Sewing Party: Burp Cloths

So since I've started up sewing again... and blogging about it, I've discovered that a ton of my friends sew or want to sew.  I thought it was kind of a lost art because it's so much more economical to buy your clothes from a store... and really it's just so much quicker too.  But I guess there is still a sweetness and charm to getting something handmade.  It's nice to know that someone put effort into making a gift and handmade items are so much more unique then store bought items.

After discovering all the other people I know that sew, a few friends and I decided to have a sewing party. Since we were all at different levels we decided to do an easy project.  We all have (or were about to have) babies, so we decided to make burp cloths.

Before starting the project, we practiced on scraps to make sure everyone was on the same level and could use the machines.  We only had 2 machines for 4 of us.

We used two fabrics for our burp cloths.  A patterned fabric for one side and chenille for the back.  For the patterned side, you can use pretty much any washable fabric. Remember, it's going to get spit up on a lot! I believe we used cottons, flannel, and knit. 

We used two different tutorials (which I give links to at the bottom of the post).  The tutorial from cloud 9 had a contoured shape which was kind of cool.  The second tutorial recommended the chenille which we liked because it made the cloths so soft.   So we combined the two to make our own version. :)

They really are quite an easy project and you feel like you've accomplished something because you have a finished project in a short amount of time.  

Sewing aside, it was nice to get together with friends and hang out.  It's also nice to be able to share a hobby together.  It also makes the tedious parts of sewing much more bearable because you're chatting as you work.  And it wouldn't be a party without goodies to eat!

My baby was older, so she didn't really need a burp cloth anymore but I still did the project.  I didn't make it contoured like my friends, and just made a rectangle shape.  It turned out great though, because I brought them home and my little girl immediately decided they were her new lovies.   And now that she's a little older, she's gotten into babies, and now the burp cloths are perfect size for blankies for her dollies.  

For your own burp cloths, try these.
Celebrate BABY - Tutorial: Burp Cloth Gift Sets by MADE
Tutorial: Contoured Burp Clothes from Cloud 9 Fabrics

Since then, I've gotten together with a friend or two to sew projects, usually whatever each of us are working on at the moment.  It's great to sew with someone else because you have someone to talk to and you can even do it with kids because you can take turns between watching the children and sewing.   But I think it's time for another party soon....

Do you know anyone in the area that has the same hobby as you?  Why not share it!?!

Boy Romper: Elephants and Giraffes

So last year, I did Boy Romper: Cars and Trucks from the McCalls Pattern M6309.  I loved it so much that I did a second one for another one of my friends.

My favorite part about this version was the Dungaree buttons. I found them in my stash and I have no idea where they came from, but I thought they were perfect for the little outfit.

And as usual, I made some bibs to go with it.  No matter what I make, I always make coordinating bibs... it's kind of my thing.

The one trick to this was that they didn't know the sex of the baby and so I had to make an outfit that was unisex.  I tried to find some neutral fabric, which I thought I did a good job at but afterward doubted myself. No matter how hard I try, I always see either boy or girl  when I look at a fabric not both.  Technically also, the pattern was a boy pattern but I thought overalls where fairly gender neutral.  

As cute as it turned out, in the end, all I could see was "boy", which is kind of lucky because they had a boy!

Anyone else have trouble finding gender neutral baby gifts?  What colors do you think are unisex?

My Favorite 12 posts of 2012

Happy New Year!  2013 is here already, crazy!?!    Hope you all out there had wonderful holidays, spent lots of time with family, ate tons of yummy food, celebrated, and even got some rest. 

I thought I'd start this year with a look back at my favorite posts of this past year.  It's kind of been a cool year in the blogging world.  I started this blog two years ago but never really wrote on it, but then started in full swing in April of this past year. And even though I'm still a little blog, I am happy for the successes I have had. 

