puppy pillow

I asked my niece a while ago what she wanted for her birthday this year as I make her something every year. the last two years I made her princess dresses, this year however she told me that she didn’t think she had any more room for a big fluffy dress, (she has a rather small closet) so she told me what she wanted this year was a pillow with a brown puppy, that has a black nose, the bottom of the pillow needed to be green, the top blue and she wanted a red heart on it somewhere too.
okay so, yeah very specific.


I then spent forever online trying to find a decent appliqué of a dog, and was coming up with nothing. I wanted something cute but simple. anything simple I was coming up with was not at all what I was looking for, half the patterns out there hardly said dog to me, let alone puppy. finally I came across a stuffed dog pattern that was really cute and thought I can use part of that to make my puppy!
the pillow I made. its 16”X16” and has a zipper in the back so the pillow form is removable. allowing the pillow to be washed. I was rather proud of the way it turned out. I think its really cute.



cutesy crafts where I found the cute little dog pattern.

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2014 ideas

not sure how good of an idea this is but I am going to make a list of what I want to make this year. I’m going to try not to be overly ambitious......
okay so here is my list.

1. a skirt made from neck ties. I already have the ties so I need to do this.
2. a bolero or two. I wear boleros all the time and need more then the three I have.
3. a Spencer ( I have no idea why I need one I have no regency dresses to wear it with. but I am thinking it would look cute with other things and I could wear it like a bolero till I finally break down and make a regency dress. because one day I will. and really I keep looking at museum websites and wanting one. museum websites are so bad!)
4. two dresses to wear for these meet up things I go to.
5. the yellow plaid Capri's I cut out last year.
6. a 1920’s beaded gown. I have a bunch of beads and really I need to use them and what better way to do so.
7. a Halloween costume, not sure what yet.
8. some blouses, since I bought a pattern.
9. at least one dress to add to my decades project.
10. maybe some other things as well. I just don’t know what.
11. maybe the 5th Doctor in girl version. but I need the rest of my Doctors to do theirs as well.

okay so probably way more then I can do, but at least its a jumping off point.

also I want to use as much as I can from my stash, but in reality I am sure I will be off buying more because what I have won’t be perfect. which brings me to my other goal. no more buying random fabric just because its pretty. I don’t have a lot space to keep it so I need to have a plan in mind when I go to the fabric stores.

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A Sonic Christmas.

for my sister I made a Chao plush. she had found a picture of one online and was like. “please make for me!” so I searched around on the internet till I found a pattern, and made one. she loved it so that made me happy. I made the plush out of fleece the body and felt for the wings and pom pom. they were so little I didn’t want to have to buy a quarter of a yard for just a tiny bit of fabric and the little sheets of felt are nice and cheap. for the eyes I used some fabric from my stash. I have no idea what the content is but it seems to have a bit of rubber in it. I cut out the circles then painted the white around the outside with acrylic fabric paint. I then glued them on using a craft glue since I didn’t want any stitching showing. the pattern was super easy, and turned out so cute. I did only do it at fifty percent though since I knew my sister were prefer a smaller and cuter plush rather then a larger one.




for my brother I made him a dice bag out of some Sonic the hedgehog fabric that was in my stash, look familiar? its the same fabric I used to make my sister’s purse for her birthday back in July. again I looked around for patterns and tutorial’s. finally deciding on this one because not only did it have a nice shape it was also easy to make. not that everything has to be easy, but the other one I really liked had tons of button holes and well I’m not real fond of doing those on my home machine. I tried to do grommets on this bag but they didn’t end up holding very well, so I pulled them out and did two button holes, I could handle two, just not the dozen on the other pattern. for the drawstring I took some red quarter inch ribbon and some blue one eighth ribbon. which I braided together. I was happily pleased with the way the contrasting sizing of ribbon turned out. I also fully lined the bag, since the sonic fabric is not that thick, I used a navy blue satin to line it. my brother liked the bag and told me it was way better then the ziploc bag he had been using. which made me glad I made this for him.


I still have two more things to post that I made for Christmas but I will put them in another post.
chao pattern
dice bag tutorial


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ribbon rose hairbow

for a gift exchange I made this hair bow. I had been going through some magazines and found a tutorial on how to make ribbon roses. it had several different roses in it, however the magazine was not in English so this was the only rose I could figure out by the pictures. I really ought to try looking up the tutorials online. I’m sure it would make more sense if I could read it. anyway this was all hand sewn. my first practice rose was a disaster but once I figured out how to do them they are actually quite easy. my second one was much nicer. one thing I did discover is you need to have a tight enough weave in the fabric or the knot on the starter thread will pop through and when one is half way through a rose that can be quite frustrating.
I completely free handed the beading. which I thought turned out pretty well. the lace was in my stash. and as for the shape of the bow I free handed that as well.
what I want before I go making too many more of these roses, is to get an awl. I think it would help in getting the ribbon through that first and last time, without cutting the fabric. because the knots on the ribbon go on the wrong side of the fabric and the ribbon has to be pulled through the fabric, which is not easy always easy. I had to make holes first and the problem with that is of course if you cut one to many threads on the fabric your hole will be too big and the knot will pull through. so an awl seems as if it would punch the correct size hole without cutting the fabric. I have needed an awl for other sewing projects as well. its amazing to me all the tools one needs for sewing.
I also have a few more things I made for Christmas gifts however those can not be posted till after the holiday, I can’t risk the giftee seeing them after all.

