True North

Monogrammed Card

Happy Monday! I'm sitting cozy on the couch with my little Maeve, listening to the rain outside. We're considering braving the raindrops to go out and pick the season's first strawberries from our garden, which we can see winking rosily at us through the window.... I'm glad to be back here on the blog after a couple of weeks off, inadvertantly, to deal with home and other personal stuff. Lots of projects to post about:

For Mother's Day last weekend, I was shopping for cards, but couldn't find anything I liked for my own mama at the local Walgreens. (The fact that I call her Mum instead of Mom takes 50% of the card choices out of the running right from the get-go.) So I decided to make her one instead, something simple and classic. Somehow I hit on the idea of embroidering a card with her initials. It was pretty easy and very fun - not every day a greeting card involves a hammer and nail AND needle and thread!

On a piece of blue cardstock, I penciled the letters in the configuration I wanted.

Then I unfolded the card and put it on a kitchen cutting board, and used a hammer and nail to punch small holes along the pencil marks. I made two holes at a time close together, then left a larger space before the next two holes. That way, the stitches of thread would be long, with just a little space in between.

I threaded a long-eyed needle with white embroidery thread, tied a knot at the end of the thread, and passed the needle through the holes. When I was done, I erased any visible pencil lines. It turned out pretty and unique. The blue and white is a very "my mom" color combination, but I think this general idea would look fabulous with other, brighter colors too, or with a drawing underneath instead of letters. For a more formal card, I would probably cover the underside with another piece of paper to hide the knots and messier underneath-stitching. But since I do actually like the handmade look of the work underneath, I left it visible on this card for my mom.

Is that thunder I hear? The strawberries might have to wait...

Clothespin Fairies

The girls and I made this adorable project last week for one of Maeve's friends, who was having a birthday. This particular little friend is so much fun to make presents for - her mom is an artist and her dad is a doctor with an expertise in environmental toxins, so I know the small, handmade, non-plastic gifts I like to make will find a good home at their house. Our little friend and her mom had made a cardboard and fabric fairy play-house in their living room recently, so when I saw these little fairies in their leaf sleeping bags from the Twig and Toadstool blog, via Pinterest, I knew they would have to be our present to her. Fairies for a fairy house!

Instead of the wooden peg dolls they used in the original project, I used wooden clothespins, because we happened to have some on hand. I did do most of this by myself, but Maeve picked out all the colors, from hair to skirts, and both girls helped me cut felt.

We cut out felt leaves, which I then embroidered leaf veins onto and sewed together (using blanket stitch) with embroidery thread.

I made little skirts by sewing hems onto the shape below and then hot glueing on once the dolls were painted.

For the flower hats, I just cut out a bunch of white petals and different colored circles for the middles, then hot glued them on. Had to work fast before the glue dried, so I had Stella assisting me on this part - not touching the burning glue, but handing me petals.

For wings, I cut out felt hearts and glued them on. And that's it! Cute, right?

This is why I love Pinterest - I really do get some good ideas from being on it... If you're on, follow me using the button in the right column!

Bright Eyes

I wrote recently about my new project of making a little doll (pattern here, courtesy of Emily Martin via Martha Stewart,) for all of the special babies in my life, near and far. This second doll in the series is for the sixteen month-old boy of one of my best friends in the world, my Seneca. Her son's name is Oren, and he is incredible. Gorgeous and charming and smart, just like his wonderful parents. I would give an awful lot for us all to live closer so I could hang out with Oren more. But since - for now - we don't, I want him to have some reason to hear my name thrown around and some good associations with me. I'm selfish like that. So I made him this.

Like the real boy, this little Oren doll has short, growing-in brown hair and sparkly greeny-hazel eyes.

Ridiculously, it was actually a little hard to part with this one because I thought it was so cute and because it made me think of Oren, but the thought of sending it in the mail to arrive on my little buddy's doorstep helped.

Seneca let me know that they received it, and that after they told him it was from Alison, he toddled around with it saying "AL! AL!" and wanted to sit with the doll at his little table and chairs. Makes my heart so happy...

