[crafter] stork door hanger

My husband and I didn't find out the gender of our sweet Little One until birth. Which made preparation hard. But that didn't phase me! I was a machine! Rolling out homemade stuff left and right. Check out the baby blanket and crib bedskirt I made!

I wanted to announce to the world that I had a baby. Yep. It would be my proudest moment, becoming a Mommy. So I wanted something to hang on the door to announce baby's arrival. A wreath? Nah. A big baby rattle? Nah. A giant marquee? YES! No, the hubby wouldn't allow that probably.

Well, what brings a baby? A stork! (We all wish it were that easy.) So I got on Etsy and looked for a stork. And they were all adorable. But too much money for this gal. Plus I just really wanted it a certain way. Haven't you figured that out about me yet? And let's not forget to mention that we didn't know what we were having. So I'd have to buy two. TWO?!?! No thanks. So why not make my own?! It'd be cheaper. And I'd get it done MY way.

So you need:
* a few yards of white burlap (my stork was about a yard tall so I got 2.5 yards)
* pencil & eraser
* black and orange Sharpies
* glue gun & glue OR stapler & staples
* letter stickers
* paint (blue or pink depending on gender - I of course had to do both)
* some examples of stork pictures to guide you - I used Google Images & searched Stork clip-art
* scissors
* some burlap twine or ribbon to hang it
* grocery bags to stuff it (probably want white bags with minimal writing on them)
* fishing line
* 3 clothespins (optional)

1. First, double your fabric and hand draw a stork on it. Please note that I'm NOT an artist. I'm not even close. I used this step by step guide actually - minus the baby's head. And hah! It worked!

2. Make yourself a banner to go across the stork's chest. I used this picture to help me. And of course I had to make two since one would be for a boy and one for a girl.

3. Cut it out.

4. Do the same thing and make the baby's little carrying bag thingy. Then paint each of them.

Now, let me pause here to say this. If you know the gender of the baby, just draw the banner on the stork and paint them both there.

 

5. Get your black and orange Sharpies and outline your stork and color in the legs and beak.

6. Add the sticker letters to the banner.

7.  I added small dots to the baby bag/blanket thingy from the scraps of the burlap using hot glue.

8. Cut out your stork leaving about 2 inches or more around the actual drawing. Remember to have two pieces here - a front & back.

9. Glue or staple the two pieces together. Leave a small opening here and there to stuff it.

10.  Fill the stork with the white plastic grocery sacks or white tissue paper. I find the grocery sacks are the best because a) best example of recycling/reusing and b)it makes it waterproof inside where the tissue paper wont. Of course if it gets wet you might be in trouble anyway with the Sharpie ink & all.

11. Add the twine on top to hang it.

12. I had to use fishing line to connect the bottom of the head of the stork to it's body otherwise it bent terribly.

13. Finished and hung with care!

My mom dropped by the house to pick a few things up for us after Baby was born. While there she hung the stork and added the banner and bag thingy. What is that thing called? I also made a pink bow to hang at the top and I guess it blew off before I could take the picture =(

I loved it!

I also bought a garden flag that she put out for me, too.

Of course I bought one for a boy, too. Perhaps I'll use it with a future baby! But for now it hangs in the garage still in its wrapper! =)

So anyway, I only had to buy the burlap and letter stickers for this project, totaling around $20. With the effort, some might just prefer to buy one, but not me! ;o) Again, I had a sense of pride when folks stopped by and asked where I got it. It was fun to say "well, actually I made it..."

Look at me! Little miss crafty homemaker!

Hey you can see my crib bedskirt project on the ironing board in the background!

[crafter] Nursery bedding - baby blanket

I'm a homemaker and I'm a crafter. Yep, that's me. And when preparing for a new baby last summer, I found that I could make most of the things for baby's nursery. Read my other post about making a crib skirt.

This time I was going to make a blanket to lay in the crib for baby. It sounded simple enough. Find a fabric I liked, cut it into a square, then hem it. Right? Yeah, not for this lady right here! I decided I wanted one side a patten and the other side minky. And while I'm at it, why not add a little ric rac in between?

