First, purchase six skeins of a yarn that's cursed with the insidious, unbearable, name "Softee." Purchase it because it is $2/skein at Michael's. Think, "I will make a prayer shawl out of this." Any chunky yarn will actually do. It doesn't have to have a title that makes you want to hack off your head with a rusty saw.


Cast on 62 stitches on size 9 needles. Begin knitting a ribbed pattern, knit 2 purl 2 etc, for ten rows.

Begin faux cabling, using a very fancy sneaky non-cabley cable recipe that you learned by creepily staring at Colyn while she was knitting. If you don't know Colyn, you can spookily leer at any knitter who's doing a stitch you admire. If they look at you suspiciously, compliment their glasses. That always works.

Cable for a while.

You should at some point in the first 30 rows gasp and realize that due to the scrunched-upness of the cabling and ribbing, this prayer shawl will be only wide enough to wrap up some kind of sad terrier.

Despair.

Decide that what it really was all along was the front of a sweater for your four-year-old daughter.

Rejoice!

After you've knit until the bottom of the sweater comes to your daughter's hips when the top of the sweater is at her armpits, cast off 5 on both sides and switch to your second color.

Continue until the top of the white is at your daughter's neck when the bottom is at her armpit, then cast off all but three repeats of the cabling thingy, and continue making a little asymmetrical tab thingy on *one side of the sweater only.*

Make a duplicate for the back. Now when you put these two things together, the little tab thingy will be on opposite sides, will form a shoulder, and you can stitch them together. See, this is the shape:



After you've got two of those thingies and you've put them together at the sides and shoulder, it's time to start panicking about the sleeves. Make a complicated plan. Confuse yourself. Live for days in inner turmoil.

This is a good time to hang out with some experienced and intelligent knitters. You might want to clutch at your head periodically and loudly say, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M GOING TO DO ABOUT THESE SLEEVES! MY MY!" Hopefully someone will stop you from knitting and tearing out mysteriously shaped sleeve pieces which you intend to set in, and say, "Just pick up the stitches around the arm hole." In my case it was Deva.

Pick up the stitches around the armhole on size 6 double pointed needles. Celebrate! Rejoice! For me it was about 40 stitches. Continue knitting stockinette in the round until when you put the garment on your daughter she says it is almost the right length. Then switch to ribbing for 10 rows.

Do the other sleeve.

Put the sweater on your daughter. She will say that it needs something. Something like pink flowers.

Decide that pink flowers can be stapled onto the front of the sweater like an afterthought. Crochet some little flowers in a similar yarn. Sew them onto the front of the sweater with the flower color yarn -- I recommend sewing down all the petals.

Now pick up the stitches around the neck and knit some ribbing until your daughter proclaims "IT'S CHOKING ME!" Tear out a couple of rows, and cast off.

You're done!











Disclaimer: I am an idiot who has no idea how to make a sweater. I was helped along by extremely generous and smart knitters who saved me from making stupid mistakes. Your mileage may vary!

Labels: how to, knitting, projects

This is the three inch strip project. Most of it was made with three inch strips.

My friend Kristen asked me months ago if I would make a vest and pants for her son Rhys to wear in a wedding. I said, "Of course!" because I love Kristen and adore Rhys and I especially like making great clothes for little boys. I used to make clothes for children, for my own and others, and also sold them occasionally. I don't sell them anymore but I do make skirts for Sadie and me and I make other things here and there, and have made things for Kristen and her kids before too. So, no big deal.

Except that... when it got down to it, I was very intimidated by the project. I had not made any "special occasion" garments in the past, nor had I sewed something on purpose that I knew was going to be scruitinized to this degree. Kristen sews, and her mom sews, in fact her mom really really sews, and knowing that these expert types would be looking at the seams (albeit in a dear, sweet, kind, approving way) kind of blocked me up. When the box of fabric arrived for me to use, I looked at it fondly and thought, "Somebody should certainly make a vest and pants out of that. I wonder if anyone will?"

On Friday I pulled out my patterns and started thinking, and made a couple of quilt blocks. On Saturday I made those quilt blocks into the outside of a vest. On Sunday I did the lining of the vest, the pants, the pants lining, and put it all together with some decorative stitching on top. Everything has pockets. Everything has a million colors. I hope the poor child survives this experience with his equilibrium. Not everyone could make this outfit work, but Rhys is definitely the child to manage it, if such a child exists.

