Girl's Quiet/busy Book

Recently we have been encountering troubles of keeping B quiet in the car. She's doing okay on a short ride; but if we drive for a day trip or so, just can't stop her screaming when she's tired or bored. We tried TV shows, cell phones,and new toys, but she's just different from her brother, who can fall asleep in his carseat at her age.
Well, being inspired by many fantastic moms' ideas, I decided to dedicate my craft time this week to make her a quiet book. I went into some great ideas on Pinterest, so I pinned them whenever I have time: waiting in line at the post office, short time before bed, rest after cleaning or cooking...Then when it comes my quiet craft time, I already have something in mind and can start right away. Thus, I don't have any templates, my pages are assorted and come from different resources,( I will try list all sources later here) and I changed and created some to better suit my 1 year old girl.
It is not only a fun project for the baby, but also for myself. As being totally fascinated with embroidery these days, I got to put some of my artwork on the front and back pages. I think B will also enjoy the colorful threads.
For the pages, if you look for quiet book templates there are way too many choices. However, before getting too passionate I calmed down and started to think what are my daughter's favorite. We all know our own kids the best, so some classics may work for one kid but totally useless for the other. Therefore, I believe a good quiet book has to be customized.
Then I realized as a 1 year old girl those tighting shoe laces, or the clock(a must have for quiet book though), or putting clothes on dolls are way too hard. She loves phones and beads, and taking things out of my purse. So I made these just for her.
Also I thought she would enjoy the ribbon knots and the busy bee since she loves picking up tiny little things. As for the animals, I made some before to attach on her stroller. Then I thought it might be fun to create a button animal page, I have enough to rotate and keep this page fresh. Also the idea is when she's older and have little lovey to take out with, I can attach it to the button page too.
I suggest to sew the beads or any small parts tightly since the little ones love to put them in their mouth.
Anyway, after this I know my next project, because I caugt E playing his sister's phone page ..."mom, I want one please!", I can already hear his voice:)

Front page.

Back

Animal buttons page

Purse page. I attached everything to a ribbon and left two ribbons for furture things to attach.

Shape and color page. I created this page.

Numbers. I also created this page. This is one of the easiest.

Phone page. Numbers can be moved around.

Busy bee. Got this idea from Pinterest but forgot exactly where... that book also has a fly with frog. Thought this better fit in a girl's book.

Ribbon knots. Also got inspired by another mom. 

Octopus with numbers. Also from Pinterest.

Easy Cover Turns A Coffee Table To A Kid's Oven

Actually inspired by a mom's blog, but can't remember where I saw it... that mom used a chair and basically made a chair cover. However, I don't have a chair like hers, but our coffee table looks quite like a stove top and oven beneath...My son actually always uses the bottom part to be a oven and bakes his sister's toy cake. So, perfect!
I could do a better job decorating it with more buttons, but consider it only took about 2 hours, not a bad deal. The oven door is made of a clear plastic file holder. Not very stable with double side tapes, so I will work on drilling some holes and sew it on later.
Now E is happily singing his "pat a cake" and even B loves putting stuff inside the "oven" lol

Thermos Carrier With Strap

E's school sent us notice for the field trip: wear school uniform + bring bottles with strap. Well, uniform can be fixed by doing an extra load of laundry, but bottle, ummm... E has 4 thermos bought by Grandma and Papa, they are perfect size and all in his favorite car and spiderman patterns, but none of them has strap...But I really don't want to buy an extra bottle just for this trip. Well, as a sewing mom, that is not a hard thing to fix though :p
Material is from a friend, she gave me several embroidery patterns.And I sewed him a little name tag too.

Free tutorial: Vintage Style Girl Silk Gown Made Out of A Blouse

Story about the shirt: I can't remember exactly when I got this shirt, but pretty sure it came with the flower jumper in my previous post. Reasons made me bring it home are the same as the jumpers: on sale and made of silk. As an Aisan, I have picky taste about materials: I am fond of natural fabrics such as silk and cotton. I don't really like the design, but the feel of the fabric convinced me to pay for it.
Later on, I realize I will never look good in this bright green color, and it is hard to match the shirt with any other pieces of clothes in my closet. So, here you go. I have confidence in B and I think she will look 100 times better than me in this shirt.

Story about the ribbon:
I got this at Hobby Lobby, one of my favorite craft stores. That day all ribbons are on 50%off, so you can imagine I was like a real shopaholic-I grabbed almost every roll... Then I calmed down and remembered we had a weight limit to travel back to Singapore... Okay, I picked several and asked the husband's opinion. Of course, he gave the typical guy answer: get them all!
Okay, so I stayed at a corner and weight every single roll in my heart, gee it is a hard thing...and finally I bought 4, and this was one of them.
However, I never really get to use this pattern after a while. I feel like the material is not very easy to handle and I am also not creative enough to make any miracle out of it... Until today, when I almost finished the dress and began to put some ribbons on it, I finally understand this is its destiny.
Long story short, this shirt-dress gown took me about 2 hours, so easy to do, and so happy to see another piece of useless item become something amazing.

