Little Elephants » Needles & thread

Experimenting with embroidery

Veronique Christensen — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:31:39 +0000

I love how independent Maggie now. The other day she was bored and instead of asking me what to do for the zillionth time, she found herself a Klutz book called Simple Embroidery, browsed a bit, and then helped herself to everything she needed to get going. The only bit I provided was a crisp white hotel napkin to work on.

This awesome bird has been joined by a ladybug and several happy flowers.

Maggie exploring on her own = a happy mommy.

Pip’s blog tour: Embroidered Bug Keepers

Veronique Christensen — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:57:20 +0000

So exciting! Today, we have a visit from Pip of Meet Me At Mike’s. Pip is on a blog tour and I was lucky enough to be picked for her first stop. For those of you who are new here, I hope you’ll stay a while & poke around a bit. I’ve plenty of fun activities for kids & grown-ups alike.

{for those of you paying attention to dates: I’m posting this on the 7th because Pip is in Australia, and her 8th starts earlier than mine!}

Here’s Pip:

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I thought a back to nature crafty tutorial would be just the thing for my visit over here at Little Elephants! Go look under rocks with the kid in your life!

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I am totally devouring the tales of writer Gerald Durrell’s childhood, so descriptively spun in books like ‘My Family and Other Animals‘. The young Gerald was forever catching bugs and other creepy crawlies, which he would then research thoroughly and (usually) return to their natural habitat. In honour of Mr Durrell, I thought you might like to craft up some bug-keeping matchboxes. They are the perfect accessory for the junior naturalist in your life. They are quick to make and you can also use them to keep little non-crawly treasures in!, if bugs are not your cup of tea. I borrowed my bug designs from the Charley Harper Coloring Book. These would make great party favours, too!

Embroidered Bug Keepers a la Gerald Durrell

Matchboxes
Calico or Muslin to embroider onto
Embroidery Hoop
Transfer Pencil
Bug Image resized to fit onto face of matchbox
Embroidery Floss
Needle
Scissors
Stapler
Iron and Ironing Board

First trace over your design using the Transfer Pencil

Next flip your tracing over and pin it face down onto your fabric. Make sure it is centred nicely.

Iron with firm presses to transfer design onto fabric. Don’t move the iron backwards and forwards or your design might move too!

Take a peek – without shifting your paper – to see if it’s transferred. If not keep pressing. Once it HAS transferred to the fabric, remove pins and paper and draw in any bits that didn’t transfer properly with a grey lead pencil or embroidery marker if you have one.

Pop the design over an embroidery hoop and stitch over your lines with small stitches. I used two strands of the embroidery floss to keep the details nice and fine.

Once done, trim all your loose threads neatly so they don’t show through your fabric later.

Next make the strip to go around your matchbox. Trim your fabric so that it’s 5″ long and 4″ high. Your embroidered design should be centred in the middle of this piece.

Go slowly so you don’t make any blunders. Head to your ironing board. Now, with right (embroidered) side down, fold each raw LONG fabric edge in to the centre so that the raw edges meet nicely and create neat folded edges at the top and bottom of your strip. Press.

Now fold just one of the short edges of your strip in 1/2″ and press.

Then wrap this whole folded and pressed ensemble around your matchbox outer.

Tuck the raw short edge under the folded short edge.

All your edges will be neat and folded now, with the embroidery centred nicely on the front of the matchbox. Yay!

Staple into place at the back, being sure it’s pulled nice and snug around your matchbox as you staple.

Go look for some critters to study : just be sure to return them to where you found them after you’ve done our investigating!

Tor’s teepee

Veronique Christensen — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:52:05 +0000

For Christmas, I made Tor this teepee. For all it’s simplicity it did take a while to get together; time which went faster thanks to a bit of help from my Mom.

I used five 7 foot wooden dowels, a large drop-cloth, a small bungee cord, and several yards of twill tape.

To make it I secured my dowels in the position I wanted with the cord, then draped the cloth over the whole thing, tucking in the top seam as best I could. The fun part was sitting inside my makeshift teepee and marking the bottom with pen all around where I’d need to cut it.

My mom helped enormously by basting the whole hem of the beast so all I had to do was run my sewing machine though a bit of twill to finish it off.

I’m hoping to convince Tomas to paint something fun and exciting on it as well at some point, but I’m very happy with the result so far. It’s already become a spot to hide with a book and a flashlight or a pile of Bakugan.

Needlepoint … ha!

Veronique Christensen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:52:09 +0000

One of the things I love most about my mother-in-law is that she celebrates even my most failed attempts at creativity. When we visited her in Denmark this summer I found this little pillow happily displayed on a windowsill for all to see (and smirk?).

I made this for Bodil nearly twenty years ago when we decided to have a handmade Christmas one year.

I have to say, I quite like my lopsided pillow with it’s happy little sailor. Who says the sky has to be blue?