I hopped on Pinterest and found motivation and tutorials. But THE BEST one is here at Sew4Home.com. I used the Mama Bear Ric Rac Blanket tutorial. It was so easy! Mine ended up about 34" square. And it's the perfect size. I will say that sewing Minky is dl;fh;fkjh;ewuohk;jdfh!!!!! It stretches so I'd sew sew sew and then get to the end and have all this fabric left over. Even when I pinned it. I'm not sure of the solution for this. Maybe someone with better sewing skills could shed some light on it. I ended up having to cut it a few times. If you look closely at my finished product, you might scoff.

But this is for a baby and Baby doesn't notice! At least she hasn't said anything about it...

I used 1 yard of Charcoal Minky from Fabrics.com.

And I bought 1 yard of gray damask from Hobby Lobby.

Check out that baby bump!

To quote from my other post: "As you can see from my informative photo, it was 8.99 a yard and then 30% off. This was the summer of 2013 so prices may be different now. What I did was go all over town and take pictures of the fabrics I liked. Then I used a handy photo editing app on my iPhone to add the prices. When I got home, voila! I had a little photo gallery of fabrics to ponder while resting my pregnant derrière."

I also ordered 5 yards of 1 1/2'' Jumbo ric rac fom Fabrics.com (I had some left over, too). 

I washed everything before I used it. After cutting all the fabric, I pinned the ric rac to the right side of the damask fabric.

Then I waddled over to my sewing machine and stitched the ric rac in place.

Next I pinned the minky to the damask, right sides together, and left a gap on one side so that I could turn it inside out later (or outside in?!).

The next step sucked. This is when I sewed the pieces together and struggled to get the minky to stay. I kept having to bunch it up and then still ended up cutting it off. Oops. My fiished blanket has a weird shape to it because of this. But what's the trick to sewing minky to something? Anyone know!?!?

After finally finishing that crap, I mean step, I turned it inside out and used my iron to press the opened edge in place.

After the topstitch, I was done! 

If you liked this, please use Sew4Home's tutorial. Remember it was the Mama Bear Ric Rac Blanket (they have three blanket tutorials in that link). I printed it out and used it step by step, and other than my minky fiasco, it was so great. I absolutely love Baby's quilt! And I couldn't be prouder to say I made it. 8 months pregnant and all.

[crafter] Nursery bedding - crib bedskirt

A homemaker is a "crafter." I don't believe that's a word actually. But it doesn't matter. Because in this blog I can do whatever I want!

I have a 6 month old baby girl. And I spent all last summer getting ready for her. My husband and I decided I would be pausing my teaching career to be a Mommy, so we had to learn to live on one income. But again, we were trying to get our home (and minds) ready for a baby. So how in the world did I prepare a nursery on a budget?! I made things, that's how.

But I'm not going to fib. Part of the reason I made most of the things in her nursery is because I knew exactly what I wanted and if I couldn't find it in the stores or online, I was going to make it. I told my husband I was saving us so much money (which is true), but mostly I didn't want him to know how much of a perfectionist Mommy I was turning in to.

Bedding.

That word alone caused me great stress. For starters, my husband and I were waiting until the birth to find out the gender of our Little One. So when looking for bedding for the nursery, I had to stick to neutrals. Which is so boring. But grey. Grey, you see, is making a come-back. Speaking of, is it grey or gray? I really don't know. Perhaps I'll alternate the spelling so that I give each a fighting chance.

Anyway. So I get on Pinterest and search gray nurseries and SO MANY cute ideas popped up. Then I got on Google Images and did a search. Equally many popped up. You might say I had become obsessed with it. That's good! Right? Because I was getting lots of ideas. But as I clicked here and there and looked at the bedding, my mind filled with dread of paying hundreds of dollars on a bedskirt and a quilt. And then there was the talk of bumpers.

"They're dangerous for babies."

"No they aren't. If a baby can roll into them, then that means they're capable of rolling away from them."

All this sounded like a good excuse to avoid buying bumpers until later.

But I still needed a bedskirt and a quilt or little blanket/comforter of some kind. And honestly I knew exactly what I wanted and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE.

