Origami Mommy

Creative toy play, part 2: Fabric

With so much fabric in our house, it's only natural our children gravitate towards using it in their play. Here are a couple of ways they especially love to use it:

Play silks. I love play silks. 

These are among my favorite birthday gifts for young children because they are so open-ended and versatile.  A piece of floaty, silky cloth easily becomes a cape, a picnic blanket, a canopy for a little house, a sea on which to float paper boats, or a doll blanket or sling. Our boys lived in playsilk capes nonstop when they were little and I still smile when I remember all their adventures. You can buy these online, but it would also be special to get some plain white silk and dye your own - I remember once dyeing a silk cape with onion skins, which turned it into an ethereal gold. Here's a lovely little tutorial on how to dye your own playsilks.

Aside from silk, my favorite fabric to have lying around the house is felt. Sometimes the kids cut it up and glue it on their own, but since I sew, the kids know they can come to me to help them turn the designs they dream up into a reality. 

These little sleeping bags for instance are so easy to whip up, even if you don't consider yourself a sewer. 

 

This makes a good beginning handsewing project, and your child can glue on embellishments as desired. Just cut out a long rectangle, fold it over lengthwise, and sew, leaving a bit of excess room on one end for the doll's head to rest on.

Felt also makes a sweet crown for your child to wear. Have your child pick out the color of the felt and choose where to place buttons or other decorations. You don't even have to edge it in a blanket stitch if you have felt that's sturdy enough. 

 

Or you can make clothing for a favorite stuffed animal. Again, I think it's nice for your child to feel part of the design process by choosing all the colors. D went through a phase where he adored Corduroy, so I made this for him while he made the sword out of a craft stick, some foil, and some tape.

  

And I just love Zakka Life's tutorial on making capes for Lego figures - this is something D has requested many times. I'd tried to make capes with cotton, but felt would be much sturdier.

Photo: Zakka Life

 Photo: Zakka Life

Fleece is another material that comes in handy because it doesn't fray - it makes a perfect sleeping bag for a stuffed animal or doll. 

Here are a few other ways to use felt, fleece, and cotton cloth.

Plain old little pieces of fabric, simply hemmed (but they don't have to be!), have also inspired many tea parties in our house. 

 

Finally, I love wool. I have a collection of wool scraps from old sweaters, and though I'm saving most of them for crafts of my own, the kids love to dig through them as well. Wool, like felt and fleece, doesn't fray, so it's very child-friendly and is used for all sorts of things - it becomes pretend food, tiny blankets, little animals (when knotted up), and so forth. I think some red wool even became fire on a pretend camping trip once. 

I love seeing what children can do with a simple little piece of cloth. Try collecting some fabric in a basket, give it to your own kids, and see what happens. 

End-of-summer sewing

Being in-between countries like this, the end of summer seems to have slipped past me before I've had a chance to catch my breath....We had time for a brief vacation back home, connecting with relatives, and a day or two of bliss at a late summer beach.

 

There were unexpected treasures, like pine cones on small bushy trees just off the ocean.

 

I hear it's cooler back home - here in Japan it's still quite warm and muggy. I'm longing for fall. I hear a friend is going apple picking soon. How I miss that! 

Towards the end of the summer I did manage to get a lot of sewing done. It was extremely addictive.

 

 

For many of these projects I splurged on Liberty print fabric, which is beautiful, and quite popular in Japan. I feel like it's not too bad of a splurge when you're making something for such a little person, because you really don't need a lot of fabric.

 

I used the small grey flower print as a lining for this little vest and then as the material for a dress for A.

 

and also made managed to make several items out of this:

 

The girls wore some of the things I'd made for them earlier in the summer, too. The little top on A was very simple - just 3 rows of elastic smocking on a tube of fabric, then I added straps.

 

And I've started making a few Oliver + S patterns. I LOVE these. Each pattern is like a personal sewing lesson. This, below, is from the Puppet Show Tunic and Shorts pattern. I made a halter top out of the trim fabric to go with these.

 
I actually made several halter tops and dresses for both girls. These are very fast! I think you can complete an entire one in about 20 minutes if you're not constantly interrupted by a baby! Faster than going shopping for clothes, no?  My go-to pattern is from my favorite Japanese dress pattern book of all time, Koharu no fuku. I love how simple, yet infinitely adaptable, the lines and patterns for all the clothes in this book are. I adore this book and often find myself recommending it to other friends who are just learning to sew. Perhaps a giveaway is in order?

 

 

 

There was sewing for boys too, but I think might discuss those in a separate post! Until then, here is a quick glimpse of some double gauze pants which D lived in this summer:

Now I'm feeling ready to try a few projects for myself. I'll start with this book, and see where it takes me.

 

It's also time to break out the knitting needles in earnest. I got a few small projects done, and am now hoping to tackle Never Not Knitting's Playful Stripes cardigan. As if life weren't busy enough - but small portable projects, along with an abundant supply of dark chocolate, are what get me through these hectic days. Casting on today!