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A Christmas skirt.

for work I had to participate in a Christmas festival , and of course had “nothing” to wear. I didn’t want to wear what I had worn the year before that would have just been tacky right?

I found this dress in some stuff someone had given to my mom for my niece, except my niece will not be anywhere near that size for years to come, and rather then store it away for ages I snatched it up. the dress being in child sizing of course meant that it was not shaped correctly for me, though it did fit but looked like a baby doll style dress on me and that was not something I was going for.

I did like the plaid though so in s split decision decided to make it into a skirt! simple right? just cut off the top and sew it back together. well it should have been that. but they put the thing together in a rather complicated manor. so I ended up having to take it apart a bit more then I had anticipated. the lining and outer fabric where sewn together all around the bust. not unusual but I was rather hoping for just thread tacks. I was excited about not having to deal with a zipper it was already installed so I was going to cut it down, which I did and would have worked except I stupidly zipped it all the way up while I was doing a fitting. and pulled the head off. I was able to thread it back on but I had to undo the bottom of the zipper to do so. invisible zippers I have noticed don’t thread on from the top like other zippers but rather from the bottom. I also had to bring in the waist a bit which I did on the sides. I got it all back together thinking it looked really good only to try it on and have the waist gaping. and now here was a dilemma. I needed the waist smaller by about two inches. but having cut the zipper so short there was going to be no way it would fit over my hips if I took it up. so to solve this I opted to put 1/4” elastic at the top of the band just to snug it up that little bit, which did just the trick and of course allows for me to wear it all season and still be able to eat, since you know it will stretch.

so in the grand scheme of things I like the way it turned out. I don’t think in the end it was any easier then making a brand new skirt but that is okay.

and here I am wearing the skirt. you can tell I was coerced into sitting on Santa’s lap by the way I’m sitting. my work was hosting Santa though, so all of us did and I wasn’t the only one complaining. I also made Santa’s boot furs. I think I was given the wrong measurement though because they kept sliding down. but I can only go by what I was told. my coworker and friend actually made the Santa coat and hat. didn't she do a nice job? I thought it turned out really well.

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Happy Halloween!

Here is my Vanellope costume being worn! yea! I did Halloween this year on Saturday due to many factors, it was fun I met with some friends and we wondered around the Halloween festivities they had in town.



one thing I was not thrilled with on my costume is I think the sweatshirt is a bit long. I should have done a trial run before wearing it out in public. if (when) I wear it again I am going to take the time to shorten it. that way I wont have to keep pulling it up. besides that though I thought the costume turned out cute.

my hair things!


yeah my costume is a bit on the too blue and too light side, not quite as light as it looks in the pictures though it was really bright sunshine Saturday.

and a reminder pic of how little miss Vanellope looks.
had fun with this one. now its time to start focusing on Christmas.

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some non sewing aspects of my costume.

I have finished my costume yea!

here are some of the non sewing pieces of it. first off the leggings. I bought mint colored leggings, and used Jacquard textile paint I purchased on Amazon for the white stripes. number one lesson this taught me. don’t free hand paint things. I did mark with tailors chalk where I wanted the lines but they ended up a bit sloppy, not quite straight lines and such. I should have used painters tape or something so it would have been more even. I had to do two coats of paint so it took several days to do the painting. but it knew it would from the reviews of the paint. as for the quality of the paint it seems nice. I haven’t washed it or anything yet though so I don’t know how that will effect it. it does have a tiny bit of stretch to it, but not much without cracking. good thing I don’t need too much. if your going to need lots of stretch with the paint I suggest having your fabric stretched while you paint. the purple stripe is just puffy paint I had, painted on with a paint brush.
next is the hair things.

I painted two buttons I had with red paint to make them look like peppermints, then glued them with E6000 glue on to barrettes, and bought some plastic rhinestones, that I then glued onto bobby pins for the round sprinkles in Valenope’s hair.

now the gummy bears were more of a challenge as I had to find them. but I managed to find this really neat place on etsy that sells all kind of cute food things like plastic gummy bears. they look really real. so definitely not something one would want around little kids. I used E6000 glue to glue these to the barrettes as well, and am hoping it will hold. the site says to use silicon glue on the gummy bears, but the E6000 glue seems to be holding them . at least all of them except the green one, not sure why that is, but oh well I just wont wear that one.
delishbeads on etsy

for the candy jimmies I am going to use colored bobby pins. I tried to make some out beads which looked cute and I might use some of them, but my hair was not thrilled with them, tangling in the beads when I tried to take them out and breaking my hair. so I was not much of a fan of the ones I made.

the licorice hair tie is actually sewn! I bought some red macramé rope, cut it to the length I wanted, burned the edges, zigzagged three pieces together on my machine then hand sewed them around a piece of red pipe cleaner. which gives it the stiffness and flexibility I needed. I made three pieces then braided them together. and sewed the ends so they wouldn’t come apart. I then tacked it in a few places to make sure the middle would stay together too.
so that’s it my Venelope Costume is finished!

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