Here they are all packed up and ready to go back to the Big Woods.