Audrey's "A" Pillow

Another member of the "second generation" of kids from our playgroup, Audrey, just turned one year old....  This sweet little girl is such a joy to play with!  She's busy honing her walking skills, growing hair (she's a hair-challenged beauty just like Sonia was at age 1!), chatting up a storm, and idolizing her older sister, Ella.  When I was trying to figure out what to crochet her for her birthday, her mom mentioned that Audrey seems to like Mickey & Minnie Mouse (she dances to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song).  Great!!!, I thought.  I'm sure there have to be a million awesome Minnie Mouse crochet patterns out there.

Shockingly, I found very little.  I'm not sure if it's because Disney keeps a tight rein on their most important characters (although if the crochet pattern is free, I think there's not a copyright issue), or if Mouse lovers just don't happen to be crocheters.....  Nothing was inspiring me at all.  Even the one or two Minnie Mouse amigurumis I found were really weird-looking.  Not all characters translate well into amigurumi, especially ones whose eyes are their most defining feature (after the ears, Minnie & Mickey's eyes are definitely their best assets).  I was afraid to try to come up with my own pattern and have the resulting amigurumi give poor little Audrey nightmares.  When I was perusing Pinterest, I suddenly hit upon a fun idea: a pillow in the shape of an A!  And I could even appliqué a Minnie Mouse symbol on it!  Here is the result:

I used a free pattern I found on the internet (more than half of the alphabet's letters are available on this site), an F hook, and a mix of Caron One Pound (worsted weight acrylic) and Red Heart With Love (also supposedly worsted weight acrylic) yarns.  Once again, as with Daniel Tiger, I ran into trouble by mixing my yarns.  The pink Red Heart With Love yarn worked up a MUCH smaller A than the lavendar Caron One Pound yarn.  Whoops.  Stupid stupid stupid!!!  So, I had to add several rows of a border around the pink half so they would match when I sewed them together.  Oh well.

I free-handed the Minnie Mouse appliqué (easy when the iconic symbol is just three circles joined together!!) and sewed it on.

To give an idea of the scale of the pillow, Sonia posed next to it (while wearing her favorite American flag dress):

Happy birthday, Audrey!

Daniel's Daniel Tiger

This month, Sonia's buddy, Daniel, turned two years old.  Daniel is the oldest of the "second generation" of kids in our beloved playgroup, and he is the sweetest little dude!  He is always up for having fun and can put away food like you cannot believe.  For his birthday, his mom (who also crochets) and I kicked around several ideas of items for me to crochet, but nothing was inspiring me.  There is a shocking lack of cute crocheted truck patterns, and I didn't have enough time to come up with my own pattern.  When his mom reminded me that Daniel loves Daniel Tiger (from the PBS cartoon "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood"), I decided to give it a try.

Surprisingly, just like Strawberry Shortcake, no one has posted any pictures on the internet of a Daniel Tiger amigurumi yet.  Yes, it is a fairly new show for PBS (it's a spin-off of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood), but this tiny tiger is so darn cute that he is begging to be crocheted.  I used a basic doll pattern that I have used once or twice before, and just winged it from there.  Behold:

Here's what Daniel Tiger looks like in his TV show:

Now to be nit-picky about how my Daniel Tiger amigurumi turned out: HIS HEAD IS TOO SMALL!!!!  I used an F hook and Red Heart Super Saver acrylic yarn for all the colors except for the orange; for that, I used Red Heart With Love, which is also supposed to be worsted weight, but whatever they do to make it a bit softer than Super Saver also makes it a wee bit thinner.  Whoops.  I should know better than to mix types of yarn, but I really wanted to use this color ("mango"), and it wasn't available at Jo-ann's Fabric in the Super Saver variety.  In the future, if I mix Super Saver and With Love on a project, I'm going to need to make some adjustments to take the difference in yarn weight into account.  As I told the other moms in the playgroup, I crocheted "Daniel Tiger after a visit to the head-shrinking psychiatrist".

I had a bit of trouble with his nose, too-- I kind of want to steal the amigurumi back and re-do it.  But Daniel (the kid) seemed to really love his new crocheted buddy, so he might not let me steal it back.

The other nit-pick comes not from me, but from Sonia.... She was mad that the hood isn't big enough to actually cover Daniel Tiger's head (even as small as that head is-- ha!!).  But if I made the hood big enough to be used properly, it would have looked a bit ridiculous and out of proportion.  In the cartoon, Daniel Tiger's hood is shown just as I crocheted it: unusable.  Apparently, that tiger is interested in form over function when it comes to clothing.

