Happy Valentine’s Day!

Last week we had a fun cupcake party for my kids and their friends.  One of the crafts we did came from the Disney magazine Family Fun.  If you have kids age 8 and under, I can’t tell you how much I recommend this magazine.  The magazine is chock full of great recipes, and more importantly, lots of easy crafts.  The publishers have created a new magazine aimed at kids, but mine aren’t quite old enough for it yet, but when they are, I will definitely subscribe to it.

One of the easy crafts we did at the party was create these cute heart doily t-shirts.

Making them only took a few minutes and the cost was cheap:  $3.48 a shirt on clearance at Target, $.99 for a pack of 4 sponge brushes, and $.99 for a tube of white fabric paint.   The most expensive item was a pack of twelve doilies.  They were $4.99 at Joanns, but 50% off, so only $2.50.

I saved some yogurt containers to reuse for the paint.  Just center the doily and dab (don’t brush) the paint through the holes.  You have to be careful at first not to shift the doily around, but as it gets saturated it stays in place better.

Peel the doily off, and voila!, a cute homemade heart shirt.  Bea wore hers to school today for the Valentine’s Party.

A package arrived from my sister-in-law for me yesterday…what a treat! 

Around Christmas I got a hankering for a hat that I could tuck my extremely long hair into and some fingerless gloves.  So I went off to Michael’s and picked out two colors of yarn.  It’s a big surprise I picked my two favorite colors, purple and green!   Thanks so much, Robin, they came just in the nick of time since it finally feels like winter here in southern Maryland!

Halloween Table Topper Part II

Last night I finished binding the two table toppers and I think they turned out pretty splendid (at least my 4 year old thinks so). I let her choose which one to keep and which one to give away, so we are keeping the one with the "spider web" design on the back. It looks nice in our living room:

The binding is completely machine attached. I have been honing my machine binding skills lately and I think I'm getting pretty good at it. It just takes a little patience and a lot of pinning. I entered a couple quilts in the county fair recently (third was my highest placing), and on one table runner the judge wrote "interesting binding" as a comment on the back of my card. Not sure what he/she meant by that. Interesting=good or Interesting=do it by hand next time. I gotta tell you, though, I don't think I will ever hand sew binding on anything ever, ever, ever again in my life. I just don't have it in me. The only think I'll ever hand sew will be hems that need to be repaired, and if I ever learn how to use my serger, I might never have to hand sew in my life again!

Stay tuned as I share some easy Halloween crafts you can do with your kids. Not all of them involve sewing, but they are guaranteed to be fun! Also, coming up will be a countdown to Christmas with great homemade gift ideas for kids that you can make either with or for a child.