Felt Playhouse: Homemade Christmas Present

I had a blast making my little one a felt playhouse for Christmas and I imagine we will have a blast playing in it in the months to come!  Already all three of my boys think it's lots of fun!  Even my 9 year old gets excited about it- though my older boys' ideas of playing are a little different than mine.  (Think robbers breaking in to steal carrots compared to picking apples from the orchard and eating them at our pretend table.)

We had a little knit house that covered a card table growing up.  I remember pretending all kinds of things inside our "house."  So I've wanted to make one for my kids for awhile but never seemed to find the time. 

Then I saw this adorable felt house at homemadebyjill and was inspired!  I loved the idea of having a garden and apple tree where they can pick fruits and veggies.  I also loved how she put mesh in the windows since it can get a little stuffy in a felt house.  I copied a lot of her ideas with a little personal twist of my own.

 My lettuce leaves are a little too plumb : )  But I think the pumpkin vines turned out pretty good.  I still need to finish the actual pumpkins!

  Here's the other end of the garden with one loan corn stalk.


I had fun with my flower garden!

I decided to leave off the dog since my son has lots of stuffed animals he can carry in and out of the pet door.

In the future it will be fun to put some mail in this little mailbox.

 

I still need to finish the pumpkins and a few more apples and tiddy up a few thing- I think mine is a little too loose around the edges but all in all, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  And it was really a lot of fun to make!! 

Quilts & pillows for my boys

Last Christmas I made quilts and pillows  for my boys.  We had gotten them bunk beds earlier in the year and painted their room the color of their choice so I thought they needed some matching bedding.  I usually like Pottery Barn stuff so I got some ideas from this set.  I also had some really cute fabric from Joanne's with a Route 66 theme and since my boys love the Cars movies and anything related to cars, I thought I could incorporate that into their decor.  To top it all off, my Mom had an embroidery pattern for classic cars that fit right in with the fabric.  So I put it all together and got this:

I mixed in about 4 or 5 of the embroidered cars.  My boys thought they were really cool!  I got the pattern from Hobby Lobby.

Then I used the Route 66 fabric for the extra pillow.  I didn't get the second pillow done in time for Christmas so I told them I would finish the second soon.  Well...I just finished them this week.  I know, pretty pathetic.  But at least I finished them before this Christmas!  

My Mom taught me how to make pillows by covering piping with fabric and sewing it around the edges of the pillow.  It's really pretty simple and there are a million tutorials online about how to do it, like this one, so I won't go into much detail.  I also knew that I would need to wash the pillowcase every now and then so I used a pillow form and made the outside like a pillowcase with an envelope back.  The two pieces connect with velcro.

When they opened the boxes on Christmas morning they were so excited!!  It kind of surprised me.  But I love sewing for my boys when they like it so much!

Winter Pajamas

The weather is getting a little more frightful (at least in some parts of the world) and my boys need some warmer PJs.  Pajamas are one of the few things I can really sew for my boys these days and I'm always on the look out for fun fabric.

This is a tradition in our family.  Grandy used to make our brothers scrappy pajamas out of her scraps- a pocket from this, a sleeve from that.  I wish I had a picture because they were so cute!  Mom makes our kids PJs for birthdays and at other times- pictures for another post- that are adorable!  When it comes to sleeping we know how to dress!

So my boys have been bugging me for a few weeks to make them some pjs- I LOVE that they want them HOMEMADE.  I had found this cute fabric on fabric.com (see side button) for a steal awhile back and it's been waiting for the perfect opportunity to fulfill its potential.

A little ironic for sleepwear, don't you think? (Men at Work?)

For my oldest I used McCalls 6227 size 10.  It seems to run a tad on the large size but then my oldest is only 9.  This was a new style for me to sew and it was a cinch!  So easy!  I'm definitely using that one again!  However it is very roomy at the top so I don't know how warm and snug it will be.  Here's "keeping it real" for you- if you look closely you'll notice that the signs are upside down!!  It must have been pretty late because I didn't notice this until I'd finished sewing the top.

For my almost 7 year old I used Simplicity 3987 size 8 and it was on the small side.  It fits just about perfect but I thought it would be looser since I was using a size larger than he normally wears.

Sleep tight, my little men!