Front of the vest:



Back of the vest:



Pants:



Everything on Sadie:



Sadie is at least a whole size too small for it, so that's why it looks like she's swimming in it. I just wanted to see it on an actual child. But I'm sure Kristen will take pictures! ;D

It's in the mail for Thursday. I did not sew up the opening on the elastic casing, in case adjustments need to be made. I made it to a 25 inch waist, but without a fitting I'm nervous about the size. If you need to make it smaller, and you have time, pull out the elastic until you find the seam, fold it smaller, resew it, chop off the excess, stitch up the opening. If you don't have any time, you can just pin it tighter with a safety pin, or tear out the seam and repin it looser with a safety pin, then just leave the opening open and no one will ever know. With the pants -- they're steamed with a double cuff at the hem to be 16 1/2 inch inseam. If you need them longer, refold, resteam, you could even tack it up or even ideally create a little dart with a button. I was nervous to tack it up or put a button there because I couldn't check the length on the actual child. If you have no time, just roll them up and go with it. :) The fabric with two layers is stiff enough to hold the cuff.

Whew! Done!

Edited to add:

Labels: projects, sewing

Want to learn to make an awesome, waterproof, colorful, duct tape hat, using two rolls of duct tape and nothing else!? Welcome! This project is part of the Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study hosted here at Little Blue School. All the lucky people who are attending the political conventions are going to be wearing those crazy, ridiculous, fashionable hats, so I decided to get us in the mood with duct tape hats. My dear friend Lori, adored playmate of my childhood, brought her kids over today to play. They are also homeschoolers! Naturally, I roped them into some hatmaking, particularly Eden, who is 11 and handy with the duct tape.

Here's our result:



So, how did we get there?

Materials:
Duct tape in many colors. We used Duck brand which comes in purple, orange, blue, red, chrome, pink, aqua, yellow, and other silly choices. I used approximately two rolls per hat. Some rolls have more on them than others. I had no problem getting a whole hat out of two small rolls, with leftovers.
Scissors you don't care too much about. They will get sticky.

I can think of a million variations to this hat, but here are directions for my hat, my method:

1. Build the Brim Square. First, you build a square from which to cut the brim.



Lay down a piece of tape, about 18 inches long, sticky side up.
Next tear off another piece of the same length. Lay it on the first piece, sticky side down, staggered halfway up.
Now you have two pieces of tape stuck together, with half the sticky side exposed on each side.
Turn the piece over to expose the sticky part of the tape you just added.
Stick another piece on, same length, sticky side down, over that one.
Continue until you have a square.

By laying each piece of tape exactly over the other, arranging these two-sided strips next to each other, and then laying another layer of tape perpendicular to the first layer, to join them, you can create a stronger piece. Like I said, there are other ways, but this was my way.

2. Cut the Head Hole. When you have built a square, cut a circle out from the middle of it.



You'll need a circle that will allow your head to go into it, but be careful of making it too loose. Duct tape is actually pretty stretchy. To get a circle, fold your square in half and then cut a quarter circle away from the center point, then unfold. If you start with a 3.25 inch quarter circle, you will probably be in the right neighborhood. Big math points to older students for figuring all this out exactly. Fit it onto your head to make sure it will go:



3. Create the Crown Rectangle. Now it's time to make the crown. Figure out how high you want your hat to be. I did about 12 inch strips. Your vertical strips will be joined together in exactly the same manner that you joined strips to build the brim. If you want stripes, alternate colors -- two blue (one in the front, turn, one in the back) then two red (one in the front, turn, one in the back)

Here's me making the striped crown of Sadie's pink-and-chrome hat:



4. Join the Crown Tube. When the crown has been built up to a length that will wrap around your head and fit approximately into the hole you made in your brim, finish it by joining the two ends together.