So I got back on Pinterest (a recurring theme with me, you'll find) and searched for a DIY crib bedskirt. And I was pleasantly shocked to see how inexpensive and easy this would be! Excellent! I used this tutorial (by Splash of Something) and also just kinda winged it. Afterall, you're essentially getting four rectangles, hemming them, and sewing them together.  How hard is that?!

I'll pause here to say I'm no sewing expert. Though I wouldn't call me a novice either. My mother taught me to sew when I was younger. I took Home Ec and made me a sweet pair of cotton shorts. My grandmother bought me a sewing machine when I got married. Up until now I've used it to adjust the size of dress pants and maybe hem a thing or two. But I'm not really a perfectionist on the machine. I couldn't care less about straight lines or matching thread or tension or any of that stuff. I just sew. And if I screw it up, well, that's what seam rippers are for.

So my first task is to figure out how much fabric I needed. So I took my 7 month pregnant behind into the nursery and measured. I measured from the ground to the bottom of the mattress holder thingy and then across the length of all the sides. We bought a white Jenny Lind crib and I couldn't wait to get it "dressed"!

Next task -find fabric. I knew I wanted grey & white stripes and gray damask. I wanted the stripes mostly with a little bit of damask at the bottom. I found the grey damask at Hobby Lobby.

Check out the baby bump & sneakers there!

As you can see from my informative photo, it was 8.99 a yard and then 30% off. This was the summer of 2013 so prices may be different now. What I did was go all over town and take pictures of the fabrics I liked. Then I used a handy photo editing app on my iPhone to add the prices. When I got home, voila! I had a little photo gallery of fabrics to ponder while resting my pregnant derrière.

I couldn't find a gray striped fabric at any of the stores around here. So I went to fabrics.com and found it there!

Once I got all my fabric, I was overwhelmed with cutting it. In fact, that was my least favorite part. For starters, I was hugely pregnant for crying out loud. And this required me to lay out all the fabric on the floor and crawl around cutting it. Plus I hate the pressure of cutting straight lines on such large pieces of fabric. I used old fashioned scissors (though I should have used a rotary cutter) and a tape measure. And I'm certain all my lines were crooked. But I don't care. And I knew Little One wasn't going to turn its nose up at my cutting job. Wait, right?!

I then decided that I wanted something in between the fabrics. I found some Bias Tape Cord Piping (I have no idea what each of those words mean alone in reference to sewing much less strung together) at Wal-Mart and decided that would do the trick!

I pinned the fabrics together with the piping in between & then sewed! I then hemmed all the sides.

I wasn't sold on the idea of sewing all 4 sides together like a real bedskirt. A crib's bedskirt will change as you lower the mattress. Why would I do more work that's only going to be a nuisance later on? So I found this fabulous idea.

And did it! Only I decided against the ribbon and went with paper clips. Yep, paper clips. And why not? They make great hooks. And I have a billion of them around here.

I just snipped little holes in the fabric every so often and slipped a paper clip through. My husband frowned when he first saw them, but he's over it now. Here in a few months when we have to lower the mattress and I have to pull the bedskirt up, there will be no frowns!

Anyway, this was SUCH an easy project. I could have made it even easier on myself and only done one fabric, but again with the whole "I-know-what-I-want" mentality that I've got going. I'm so pleased with the outcome.

define: homemaker

A homemaker is a person whose main job is to take care of his or her own family home and children. - wikipedia

homemaker - a person who manages the household of his or her own family, especially as a principal occupation - dictionary.com

homemaker - a wife who does work (such as sewing, cleaning, or cooking) at home and usually does not have another job outside the home merriam-webster.com

These are all very nice definitions. But I like using the word itself to define it. A homemaker is simply someone who makes a home.

I make my house a home by filling it with family and friends. And adding touches here and there that bring me delight. I try to keep it {relatively] clean. I cook my family meals. I make and create the ornamentations that adorn the walls and furniture. I'm not the best at any of this. But I do it because I love my family. And I actually enjoy it when it turns into a success!

These are the stories of my adventures as I attempt to define "homemaker."