Frozen Movie Inspired Hair Flower

Hello everyone,

The movie Frozen is so fun. You've probably heard Let It Go a million times and read lots of different blogs' takes on what it all means. Personally, I think it is a story about an introverted (almost social anxiety-ish) sister contrasted with an outgoing, gregarious sister, and finding ways to love each other when you feel so different. Sigh. Now I'm just projecting my problems...

But that's neither here nor there. You are here to see a fabric flower. So here is it. (Modeled hesistantly by my daughter. She's kind of like an Elsa. And maybe my little baby daughter will be like an Anna, she seems pretty social even though she's only three months, definitely not old enough to talk my ear off yet.)

Frozen Inspired Hair Flower

It is delicate and lovely. We made it, my daughter and I, for her friend and her Frozen inspired half birthday party. It was a really fun party. My daughter helped me make the flower. She's only four, but she loves to pull the needle through after I place it and she did a few stitches. I love that she is already learning how to sew. And she loves learning this stuff. I hope I can teach her some good skills she'll need to be a good adult.

It is nine- and eight-pointed. Not really a well-represented snow flake with six points, but that would have left the flower looking too anemic and sparse. I wanted it fluffy and juicy. And my reasoning behind the nine and eight are thus. The nine on the outer circle reminds me of the 9/8 time signature that makes up a slip jig, an Irish step dance time signature that is just for the ladies.

Now you've gotta go watch a slip jig. I learned one very similar to this one while I was a student at BYU. Good times.
Slip Jig on YouTube.

Ooh, the Baha'i nine-pointed star has some pretty cool symbolism. You learn something new everyday. Baha'i symbols on Wikipedia.

The eight pointed star is like two squares tilted with respect to each other. A square represents earthly things, the four corners of the globe. (Haha! How can a globe have four corners? Well, it does in this analogy. Just let it be.) And maybe you already know that the circle can be a representation of heaven. If you feel like throwing a circle in there with the two squares, you've got a nice looking eight-pointed star symbol that you might see adorning an LDS (Mormon) temple. It's the meeting of heavenly things with earthly things. I like it. It can also be called the Seal of Melchizedek or it can also be like the eight points of a compass.

The Seal of Melchizedek on the San Diego temple. Lovely.

Here's a lovely link to some great temple architecture at The Trumpet Stone.

How to make it: I'm not exactly sure how to describe it other than it's like rolled circles. Here's a paper craft that comes pretty close to my fabric flower. Tutorial thanks to Ideas For Scrapbookers and the Handmade Dahlia.

I also made a wreath out of old book pages using this rolled cylinder style. Danelle's Upcycled Book Wreath. The circles on the bigger, outer rim were eyeballed (yes, that is the technical term) to be about two inches in diameter. They still make the flower surprisingly large, about 4.5 to 5 inches in diameter. That's getting to be pretty big for a kid's head. I like the size, though.

I used some material that someone gave to me, it has a scroll work design embroidered on it and it is clear white material, kind of starchy. The inner material is white, very thin, silky, and transparent, like a scarf. I'm not sure what it's called. Organza, probably? Then I purchased the little jewel at a fabric store. It was in one of the cheap dollar bins or clearance. Probably because they look wintery and winter was over.

I stitched the outer rim first, rolling the circles to little cylinders and stitching through it to secure it to a little gray felt circle on the bottom that makes the sturdy base of the flower. You'll want to put your stitches in a place where they will be hidden by the next rim of dahlia flower petals. Also use white thread so it will blend right in if it is peeking out. Continue with the next rim of white organza. I put another scroll work circle in the center to hide some stitching by pinching it a tiny bit and stitching it on so it will not be so flat, it will have a little oomph and poke out slightly. Then add the jewel by stitching it on. (My two fabrics were slightly different from each other, but that may be difficult to tell from the lighting in the photos.)

Then get out your hot glue gun, grab a hair clip like an alligator hair clip, cut another felt circle to hide the stitching, attach it with the glue gun, and attach the hair clip to the felt with a glue gun. Bam! Done.

One last look. I love it. I think I'll have to make more.