Here I am with the "stovepipe" part of the hat, measuring it against the hole in the brim, while Dan explains something about trading to me:



Here's Eden measuring her crown against her brim, checking to see if she needs to add more strips:



5. Cut the Tabs. Now cut slits in the bottom of the crown, about two inches long, all around the bottom of it. These will become tabs that attach to the brim. This is best illustrated in a picture I took of Eden making her hat:



6. Connect Brim to Crown. When you have your tabs cut, tear as many 3 inch strips of tape as you have tabs, and stick them to something closeby, like a table edge or your leg, so they'll be handy. Start by taping down one tab, then do the tab opposite, then the tabs between, and work your way around. So, do the north tab first, then the south tab, then east and west, etc. This will keep your project even. It's a good idea to try on during this process so you can gather it in or stretch it out a bit, as needed. Tape all your tabs down firmly. If at any point the hat becomes too big, create a gather and tape it down. If it is too small, cut the crown apart, add more tape, tape it back together, and you will *never know* there was a problem. Duct tape is awesome!



7. Attach the Top. The only thing left is to make the very top of the hat. If you still have the piece you cut out of the brim, you can use that to finish the top, or you can create a new piece using the same strip-on-strip method, and cut it into a circle. It's not necessary to make it perfect at first cut, you can trim it to fit later, after you tape it in. Attach it with tape strips inside the crown where it won't show:



8. Embellish. Now you can trim the brim into whatever shape you like. Zig-zag, circle, scallops, or whatever. You can cut out embellishments and tape them on, add a hat band, flowers, whatever you like. We added stars on this hat to turn it from this:



To this:



Eden rolled her brim to create a cowboy-hat-like effect:



That's it! There are more pictures in my Flickr Set but I can't resist posting a few more here. Any questions, please email me. If you do this project, I would love to see the results! Stay tuned for more Vote for Me materials, and happy campaigning!

Benny's hat:



Jordan's hat:



Cameron's hat:



Happy Homeschoolers:

Labels: art, duct tape hat, homeschooling, how to, projects, voteforme

Hi! I warned you about sock monkey pants, did I not?



I will blog the elections class materials this afternoon. We are doing the "Funny Hats at the Convention" project today with some other kids that are coming over, and I want to include pictures and whatever variations we come up with. So that lesson will be available tonight.

For now: SOCK MONKEY PANTS!

Labels: projects, sewing

One challenge in teaching very small children to write poetry is that they don't really know what it looks like -- its literal or even imaginary shape. Children hear stories of a certain length and "shape" regularly. There are reliable forms and predictable elements that a child can make their own. Once upon a time, there was a princess. Once upon a time there was a lonely shepherd. In the end, the monster was defeated and the princess married the prince. From that jumping off place, a child can bring in the talking potatoes or the underwater bicycle or whatever they bring to the form, because they mostly know what to expect, and what is expected of them.

Poetry is different, because its forms are so varied. There are traditional pieces that look very organized and rhyme and maybe fit on a page in a sonnety way. There are more freeform pieces with different line lengths and interesting breaks and punctuation. A child encouraged to write a poem may not immediately know the scope -- two lines, twenty lines, twenty pages? This project was a way that my kindergardener could visualize her poem and get a sense of the space she was going to fill, before she wrote it.

I found this cool painting technique on Scrumdilly-Do and decided to modify it into a poetry prompt for teaching the junior class in Phi Bensa Zoe Academy. Phillip is five, Sadie is four, and they both did really well with this.

If you click on this link for the painting idea, you'll see very excellent how-to pictures, much much better than mine. The basic idea is that you fold up a big piece of paper in a staggered accordion fold. You just put little ripples in it so that when it all lies flat there is a new surface for the paper , with lots of hidden little strips folded up into it. Then you paint on this new surface:



Then you let it dry for a while and stretch it out:



This is where the poetry comes in. After the kids had these neat staggered strips of color and these white strips in between, I had them dictate a poem to me, and I wrote each line in a white strip. Very cool. They could see how many lines they needed and about how long the lines would be, so I think it looked somehow doable for them. Anyway, they did it:



Here's Sadie with her finished project. It is a poem about ballet and karate and I think the theme of it is that she really likes to leap around the house yelling and making muscles at us but that doesn't mean she can't still call herself a ballerina.



The coolest thing about this is that you can fold the paper back up, hiding the poetry, and it becomes a painting again. It's a secret poem. Possibly a magic poem. The magical properties have not yet been tested yet. If I wake up and the sink is empty of dirty dishes, I will let you know. It certainly was cool to put it back together, and unfold it, and fold it up again, etc.