Happy birthday to Daniel!

Joann's yarn bag

Even before I sewed Erin's yarn bag, I was already scheming to make another one for her friend, Joann, who also crochets.  I didn't have enough of the same material, so I decided to use some other fabrics from my stash.  I stitched on a "J" so her little monkeys (Evan and Daniel) wouldn't somehow think it was theirs to stuff with Batman or Daniel Tiger amigurumis.  Heh.  Anyhoo, the bag was photographed before it got the cord stopper, because I ran out and Erin was going to put one on from her stash back up in Illinois.

Side Tie Bag with some extra features

I made a different Side Tie Bag last week (but haven't posted about it yet because it has yet to be given to the recipient!) and liked it, but though it needed a couple of things.  I love interior zipper pockets and it would be nice if the purse also zipped close (or used a magnetic snap) at the top.  Erin wanted me to make her a purse using the pleather I had sewn the Hobo Bag with, so I decided this was going to be the project.  She also loves interior pockets in a purse and she preferred that the purse zip closed at the top.

Check out the cute pleather gusset and the side ties!  I used parachute cord instead of sewing fabric ties, because they look way cooler.

In order to put in an interior pocket, I couldn't use the technique I normally used because it would fight with the seam in the multi-panel lining.  So, I decided to stick the zipper between two of the panels in the lining, adding some material at the ends of the zipper to fill in the gap.  I totally winged it and probably couldn't recreate the exact method if I tried, but I think it worked out surprisingly well.  Probably would have looked cuter with a white zipper, but I was out of them and impatience won over aesthetics.  The lining fabric matches Sonia's May Day Skirt!

But the coolest part is the gusset zipper I winged for the top.  I couldn't put it all the way down the width of the bag because it would have interfered with the side ties, but I think the purse still opens up enough with the shorter zipper.

The only problem with this bag is that now I want it.  Darn it!

Sonia's May Day Skirt

Oops -- I forgot to write a post after I finished Sonia's May Day Skirt that I sewed for her birthday two months ago!  She wore it when she and Erin visited this week, but I didn't take any glamor shots of her in it.  I did get some action shots of her from our visit to the Henry Ford Museum, though.  She looked super stinkin' cute in it!

I used white piping rather than the denim flat piping (like in Charlotte and Shelby's May Day skirts), and it looks very fun.  Love that eyelet material!!!

Birthday shirts

I have been busy making the number appliqué birthday shirts for a lot of little friends.

I am still kicking myself for not taking a photo of the "7" shirt I made for our friend, Mia. It was the highest number yet!  These ones were made for Whitney (the pink with the "2"), Harry (the orange with the "2"), and Declan (the black with the "3"). The 3T-sized shirt I bought for Whitney at Jo-Ann's looks remarkably bigger than the 3T shirt I used for Harry's shirt.  I hope Harry's fits!  I guess we'll find out when I give it to him tomorrow.

These are for Maisie and Quinn. I'm not sure why I didn't make one for Quinn when he turned 4 in February, but I decided he needed one if I was making Maisie one for her 3rd birthday in August.

I know I'm not super consistent with the sizes of numbers, but I always use Ariel Black for the font.  I have considered other fonts, but that one allows for the greatest surface area (to showcase the fabric better) and doesn't have a bunch of fiddly things on the ends (easier to sew around!).  Maybe someday I will branch out to another font.  Maybe not.  Next up is a "4" shirt for Petey's buddy, Ben, for his birthday!  Gotta go find some trail fabric for that one.

Yarn bag

After seeing this post by a lady who crocheted her own bag to use for holding her yarn while crocheting, I knew I had to recreate it for Erin.  I looked up a tutorial for a simple drawstring bag, altered the dimensions, altered the construction a bunch to get rid of all the darn raw edges on the inside (fabric shedding all over the yarn just wouldn't do), and added an applique "E" to it just for fun (or so Sonia will know not the steal the bag?).  It turned out just as I imagined.

Here is it, stuffed with two skeins of yarn (each in its own separate part of the bag), ready to be used for crocheting:

And here it is empty.  You can only faintly see where it is sewn down the middle to make two separate compartments.

We tried it out with yarn in a skein (with the yarn coming out of the middle of the skein), and we tried it with balls of yarn, and it seems to work great for both.  Now yarn will be kept nice and clean and yarn balls won't be bouncing all over the floor.  Fun!