library display -- where the wild things are

counting on it!

Well hey there! It's been awhile, right? It was an amazing and busy summer. The kiddo and I made a lot of stuff, went on a lot of adventures, and generally kept ourselves occupied from the day preschool let out until the day preschool started. And I'm on the board this year, so things have gotten even crazier.

I'm stopping in today to share one of the big projects we finished this summer. It's a book.

About halfway through the school year, the kiddo's teacher started having the kids make one or two alphabet letters per week as part of a daily series of arts and crafts projects.

E is for Eagle

F is for Flower

X is for X-ray

If the kiddo was sick on a day a letter was introduced, we made our own version at home. Adding to the fun was putting each letter in a black portfolio book, one after another, until finally we had the whole alphabet.

P is for Pirate

Q is for Quilt

"But wait, Mama!"

There were so many blank pages left! I suggested we take on as many numbers as possible until the book was filled, and the kiddo was game. We managed to fit zero through twenty in the book before we ran out of space.

One red apple / Two pretty flowers

Six crunchy carrots

Aside from cut paper, we used a little of every material in our arsenal, from googly eyes and multi-color pipe cleaners to bingo daubers, glitter glue, and stamps.

Eight wiggly spider legs

Seven spangly fireworks

Ten flying keys

He even stitched through the buttons using a tapestry needle and yarn!

Nine colorful buttons

Towards the end, when things were getting crowded and the projects a little lengthy, we got extra inventive.

Eleven apple trees

Thirteen sugary donuts

Fourteen fuzzy bunnies

I love the sweet little faces he drew. Love them to bits.

Sixteen glittery jewels

Seventeen black zebra stripes

Eighteen wiggly hairy eyeballs

Nineteen peppermint candies

Twenty pink carnations

Whew! We made it through the whole thing. I tried to let the kiddo do most of the work on the gluing, drawing, punching, stamping and coloring (although I got a little bossy with the zebra). I stuck mainly to cutting, although he's getting so good with the scissors now that I'm going to be pawning more and more of that work off onto him, too. We're planning to tackle the lowercase letters next, unless the new preschool teacher gets to them first.

What about you? Did you tackle any arts and crafts projects this summer too?

Thanks for reading!

--a

simple animal paw shoes for theater + halloween costumes

I made these shoes for the Cat in the Hat for our preschool's recent production, to match the costume I retrofitted (coming up in a future post). It's funny; I had let the other costume maker borrow my one and only costume shoe pattern and was scrambling to get some shoes made for a dress rehearsal, but this style actually ended up working better than the pattern I'd loaned her.

You'll remember that my computer died? As in DEAD dead. The hard drive and logic board both keeled over at the same time, which means I could only use my phone for internet searches, and my phone won't send anything to my printer. So while I remembered this Martha Stewart felt slippers pattern, I had to improvise and hand-draw rather than printing it. All's well that ends well; these turned out just right.

For the soles, I used two layers of this old rough-backed felt from the stacks of leftover fabric in the theater supplies at school. For the body, I used one layer of the stiff-backed felt and one layer of the hound's tooth flannel I'd used for the Cat's costume. The foot pads are cut from a scrap of red ostrich leather I bought awhile back at a thrift store, zig-zag appliqued into place before assembling the shoes.

To make your own, you can follow Martha's original instructions with the following changes:

1) Instead of a single layer of thick felt, I used one layer of thinner craft felt and one layer of woven fabric, serged together at the edges. Word to the wise: when using thinner felt, using mutiple layers is key. You'll get a lot of stretch and wear-through with single layers.

2) The appliques are used (in addition to the rough-bottomed felt) to make the shoes non-slip, and to add some durability. Highly recommended, whether for Halloween or for theater. In addition to making the shoes less slippery and more sturdy, the pads are an especially nice touch if, at any point, your character shows the bottoms of his or her feet to an audience. This happened in our play, and every time I could feel how much it added to the kids' experience.

3) The original pattern leaves the seams on the outside; I tucked mine inside.

4) As the cuffs are layered with woven fabric + felt, they don't have much stretch, so the wearer will have to spend a minute working them onto his or her feet. It actually makes them fit really securely, and for a seldom-used costume piece it's not too much of an inconvenience.

Like most things, you can adapt these pretty endlessly to a variety of costumes. Switch up the fabric, use faux fur, different color leather, etc.

More to come! Thanks for reading.

the cat in the hat mini hats

A couple of factors played into the lack of activity at the blog over the past couple of weeks. First, I was scrambling to finish up the last few costume projects before our preschool's all-parent production of The Cat in the Hat. A few late nights, some scavenging for materials, and a couple of re-dos later, and everything came together. It was a pretty amazing group of people who came together on the project.

Second, my computer died. Like, completely. I took it in with a blank white screen with only a gray apple in the middle, and when it came back to me a little over a week later, they'd replaced the hard drive and the logic board. Thankfully, luckily, magically, there was a week left on the AppleCare extended warranty the Mr. had the foresight to buy. A week later, and we'd have been paying out-of-pocket for the parts and repairs. And it would have cost about as much as I earned on Etsy this year. I feel really lucky.

Anyway, on to today's post.