Many skills involved here: folding, paper-clipping, painting in one direction (you want to paint in strokes perpendicular to the folds so you don't get any into the white strips) Sadie enjoyed herself, and so did Phillip. So, good for kindergarten. But would this exercise have value beyond the paste-craving years? An older child, or even an adult, might find this an interesting way to integrate writing and art. The pre-defined line limit could be seen as a constraint or a challenge -- kind of like making yourself write a sestina or even a haiku. Give it a try and see what you come up with. And props to Scrumdilly-do again.

We're part of the Book Arts Bash. Are you?

Labels: art, book arts bash, lessons, phi bensa zoe, poetry, projects

Those of you who know me will remember that in early June I went through a short period of hair-pulling insanity and mouth-foaming angst as Ahno and I were constructing the decorations for old Jerusalem at church. Ms. Charlie's summer program for the children involves learning about the culture and custom in Jerusalem in Jesus' time. They are learning to say Hebrew words, recognize objects in the home, and practices in the synagogue. They're going to make bricks, dye fabric -- yesterday they worked on using a stylus to create Hebrew words in a block of wax.

Ahno and I are not responsible for the awesome lessons, but we did make the backdrop for it, and here's our work:

The "in the home" set with Ms. Barbara teaching the children:



The "in the synagogue" set:



More synagogue:



Two homes, or a home and a market stall, or two market stalls, depending:



Onlookers:





Ahno and I worked together, but she did all the conceptualizing, drawing, etc. I did the lifting and carrying the backdrops up from the basement and around the room. :) I did the backdrops in the homes/market stalls and she did the sheep and donkey and the angel in the synagogue -- the picture of the donkey was blurry but he is a very fine specimen. Anyway, whatever it is, it's done, which is more that can be said for the dishes.

Labels: church, projects

Last week at Phi Bensa Zoe Academy, our homeschool mini-co-op, the junior class did a math/art/nature project that resulted in a picture frame decorated in painted shells. Of course, with preschoolers, it's all about the process.

Step 1: Wash the shells.

I had a big bucket of shells that were pretty much straight from the beach. Sand in them, bits of seaweed, random ocean gunk, etc. I put the bucket in the sink and turned on the water. Sadie and Phillip washed the shells and each chose a bowl full to use in their projects.

This was definitely the kids' favorite part of the whole thing. They liked clinking their hands around in the bucket of shells and water, they liked picking out different variations of color and shape, and we talked about the creatures that had inhabited the shells, why they were shaped how they were shaped, why they were sandy, why some had ridges and some didn't, etc. The nature lesson was good, but I think the tactile sensation was better.

Step 2: Paint the shells.

When they had their shells picked out, I laid paper towels on the table and set their bowls next to their workspace. They each chose ten shells, which we laid out in a row and numbered, then ten more, another row, then ten more. We counted to thirty, we counted by ten to thirty, we talked about three groups of ten making thirty, and we exploited the math moment in other ways. Then we painted.

Painting shells is complicated because of the ridges. We tried, with varying degrees of success, to paint with the ridges rather than across them, to make an even, smooth layer of paint. We also tried to cover the whole shell.

We used pearl white and metallic gold paint, and then came behind with silver and gold glitter paint. I like glitter paint 50 times better than shaking loose glitter onto glue. It's so much easier to control, so much less messy, and so much less likely to get into your eye and drive you crazy for the rest of the day.

Step 3. Arrange the Shells on the Frame.

After the kids chose their favorites and organized them on the frame, I came behind with a glue gun and attached the shells. We used an unfinished wooden frame, which we later varnished with spray varnish, because the glue and the shells will stick better to an unpainted wood surface than to paint or shellac.

Another example of the quiet, private nature of homeschool learning. Looking at the finished frame, some silvery shells stuck onto a wooden rectangle, you don't see the math, the marine biology, the joy in the tactile sensation. While school teachers have to focus on deliverables, proofs, and evidence, the homeschool teacher has her own experience, her own memory, her own relationship with the project and the moment, and there's no one to prove it to, no need to quantify it.

Of course the homeschool teacher also has her homeschool blog where she occasionally does record it, quantify it, and provide all the evidence she likes.

Labels: children, counting, crafts, kids, painting, phi bensa zoe, preschool, projects, shells

This should properly be titled, "How to Make Princess Dolls with 20 Children Under the Age of 7 Without Running Screaming into the Night."

And if anyone feels the need to remind me that I did run screaming into the night a few times, recall that at least I remembered my address and took my keys with me.

