(like the rod stewart song)
i'm an elder millennial living in the bay area who loves dark beer, the environment, and sewing for the tiny humans in my life.
All in gifts and accessories
quick post today
a little while back i whipped up this stuffed owl. admittedly it was inspired by the cat nip toys i made fitz around the same time.
continuing my series of my favorite homemade gifts today with gifts for babies and new moms. (want to take revisit my past posts? you can find my favorite kid toys and accessories here, my favorite little girl apparel gifts here, and my favorite little boy apparel gifts can here.)
first off the obvious: who doesn't think of a onesie for a newborn gift? here is neela in her put a bird on it onesie from the lullaby layette pattern from oliver + s
yesterday i posted about my go to gifts for little girl apparel and today i'm going to post about apparel gifts for little boys.
until a few months ago i had never made clothing for a little boy. i had gotten by sewing gender neutral baby stuff and toys whenever necessary and didn't have any desire to change my approach. why sew for boys? i've got this girl thing down and it's really fun.
but when our friends had a baby boy back in june i knew it was time to get on with it and set to work on my first boy project. since then i've developed a few favorite boy apparel items i turn to when it comes time to make things for the little dudes...
for the next few days we are talking about my favorite homemade gifts for various types of occasions. yesterday i shared my favorite kid toys and accessories to give as gifts and today i'm talking about making little girl apparel as a gift.
now sewing for little girls is sort of my 'thing' so i'm breaking it down into three pieces of advice.
this is awkward but we should probably talk about how it's the holiday season. for the next few posts i am going to share my go to homemade gifts for various demographics. let's start with the obvious: kid toys and accessories.
one of my favorite gifts for new moms has become has become an infinity scarf for mom and a matching top for baby.
if it's not incredibly obvious, i love my cat. chairman percy fitzwallace aka fitz came into our lives this january and is never leaving.
growing up with dogs i never thought I would be a cat person, but I am definitely a fitz person.
today i am going to share a tutorial for some owl shaped cat nip toys i made him.
when i moved to california two years ago i had grand dreams of refurbishing or making all our home furnishings.
i was going to find a vintage school map and hang it as a funky piece of art, put $75 worth of anthropologie hardware on a $50 dresser from craigslist i lovingly refinished while listening to podcasts, and of course sew any and all fabric components of the decor along the way.
these days i am a wiser woman and have come to realize just because you can make something it doesn't mean you have to. so today i am going share my thoughts on what is worth it to make vs. what is okay to just buy.
i'm the youngest of three girls and each of my two sisters has two daughters of their own. also my mother has a sister who also has three daughters (spaced similarly to us) and three of their four babies them have been girls.
so i guess you could say there is a lot of estrogen in our family.
as previously mentioned my hippie parents didn't enforce a lot of rules.
however there were guidelines they, well really my mom, believed everyone should follow: always drive slower and more carefully than you feel is necessary (especially in bad weather), perform at least one random act of kindness each and every day, don't leave candles or anything that burns unattended (better yet just don't burn anything inside), and always say thank you.
a few years ago my retired parents, who had shunned off all pets since my childhood dog had passed away a few years earlier, woke up and decided to get a new dog. so rosie the english bulldog entered our lives.
i feel like you might need a visual to really be with me here.
sometimes it's the simplest and easiest projects that bring my nieces the most joy.
my sister sammie is exactly the kind of mom i, as the biggest recipient of her nurturing instincts for 26 years, always knew she would be. that is to say she's amazing. she's warm, caring, disciplined when need be, and most of all really fun. so when i see maya idolizing her, hanging on to her every word, and wanting nothing more than to be like sammie, i can totally relate.
when vic and I did long distance for 819 days (but who counted) one of the few things i didn't like about visiting him in california was that i couldn't bring my sewing with me. then i discovered you could do entire projects by hand. game changer.
one of the early hand sewing projects i did was birthday bunting for the girls. when i referred to them as bunting vic was incredious, insisting they couldn't be as that was something baseball players did. #allboysfamily
for the past two months all but one of my blog posts have been about old projects. (i guess is the blog version of stash busting?)
while I still have a fair amount of posts lined up i wanted to end the month by sharing more recent pictures. some updates of things you've seen before and some previews of projects i've been working on.
for the holidays a few years back i made maya a fabric memory game. it was such a hit i thought i would share a tutorial.
my sister sammie loves to cook, maya loves to help, and i love to use up scraps of fabric. so it's not surprising this apron came into existence.
this is the story of how aunt maggie won christmas.
december 2012: my nieces were incredibly into their american girl dolls or rather they were incredibly into those babies made by the american girl doll company. yes just about everything these girls did revolved around tweedy and mister dolly. (you read that right, mister dolly is what etta named her doll. in terms of cuteness that's right up there with how she calls vic 'aunt vic' or 'uncle vicky').
when maya when moved to the big kid room at her daycare my sister and i decided it was time for her first backpack.
vic had very thoughtfully gotten me the little things to sew book by oliver + s a few months earlier and i was dying to try the penguin backpack pattern. but when we found this owls all around print from the nested owls collection we knew a penguin wasn't gonna happen.
