School Banner

The photograph above is my eldest daughter holding the school banner that she made for school.

The school were holding their annual sports day and asked the pupils to design some posters and bring them in for that day. My daughter had to do one better and bring in a large banner!

She made this at home in her room, only coming out to ask for glue and staples, she kept it as a surprise until she had finished it all by herself.  I was quite surprised by the size, but she managed to hold it ok on the day!

The photograph below is a closer look at the poster.

The wording on the banner is 'Emerald' which is the school house colour she is in. The banner is made up of 12 sheets of coloured A4 paper. She put quite a bit of work into this and considering it is the first banner she has made I think she did quite well.

Pirate Hat Tutorial

Today's post shows you how I made the Pirate Hat shown in the photograph above.

My daughter will be dressing up as a pirate at school next week, so I have been searching and asking for help on ideas to make her a pirate costume.  She was not happy about dressing up as a boyish pirate, so I have had to try to think of ways to make the outfit more girly!

An idea that someone mentioned to me, was using a normal pink cowboy hat and transform it into a pirate hat, these hats can normally be found in some of the pound/dollar shops. My intention was to go and have a look in these shops, however I was really lucky in finding a red and silver cowboy hat at my son's school fair and it only cost 40p.

Below is a photograph of the original hat before I did any work on it.

Step 1: Find a picture of a skull and crossbones, print and cut out a template.
Step 2: Use the template to cut out some white and red felt pieces.

Photo below shows the felt pieces for the applique.

Step 3: Sew the eyes and nose onto the skull, also hand sew a mouth onto the skull.
Step 4: Pin the brim of the cowboy hat to the top of the hat in three pieces, see first photo for example.
Step 5: Sew on the skull applique to the front of one of the upturned sides of the hat brim. (You will need to unpin the brim to make it easier) Use any style for effectiveness.

See a close up photo (sorry for the quality) of the skull sewn to the hat brim.

Step 6: Hand stitch the folded up brims to the top of the hat so that they are secured tightly.
Step 7: Add decoration, I added some pink feathers.

Below is another photo of the completed pirate hat.

Even though this was an adult size hat, it fits my 4 year old daughter really well. At first I thought I might have to add some padding inside, but there wasn't any need for it.  Now I need to start work on the rest of the outfit.

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Laminated Placemats

The photograph above shows the new placemats I made for my girls.  Their original ones (which I made last April) were now a bit worn around the edges.

I used the Picnik site, which makes things a lot easier and they have better font choices than normal word documents.  Once I had the design I wanted, I then imported the picture into a word document to print. (Maybe there is a different way to do this, but this is the way I have always done it!) Then I printed the design onto A4 Cardstock. Then using A4 laminated pouches I laminated the card to make the placemats.  Depending on what design you use, you could use these laminated cards for various other things.  Some examples are door signs or file dividers.

I think I will have to do a blog about my 'Organising Habit' one day.  I can't live without my lists and charts, otherwise my life would be topsy turvy.  I know this post is a duplicate, but when I first posted this I didn't have any followers!

The Versatile Blogger Award

Yeah, I was recently awarded the Versatile Blogger Award.  My other blog has won this three times and I was waiting for one of my followers to forward the award onto this blog. 

I want to say a big thank you to Aprile at http://www.thesteadyhandblog.com/ who nominated me for this award last month. I know they are not true awards but I am happy to accept and it is nice to pass around some links!

This award comes with some rules.
 Here are the rules:

• Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.
• Tell us seven things about yourself
• Award fifteen recently discovered new bloggers
• Contact these bloggers and let them know they’ve received their award

My 15 Bloggers are:
http://www.accidentallyangela.com/
http://www.andreasartz.blogspot.com/
http://www.everythingjeanette.blogspot.com/
http://www.heavenlyhandmade.blogspot.com/
http://www.itsabouttimemamaw.blogspot.com/
http://www.jeanette-myownfourcorners.blogspot.com/
http://www.jembellish.blogspot.com/
http://www.marlieandme.com/
http://www.northwestmommy.com/
http://www.onemixedbag.com/
http://www.sevenclowncircus.com/
http://www.teufelhundenfarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.meyouandcreamedcorn.blogspot.com/
http://www.jasonandcassieclarkson.blogspot.com/
http://www.ninthstreetnotions.blogspot.com/

Here are 7 things about me:

1. My favourite actor is Brad Pitt
2. When I was young I wanted to be a nurse
3. My favourite food is Cous Cous
4. I love upcycling things
5. I am 5ft 7in tall
6. I love to eat banana sandwiches
7. I am a planner geek, I love to organise 

Thanks again to Apile for her thoughts.

Upcycled doll dress - Mini Tutorial

The photograph above shows the miniature red and white matching school dress I made for my youngest daughter's doll.

My youngest wanted her doll to have a red and white dress similar to the one that she wears for school. These can't be bought in shops, so I set about making one for her.  I found an old school dress which was too small, so decided to use the fabric from this.

Below is a photograph of the dress before I cut it up and the completed dress beside it. I apologise for the fact I didn't iron the dress first.

I started by unpicking all the joins, so I had a collar, 2 straps and 3 pieces of generous fabric. I then found a dress that already fitted the doll and made a rough template for the size of the dress. See an example photo below.

I decided to make the front of the dress by using the front from the original dress.  This was great, because I had the button closing front already completed for me. I simply sewed the spare buttons onto the smaller version, in between the original ones. I only sewed these onto the front for decoration, I didn't make any new buttonholes. I thought it would be to complicated for my littlest to fasten so many buttons!

I sewed the front of the dress to the back of the dress, leaving the armholes and neck line open.  I shortened the neck collar and then reattached it to the dress.  I used the straps to make the short sleeves, I simply attached them to the arm opening. Then with the spare strap I made a simple bow for the back of the dress. See photo below of the back of the dress.

Then with some of the spare fabric I made a strap and attached it to the bottom of the dress. This made it look neat and also match the arms.  When I was putting the parts together, I hand stitched most of them first, and then I went over all the joins with the sewing machine.  This was my preferred method, maybe not the best, but it was quite fiddly doing this with a small dress so I found this way easier for me.

The photograph above shows my youngest holding her doll, both of them wearing their school uniforms.  She was so pleased with her doll's new dress that she took the doll to school to show her teachers.

I had hoped that I would finish this project quickly, but because it was quite fiddly for me, it did take a whole night of working on it!  However, I am very happy with the result, and glad it pleased my daughter.

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