Materials:

A reasonable amount of plain muslin.
Pale colored thread.
A Sharpie!
Yarn for hair. We used a very silly, fluffy fun-fur type.
A sewing machine.
Some loverly pink organza.
Different loverly pink ribbons, 2 inches wide, cut about 15 inches long.
Jewels.
Googley eyes.
Non-permanent markers for the kids.
Tacky Glue. Small bottles the kids can manage.
Skinny ribbons, cut about 10 inches long.
Tiny bunches of pink roses on floral wire. We found 10 in a bunch for just a few dollars. Just cut apart the bunch and remove the floral tape and they'll be useable individually.

Making the Doll

1. Draw a template. The doll should be about 10-12 inches high, with a nice big
round head, and fairly thin, long arms and legs. Give yourself enough room to
turn and stuff the doll, but we don't want a fat baby ballerina here, we want a
nice long stringy ballerina. Our arms and legs were about an inch, an inch and a
half wide. It's nice to add a thumb sticking up and shape the foot so there's a
shoe.

2. Trace the template onto muslin with your Sharpie. It's good to sew one up and make sure you like it before you trace 20 of them.

3. Cut the dolls apart from each other. Don't worry about cutting too close to the sewing line -- just separate the dolls from each other. It's easier to sew if you have more room.

4. Set your sewing machine to a very small stitch length and sew around on the
Sharpie line. Leave a small hole for turning under one arm. About an inch and a
half will work.

5. Now trim the excess fabric down to very very close to the stitching line. Clip your curves, turn, and stuff

6. Finally, use a Sharpie to draw a leotard and shoes onto the doll. Do different necklines, different sleeve shapes and hems, etc, on the different dolls. Make the leotard one of those ones with legs that go halfway down to your knees.

Making the Hair

1. Make yourself a cardboard hair-winder. If you want short hair, the
cardboard hair-winder should be about 4 inches wide. For longer hair, go up to 6
inches.

2. Wind the hair around the hair-winder until you have a reasonable amount
of hair for a doll.

3. Slide the loop of hair off the cardboard and lay it on a scrap of
muslin. The more interesting and delightful your yarn is, the more irritating
and painful it will be to make the hair. Soft slippery fluffy hair is going to
give you a pain in your bum that feels like the bite of a horse.

4. Sew it down to the muslin, making sure that it doesn't spread out more
than a few inches. As you go down the hair, keep smooshing it under the pressure
foot, smooshing, and smooshing. The stitches you're sewing will separate the
bangs from the rest of the hair, so if you're making long hair, put your
stitches toward one end.

5. Turn the muslin-and-yarn wig over and trim the muslin down very close to
the stitching line.

6. Lay the wig on the doll and sew it on by hand. While you're doing your
handwork, you can stitch up the hole in the doll that you used to turn her and
stuff her. If you have any "gotcher armpit" jokes in you, now is the time to use
them.

7. Turn the doll upside down over a garbage can and clip open the loops of
hair. You're over a garbage can to stop the fluffs of hair from invading every
corner of your home. For this reason, take your scissors with you and go
outside, before you give her a good shake and then a nice haircut/trim to shape
up her hairdo.

8. After doing this hair, it's a good idea to clean out your sewing machine
a bit.

Making the Skirt

1. To make 21 skirts, I folded 1 yard of organza into thirds (12 inches
wide, 44 inches high) and cut the thirds into 7 pieces each (approximately
12 inches wide, 6 inches high). You could make them wider (more that 12 inches)
for more gather, or longer (more than 6 inches) if you have a longer doll.

2. Increase your stitch length all the way long and stitch down the top of
each skirt. Pull on the bobbin thread and gather the skirt up.

3. Cut your wide ribbon into pieces approximately 15 inches long. Fold the
center of the ribbon over the center of the skirt and sew into place so the
ribbon is wrapped over the gathered up part. I used a decorative stitch for this
-- hearts, flowers, you know the drill.

4. Now the skirt is done. If you're making more you can fancy it up with a
hem, or stitch the entire ribbon closed, or something, but if you're making a
lot, and you finish this part, give yourself a pat on the back and maybe a nice
big mug of rum. Or diet Coke.

Putting it All Together.

Now it's the kids' turn to take over. There are two ways to put this project together. I suggest the kit method for a smaller number of kids, the station method for a larger number.