Very Wholesome

Chris and I were out with some friends recently and one of them mentioned that he comes by to check out True North sometimes, which was so nice to hear. And then he said something absolutely terrible. He said, "Your blog is so wholesome." He didn't mean it disdainfully - though there was a hint of brotherly teasing, perhaps - but wholesome is only really a compliment if you are a loaf of bread. Or a preschool television show. Wholesome when applied to my own passions and challenges seems a little like code for LAME. For days it was stuck in my head.

But then I decided: you know, screw it. I know my life is pretty kid-centric and I'm ok with that. If it wasn't for my kids - for the fact that I've been a mostly-stay-at-home-mom with lots of time but little of it available to myself, for our lack of extra money necessitating me to think outside the box for birthday presents, for wanting to model for the girls that you do what you love and trust the process and don't give up on what's important to you - I don't know that I would have had the opportunity OR drive to "reclaim" my creativity. So True North is pretty wholesome. I work here on being honest and brave, and I craft a lot for and with my kids. It is a bit of a preschool television show, and that's how I like it.

All of which is a prelude to saying it's about to get a whole lot more wholesome up in here, because I have a new project that is all about the babies in my life. And wait, it gets worse: I'm making them all dolls. Yep. In the past couple years, many of my closest mama-friends have had their third children, and my high school and college friends are finally catching up and having their firsts. I have a lot of new "baby friends," as Maeve calls them. Some of those little friends live frustratingly far away, and so I hit on the idea of hand-making them something special as a way to bridge that divide and give them each a little piece of me to include in their days.

It started with newly 1 year-old Lee, who's first birthday party we were headed to last month. (You may remember the tree jammies I painted for him when he was born.) Lee is a third child with two older brothers, so this is not a household that needs more toys. But a little soft buddy that could be smooshed in the carseat and tossed in the crib, especially a doll for a little boy, well, that sounded just right.

I had wanted to try making simple dolls again ever since I made these hand-holding gals two years ago as a present for one of Maeve's friends (details in this post):

So I went back to the source: this tutorial (with video!) by Emily Martin of The Black Apple on Martha Stewart. And this time I actually printed out the pattern instead of winging it. (Older and wiser...) Though I did modify it a bit, as I explain below. This was the resulting dolly for little Lee:

The shirt is a batik print fabric I've had for a while (it has made an appearance on True North before, here). The face and arms are thin canvas appropriated from old curtains, with the features painted on with fabric paint. The legs, peace sign, and hair are all felt. The real Lee was born with a fabulous head of dark hair, so the doll had to rock some serious hair, too. My dear friend, Lee's mom, has a great sense of humor and style, and I knew she'd get a kick out of the giant peace sign, which I cut out of orange felt and appliqued onto the shirt front before sewing the body parts all together. To make Mr. Lee-doll a bit more boyish than the Emily Martin pattern, I slimmed down the shirt and kept it more of a rectangle, less of an A-line dress shape. I also purposely sewed his legs slightly farther apart to further indicate this idea of shirt and pants instead of dress and tights. I think it works.

Here he is standing up. He has quite long legs. And wonky arms that seem to reach out for a hug.

The little glint of white on the eyes helps bring life to his expression.

The real Lee is an absolute little bowl of sweetness, and I think that somehow the doll captures that. Can't wait to show you the others!

Butterflies and Rainbows

This week, one of Maeve's little school buddies was having a birthday party and we needed a present for her. Hopefully a present that was low on the expensiveness scale but high on the specialness scale. So I resorted to my old standby - the painted t-shirt. 

The twist this time was that I made two matching shirts - one girl-sized and one doll-sized. (Two certain people in my house are big into all things American Girl, a company which very much promotes the idea of dressing alike with your doll. Evidently I am easily influenced...)

I bought the doll shirt at Jo-Ann's - it's part of the knock-off American Girl doll line they sell there (and other places too, I think), Springfield Collection. They're a decent, affordable alternative to AG, and good for basics like plain white shirts. The kid-sized shirt is a Hanes child's undershirt, which I buy packages of to have on hand for just this purpose.