Stay tuned for my Frozen inspired wreath.

Let It Go and Goodnight!

Easter Green Grass Wreath

Happy upcoming Eostre!

It's another wreath!

I made this one last year. Quick. Easy. Fun.



Close-up of the fuzzy goodness.



Happy Hoppy Easter! And happy spring! Except as soon as I decided to hang it on my door a few days ago, winter decided to come back and it snowed. The weather mocks my enthusiasm.

Tutorial at Capture the Details.

Baby Bibs and Burp Cloths

Hello everyone,

It's a baby craft post!

I have become quite proficient at making these bibs and burp cloths (and the occasional matching paci leash), in girl varieties and boy varieties: in chenille, in cotton, in flannel, (maybe I should try minky now?), or quilted on the inside for more absorbency (for the bibs). I decided it was probably stupid to be adding the batting to the double-cotton-sided bibs and stopped, but then my sister Michelle told me how well the bib worked for her daughter who spit up a lot and it really absorbed well.

She said it was her favorite bib! Be still, my beating heart! I was afraid it looked dorky and didn't lay flat, but it looked fine. It's just always nerve-racking to make a new craft as a present, not having used it yourself first or knowing how well it will work. I'm about a 75-percent-efficient-useful-gift and 25-percent-looks-good kind of person. I will usually choose comfort and function over style, and it shows. I'm probably the frumpiest of my four sisters (but comfortable!), and also the most shy, but compared to others outside my family, I'm doing pretty well. So no worries.

These bibs that I made recently and am posting today, however, contain no batting. I know, I'm off telling stories and not describing the present craft. This Quite Possibly Craft is made of chenille on one side (cotton on the other), which is naturally absorbent, so I left the batting alone and just focused on cutting out a nice-sized and -shaped bib. I do the inside-out trick, where I sew right sides together but leave a hole, then turn the bib out and sew around to shut the hole and leave a nice stitch. Then I add (sew on) some velcro (buy the kind meant for sewing! or you will be crying!) for the "snap," so it's a little bit adjustable. Real snaps are also nice, but take some force to get on the bib. Literally, you have to hammer them on. The thicker the fabric, the harder it is to get snaps on. On chenille, it is something of a nightmare. Been there, done that. Looks great, but takes a lot of time and effort. I'm getting lazy in my middle-aged-ness. Do it however you like. Maybe you'll be queen (king?) of the snaps.

Here's the finished bib and burp cloth, with lovely applique monograms of the first letter of her son's name. I like how they look boutique-y expensive and fancy. I used the "lazy applique" method, which I should probably explain in a near-future post. (Basically I use that stuff you iron-on (comes in the purple and white baggie) and you can get cheaply at Wal-mart and then just trace, cut out, iron on and do a straight-stitch around. I know they say to zig-zag, but my machine does a really bad zig-zag. It's embarrassing. And this way looks fine and usually wears well too. But I know you quilters and pros out there are disgusted in my laziness at not doing the proper tight zig-zag. Quite possibly I don't care.)

I made the bib and burp cloth for a friend who just had her fourth child! She has one girl, and now three boys! I figured she probably already had tons of boy clothes, but just giving her a box of diapers seemed boring (and expensive!). Bibs and burp cloths are ALWAYS useful, and this kid is the third boy. He's going to get A LOT of hand-me-downs and not a lot of personalized stuff (so I would imagine). This was something that could be his. Or maybe he would be too little to remember, but it might mean something to his mom, too.

I already had the fabric lying around so I just needed to find the time. Chenille's not cheap. It's about $12 a yard. And I got the fabric cheap with a 50% JoAnn's Fabrics coupon. YEAH! Bad news about the chenille, though. At my local JoAnn's anyway, the chenille has all been moved to clearance and discontinued, and most of it is gone. They have a chenille-like fleece replacement that may one day grow on me, but for now I am in a bit of a quandary. I liked that chenille. Granted, it made a mess when you cut it, and another mess in the dryer for the first wash, but it was so soft. I used to use the scraps to make baby wash cloths (chenille and flannel), and I've received good reviews of those too, from mothers who got to use the product and gave me a little critique. I'm not going to order it online full-price and pay an arm and a leg for it though.

