Baby Blue Winter Coat

I decided to make Andy a little dress coat before Christmas. He will need it, since his Christmas outfit is a smocked john john with a short sleeved shirt. I browsed ebay and there are some adorable little dress coats, but they are fairly expensive and they are usually wool, which is not my favorite fabric. It always makes me itch (I think I'm allergic) and I don't like to dry clean anything. So, I decided to make one. I bought some very soft fleece at JoAnn's black Friday sale. I got 2 yards for $4. I also bought a gray satin lining.

The pattern is from 1962. I like it because of the raglan sleeves, which I think will fit a small boy well. I also thought single-breasted would be less fussy on him, even though I love the double-breasted look. I can't resist that cute cap, either, though I am considering knitting a little hat to match. I might even make the leggings, for a total snuggly outfit.





I said I would share pictures of my Great Aunt Flo's china, which my Mom gave me recently and I used for Thanksgiving. Here is my table from our Thanksgiving with my parents.
 I have been embroidering my small stash of nice kitchen towels to have on hand as Christmas presents. I'll take pictures and share them soon. I have also been doing a lot of knitting and crochet, including these 2 works in progress:

The pixie hat is a pattern I am designing myself. The sweater is another of the 9 hour Toddler Sweaters, like the blue one I already finished. I am altering it to have ribbing and buttons instead of the garter stitch border.  I have lots to share with you, just not enough time to do it!

M-E-R-R-Y Christmas Photo Shirts

Andy refused to wear the hat!!

Today we had our Christmas pictures taken. The kids had group and individual shots taken in their formal Christmas outfits, but then we did this fun picture, too. I made these MERRY shirts on my embroidery machine. The letters are the Santa Font from Planet Applique. 

Closeup of Andy's letter Y

 I used red fur and black satin and I love the way they turned out. Thank goodness I only have 5 kids- with hooping and interfacing and trimming, etc. each shirt took about 40 minutes of my rare free time!! I love this picture and will be using it on some of my Christmas cards. Back soon with some Thanksgiving pictures, but I was just so excited to share these shirts.
Happy Thanksgiving and many Blessings to You!!

Turkey Nugget Holders for Thanksgiving

I made a batch of these turkey Hershey Nugget holders for Thanksgiving. I plan to add a cardstock circle with each person's name for our table settings. These are from Embroidery Garden and are quick and easy to stitch. I made 5 at a time in my 6x19 hoop. I also made some Pumpkin Nugget holders.

I think these will be so cute on our Thanksgiving table. We are celebrating with my parents on Sunday, so I'm trying to get everything ready. I'll be back soon to show you my Great-Aunt's dishes that I'll be using.
Here's a view of the basket of turkeys and pumpkins, ready to go!

Hey Diddle Diddle...Baby Gift

 This week I made a baby gift for a friend whose daughter is having a little boy in December. I over-thought this one a lot. I found the nice moon and stars flannel, but couldn't decide what to put on it. Finally I saw this cute design at EmbLibrary and I thought it was perfect.

The blanket is 40" square with plain hemmed edges. I thought about crocheting an edge, but I wasn't sure if the Mom would like that for a boy. I did something new on the back of the blanket. I ironed fusible baby interfacing from Farmhouse Fabrics over the embroidery. It makes it soft and looks so nice. I'll definitely be doing it this way from now on.

The back of the embroidery

The burp cloth also has a special treatment on the back. I stitched a strip of flannel to make the burp cloth into a tube, then added the border at one end. It makes it a nice size, seals in the back of the embroidery, and makes both sides pretty, too.

The little hat is crocheted with a soft yarn. It's a self-striping blue and white and this one happened to be mostly white with blue at the scalloped edge. This baby lives in a warm climate, so I'm not sure if the hat is necessary, but I always liked my newborns to have a soft, cuddly hat.

Cozy Baby Quilts

Robot Snowball Blocks (4 meet at diamonds)

 I volunteered to co-ordinate the Comfort Quilt Committee for my Quilt Guild this year. I have not done as much as I hoped to (yet). We are trying to make a large batch of baby quilts to donate to a local lady who provides Welcome Bundles to newborns in need. I made 2 kits in September for our Quilt Retreat. Both were made up of pre-cut pieces for snowball blocks: one with a robot focus fabric and one with pastel animals. I also cut the same yellow, blue, orange, and green squares for each kit. The ladies who went on Retreat said they were easy to do and I think they turned out great!

The complete Robot Quilt

The baby animals blocks

Completed baby animals quilt

This quilt is a bonus made up of the leftover corners from the snowball blocks. One of the ladies made them into pinwheels and then into a nice baby quilt. I think the recipients will love these sweet little quilts!

My 9 1/2 Hour Toddler Sweater

I think the snowstorm we had last week put me in the mood for some knitting and crocheting. After I made the Sock Monkey Hat, I found a free pattern for an easy Toddler Sweater. It's called the 7 Hour Toddler Sweater. Obviously, from my title, you can see that it took me a bit longer! This pattern is a variation of the popular 5 Hour Baby Sweater. The direcctions were great! I used one skein of Red Heart Fiesta yarn, which cost $4.50, so this is a really inexpensive sweater.

I love the denim blue with the flecks of brown, white, and red. I often have a hard time knitting to gauge, so I am very excited that this sweater is proportional and fits Andy beautifully! It just happens to look good with the puppy outfit Katie bought him last week. 

For my next projects, I am going to embellish some kitchen towels for Christmas gifts and crochet a longtail cap for Andy.

Adorable Sock Monkey Hat!

I am not a big fan of sock monkey toys. I think they are a nice vintage thing, but I don't own any and have never desired to make one. But when I saw the pattern for this hat on Etsy, it just looked so cute to me! I bought it and a bluebird hat pattern by the same seller. Let me say that this was the best-written pattern I've ever bought. The directions were complete, accurate, easy-to-follow, and even had photos. The seller even offers to help you by email, but you won't need it! 
I bought the Vanna's Choice acrylic yarn at Michael's and I liked it very much. It's soft and washable. I still need to add the pompom, but I haven't been able to find the Clover pompom maker yet. My hat was supposed to be for Andy, but my crochet was a bit loose (and my kids have compact heads) so it fits Davy perfectly. I might make another smaller one for Andy. I think it would look cute with a red shirt and brown pants.
It took me about a week of occasional crocheting to make this. I was working on the ears while my kids had lunch at Pizza Hut one day. Our waitress was so enchanted with the hat, she was telling everyone she worked with to come see it. I gave her the link for the pattern. It is a fun hat that makes people smile. I definitely recommend patterns by sock monkey kook on etsy!

We Survived Snowtober!!

The view driving down the main road.

We had a record-breaking snowstorm here last weekend. It started snowing Saturday afternoon and was very heavy all night. We lost power Saturday afternoon and got it back yesterday. Our DSL and cable came back last night. This is the third storm with heavy damage we've had since building this house 9 years ago. We lost power for 8 days in December of 2008 and for 3 days last spring. The difference this time is that we bought a generator! I feel so stupid for not doing it sooner. It was wonderful. Despite the power being out, we had heat, water, fridge, lights, even TV. I really wasn't expecting the power to come back for a week. My kids have been out of school all week. They have already called it off tomorrow (Thursday), but they will return on Friday. Most of the towns around here even had to postpone Halloween! We will be trick-or-treating on Saturday. I think we've already had our trick for this year!

This WAS a huge tree by our town hall.

These are trees along our driveway.

I'll be back tomorrow to show you a cute sock monkey hat I crocheted!