The Kit Method

Into your large ziploc baggie goes 1 doll, 1 skirt, 2 googley eyes, a
handful of jewels, a skinny ribbon, and a rose. The child sits down at a table
with a communal marker bin.

1. First, she colors the face and leotard using markers. Non-permanent
markers are fine, because we're not going to be throwing this doll in the
washing machine, are we?

2. Next, she glues jewels onto the doll's body. Maybe emeralds around the
neckline. Maybe a giant sparkly heart right in the middle of the bodice.
Maybe diamonds in the hairline. A pearl on each shoe. Try not to glue
anything right around the waist where the skirt will tie on. Show the kids how
to do one dot of glue for each jewel, rather than splodging around a whole lot
of glue.

3. Tie on the skirt. Older children will be able to manage sticking jewels
onto the skirt too, but it's tricky, because the glue bleeds through the
organza.

4. Now tie the skinny ribbon around her neck in a bow, and clasp her hands
together and wrap the little rose around them, using the wire. If the child
doesn't want the hands clasped, you can just wrap the rose around one hand, like
a wrist corsage.

5. Allow glue under jewels to totally dry before the doll begins her career
as a toy.

The Station Method

1. The Marker Station. Give each child just the doll and have her sit down
at a table with a communal marker bin and color the leotard, shoes, and
face.

2. The Sparkle Station. Put the jewels and googley eyes out in trays and
have an adult (or two or three) standing by to administer the glue as directed
by each child who comes to the station. You do the glue, the kid arranges the
jewels, the eyes, as they desire.

3. The Skirt Station. Pick out a skirt and tie it on the doll.

4. The Finishing Station. Tie the skinny ribbon around her neck and wrap a
flower around her wrist.

Done! Let the pretending begin!

Thank you to Ahno who fought with that lousy muslin and that slippery pink hair, on and on into the night, and emerged triumphant. We prepped these projects for 20 children at ballet camp, and thanks to the cooperation of the teachers and volunteers, we had 20 happy children bouncing off with their own personal doll at the end of the day.

Labels: ballet, dolls, princess camp, projects, sewing

So you want to make t-shirts, just a few, and you don't want to deal with the hassle and uncertainty of cafepress or maybe you need them *right stinking now* and you can't wait to order them online. Okay! I have your messy, irritating, dangerous answer! Aren't you glad you came to this blog?

I made six t-shirts for our small homeschool co-op with this method, and it worked great. I let Benny pick the color of the paint and Sadie pick the color of the shirt, but apart from that they weren't able to help too much because of the razors involved. Hey, you can't always make it a teaching moment. Especially when there are razors.

Supplies list:
T-shirts
Acrylic, permanent, unwashable paint
Paintbrush
Freezer Paper
Masking Tape
X-Acto knife
Iron and ironing board
Piece of cardboard as big as design

1. Make your design.

We named our co-op "Phi Bensa Zoe Academy" using our kids names to invent new and serious-sounding Greek letters. Then we invented the "new" Greek letters to go with, and that was the shirt. Whatever design you choose, print it out in black and white on a piece of paper. How complicated can it be? Depends how fussy you want to get with the cutting out and the ironing later.

2. Tape six pieces of freezer paper to a cutting board, and your design on top.

If you're making six shirts, use six pieces of freezer paper. Make sure the wax side is down!



3. Cut out your design.

Using the X-Acto knife, remove all pieces of your design. With a sharp knife or razor, you can easily go through seven layers of paper.

4. Make sure you save any inner pieces, because you'll need them later to complete thhe stencils.



5. When the stencils are all cut out, remove them carefully from the cutting board and peel off all the tape that was sticking them down.



6. Lay one shirt on the ironing board and slide the piece of cardboard up inside it, under where you want the design to go. Iron the stencil on, wax side down, and make sure all little edges and bits are firmly ironed into place.



7. Now replace all the little inner bits and iron those down too.



8. Paint over the stencil, and make sure every bit of exposed fabric gets fully covered. This is pretty much the only part the kids can help with in anything but an advisory position. You don't have to glop on a whole lot of paint, but use a stiff brush and work the paint down into the fibers.



