More Crafting...

For Christmas 2009, I decided to take a "homemade" approach. We made most of our gifts and I had a lot of fun doing it. In Matthew's family, we draw names and I drew my sister-in-law, Jenny. As soon as I picked her name I knew what I wanted to make for her. I bookmarked this tutorial in my Google Reader from the fabulous Sew, Mama, Sew! website and was waiting for the perfect person to use it on. While making the Car CD Holder for Jenny, I also made two for me (one for each visor in my car). The tutorial was very easy and I was excited about the finished product, Jenny was too! I paired the gift with a g.c. to iTunes! :D

The next gift was for my nephew, Drew. I found also found these two patterns on Sew, Mama, Sew! The Toddler Backpack is already a favorite of mine! I decided to use flannel for the main fabric and canvas for the straps. The tutorial was easy to use, the only difficult part was adding Velcro to the front of the backpack and turning the straps after stitching them (always the most time consuming)! Drew looks pretty adorable with his backpack and I hear it makes for a great church bag!

My sister-in-law, Jill's birthday is Christmas day, so I decided to make her a Linen Apron. I thought it would be a cute idea to scale it down and make a matching one for my niece, Grace, so I did, with the help of my mother-in-law. This pattern was really difficult to follow as the measurements were in centimeters, so the conversion was difficult, but they turned out so adorable!! Both have hand-stitched embroidery and we used a linen-looking fabric instead of real linen because linen wrinkles so easily. Grace's is a little different from Jill's, but they match which I think is just so darling!

The last two projects were some of my favorite and most time consuming. I made two different magnet boards with matching magnets. I bought the boards from Robert's Crafts and then sanded and painted them. For the magnets, I used the following tutorial. I had made magnets before, but this time I sealed them with decoupage to help seal the paper to the rock, so the heaviness of the magnet doesn't rip the paper off the rock. The first set of pictures is the magnet board I made for my mother-in-law. They will be building a home this summer, my plan is to get pictures printed for the board for Mother's day. The second set of pictures was for my family in AZ, I loved getting the picture printed and organizing them on the board.

Overall, I think the projects turned out well! I'll definitely be making them for my family and home someday!

The Bag Lady

I've found a love for bags, especially when I can make them into whatever I want, all the while choosing the perfect fabric for each person/bag. I decided to make my cute sister-in-law, Jenny, some practical bags that she could use for her job. She's a 3rd grade teacher and is constantly bringing stuff to and from her class room every day.

I looked at two different patterns and then merged the two to create hers. I actually made one for me first to make sure the measurements and everything turned out okay. I use mine all the time and would love to make more, soon hopefully!! My sewing list is about a mile long! :D

Jenny and her cute bags!

They are cotton on the outside and canvas inside. The straps are also double lined with canvas and then the cotton overlay. Super sturdy and oh so cute! :D

My cute Bernina, was able to embroider "Made with love" on the inside.

The other bag I made, I love just as much. It definitely has its own function. I was able to start and finish it conference weekend and am so happy with the finished product. The bag is gigantic!!! I brought it to work a few times and people made fun of me, so now I use it for my Nursery bag and it couldn't be more perfect. The pattern is by Amy Butler and is available for purchase here. I made the large Betty Shopper Bag and I love it. I'd like to try the smaller version one of these days and compare them.

People have asked me about the Amy Butler patterns. They aren't the easiest to read/follow/understand. I suggest reading through all of the instructions a couple times before starting the project, but for the most part I didn't think it was that bad.

The fabric I used was an Amy Butler Home Decor fabric that was pricey, but I fell in love and it was the first sewing project I did for myself, so it was justified. The inside fabric was Moda fabric that I also love. The bag has surprised me in durability, especially as the straps are just knotted through grommets.

Outside Bag

Inside of the bag: large enough to fit my scriptures on one side...

...and my crayons and materials on the other. It also have 4 VERY large pockets, two on each side.

Girl's Camp 2009

Girl's Camp was months ago, but I've had several of you ask me what exactly I was up to in this post. Our Girl's Camp theme was: I Strive to Be G.R.E.E.N. (Grateful, Respectful, Energetic, Example and Nice). Each day at camp we focused on one of the acronyms of G.R.E.E.N.

I wanted to get the girls excited for Camp, so I decided to pass out little treats with cute sayings on them the last month before camp. One of the focuses, was to be "Green" or environmentally friendly, so I found a font online that had different pictures and symbols which represented recycling, tree huggers, etc. I also used this font throughout the process.

