Practising for Halloween

My big girl wants to be a bat this year so we have been practising the face painting today. I have followed a tutorial by the brilliant Lisa Joy Young again. I need to make some wings in the next few days. She has gone through her wardrobe and found some leggings and a t-shirt that will be perfect, nothing better than team work!
I have found a super tutorial for bat wings here.

Face Painting

I have a new craze! Seems like I find something new every sew season. This summer it was face painting. I only wanted to look up how to do Butterflies and ended up hooked. Lisa Joy Young is brilliant and I keep looking at her you tube channel all the time. My oldest child is already so fed up, that we had to come to an agreement, she can paint my face, if I am allowed paint hers. I did a face painting day at my little girl's pre-school and took all my face paints to Germany with me.

I like the quick results and that you just wipe it off and can start again. I have been trying out Halloween ideas and can't wait!

Baby Toy

I made one more of these today. We will see our friends in a couple of days and they had a little girl quite recently. She already has a big sister, so it is quite hard to find something that they haven't already got...out comes my sewing machine. I found this tutorial at thelongthread but changed it a little. I added ribbon for hair and goose feathers at the bottom, the beak is faux leather, the feet have Hama beads in them for texture (not rice because you can't wash rice), the wings have baby wipes packaging in them for the crinkly sound and the tummy is made from fleece. I hope she likes it.

National Quilt Championchips

My friend and I went to the National Quilt Championships on Friday. Wow, we thought that we had come a long way in our short time that we have been sewing but when we saw those quilts, we realised that there is still a mountain to climb. The quilts were amazing, the amount of detail and work that went into them was breathtaking.
We went along a spent some time looking for fabric and buying some, too, who could resist. We both agreed that if we won the lottery, a lot of that money would go towards fabric. Or a trip to the States, why is fabric over there so much cheaper? I could not get myself to spend £12 a meter for fabric. The problem is that it wouldn't end there, I would have to by the rest of the line, too and then we are talking loads more. And to be honest, I think fat quarters are too small. I like big projects and a fat quarter is never big enough.
Oh Moda fabrics, one day I will feel rich and careless and just buy you, but just for now, I admire you from afar and think about a super special project, to justify that expense.... my new lounger in the guestroom really needs a quilt on top, it looks very naked.

Autobahn

My girls love Kraftwerk, I put this totally down to my husband. Each one of them has a favourite song, the little one likes "We are the Robots" and the big ones loves "Autobahn". When I came along this fantastic tutorial by prudent baby today, I knew exactly what to do. I had an old "Autobahn" T-shirt in my stash and within 30 minutes my big girl had a dress. We are now waiting for the "We are the Robots" T-shirt to make it's way into my stash.

Olympic birthday party

Just thought I share my ideas for an Olympic birthday party. My older daughter turned 6 in May and living in GB she got hooked on the idea of the Olympics. Unfortunately the weather was really bad, so we had to do it inside. We had 12 children and split them three teams. When they arrived they had to create their team flags and find a name for their team. We then paraded through the house, following the Olympic torch. The children were shown the seven activities:

1. medal forge: I baked gingerbread medals the day before (simple circles with a small hole at the top) and the children had free range over the decorations.
2. Olympic hats: I had cut our party hats in Olympic colours with my cricut (free svg file here on svgcuts) and the children got to stick stickers on and colour them (no glue because too messy)
3. kangaroo jump: keep feet together and jump as far as you can, three goes, add points
4. beanbag toss: throw beanbags in different sized buckets, three goes, add points
5. dream trampoline on the Wii (we were going to use the trampoline in the garden)
6. star jumps: count how many star jumps you can make
7. hula hoop: count how many rotations you manage

The children circulated at their own pace, that's why we had so many stations. They noted their results down on their score sheets (here is the free font for the London Olympics). After they finished their activities, I added all the scores and divided the results for each team by the amount of team members). After our picnic we had the medal ceremony, each team member got a rosette and a party bag. Party bags had a book, GB flag, party blower and their own gingerbread medal in them.
We didn't have a big cake but lots of little cupcakes, it was a lot less mess this way. They were really tiny, only two teaspoons of dough in each.

I made something new

Not that I haven't been making things, but I finally managed to take some pictures before I posted it. It is my godmother's 60th birthday and even though we usually just wish each other a happy birthday, this called for an exception. She is a big fan of cranes and butterflies. My mum is hosting her party and the theme is, guess what, cranes and butterflies. While my mum was over for a visit, we folded loads of Origami cranes, mostly in blue, because that is my aunt's favourite colour. After my mum had left, I remembered that I had seen this tutorial on sew mama sew, I loved the font but thought that it looked too involved and I can't get hold of freezer paper. I then had a look at this tutorial and combined both. I was really pleased with my result, even though I had to open quite a few seams again. I hope she likes it, too.