I didn’t end up making the felt eggs for my March felt food swap, but I did make chocolate bunnies!
I made 8 total. Five were for my felt food swaps, 1 for Bennett’s Easter basket, and 2 extras.
They are made from Eco-fi felt, which is made from recycled plastic bottles!
It took me a bit, but after some trial and error, I remembered how to tie straight bows!
I tacked the bows down to themselves so they won’t untie.
Since I have 2 extras, I’ve listed them in my Etsy shop. :)
HAPPY EASTER!
I while back I’d seen on Pinterest that you can regrow celery from the bottom of the stalk. I had some celery a couple of weeks ago to make sausage casserole, so I thought I’d try regrowing it.
The celery on the left is about 3 weeks of growth! We haven’t has much sun, but I’m hoping that once I can get it in the ground that it will take of. The celery on the right is about a week of growth.
In the middle is baby bok choy that’s been in about a week and a half. In thinking that it would root as well, I did a little searching and found that 17 Apart had a post about it.
I’m excited to be adding some new edibles to the garden! I know the bok choy won’t last out winter here, but I’m hopeful for the celery.
I have another baby busy bag exchange this month. I didn’t want to do the same thing as last month, the crinkle squares. I wanted to make something I haven’t exchanged yet to add some variety.
I’d been stumped about what to make and it’s getting close to the deadline, so I just started pulling out fabrics to see what struck me. I found that I had some St. Jude fabric left from making Bennett’s toiletries bag. It’s really cute, bight, and perfect for new project inspiration. I began looking through my color fabric bins for fabrics to match.
I still didn’t have a clear vision until I unknowingly had a bright rainbow of colors laid out on my cutting table. It all came together with a bit of scrap batting as a soft rainbow colors book.
There are lots of different patterns, splotches, polka dots, leaves, vines, flowers and shades for lots of learning for little minds.
I added a length of grosgrain ribbon to the front and back panels to made a sort of handle, perfect for little hands to tote to the car or around the house.
A fun game to play with a toddler learning colors would be to find the page that matches something on the cover. For example: find the color page that matches the color of the giraffe. The cover can also have used for simple counting; how many green things, how many fish.. etc.
The pages are in color order, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The cover is the multi colored St. Jude fabric.
I’m just about finished with the other books and will mail them out this week. :)
Best part, everything came from my stash of fabric! Yeah more stash busting!
Well, it took me well over a month to finish this sashiko panel, but it’s done! Lots of other things needed doing… other projects, school exams, and busy bags. :) This is a long term project anyway.
So here are the results.
The rabbits are simple with a geometric rectangle pattern. I made this one with blue thread, the first rabbit was made with red.
I love how the rabbits are all a little different from each other.
Next up is a Dragonfly pattern! I’m doing it in purple! So I think I’ve settled on red, blue, and purple for the colors for Etienne’s quilt. :)
Today I went to the Olympia Food Co-op to pick up some Ecos laundry detergent and I remembered that I wanted to get some vanilla beans to make some extract.
It’s a pretty simple process of letting split vanilla beans soak in vodka for a couple of months. The result is a wonderful homemade vanilla extract that is a fraction of the cost of store bought extract. There are lots of blogs about how to make some, Joy the Baker, is one that gives simple instructions.
I bought the cheapest vodka I could find and some nice Tahitian vanilla beans. I used a Le Parfait canning jar that I had sitting around and fitted it with a new spare gasket.
I want to get more vodka and beans to fill up the jar, but this is a good start.
After a good shake it is already starting to tint a little bit. I’m looking forward to the day it’s a beautiful brown
I wanted to make vanilla extract last year for Christmas gifts, but I just didn’t get to it. So I was determined to get a batch going early this year.
My hands still smell like vanilla after handling the beans. :) Mmmmm.
I’m participating in a felt food swap this month. I thought I’d try making an Easter egg from a fair isle sweater to see what would happen and this is the result.
I felted the wool sweater in the washer, then cut out the 4 egg sections. Each of the edges are sewn by butting them together with the neighboring section, matching up the pattern.