Let's look at making some Cat in the Hat mini hat headbands!

You can use this idea for making any kind of mini top hat, really, just by changing the color of the stiffened felt and adding some embellishments. Here's what you need to know.

Materials for two hats:

1 12 x 18-inch piece of stiffened felt (also called Friendly Felt) in white or glittered white
2 9 x 12-inch pieces of regular red felt or glittered red felt
red and white thread
hot glue
2 red ribbon-covered headbands

For each hat, cut a piece of stiffened white felt that's 4 1/2 x 12 inches, and three red stripes that are approximately 1 x 12 inches. You'll also need a red circle that measures approximately 3-inches in diameter, and two stiffened white circles (not one red + one white, as photographed) measuring approximately 4 1/2 inches in diameter.

Arrange stripes as shown, then stitch in place using red thread.

Using the red circle as a guide, pin the striped felt into a tube that will use the red circle as a top. You can either pin it inside out to machine stitch and turn carefully right side out again, or you can pin right side out and hand stitch using a mattress or a slip stitch. Both ways will work.
 
After pressing that seam to make sure the tube retains its round shape, sew the red circle to the top using red thread to whip stitch it in place.

Center the hat's top on one of the white circles, then use red thread to whip stitch it in place.

Hot glue the hat to a headband, then cut slots on either end of the remaining white circle to accommodate the head band (as photographed).

Line the circle up with the underside of the hat and the headband, then hot glue in place. Make sure to use lots of glue on the headband, and a scant amount of glue on the white felt so that it doesn't leak through. Then whip stitch to the hat and you're done!

Use similar materials for Mad Hatter or steam punk style hats! Switch to black or brown felt and headbands, and add feathers, ribbons, and other embellishments. And then send me a link so I can see what you've made!

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them for more detail!

happy birthday dr. seuss

Celebrating the 110th birthday of Theodore Seuss Geisel, Dr. Seuss, creator of the modern picture book, whose stories help lull my kid to sleep on a wave of rhyme.

Fish Puppet for The Cat in the Hat play at the preschool, made from corrugated cardboard (old box), felt, cotton broadcloth, polyester fiber fill, cotton canvas (old painters' drop cloth), latex and acrylic paint, thread, and hot glue.  

where the wild things are growing at an incredible rate

The Halloween before my kiddo turned two, he and the mister dressed up like this for Halloween:

Max in his wolf suit and his Wild Thing papa, from Where the Wild Things Are were a big hit at the library's Halloween story time that year. And the little Max costume was so soft and comfy and fun to wear that my kiddo didn't want to stop wearing it. 

That was a year and a half ago. He was Max quite a bit in the months following Halloween . . . and then he got distracted, and wore it less and less frequently.

When I cleaned out his closet six months ago, coincidentally right around this most recent Halloween (we went as Muppets this year; he was Kermie), he excitedly pulled it out and wore it around the backyard like a hooded jacket because his legs wouldn't fit. 

And he kept growing, and the next time he tried to put it on, his arms wouldn't fit either, so he wore it like a hooded cape. And then I wised up and pulled out the leftover fabric and the old pattern (for shape reference) and a shirt one size up (to use as a size reference) and stitched up a hoodie he'll be able to wear for another year or so. Luckily, the tail is a pin-on, and so we just transferred it from the old Max suit to the new Max hoodie.

Because childhood is too short, and Halloweens are too far in between, and because . . . reasons.

*****

Please consider donating to the Red Cross to help survivors of the tornado in Oklahoma.

And thanks for reading.

p.s. The original toddler-sized pattern has been removed from the Burda Style website; e-mail me or message in the comments below, and I can send you a PDF of my reworked, resized hoodie pattern (it's a 6-7 I'd estimate). If there's enough interest, I'll just post a tutorial.

halloween costumes, past and present

Halloween 2009—In utero. We didn't know gender yet, and it's hard to get a costume on a fetus anyway, so the kiddo just accessorized my "pregnant lady" costume. It was the laziest costume I could come up with, which was good because I was sleeping all the time when I wasn't working or pumpkin hunting.

Halloween 2010—What a difference a year makes! I knitted my sweetie's sock monkey costume freehand (without a pattern). As I'm a better crocheter than knitter, I always see a ton of flaws, but I still love how it turned out . . . just in time, too. I was still working on this on Halloween Eve.

I used a yarn needle to add this knitted "tattoo" after I finished knitting the sleeves; switching yarn in the middle of a row is not my favorite thing to do when knitting (and I'm not very good at it) so this shortcut was the perfect way for me to get this effect.

Halloween 2011—Max and one of the Wild Things from Where the Wild Things Are. The kiddo's Max costume and the mister's Wild Thing costume were blogged about here. I used a pattern for the Max costume and a Instructables tutorial for the Wild Thing head, both of which are linked in that blog. Two of my favorites ever, these were also a huge hit when we were out and about. It was the first time strangers ever stopped us and asked to take photos.

Halloween 2012—It's all about the Muppets. Here's a sneak peek of a costume in progress:

The sheer cuteness of my kid in a Kermit costume is going to melt your eyeballs, so be warned: a full Kermit post is coming soon!

Thanks for reading! 

p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that.