I asked Maeve what she thought her friend would like, and she went into an enraptured monologue about butterflies and flowers and hearts and clouds and sparkling rainbows. I worked with her to rein it in a little, and we settled on a rainbow butterfly surrounded by hearts.

(For both my girls, 4 years old seems to be the peak of an obsession with this kind of "girly" aesthetic. If Stella's trajectory is anything to go on, Maeve's likes and dislikes will get a little more complex in the next few years. For now, I try just to go with it, and only offer my opinion when what she Likes becomes fodder for how she thinks Things Should Be, eg. "I don't like that game because it's for boys" or "That's not a boy, Mommy, it's a girl because see her long hair, only girls have long hair." Sometimes it feels like I'm raising a couple of 1950s squares, but I have to remember it's just a phase of trying to organize and understand the world, and in the end our influence as parents and the things/people we expose them to will win out. Anyway. Moving on.)

So a rainbow butterfly and hearts it was. Here is my little model and her own dolly modeling the results for me.

(doll accessories styled by Maeve)

Mostly the designs are free-handed, though to get the big butterfly just right, I did do a search and found this nice black-and-white printable for children to color (from a butterfly teaching unit on "The Homeschool Club" on Squidoo, tons of stuff there). I printed out the butterfly and cut it out to make a template, like so: (I decided to forgo trying to cut out the teeny tiny antennae)

Then I traced around the butterfly with pencil onto the kiddo t-shirt. The rest, and all of the dolly design, I just did by eye. There are definitely some mistakes but my motto is always that mistakes add to the charm of something handmade/handpainted. If I had wanted a little more help from my paper butterfly, I could have cut out all the white spaces with an exacto knife and traced the entire pattern onto the fabric. Or even traced the pattern onto freezer paper and cut that out, then ironed the freezer paper onto the fabric which would have given me a budge-proof stencil to work with. But all that would have taken a lot longer.

Big butterfly:

Unfortunately our iron is broken right now, can you tell? ;)

Little butterfly:

Then both butterflies got a sprinkling of tiny hearts and dots, for pizzazz:

I hope the little recipient likes it. If she doesn't, she can always give it back to Maeve, who really wished I had made two... I mean, four!

If you're like this, check out some other painted clothing gifts I've made for our small friends over the years: some tree-inspired baby pajamas, a pink retriever t-shirt, a firefighter t-shirt, and a do-it-yourself t-shirt painting kit.

Auction Basket

School auction time is here again. Got an email yesterday about donating a creative good or service to the annual gala-auction-event at our old nursery school. I'll have to come up with something good this year. Last year I donated a custom mural in someone's home, and the year before it was the tattoo-inspired painted denim jackets (see those here. And peek into the process of making them here and here). Hmmm....

At the girls' current school, auctioning happens along simpler lines, with a silent auction to which each class in the school donates a themed basket--a movie-night basket, a wine-lovers basket, a scrapbooking basket, you get the idea. As head class parent in Stella's class, I was responsible for putting together our class' donation back in December, and I loved what I came up with: an art basket.

The idea was that you could bid on this for an artistic child who's ready to move beyond their Crayola watercolor set and crappy paper, or for an adult who needs a little encouragement to get creative. Either way, the materials would be easy and fun to use, but enough of a challenge to keep you interested. Kids need decent art materials too!

So into a basket full of feathers (just for fun), I put: a set of acrylic paints in basic colors, a set of ten paintbrushes in different sizes, two canvases, a palette, a color wheel, and a little note from me. I had originally wanted to include a mini how-to book on the basics of working with acrylics, but wasn't able to find exactly what I was looking for. So I ended up just making my own. I figure if you're going to be opening up a basket of art supplies all by yourself instead of in a class setting, you could probably use a little guidance to get you going.

The whole thing, including the basket and plastic wrap (but not counting the feathers, which I already had) came in just under $50 and I understand from the auction committee we made money on it, so I'm pleased. But even more rewarding is the idea that maybe this little basket of goodies inspired someone to start painting, or to take their painting a little more seriously. Seriously, how cool, right?