Easy Peasant Dress with Ruffles(free tutorial)

I love peasant dress since I was little. They are easy to put on and off, can be colourful, and very comfy. Made this dress for my friend's daughter, she loves it and put on immediate lol

Step 1, cut two of each pieces shown in the picture. Big pieces will be front and back, and two small ones will be sleeves. So if you cut the big ones longer, then you are making a peasant dress, otherwise will be a top. If you cut the small ones longer, you will then make a long sleeve top or dress, otherwise short sleeve. Easy, right?

Step 2, sew the two sleeves to the front piece, like shown in the picture.

step 3, sew the two sleeves to the back piece. 

Step 4, seam the front and back parts together.

Step 5, sew the side of the collar part like in the picture, to allow a elastic band go through. You can also just try sew the elastic band directly on the collar, but my sewing machine doesn't do very good on that, ( still try to figure out though), so I use a easy way. Just sew a tunnel to let elastic band go through.

Step 6,  put the elastic band go through like in the picture.

Step 7, sew some ruffles on the bottom. You can be creative here, sew as many rows as you want... I think it will be good with at least two rows. Anyway, I forgot to take pictures of how to make ruffles... It is super easy also, will try next time since they are my favorite decorations!

Now it's all done! Take literally about 2 hours to make. I actually hand sew the ruffles and seamed some parts since I don't bother using machine before bed. I enjoy some quiet "my time" sewing before bed :)

Also made some easy but cute little clips go with the dress. The friend's daughter loves the bow, isn't it easy but fun?

Anyway, peasant dress is a must-dry for sewers. Pick your favorite piece of cloth and go for it! Also you can be so creative to add some style into it, from flowers, ribbons, to ruffles, laces...Believe or not, whatever you do, it will turn out to be fabulous, I just know it :P

Matching flower hairband

Okay, now only thing left is a matching hairband, which is super easy. I am just gonna show the flower part, since you will have millions of choices to match some ribbon bows or flowers go with it.

Step1, cut about 12 round pieces.

Step 2, sew 3 of them together like showing in the picture.

Step 3, tight the thread, and sew another 3 just like the previous ones.

Step 4, keep doing all the pieces and tight the thread.

Step 5, arrange your flower petals as you wish.

Step 6, put a little button or diamond, whatever you want, in the middle of the flower. Done!

I made 2 flowers, put one on the hairband and the other at the waist of the dress.

Flower Silk Dress and Hairband for Baby Girl (Altered from Adult Jumper)

    

 I love summer dresses, though in Singapore I don't have a choice- this is a country has no other seasons but summer. Anyway, gives me more excuse making colourful little dresses for my little one. Also in this tropical place, the best material ever is silk- a silky dress is just like another layer of natural skin for the baby!

I have these silk jumper for years, since I was still in the US and found this one on sale. So of course, it is not my size (way too big), but I love the pattern and the design. However, since it doesn't fit me, and especially now I have been breastfeeding, I feel I would never be able to wear this out. 

We all have something in the closet like this, right? Yes it's pretty, but you would never pick it out for a date or, there will always be excuses not to wear it out...but, too pretty to throw away.

Okay, now luckily, I have a lovely baby girl and she will need this piece of adorable flower silk!

I don't have a pattern, but you can follow the tutorial to work on other materials. 

Some tips for using silk: 

1,if you are a first-time sewer or not very good at measuring, try to use paper patterns and cut with them. Otherwise silk it very hard to control. 

2, if you are like me, don't want to give the comfortable material a inner layer ( I always think it is stupid to put polyester layers inside silk-the reason you dress silk is to make yourself more comfortable, but polyester stops it!), you'd better try not to sew zippers, because silk will be too fragile for holding zippers.

3, this one is for all who's also alter from old clothes: think before you cut, you will always find something useful on the old ones.

 here you go!

step 1:

this is follow my tip No.3. I cut the waist band of my jumper and give each side a about half inch area. This one can turn into a perfect ruffle without extra work!

step 2: 

front side. I gathered the middle first to decide how wide I should cut.  Also remember we are not using any zippers, so make sure the front and back sides will be big enough to let your kid's head go through. 

Step 3:

seam the sleeve part for the front side.

Step 4:

cut a back part. This time please match the size of your front side.

Step 5:

cut the bottom. Since we are gonna to gather, you need to make at least 1 and half times longer than the front side. and make two pieces and seam them together. I cheated since I have the top of my jumper, I just cut out the collar part and left the rest without extra sawing.

Step 6: 

Gather the bottom. Since I want to match the ruffle, I gathered the bottom first.

Step 7:

Put the bottom and the top together. I put the bottom out of the front and back part also to match the ruffle I will put at the bottom of the dress later.

Step 8:

cut two short pieces out of the ruffle we made in Step 1, and sew them on the shoulders. 

Step 9:

put the ruffle in step 1 to the bottom. Uh-oh, I don't have enough... So I just put on the front side... Anyway, not too bad for a stay-in-the-house dress.

Step 10:

since we will not have any zipper, so I put some elastic thread on the collar to hold them tight.

Step 11:

Now just seam all the collar, underarm part, and every single place that I haven't been able to mention... Also as using old clothes, I always try to take advantage of the seams-to save you some time!

Now the dress is finished! I will show how to do the flower and the hairband in the next post.