Ben's Zombie Stuffie

Smack dab in the middle of the holiday rush a couple of months ago, my 6-year-old Ben came up to me and asked if we could make a stuffie together.

The transition to First Grade has been a bit rough on my big boy: there have been meltdowns galore and less-than-stellar behavior, along with much need for hugs, cuddles and quality time together. Even though I was swamped with holiday sewing and craft show prep, I caved and said "okay".

I'm so glad I did! In just about an hour, we'd worked together on a fun little project and created an adorable plush zombie!

When we work on a project together, Ben often jumps in with a very specific idea in mind (see Halloween costumes for examples) and this was no different. He drew me a picture of the "zombie stuffie" he wanted to make, illustrated with a little cloud of polyfill.

We dove right in. Ben first chose fabric from my overflowing box of scraps: a piece of soft grey and white flannel left over from the backing of Hugo's quilt. He picked two matching emerald buttons from my button stash for the eyes. I helped him with stitching the buttons on, but he stitched the mouth on his own with bright red floss.

I layered the embroidered fabric right sides together with another. I cut out the zombie "pattern" and pinned it on the fabric, making sure to fit the embroidery in the head area. I then used my machine to sew about 1/8-1/4 inch all around the outline, leaving a 2-inch opening on the side of the torso. I carefully cut around the stitches, clipping seam allowance inside the angles between the limbs.

We turned the stuffie inside out and gently poked the limbs out with a chopstick. Ta-da!

Ben was in charge of stuffing. He needed a bit of help to make sure the polyfill made it into the arms and legs, but otherwise handled it like a pro.

I pinned and machine-stitched the opening closed, and we were done! I think it turned out super cute. It definitely looks kid-made and Ben loves it! He calls it Mingu and has slept with it every single night since we made it. So sweet! We also made a lion version for his best friend for Christmas.

I am terrible about prepping craft projects on which to work with the kiddos. I love this type of kid-led spur-of-the-moment instant gratification project. How about you?

Kindergarten Auction Art Project: Fabric Tree

Hi Angel!

I finally finished the auction art project for Ben's class and wanted to share. I am really happy with how it turned out!

I wrote a whole behind-the-scenes post on my shop blog Jenny Bartoy ~ Handmade Designs where you can see a bunch of photos and read details on the process. Meanwhile here are a few pictures of the finished project!










What do you think? I sure hope it will bring in some money at the auction. Fingers crossed!

Guest Artist: Working with Fiber in the Classroom

(All photos courtesy of Camilla Spadafino, art teacher extraordinaire!)

For the last three years, I've been lucky enough to work with Ian's art teacher and students on a collaborative project. There is a theme each year for the school, and the art projects loosely revolve around that theme. Ideally, each classroom has an adult "guest artist" volunteer that comes in to facilitate an art experience for the students. The finished pieces are displayed around the school and an Art Show and fundraiser is held one night each year.

When Ian was in Kindergarten, a friend volunteered me for the "guest artist" position during another event Ian's class was having in the art room. Prior to that, I'd thought myself crafty, but not an "artist". But was I? I'm still trying to figure that one out, but the process of creating with these 5 and 6 year old kids transformed me creatively, no doubt about that!

So far, my favorite project has been felted wool landscapes. The students had already studied landscapes in class, and were familiar with the concept. I brought in a poster board with pictures of examples of fiber art landscapes for the first class meeting, you can see I have my faithful sidekick Silas with me!



Ian's teacher, Camilla, already had multiple examples of abstract landscapes printed out, and we put gorgeous piles of fluffy wool roving at each table as well.



It's a bit tricky to see, and I don't have another photo to show, but before the class meeting I lightly needle felted natural brown wool rectangles, one for each student. These were their "canvasses" for their abstract landscapes.



Here I'm showing a few students how to pull the fibers apart.



There are so many reasons to love this project, the wool is such a wonderful material. It is soft, colorful, can be easily manipulated, doesn't make a mess, and until felting, children can change their canvasses if they wish.



After the students were done placing the wool on their canvas, I took each piece home and lightly needle felted the top. This helped to keep the fibers in place for the next part of the process, the wet felting!



This part was really fun: we placed each wool piece into a large heavy duty zipper type freezer bag and then squirted a mixture of hot water and dish soap inside. Then it was time to pound, squish (gently) and otherwise felt our wool





Voila! After about five minutes of felting inside the plastic bags, I took the bags home and rinsed each landscape in as hot of water as I could stand to continue the felting process. Almost all the wool roving stayed in place! It was very important to me to preserve each artist's vision as much as possible during the felting.



Here they are, hung on the wall! For hangers, I just threaded a piece of plain jute twine into a loop at the top of each piece.



Jen, I can't wait to see pictures of the art show from Ben's school! Be sure to take lots of photos.

Readers, have you participated in an art project or auction similar to this? I'd love to hear about it!

What's Been Keeping Me Busy...

Hi Angel!

I can't believe how this year is flying so far. I owe you an update on the crafty front! I have been so busy with my little business, which is great. I feel like things have finally kicked into a smooth, steady gear. I have had a constant stream of projects to work on, mostly custom orders. (See below for a few examples!) But eek, it's hard to stay afloat on all fronts and I feel like my blog posting has fallen by the wayside, along with my socializing. I'll try to catch you up here!

First, I wanted to show you the little Valentines I made with the kids for Valentine's Day last week. I had noticed this adorable lollipop-holding photo idea on Design Mom a while back and pinned it. The weather was horribly rainy and gloomy in the days leading up to V-day, so I had to take indoor photos of the kids, which of course were slightly blurry. They turned out pretty cute though, and were a big success with their friends!



