January 23, 2011

Happy Aprons

I was asked to make two aprons for Emma’s preschool class. Every day the teacher picks two kids to be “kitchen helpers”, when they help with cleaning after everyone is done eating. So they need to wear aprons while on duty. These aprons had to be all white but I tried to make them more fun. I think embroidery is very cute and I love different colored bias tape on the pockets.

Again, made without any real pattern. Had some measurements in one of my Japanese books and had to change it a little bit to make aprons a little bigger. Put some snaps on the top part so the length of it can be changed according to a child’s height.

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The embroidery just makes me happy. Got the idea from another of my Japanese books. :) I am a Japanese craft book addict after all.

January 19, 2011

Have You Ever Seen a Snowflake

Up close and personal? I am lucky enough to live with one little snowflake. She likes to twirl and dance. She falls sometimes but not too often. She is a very happy snowflake but not without some attitude issues. I hope she stays with us when the winter is over because I love her too much to let her go.

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Emma had to be a snowflake for her school New Year’s recital and I had to make her a costume. I had no idea what to make first and then came up with this little number. Obviously I am not a costume designer as all I could think of was a puffy skirt. So I made a puffy skirt out of some organza fabric plus embroidered a snowflake on her leotard and made some puffy sleeves (sleeves and embroidered snowflake is barely seen on this picture…sorry). Then threw some sparkly accessories and ta-da! You’ve got a snowflake.

Sorry for the crappy picture. That’s the only one I could snap of Emma before she took her costume off.

January 14, 2011

Time Flies By…

It’s crazy how fast time goes. I never have enough time in a day for everything I want to accomplish. I have to admit I procrastinate a lot too. Instead of the things I could have been doing I sit on the couch just browsing online. I do get inspiration like that, so it is partly useful but it’s not an excuse for me to forget my blogging. I will try to do a little better (no promises though). But let’s talk about something better. I do have a couple projects I wanted to share. When winter suddenly came to Moscow I discovered that Emma grew out of all of her winter hats. So I had to come up with something fast. I made one out of two layers of fleece (I still have to take a picture of that one). And then I saw a hat in some online store and wanted to replicate it. So I did and voila!

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I had to line it so it’s fully warm and ready for frosty days. The only problem is that that was my first time dealing with a lining for a knitted hat and I made it a little bit bigger than the actual hat. But it’s inside of the hat and nobody can see it… well, everybody can see it but let’s just pretend it’s all perfect :) The other problem is that this hat is not that practical as I wanted it to be. It looks weird if you tie it and if you don’t then it moves around a lot because of Emma’s big hair. It would be perfect for American winters but not for Russia.