It’s completely hand sewn and stuffed with poly-fill. The felted wool is so thick that sewing and turning wouldn’t have worked well at all.
It came out rather large since the pattern I had called for a 1/4 inch seam. It’s 4 inches tall and nearly 10 inches around. It’s about the size of a goose egg.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to make tese for the swap yet, but if I do, I’ll make them
smaller for easier mailing.
I realized that I forgot to post what I made for my Preschool Busy Bag group! Whoops! That’s what happens during finals week. My brain is full of Environmental Technology. Heh.
I made small chalkboard mats… 
They have about a 6 1/2 by 8 inch drawing space and a little pocket for putting chalk in.
They also roll up and tie for easy storage or tossing in a bag to take along to play with.
I used this fun penguin fabric that I had on hand. I bought the chalkboard fabric in January to make one of these for Bennett. I over bought, so I was glad to be able to use some more of it up!
It looks like I used a binding, but it is just the backing fabric folded over in a roll seam with mitered corners.
Here’s my tutorial for how to make a crinkle square toy for a baby.
You’ll need fabric, some kind of crinkly plastic, ribbon, and thread.
I used fleece fabric, an up cycled cereal bag (food grade plastic), grosgrain ribbon, and cotton thread. Using a walking foot with your sewing machine will help the layers move evenly through your machine.
Cut a square of your plastic 6 inches square.
Cut 2 squares of fabric 5 1/2 inches square.
Cut a length of ribbon 5 inches long.
The reason for cutting the plastic larger is that it can be very slick and can shift very easily while sewing.
On the right side of one of the fabric squares, place the ribbon end in the corner and fold over. The loop will be towards the center. Pin it down.
Sandwich the pieces together:
Plastic on the bottom
Next a fabric square right side up,
Then put the second square with the ribbon, wrong side up on the pile. (The ribbon will be on the inside.)
Pin the corners to prevent shifting.
Sew around the edge about a quarter inch away from the edge all the way around. Leave a gap about an inch and a half wide to turn it right side out. Use a fairly long stitch so that you don’t perforate the plastic sheet.
Clip the corners to allow for the corners to turn more easily.
Turn right side out through the gap and poke the corners out with a turning tool, pencil, chopstick, or tool of choice.
Top stitch along the edge, all the way around.
You’re done!
Give it to your favorite tiny person! :)
You can make them bigger, smaller, with more loops, no loops, or in all manner of fabrics. Experiment colors and textures and have fun!
I’m planning to make an upcycled wool and cashmere one for my littlest babe.
These are great for busy bag exchanges, baby gifts, or make for your own kiddos. As with all toys, babies and small children should be supervised during play.
I’m involved in a Busy Bag exchange where each of the 6 mothers in the group makes 6 of something small to occupy our children. The idea is that you keep one and send out the other 5. The other mothers do the same, and you end up with 6 different small busy items for a kiddo to do. It’s a great way to meet other moms too. My kids are in two different swap groups, baby: newborn to 18 months, and preschool 3-5 years old.
Today I finished my busy bag item for the baby group. I made crinkle squares! For the baby set they are perfect. They are soft and make a little noise, just enough to be interesting.
I had all the materials on hand, so I didn’t have to spend any money on making my swap, just the shipping. They are made of fleece, grosgrain ribbon, recycled cereal bags, and are about 5 inches square.
I’ll be making up a tutorial soon so you can make your own crinkle square.
I made two frogs this week from Funky Friends Factory pattern.
The first one was made of some super soft minty green cashmere sweater bits that I have left over from making some upcycled baby hats. I had to size the pattern down just a hair to make it small enough to fit the material that I had left. I used some little scraps of white cashmere with safety doll eyes to make his eyes.
The result was Mr. Ribbit! He’s super sweet and cuddly!
The second frog I made is two shades of bright orange. I had some left over fleece from making a friend’s son a snake last year and wanted to use it up. I’m normally not drawn to use orange by choice, so I took the inspiration and ran with it.
Meet Orange Lenny! Yep, he’s a
mutant frog with 3 eyes. :)
I was very happy to use up a color that I don’t use very often and some left over from another project! Yea for stash busting. :)
Sew the Day 