Ben has a little friend named Angel in his class!



In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I also made some heart-y table runners for my shop. I love how these turned out, fun!






A few weeks ago, I scored a whole bunch of new fabrics from both Drygoods Design Online and Hawthorne Threads. Here are some photos to make you drool. There is some Stamped, some Bella, some Notting Hill, and more loveliness. Pretty much all of this is going into projects for my shop, though I'm thinking of saving some of that Notting Hill sateen to make a pillow for our living room.






Here are some of the custom orders I completed recently: a book cover for our friend Carrie's bible study tome, some quilted table runners, and a custom set of coasters.








Also, I am in charge of the auction art project for Ben's kindergarten class. Their curriculum is project-based, and their winter project has been "Fabrics through the world". How fortunate! As you can imagine, I've been invited to do show and tell a couple of times.

For the auction project, we've been working on a large piece of fiber art, involving fabric. I had visions of branching out from my usual burlap art and doing something edgy and cool. But all the feedback I received from the adults involved has been to stick to the type of stuff I've made from my shop, so the project will involve a tree and some birdies. Here's a glimpse at my prep work. I'll share more soon!!




I think that about rounds up all that's been keeping me busy lately. How about you? What is occupying your hands lately? What fabrics are you drooling over? What projects are getting you excited? I'd love to know!

B is for Bookmarks

Hello Angel,

I hope you're feeling better! Things are so busy here, preparing for Christmas, shipping orders from my shop, etc, that I haven't had a chance to breathe deep and fully process the tragedy in Newtown, CT.

There are so many wonderful, eloquent, thoughtful essays and articles out there about it that I don't feel the need to add more to the mix. Let it be said though, that I have not cried so much and so uncontrollably in a long time, probably since I was severely depressed a decade ago. This horrible event seems to be affecting everyone more deeply than previous similar occurrences. Probably because of the shattered innocence. My personal processing mechanism is to focus on the productive and the positive (which is why you've seen "regular" posts around here) so I've been trucking along, trying to deal as best as I can.




My lovely friend Rachael told me about ABC's Of Love: 26 Ways To Pass It On, a blog project she is working on along with other crafty friends, to encourage all of us to find simple ways to share love within our families and communities. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to channel some of my sorrow for the victims and their loved ones into a productive and positive endeavor. I decided to contribute B for Bookmarks, and share a simple project I worked on with a class of kindergartners on Friday, weirdly enough, at the exact same time I found out about the Newtown massacre.

The curriculum in Ben's kindergarten class is project-based. Their current project is "Fabrics around the world". They've talked about different fabrics, their texture and purpose. Because of my "expertise", I was invited by the teacher to do a little presentation and a project. We focused on quilts, patchwork and the amazing possibilities of fabric scraps! I had prepped a little project the previous day, and we made fabric bookmarks with the kids. They could either keep their bookmark for themselves, or give it as a gift -- and they unanimously chose gift-giving. So sweet!

Here are the 2 bookmarks I made beforehand and brought as examples:

Halloween Costume: Peregrine Falcon

Hi Angel!

I hope you're enjoying the weekend. The Daylight Savings time switch is once again kicking our butts over here, with Henry up at 4 a.m. instead of his usual 5 a.m. Yawn... It is also gross and rainy outside, so we're looking at a Sunday at home, and I need to fish something out of my bag of crafty tricks. Maybe we'll do some collage or painting, or maybe bake some cookies! That actually sounds pretty good! How about you?

I wanted to show you Ben's finished Halloween costume. I got it done on Tuesday evening, and while it was slightly last minute, it came together pretty well. Ben wore it to school on Wednesday morning for the school Halloween party and was so proud of himself!

Here's my Peregrine Falcon and his little bro Dinosaur (an old costume, made by my mom) on Halloween morning:




I changed my plans a bit after my original sketches. I ended up creating more of a poncho for the wings and body of the falcon, rather than a shell and separate wings attached to the arms. We also skipped painting spots on the front of the body.







With the thick layers of felt feathers, the poncho at first made Ben look like a big fluffy chicken. So I sewed the wing layers together with horizontal lines under the feathers, from the tip/edge to where the torso would be. This made the wings flat aside from a "tunnel" for each arm to slide through. That fixed the issue!






For the "helmet", I copied the shape and size of a winter hat, then added a few pin-tucks (is that the correct term?) until the fit was as good as it was going to get. The beak is filled with a little polyfill and painted with grey and white fabric paint. There's elastic under the chin to keep it in place. Next time, I would line the inside with a soft cotton -- Ben was a trooper and kept his helmet on the entire day but complained of itchiness.






The claws were quite tricky to make. I copied some firefighter boots from an old homemade costume, enlarged them and cut out claws that I top-stitched down the middle and at the end to give them a 3-dimensional quality. I painted the "nails" with black fabric paint. From far away, I think they actually looked like claws, but from up close, eek.










Overall I am pretty pleased with how it turned out! I have definitely learned some aspects of apparel and costume construction since last year, and am proud of how this costume turned out. It is always such fun to deliver a successful execution of your kid's vision. Ben was thrilled!

* * *
For those of you interested in the construction of this costume (I hear there's a lot of kiddos obsessed with peregrine falcons thanks to Wild Kratts!), you can see my process and progress in these two previous posts:

Part 1 - Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon
Part 2 - Who's Ready for Halloween?

I hope that helps! Don't hesitate to leave me a comment with questions.