I know, you probably want instructions. I don't have any. I keep a sewing journal where I write down measurements and improvements to sewing "recipes," but this one is basically just a template that I got from another bib that fit my little baby girl quite nicely. So that's what I recommend you do. Trace a bib on regular cotton paper, make any adjustments to get the perfect shape and proportion you want (I've been big into proportions lately), and try and reiterate. The burp cloth is the size of a Gerber cloth diaper. I like to do chenille on one side, cotton fabric that matches the bib on the other, and sew two partitions so it folds up nicely like a cloth diaper, too! Or I will put cotton on the top and flannel on the bottom. Flannel is really good at gripping on your shoulder and not sliding off, and also is absorbent. Great for staying on your shoulder and not leaving you vulnerable to getting baby puke all over yourself!

Anyway, reiteration. It's always a learning process with a learning curve. Don't expect perfection the first time, you usually have to work out some kinks. But if you hit on the golden design pretty quickly, good work! And if you don't, keep trying! Ask around, check other blogs, be creative! :-)

Have fun crafting and being quite possibly creative!
Danelle
Quite Possibly Crafts

Red Felt Valentines Day Wreath

Hi everyone!

Happy Love Day!

Hang something happy and festive on your door to celebrate. I had been struggling to make this wreath for the last two years. Not that it's hard. We just have moved a lot and had stuff in storage (my barely begun wreath, for one), the whole song and dance. I'm glad I feel like we have maybe one or two more months of stability until we move again, but I know I'm just a big complainer and no one likes to listen to complaining. (Not my husband, anyway.) This wreath still cheered me up. Technically, it isn't too hard to make, my two-year-old girl was helping me to push the folded felt into the Styrofoam heart form. But cutting the felt circles out takes a lot of time! Beware! I didn't mind. I just took the cutting along with me when visiting friends at their houses or when we got together for a girls night watching the Bachelor. (Mostly I was there for the good company and time to work on my wreath, I'm not really a fan of the show.)

Here are some photos of the wreath on my door. (It's blue. The red and blue kind of mess with your eyes, I apologize. Maybe our next door will be a nice dark brown or white, or something that will make the wreath photograph a little better.)

For instructions, I found some good ones here at The Idea Room. I wanna say my circles were about 2-1/2 inches in diameter (hers are 3-in.), but I already don't remember. I did cut out about 300 of them, so that's where the tediousness comes in.

Big juicy felt ruffles, looking so good.

I made a new logo. YAY for logos. You can borrow my pictures, but just give me some credit, yes?

Yes, the large logo, in all its glory.

Stay tuned for some baby sewing stuff. :-)

-Danelle
Quite Possibly Crafts

Pink Lace Fabric Flowers

I mentioned these pink lace fabric flowers in my last post (about the Spooky Flirty Halloween Wreath) and I really enjoyed the way they turned out, so I made some as hair clips and for dressing up your outfit on a shirt or lapel. They go pretty quickly and they are fun and very cute!

These flowers are similar in style to the ones you'll find here. I did have to modify the instructions a bit. To make these, I used a long strip of pink lace about 1 inch thick. (I found it in the remnant bins at Joanns Fabric for 50% off! Yay, deals!) I folded the fabric in half, like the instructions at the tutorial link explain, and I bunched and rolled the fabric to look like a tight spiral. This will be the center of the flower. Then I used some hot glue to secure the flower to itself so the tight spiral wouldn't come undone and I cut out a circle of pink felt about the size of the final flower (however big you choose) and glued the bud to the center of the felt circle. You'll want to coordinate your felt to whatever color lace you are using. Then continue to wrap, turn, glue; wrap, turn, glue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Try not to burn yourself too much. It's hard with the lace, to be sure.

Once the flower part is done, you attach an alligator clip to the back and you're ready to rock and roll. (I also added a couple of gold fabric leaves poking out. I like it!)

Final product! So pretty and fun! I want to make a bunch of these, but I'm saving the majority of the lace to make myself a pretty pink skirt. I need to get on that.