Tomas’ birthday hat

Veronique Christensen — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:02:57 +0000

Lookee what I did! Today is Tomas’ birthday. I tried to put together a little party but he went and got sick on us (again!). Good thing I had this little number ready to help keep his aching noggin warm. Probably not the flat-panel TV he was dreaming of, but it was in my budget and helped me feel better about flunking my pledge to buy/make handmade over the holidays

It took me two evenings to make using circular knitting needles. I didn’t use a pattern, and just winged it by measuring my own head and calculating how many stitches I would need (80 in this case). After the green rows I dropped one stitch every eight, knit a whole row, then dropped a stitch every seven, then knit a row … I kept this pattern up until I hit five & the wool was stretched out so tight I couldn’t possibly continue. I haven’t chrocheted since I was around Maggie’s age (she’s 9) so I did a test run off the hat to figure it out. Once I had the hang of it, I crocheted the hat off the knitting needles and worked my way in spirals until it was closed up tight.

I was inordinatly pleased with myself. I even forced the kids to come try it on and admire my work.

In the end this was an easy and crazy-satisfying project. I hope the kids weren’t lying when they said they liked it, ’cause I’m planning to make more for the whole family so we can all be matchy-matchy

Mamie’s new blanket

Veronique Christensen — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:02:17 +0000

A couple days ago I started to knit a scarf for Tomas. Maggie had other plans for it as soon as she saw it start to emerge from my knitting needles. Her treasured Mamie now has a new blanket. Tomas will have to wait a bit for his scarf … not too long, though, because I really enjoyed the quiet time I had whipping this one up. Nothing beats a simple craft for catching up with your daydreams

Knitting spool maniac(s)

Veronique Christensen — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:51:08 +0000

A couple years ago I bought both kids knitting spools because I thought they were cute and I had happy memories of the monotonous craft. I hauled them out last week when the kids were feeling better and Tomas was definitely not feeling better. This silly craft provided many minutes of quiet time for this Momma to tend to the mundane tasks of dishes, laundry, and vacuuming that were in dire need of doing once I was better. The only part I haven’t quite figured out is a clean cast off, but no one’s complained this far.

Now I’ll need to do a bit of thinking to figure out what to do with these long tubes of yarn! Hats? Coasters? Trivets?

Finger puppet fun

Veronique Christensen — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:27:39 +0000

All this felt sure has gone a long way these past few days, and there’s still a bunch left over for more crafty goodness. Not bad for under $5!

On Saturday morning Maggie asked if she could make finger puppets. This was so easy, I couldn’t say no (and I do say no pretty often, I have to if I want to keep my sanity, or have a few minutes of nothingness).

We measured her index finger and I cut out a whole-lotta felt squares to be folded in half and sewn along the top and length — leaving the bottom open. Once stitched we turned the puppets inside out so to hide the seams.

Next up, I dumped a pile of fabric scraps and random adornments including googly eyes, feathers, yarn and pretty flowers. I then handed her the fabric glue and let her have at it. It was a glorious mess and a wonderful (quiet) frenzy of creative activity that lasted at least an hour.

Bjorn watched from the sidelines for a while and finally stepped in to make his own. When he got bored (tired?) of sewing his bodies, I took over so he could get to the fun part — decorating!

On Sunday they literally spent hours making up stories and creating their cardboard stage and sets. And in the afternoon we had family theater time to view their 1/2 planned, 1/2 improv productions. Lets just say they both had a lot of blood and gore (I might have to have a talk with them about that!).

Bjørn’s new pillow

Veronique Christensen — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:59:37 +0000

While Maggie was busy at work on her mouse, Bjørn came up to me to ask if he could make something as well. Like I would say no?!

He very carefully chose his colored felt (black and teal) and embroidery thread (red), and just before starting to sew, he asked if he could also decorate his pillow. Of course! So I handed him the fabric markers.

When he was all done he gave me this huge smile and announced that sewing was a lot easier now that he was older. He remembered struggling over a sewing project in school when he was a kinder, and was very relieved that it wasn’t as difficult as back then. I have to say, I’m quite impressed with how even his stitching is!

Meet Francis

Veronique Christensen — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:58:18 +0000

Maggie decided that she wanted to institute Project Days this summer. Her idea was to have specified days completely devoted to crafting. I don’t think it’s possible for me to convey with any accuracy just how nervous this made me — one or two crafts I can handle. An entire day of back-to-back forced creativity overwhelms me. So, I handed her a pile of craft and sewing books and told her to make a list of the sorts of things she’d like to try out. Nothing like postponing a craft-athon to ease one into it.

She quickly thumbed through my books and claimed that she’d read ‘em all and knew exactly what she wanted to do. She then sketched the pattern above to show me how she wanted to make a mouse.

After my morning coffee we all packed into the car and headed for the craft store to get felt and stuffing. The minute she got in the door she set to work and barely had need of any help from me.

This is Francis:

Francis now has a brightly decorated tail, a mousy home complete with confetti bedding, and a lovely pair of earrings.