Proud Gift Giver

I genuinely like making handmade gifts for our small friends, but this latest one was handmade out of necessity. One of Maeve's little school buddies just turned four and was having a party, but I was too busy in the week leading up to it to go out and buy anything for the birthday girl OR to spend time planning the perfect thing to make. I needed to be able to make something easily, in one night, with things I already had on hand, and still have it be something Maeve would be happy to give her friend.

So this is what I came up with. First, one of Maeve's and my patented heart headband-belts. Remember the one I made her for Valentine's Day? She has continued to wear it since, alternating between it being a belt and a headband/crown. This has got to be the easiest thing to make ever for a little girl who loves to be fancy. It's just elastic, the ends sewn together to make a circle, and then felt hearts attached with hot glue. 

The second part of our present was a tote bag in minature, sized down for a preschooler. Here's the finished product, modeled by Maeve.

To make it, I took two long, rectangular pieces of fabric: some thin, buff-colored canvas that used to be curtains for the outside of the bag, and an old pink, floral shirt for the lining. I made sure the pink was slightly thinner than the buff so that it would fit inside. Then I folded them in half lengthwise and sewed up the sides, leaving the tops open.

Then I gave them both box bottoms so that it would end up looking more like a bag and less like an envelope, and also feel roomier and be more usable. This is such a good trick. You just pinch the bottom corner of your still-inside-out bag and sew right across, making a short seam perpendicular to the main side seam. Like this:

Then you snip off the little triangle you've made,

and when you turn it rightside out, you've got a nice, semi-stable little bottom for your bag. (Now we're looking at the canvas rather than the lining, of course. And also now it's upside down. Sorry.)

To make the strap of the bag, I just cut off the hem from the old canvas curtains. Being a hem, it was already a long, skinny, folded up and sewn piece of fabric, so I didn't have to do anything else to it. Shortcuts like that let me use more of my limited hours working on some fun details for the bag,  like making a little pocket for the lining, and embroidering the birthday girl's name on the outside...

I have almost no embroidery experience, but my sewing books all have a section where they talk about hand-sewing stitches, so I've picked up a few things from there. We had some embroidery thread lying around from Stella's birthday present last summer, so I picked out a bright cheerful orange, penciled her name onto the fabric, and went over the pencil lines with a chain stitch. This was actually my favorite part of the project, and made me think (not for the first time) that I'd like to learn more in this vein...

The only tricky part was putting all the bag pieces together. This always confuses the heck out of me. It's like those IQ tests where you have to imagine what shape something's going to be when you rotate it 90 degrees and turn it twice on its axis or whatever. For a lined bag with a handle like this, you put the lining inside the outer fabric, but with right sides together. You sandwich the legth of the strap in between the two pieces of fabric, with just the two little ends of it poking up through. It all feels totally counterintuitive. Then you sew around the top, catching the strap in your stitch as you go, and leave a gap of a couple of inches left un-sewn.

Through this gap, you turn the bag inside out, and for a minute while you're doing that it seems like nothing but a big mess but then, magically, you get all the pieces through the gap and it's a bag! I topstitched around the whole top of the bag to help the lining lay flat, and when I was doing that, as I got to the open gap between the layers, I just caught them in the topstitching and that closed it up perfectly.

Maeve loved it. She woke up a couple hours after she had gone to bed that night and came into the living room where Chris was sitting with his laptop and I was embroidering Chaya's name, and so she got to see what I was making and do some peripheral little tasks for it. It made her feel like we had done it together. She was a proud little friend indeed, carefully carrying these wrapped presents into the party the next day. And really, that's all I could ask for.

Stenciled Shirt Kit

For the birthday celebration of a friend of Stella's: instead of yet another shirt painted by me, a present that lets the birthday girl do the painting herself.

We bought three plain shirts at a local second-hand store. Then I cut three freezer paper stencils and quickly sewed up a little pouch for them - the 7 on the pouch is for this not-so-little one's seventh birthday. I can't believe Stella and her friends are getting so old...

An E for the birthday girl's name, some stars because they are Stella's signature (because of her name, of course), and the soccer insignia from the party invitation.

Threw in some paint brushes and three different colors of fabric paint, and presto - a fun mix-and-match, DIY, handmade present for our buddy. I hope she likes it!