Sincerely,

Danelle
Quite Possibly Crafts

Spooky Flirty Halloween Wreath

I made this for a friend. It's a spooky flirty wreath with stamped laminated paper and fabric flowers. This cheerful wreath makes me so excited to celebrate Halloween.

I got the wreath form at Dollar Tree. It looks like it's made of dried grape vines. I also got the spooky gray gauzy fabric to wrap all the way around the wreath from Dollar Tree.

I had the stamp on hand, "Ghouls just want to have fun." I'm pretty sure I got it in one of those clearance bins at Michaels for $1. I stamped it with silver ink on some black card stock paper, and did a poor man's laminating job with packing tape, trying not to show any seams. I wanted to make it weather-proof. I cut the excess tape off. I hot-glued this one on, but I made another wreath by wrapping brown yarn around a Styrofoam wreath form, and I wanted to be able to take stuff off and update it for other seasons, so I used pins to anchor the stuff, and then I can take it off at a whim and put something new on. Those darn yarn wreaths take FOREVER to wrap. I'm not doing that again.

Then I made the fabric flowers using pink lace and a glue gun, and some other kinds of material too. But the pink lace fabric flower is definitely my favorite! It's made in this style and is a little bit of a craft in itself. I had to do a few things to help the rolling along. Since the lace lets the hot glue through, you might be more likely to burn yourself. I also needed an "anchor" for the lace, so I used some coordinating pink felt to go under, cut in a circle about the size of the final flower. I rolled a tight circle-bunch and then glued it to itself and then glued that onto the center of the felt circle.

The ghosty ghoulies are made of that white cheese cloth you can get cheaply at the grocery store. Maybe you still have some on-hand from Halloween. Don't throw it away! Or you could used dryer sheets. I hear those things don't biodegrate, so rather than sitting in a local landfill, they could be dancing happily on your wreath and filling the air near your front door with a pleasant smell. I bunched them with my fingers 'til I got a good ghost effect and then tied them tightly round and round with white thread until I was sure they were secured. I hot-glued them on, but you can also pin them on so that you could remove them again if you wanted to.

The orange ribbon is like a harvest autumn leaves theme and it's wired ribbon that I got from, you guessed it, Dollar Tree. I'm on a very tight budget so this craft needed to be cheap. Love the craft items that the Dollar Tree has been peddling.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Mothers Day and Fathers Day

Rewind to Mothers Day and Fathers Day 2012. I got really creative. Well, for Fathers Day, anyway. But I still got crafty for both days. I had some cute fabric I had ordered from Amazon, but when it came, it was like upholstery fabric, twill, and not like the soft cotton I had envisioned. It all worked out, I made a fancy lemonade out of lemons and my mother, MIL, and grandmother-in-law (and even me!) all ended up with really cute dishtowels. These are some of my favorite dish towels of all time. They work excellently, dry superbly, and just cheer the kitchen right up. Won't you agree? Hollywood regency updated and modernized, in punchy happy colors. Quite possibly perfect.

Maybe I'm too close to the project and not thinking clearly, but to me, they are perfection.

Okay, enough gushing about the dishtowels, I found amazing fabric (okay, Tommy Hilfiger bedsheets) at the Goodwill for the low, low price of $2 (instead of the going rate of $50!!!). I don't remember exactly how I hit upon the idea, but I remembered that my father-in-law Glenn had left his grilling gear at the last campout, and my brother-in-law Daniel was wanting to do more cooking on his sweet outdoor grill, so the common thread was telling me to sew them little roll-up grill kits made out of that fun blue-striped lobster fabric. Again, to me, perfection. I'm proud of this craft. A friend asked me if I was selling them on Etsy. I had to tell her no. I had run out of the material! Sad sad day.

This next image also fits well in the post. I think I made this for my mother-in-law for Christmas, or for her birthday, or just to say thanks for letting us live in your house and eat your food for almost a year.

It's a cute casserole carrier! Perfect for church functions and pot-lucks!

Take a peek inside!

I love it! I want one!

Cordially, Danelle