9. Peel up the stencil. Here, mine is peeled except for the inner bits.



10. Before washing this shirt, you should iron it to set the paint. Iron on the back, and put paper under the front so it doesn't get on your ironing board if it bleeds at all. Then you can wash it as usual!

Final product:

Labels: crafts, custom, homeschooling, projects, t-shirts

In the course of parenting a lively child who is richly engaged with the world around her, you find you have to sew things. Difficult things. Spandex things.

Sadie loves her leotards. She wants to wear one every day. When she's wearing some other vile outfit that doesn't qualify as a leotard, she says, with great pathos, "But MOMMY, now I not a ballewina!" Trying to convince her that being a ballewina starts in the heart and not in the closet is... not effective. She really thinks it starts in the closet.

When she first started ballet, I bought her one leotard. Insufficient! I bought a second leotard! Also insufficient! So I dragged my sorry carcass to Hancock fabrics and approached the aisle I'd never explored before -- the lycra and spandex aisle. The aisle of the lovely leotards. I told Sadie she could pick out her own leotard fabric, and she (predictably) chose the pink. I chose some other fabric too, kind of a mottled green/gold. Here's the one I made in my fabric:



Not appropriate for ballet (pink only!) but she wears it to gymnastics.

Here's the one I made from her fabric:



I actually made two of each fabric, both identical, so now she has six total, and she doesn't seem to run out as fast. Whew. Nice sewing, mom. But, let's be honest. Do you notice what both of these leotards (and by extension the others that I made) have in common? Little flowers at the neck? Yes, I explained that to myself by saying I intended to use those flowers, to make the pink leotard more like Kelly's leotard in "Barbie and the Nutcracker." In fact, I must admit, those flowers are there to hide the hideous gapping and puckering that happened when I was doing the neckline. And let's not even pretend that these leotards fit her. They are baggy in all the wrong places. Meaning all the places. As a leotard-ist, I have fallen short of the mark.

Now I have another chance to test my sewing skills. Ahno made Sadie this dress and bonnet to wear to Colonial Williamsburg:



Awesome, right? I was so in love with the overall effect, and Sadie was so charmed with it too, that I borrowed the pattern and vowed to do the same style in all pink for her Easter dress.

Here we are on Easter Eve! I am not Ahno. I cannot do this shearing and keep it straight. I cannot do this gathering and keep it even. Yet, having set my task before me, I cannot at this hour run to Nordstrom and buy something respectable. I have to persevere. I'm sitting here with the dress done (sort of), the apron in pieces and the hat only a dull throb in my head.

Tune in tomorrow to see if I managed it...

Labels: projects, sadie, sewing

Benny did his first sewing project this week, with a real needle that is sharp and everything, holding it in his hand where it could have at any moment flown wildly into the air and punctured his skull. And I didn't have a panic attack!

I decided I needed to make a Teddy bear. This is something I haven't tried before, and I thought it would be fun for the kids and I to do this together.
First, I let the kids pick out the fabric. The fabric they chose is something *only* children would pick -- it has McDonald's logos and Ronald McDonald's face all over it in a bright red and yellow repeating pattern. It hardens your arteries just looking at it. Wow. If I were to make a bear using only my own asthetic choices... I would certainly have chosen something different. But hey.
Next, I found a pattern on the internet, and printed it out, enlarged it via eyeballing it, and drew it onto cardboard. Then I cut it out with my own gnarled arthritic fingers. I modified it a tiny bit -- added a gusset to the middle of the head, and changed the arm shape a little. The pattern I chose was the simplest one I could find.
The kids helped me lay out the pattern on the fabric, figure out how many pieces to cut, and trace it onto the fabric with a Sharpie. Then I cut it out. I wish I could have relinquished the scissors on this step but... sometimes you have to take a *little* control or they'll be sad with the final product with has radically different arms, no legs, and a hole in its stomach.
Benny helped run the sewing machine -- he does the foot pedal and I yell STOP! GO! SLOW! NO STOP! NO GO! and somehow we got the pieces together. Then I clipped the curves and they helped me turn and stuff it.
This was an exciting moment for them, because they could really visualize the end product. Benny really really wanted to sew with the real needle and thread and be in charge of closing up the openings. So I let him do one leg and one arm while I did the rest. It was so completely darling watching him bite his lip, wrinkle his forehead, and earnestly sew:

He also tried to do the head attachment, since I think he interpreted this as the most significant part (and it is!) but after wrestling with it for a while, he asked me to do it. After we were done, and before I sewed on the button eyes and embroidered the nose, I went upstairs to get Sadie dressed. As I was coming down the stairs, Benny reported cheerfully, "WELL! He's all decorated!" He had used the green Sharpie to draw on eyes, nose, claws, mouth, and a big giant S on his belly, with a green border.
I gulped down my "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE" and said, "What's the S for? Is it Superbear?"
"No," he said, "It's for Sadie. I made this bear for Sadie to have. That S tells her it's hers."
Well. Okay. So you can draw on your bear with a green Sharpie any time. And if you want to make it out of ridiculous McDonald's fabric, that's okay too. Just keep being such a sweetheart, and everything will be fine by me.

Labels: projects, sewing

The first thing you should do is sit down and write down all the bones you know, and draw a picture of the skeleton. You'll need to think about scale when you're making your meringue bones.


Now it's time to make your skeleton! You will need:

1. A good meringue recipe and this probably involves a mixer, unless you have a robotic superarm capable of creating "stiff peaks" in egg whites. You be the judge. Little confectioner's sugar, little egg white, around and around, and bam you have meringue.



2. Large ziploc baggy. You'll need to cut a small hole in the very tip so you can squeeeeeeze out your meringue onto the cookie sheets.



3. A lot of cookie baking sheets and parchment paper. You can get parchment paper to line your cookie sheets in the baking section at the grocery store.



4. A large space to set out your skeleton when the pieces have finished baking!



A couple of hints:

If you do this on a humid day (like we did) your bones will soon be sticky (like ours were). This can work to your benefit if you want to connect them, but it can also get all over your fingers. You have been warned. They'll come out of the oven nice and crispy, and then gradually they'll start to kinda sweat. This of course will not bother the children at all.

Baked meringue is brittle, so make your bones thicker than you may think you need to make them. If you have leftover meringue, go back over the piece you've already made and thicken them up. For tiny bones like the phalanges and metacarpals and whatnot, it's easier to not make each individual bone, but rather make a little web with all the bones touching.

When you are removing the meringue from the parchment, pick it up and peel the paper off the bones, rather than trying to lift the bones off the flat paper. Some will break, and that's okay! When you lay them out, just lay the pieces together.

This skeleton is FAT FREE, in more ways than one. Enjoy!

***
Interested in more Little Blue Ideas? Try the Idea Box for homeschooling ideas and more.

Labels: lessons, projects, science

My friend Kristen, her two kids, and her mom (henceforth known as Nana) recently visited us. Nana had an amazing suitcase full of wondrous things -- books, games, projects galore. On our final day, just when I thought the amazing suitcase's depths had been exhausted, Nana pulled out a project for a sunny day: Sun printing.



Mix the paint, schlop it onto the fabric any way you like, then lay down the shapes you want the sun to highlight. Leave the projects in the sun until they dry, and PRESTO you get lovely magic "prints." Benny and Irene made shirts for their dads for Father's Day, and the most amazing thing was that the little siblings (both 2 years old) got to paint too. Because you apply the colors with sponge brushes, and because it doesn't really matter where you put the paper shapes, the two year olds really got into the effort.



Finally, we found a use for our porch roof. After five years. A couple of tips from Nana: 1. Slip a garbage bag over a piece of foam board for a working surface. 2. After you're done painting, slip the garbage bag off and let the shirt dry on it. 3. Use a different garbage bag under each shirt. 4. Those sticky foam shapes work great for sharp, detailed prints. 5. Nana uses Setacolor Soleil paints, but you can also get a kit from Hearthsong or Klutz.

Nana sunprinted a giant piece of muslin, and then had the kids draw on it with Sharpies. We made a list to help them remember all the highlights of our visit together, and they drew scenes from it... from tubing on Broad Bay to Maymont Park in Richmond to the Fireworks at Harborfest. After the drawings were done, we all wrote our names on it, and we have a permanent record that could be made into a memory quilt for them.



Naturally the little siblings got in on that end of it too. Who would pass up a chance to color with a Sharpie, that forbidden fruit of the craft cabinet top shelf!!! So a good time was had by all, thanks to Nana! Of course, on a rainy day, you're going to have to find something else to do. Like go to the aquarium... oh... wait... not that....

Labels: holidays, projects