Valentines

We had such a sweet, crafty Valentine's Day. I confess to really liking Valentine's Day with little kids. It's nice and low-pressure. The girls get so into making cards for their friends that they forget every year that they're going to receive valentines as well. They come home from school with their bags of tiny cards and treats, wide-eyed like they just won the lottery.

{last year}

In past years with Stella, we've always done something fun and handmade. When she was three, she colored heart-shaped doilies and glued them onto red paper. At four, she made finger puppets by drawing faces onto pieces of pink, heart-shaped card stock, which we then punched two holes out of the bottom for fingers to fit through as "legs" (tutorial here). Last year, she drew little portraits of everyone in her class. That one was a bit of a time committment, but it was her idea and she really wanted to do it. This year was sort of a free-for-all. I bought red card stock, cut it into postcard sized rectangles, and let her have at it with crayons, stickers and glitter glue.

For Maeve, I bought valentines for the first time. Cute little color-in-the-picture cards. It's funny because, even more than Stella, Maeve is very content to sit with a bunch of art supplies and go to town. I really didn't need to buy for her, and I'm not sure what possessed me to. But it worked out kind of magically that I did because instead of getting all painty and gluey, as she is wont to do, she focussed her energy on writing her friends' names. It was a HUGE big-girl development for Maeve, and she is SO PROUD. It was all her; I would have happily written their names for her, but something clicked and she really wanted to figure out the letters. I love how explosive kids' development is... you babystep along thinking you're not getting anywhere and then all of a sudden: boom! they are doing something brand new. It's a lesson I have to learn as a mother over and over - to trust their process.

Maeve's valentines were ordered from Stubby Pencil Studio, where I get lots of the girls' art supplies and Christmas and birthday gifts. They have really nice stuff, all eco-friendly, and affordable... We also ordered organic lollipops from them, and attached one to each child's valentine in both girls' classes. That was a first too, to add a treat. But an organic, vegan, allergin-free treat colored with vegetable dyes and sweetened with natural cane juice - practically health food, right? ;)

Chris and I exchanged cards and had a nice dinner after the kids went to bed but, I suspect like many parents, this isn't really a holiday for us. The big, romantic gestures are a lot more meaningful to us on our anniversary, or just spontaneously for no reason in particular. But I did do a little of my own heart-themed crafting.

A fabric and paper valentine for my mom, who deserves something sweet. A red card stock heart with pink fabric border (the hem of an old shirt sewn on with one of my machine's crazy stitches), red felt heart, and floral paper center... oh, and a little sticker. I like how you can really see the needle holes when you sew through paper.

For the girls, instead of another card, I made them each something to wear to school yesterday. And stayed up way too late on the night of the 13th doing it, of course!

Stella got a brooch valentine. I sewed three felt hearts together, added a little center with red stone beads, and hot-glued the whole thing to a pin backing. She really loved it.

Maeve got a belt/headband valentine. A piece of elastic with the ends sewn together to make a circle, and then felt hearts just hot-glued on. The hot glue gun is awesome for last-minute crafting. I really meant it as a headpiece, like a crown, and it looks painfully cute on Maeve that way, but the girl has a mind of her own. She decided it was a belt.

Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day!

Baby Acorn

It is baby season around here. Not for our own family, but for so many of our close friends - four new babies born in the past three months, and still more friends are pregnant. The latest arrival was born last week, and today we gathered to celebrate his Brit milah.

Instead of yet another receiving blanket, I brought our new, tiny friend a little pair of footie pajamas that I painted.

On the front: a little acorn, all hopes and beginnings, for the present.

On the back: a big tree, rich with life and promises fulfilled, for this little man's future.

I had been playing around with doing a shirt or jacket with a tree and its roots for a while now, and somehow it just came together for this gift. I really like how it turned out. Instead of doing one of my usual freezer paper silhouettes, or even just laying on the fabric paint thickly so that it looks like a sewn-on applique, like in these jackets, with this project I let the lines breathe a bit, let the fabric underneath show through. It looks so different from how I envisioned it in my head when I started, and I think sometimes that's the best way...