First off,  I wrote 75 posts.  Wow... that's a lot, especially since the previous two years I had only written a total of five.   Sometimes as a stay at home mom, you don't always see the fruit of your labor, but to see that in print - 75!  Now that's cool.. and not only did I write 75 posts, but I had to do all the crafting, sewing, cardmaking, and cooking to be able to have the content for all those posts. 

Second of all, I have just past 5000 hits on my blog.  Which may be small potatoes to some of you out there, but I'm proud of it.  I'm thankful to my few followers for being faithful readers and helping me hit that mark. 

Lastly, I have learned a lot.  I have learned about how to make my pictures better.  I have added a watermark, and personalized my site a bit. I have also discovered that blogging is hard work.  I have learned from mistakes and I am looking forward to a exciting new year full of exciting new posts and learning even more.  I hope to grow a little bit more and get a few more followers along the way.

So here's my favorite posts from the past year. These aren't chosen for how many hits they received, but more are significant marks in my journey over the last few months.  Hope you enjoy!

1. Little Red Riding Hood -The Cape.

So this to date is my most pinned post.  I wasn't expecting much traffic from it because I posted it late after Thanksgiving, but for some reason it took off.

2.  Baby Drawstring pants

I was just really proud of these.  I started out to make a pair of pants and it evolved into something more interesting.  I really loved the drawstring look which gave them so much more character.  It's nice to be able to go from just relearning the basics to being skilled enough to start being creative.

3.How to make an Ice Cream Cake

This was my favorite food tutorial.  I mean, who doesn't like ice cream??

4.Crafty Time: Angry Birds Pinatas

This was my favorite craft of the year.  It was a lot of hard work and I definitely messed up a lot!  But because of my mistakes I learned a ton and am totally proud of how it came out in the end.

5. Baby Girl Gift Set: Flower Applique and Two Tiered Circle Skirt

This was my favorite onesie set.  I started out with one idea in mind and totally had to rework it.  It was the first circle skirt I had tried and it turned out to be trickier then planned, but still came out soo cute!

6. Chevron and Circles Baby Shower

This was my first free printable.  This was also before I started using GIMP and was only using Paint.  I totally realized that sometimes it's worth it to find good software.

7.Orange Sherbet Tee

This was my first free pattern.  I learned a lot about how to document a tutorial (though still am learning).  I also had to work out lots of kinks trying to scan in the pattern and upload it so that it would turn out the right size.  Who knew it would be so difficult?

8.Boy Romper: Cars and Trucks

This was my favorite store bought pattern.   I hadn't done a pattern in years, so got to go through the wonderful process of trying to understand the instructions.  Sometimes I felt like I needed a translator!  But it turned out better than I'd hoped and I even made a second one.  (post to come)

9.Yoga Skirt: Maternity

This was my first attempt at sewing for an adult. My friend requested I make her a maternity skirt.  I agreed, but was a little scared of sewing for an adult.  I found out about sewing with knits, but with a little trial and error, it turned out great!

10.Shades of Blue Dress: The Ombre Skirt

This was my favorite upcycle. I don't know if this technically counts as an upcycle, but I took a shirt and turned it into a dress.  I was pretty proud of how it turned out, though you can't really tell how cute it is in the pictures because I hadn't started editing my photos yet.

11.Dolls for Fiji

This technically wasn't my own project.  I helped make dolls with my church to take on a mission trip to Fiji.  I think this was the project that took the most work but was the most rewarding. We made over 100 dolls and it was really cool to see afterward the pictures of the little kids holding their dolls.

12.Flowers in the Sunshine Dress

This was my first outfit made without a pattern.  I ran into a few hiccups here and there which I had to work out.  I had to do a lot of planning before I started sewing so that I did it all in the right order.  It came out a little big but otherwise turned out just as I pictured.

Thanks for following along on my crafty journey.  I'm excited to see what more is in store for the next year!