Barnum's Animal Crackers with the saying: "Don't worry about living like an animal for a week, we do it all the time". Then there is a recycling symbol below that and the Girl's Camp theme at the bottom.

This treat was Chocolate Covered Cinnamon Bears that said: "YW Field Guide to Bear Identification" in a Bear font that I found online for free :D This also included a recycling symbol and the Camp Theme at the bottom.

Pop Rocks: "Camp Rocks"

Fruit & Nut Granola Bar: "There a little Fruit and Nut in all of us"

Another idea I did, but didn't take a picture of:
Little Baggy with 2 Golden Grahams, 1 small marshmallow and 1 chocolate chip: "Want S'more?"



Each ward was in charge of providing notebooks for the music, instead of making each leader their own, since our turnover is really high, I decided to make 1 for each position (YW President, 1st Counselor, 2nd Counselor, Secretary, Camp Director, Camp Assist. Director).

For one of our pre-camp activities the girls decorated their binders and they will get to keep them when they turn 18. They all turned out so cute and I think the girls really enjoyed making them.

Now, onto the main event. As soon as I heard about the theme, I went crazy and started thinking about all of the fun things I could create. Last year we purchased canvas totes from Robert's and decorated them with puff paints and fabric stars. I wanted to do something more practical, so this is what I came up with:

We took these swatches...

and after trying 3 different kinds of canvas, we found the one that would work perfectly...

we started cutting, and measuring...

all the while, trying to keep track of whose was whose...
my mother-in-law was a saint to help me out, and the sewing began...
the project was finally starting to take shape...
The final project....a drawstring backpack and matching journal.

Two cute pockets in the front of the backpack, one for the journal and one for a water bottle.

The journal below I made with the help of my sweet friend (2nd Counselor at the time) Dorothy. She was a saint through all of my madness. We also used her mother's embroidery machine to embroider each of the girl's names on the inside of their journal.
Our older girls, came and helped us pick out a button that would fit each girl's personality and make them original. I was so impressed with their skills and how mindful they were of each girl.

I found some of this fabric at the fabric store and knew I had to create something and incorporate it into our theme somehow...

so I made these little buttons for their backpacks.

Then I took all of the scraps...

and made a cute fabric banner for our cabin! It includes a piece from each girl's fabric that they chose for the backpack and journals, although they didn't know what they were choosing the fabric for.

While the girls were away at flag ceremony, we put the backpacks with all sorts of goodies on the table.

Our Girl's Camp flag below: It includes two separate pieces from each of the different fabric. The girls put their names on the squares at the top and their year of camp on the rectangles at the bottom. My favorite part...we used glow-in-the-dark puff paint!!!!

And finally, one of the crafts we made at camp was a block with the Mutual Theme on it.
Front:

Back:

I realize now, this is an extremely LONG post with lots of pictures, but I've been wanting to share for a long time! About two weeks after Girl's Camp ended, I was released. And a short month or two later my husband and I were called as the Nursery Leaders. Now we spend our Sundays playing with 18 month to 3 year olds and have enjoyed their little spirits and their ever abundant energy.

HUGE sewing project

This is my second year as the Girl's Camp Director in my ward. As soon as camp was over last year, I started thinking about ideas for Girl's Camp this year. All my friends will tell you that I'm pretty much obsessed when it comes to camp. Just the other day I did a service project for Relief Society Enrichment and the whole time I was there I kept asking myself how we could do that same service project up at Girl's Camp.

This year our Stake Girl's Camp Theme is: "I Strive to be G.R.E.E.N. (Grateful, Respectful, Energetic, Example, Nice). We'll be incorporating ways to be environmentally friendly along with all of the other qualities that G.R.E.E.N. stands for. I was so excited when I first heard about the theme, my wheels immediately started turning...


Unfortunately, I can't give you the details about the project until AFTER Girl's Camp because the girl's don't even know what I'm doing (My girls look at my blog to see if they can find out what's going on). They have seen these green strips of fabric, in fact they got to pick out which one they wanted, but again they don't know what it's for. This is what I spent hours and hours on the first weekend I got my sewing machine. My wonderful MIL helped me sew and even came down this last weekend to help me finish the first half of the project. It's always so rewarding to see everything fall into place. :) I'll keep you posted on the project and I promise I'll post the whole thing in just a few short months!