Used Again

Sophie is actively engaging in the felt books! I am beyond excited. I know the rest of the world may not care, but it means a great deal to me to see her firstly using something that I've made, but also having developed enough to be able to do so. Here she is using this felt book.

She's gone from not even having the motor skills to open the book, let alone pick out the felt, to actually making faces on the pages. That one there, is apparently herself. Yay for growth and development! Change and progress are happening here people, and I get to be a part of it.

Off the Shelf

Last year, I made this gem and I'm excited to say that last week, Sophie took it off the shelf and had a good twenty minutes using it.

I am well pleased.

Finished Busy Book!

Last year in March, I made my very first felt book. I love it. This year, in February, I completed page one of my second attempt at a felt book. I cannot believe how long this page sat on my shelf waiting for other pages to be complete. When I wrote the to-do list last week, Felt Book was at the top of the list. I had to get it finished and now I have!

I spent the majority of spare time this week getting the bits together. It was about time really. Maybe I should take more "Work In Progress" photos, so that I can update this blog slightly more often and make it appear that I'm doing more than I seem. Then I wouldn't end up with this extremely long posts all about sewing things. Sorry non-sewing people. On to the book!

This felt book is bound and covered in some fabulous material that I made a dress for Sophie out of in January this year. When I got the material out, Sophie got all excited and tried to put it on. Pretty amusing. The book closes with a plastic snap fastener thing. I like that it looks nice and neat when all closed up. It turned out much larger than I anticipated (think A4 landscape), so it was important to have a good finish.

Page one is flowers that you can "pick" (unbutton). I was thinking I'd sew a little brown basket on to put them in. Maybe next week. I dislike sewing button holes and if I did this page again, I'd use snaps. I think they'd look and work better.

Page two has these funky balloons that you can snap off and then match up again. I've sewn the strings of the balloons down under that cute pink bow so they won't get lost either. I look at this page close up and think it's a bit messy. The stitching around the balloons is shaggy and the strings don't match. When I look from a distance though, I really like it.

Page three you already know about. Notice I still haven't fixed that lacing problem from February? :P Maybe later.

The final page has these cute kids (in their modesty gear) waiting to be dressed. The zippered thing on the right will eventually be full of felt clothes. Pretty much, I wanted to put a zip in, (more practice, though this one wasn't so bad), and this is where it went.

I had a lot of fun hand stitching the clothes and features on these guys. Hand stitching is such a great change of pace. All in all though, the book covers fine motor skills (buttons, snaps, lacing, tying and zips) as well as matching and should (in theory) keep kids occupied for quite a while. If Sophie were slightly older, it'd be a great thing for her to play with while I'm busy with bub number two. Oh well, at least it's ready for when she's no longer napping in the arvo and bub number two is.

Busy Book

Last year, I ventured into the land of felt books with this little bit of excitement and since then, it's been on the to-do list to make another. The next one, I decided long ago, would have a variety of pages that work on a different skill, rather than just encourage creativity. I know that lacing is something that is supposed to be great for kids, and after Steve wore through a pair of his old connies, I was struck with the inspiration for the first page of the book. Behold!

Is it not fabulous? Sorry about the way that it is currently laced, my original lacing did make it all the way to the top, but I thought something went wrong, tried to do it again and came out with something rather worse. Now, I can't be bothered change it. Lazyness wins again. But really, look at the lacing potential! Not to mention the excitement that might come from using it to teach how to tie shoe-laces. And it's general awesomeness from being Converse!

Page one done. I'm not sure how I'm going to sew these pages together, but something will come to me I'm sure. Now that I'm all inspired, I've done the layout (though not the actual sewing yet) for page two, which uses buttons.

This morning I completed something I've been tossing around for a while (ok, maybe a week and a half) and I feel like it came out really well. Maybe spending time thinking about what you are going to do before you do it does affect the end product. :P

So this is what it looks like. I used some ribbon that was on a present Fiona is giving Sophie for Easter and I'm sure some people will recognize the polka dots. Also used some more of the bias binding that Mum donated to the Paula-sews fund. 

When you open it up, you see this. Pretty boring right? What kind of a thing have I made my daughter anyhow? But if you flip to the back....

... you see this! And inside the pink pocket ...

... is this! All sorts of crazy bits of felt that I spent some time this morning cutting up. And with the felt you can be all creative and do ...

... this! Ok, I'm not that creative, but I'm sure my children will be. All in all I'm really happy with the finished product. As always it has it's small glitches. Sally the Sewing Machine can't get thread tension right, so the zig-zag's are messy, and the binding is a little too thin to cover the overclocked edge, but I changed the thread colours to match (most of the time) and even pinned before I sewed (most things). Well done me. :)