Potato Latkes

Happy Hanukkah! Saturday was the first night of the eight days and since we have several merging cultures in our household, we celebrated the start of the holiday season by making traditional potato latkes.  If you don't know what they are, they are also known as potato pancakes.  Quite yummy, but probably not so healthy because they are fried.

Recipe adapted from My Very Own Hanukkah Box

Ingredients:  

• 5 medium potatoes
• 1 small onion
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

• frying oil (NOT olive oil)  (the recipe said do not use olive oil, but when I was researching Hanukkah on Wikipedia  it said that you should preferably use olive oil,... so who knows really)
• lots of paper towels

1. Peel potatoes.  Rinse in cold water
2.Grate potatoes.  I used my kitchen aid... it made it so much easier then grating it all by hand!
3. Peel onion and grate into the potato.
4. Put potato and onion in colander.  Press down and remove as much liquid as possible.  Pat down with paper towels and put back into a dry bowl.  ( We got a couple cups of liquid out of ours)
5. Beat eggs, then  mix well into the potato with the flour, salt and pepper.
6. Pour a little oil into the frying pan. When hot add a heaping spoonful of the potato mix, pressing it flat with spatula.  Don't overcrowd the pan with too many pancakes.
7.Once edges are browned, turn over and fry on other side.  Both sides should be golden brown and crispy.
8.Have a plate ready with paper towels and place latkes there to drain oil.

Best served hot.

 Traditionally eaten with applesauce.  Other toppings that we use are sour cream, mustard or ketchup.  I tried googling additional topping ideas and there were some pretty creative ideas out there, but I like to keep it simple.

Light the menorah, play some dreidel, eat some chocolate gelt and have a happy eight days of Hanukkah!

Drunken Noodles

Have I mentioned how much I love Thai food?  No, well, then let me tell you, I love Thai food.  One of my favorite Thai dishes is Drunken Noodles.   Not to long ago, I was out to eat and was enjoying how delicious my meal was when I thought how great it would be if I could make it at home.

So I searched Pinterest, of course, and found this recipe.  It has a few obscure ingredients (like 3 different types of soy sauce) but if you go to your local Asian market, you should be able to find them.  And the great thing about shopping at Asian markets is that they are so cheap. I recommend buying any Asian ingredients at your local Asian grocery even if they have the item at your regular grocery store, because it will be twice as big and a quarter of the price.

So the first step to making this recipe is soaking the noodles ahead of time in warm water for about an hour.  Then I put them in boiling water for 45-50 seconds.  That's what the package recommends for soup.  For stir fry it recommends that you can just stir fry in oil for a few minutes (which is what I do with Pad Thai).  I wasn't sure which category the drunken noodles fell into so I boiled them, and it seemed to come out the texture I wanted.  But you can choose which you think works better.

Cut up the veggies.  I love how pretty they are... such vibrant and contrasting colors.

So one of the key ingredients is the Thai Basil.  This is different then regular Basil.  If you have no other option you can use regular Basil but it's not quite the same.  So if you are able to get it, take the extra trip to get the good stuff. It's totally worth it!

The other key ingredient is Thai Chili peppers.  You totally don't need that many to make it hot.  I halved the total recipe  and only had 4 Thai Chilies and it was totally hot enough.  Though that is totally dependent on your level of tolerance for hotness.  For this recipe to taste really genuine, it really needs to have a kick to it.   And look at all that garlic... Mmm, yummy!

Look at all that yummy goodness. It was totally delicious and tasted like a dish from a true Thai restaurant.  I love to go out to eat, but sometimes it's nice to be able to get the same food at only a fraction of the price.  

 If you want to try the recipe yourself:  Drunken Noodles from Epicurious.

Note:  I followed the recipe and used chicken the first time.  It turned out exactly right.  The next time I made the recipe, I used tofu.  Unfortunately the tofu didn't soak up the hotness the same way the chicken did, so it was a lot less flavorful.  I still would like to figure out how to make it with tofu so that I can add it to my meatless dish collection.  I'll update you when I figure out how to successfully do that.