What fall projects are you hoping to get to?

Gather, pleat, smock, and sew

I've been spending many happy hours engrossed in sewing lately.

I didn't grow up sewing and I don't know where the love of sewing comes from, or the determination to master it even though I am such a novice. 

I know that I had one moment of sheer bliss while I watched a thin, perfectly cut bias strip I'd made from the fabric for this dress smoothly gliding under the sewing machine needle. Perhaps the addiction is fed from the lovely feeling of hearing my girl gasp, "Oh! Mama!" as I unveil a new dress made just for her, or watching my little boy silently, immediately change into the shorts I've made him while he ever so politely ignores the scratchy, unfinished seams, just because he is so happy I made him something. Maybe it's this combination of love, embodied in handwork, and the tactile pleasure of working with fabric, colors, texture. Whatever - I know I just feel very happy and satisfied when I can sew and knit and ever so cranky and irritable when I can't get enough handwork in.

Anyway, from poring over Japanese craft books and discovering some amazing online resources I've learned four basic techniques which I think are really important if you want to create your own designs. Just as with cooking, I love basic formulas because I love the way they become a springboard for so much else and give you flexibility. There are now so many dresses and clothes and projects swimming around in my head that I've started a project journal to at least help me gather my thoughts together.

These four techniques are gathering (to make billowy skirts and ruffles), which I learned last summer here,

 

pleating, which I learned by reading this fabulous tutorial, 

smocking, or shirring (there are many tutorials on the web but the one that made it clearest for me was this one), and oh wow I just saw she has a post about hand-sewn smocking, too! 

and making my own bias tape, which is a basic requisite for just about every Japanese pattern I've seen. And sometimes, a combination of techniques, like gathering and then encasing in a strip of bias tape to make a sweet pocket, just like this:

 

It's been a bit obsessive; I'm making several projects a day, including for myself (bias cut skirts) and shorts for the boys, too. The kids fend for themselves, dinner gets burned or is late, laundry piles up and up and up, when I'm in this kind of mode. But it's kind of like a fever and I know I just have to let it work its way out of my system!

Have you taught yourself a hobby or technique? What did you find most helpful? Classes, books, or online tutorials?

Summer sewing

Sewing is a huge challenge for me right now (how do those of you with babies do it?!!!) but the intense craving to sew something quick and summery just would not be satisfied until I did it. So I did! I made summery little dresses in subdued Fourth of July colors for my girls.

I'm always torn about whether I'm better off using a pattern or not. I'm such a sloppy sewer! I'm really much better off knitting because yarn is more forgiving. For some reason my sewing shears always get dull right away and the fabric I cut looks all chopped up, with crooked edges. I don't measure very well - I can't find my ruler right now. I made bias trim without any tools, just kind of slashing away at the fabric on the diagonal and then sort of folding it together under an iron. So if you take a close look, it's really quite crooked. Also, my sewing machine is fading away on me - the zigzag doesn't work, so these have been put together quite precariously - if I put them through a washing machine I'm afraid the delicate seams won't hold up! So impractical!

But anyway, I decided to try to make the camisole from a pattern (though I had the same problem with the bias trim), and I'm very glad I did. I have a small but growing collection of Japanese sewing books, which I look through for inspiration more than anything else. This is from one of them. 

One concrete thing I learned from actually cutting out and using this pattern is that the cloth has to be cut deceptively wide, much wider than I'd ever imagine it has to be (as you can see in the below), to get a nice swingy look that, in the end, isn't that wide at all.

 

The pillowcase dress is a bit too narrow all around because I didn't follow a pattern. Would be OK on an upright, walking child, but on a crawling baby, it's too constricting and would have been better off as a little top. So now I know what to do next time!

My goal last summer was to work through at least a few patterns from my Japanese sewing books.....this year I'm going to be less ambitious and more realistic and just see what I can do. I'll be happy with any small bits of sewing I manage to do. 

Drawing inspiration from crafty tutorials

We had our last round of summer visitors, and the boys are now back in school, so I hope to be able to be more productive for the few weeks remaining in my pregnancy, but in the meantime, here are a few fun things I've made recently. Most of these were inspired by tutorials on the web and so they required very little brainpower from me (big plus). My only criteria when scouring blogland for tutorials were that they be fast, easy, and teach me a new crafting skill. I'm really in awe of all the crafty bloggers out there - so much talent and so much generosity! 

First of all, I made a tiny hairpin out of traditional Japanese fabric, chirimen.

The lovely tutorial for this can be found here at Miscellany of Me. It's very simple, really similar to the pincushion I made a few weeks ago, and could be made with just about any fabric and literally takes just a few minutes. Satisfying!

Next, I decided to tackle purses again, because I was disappointed by my last attempt at making bags without interfacing (way too floppy).  It took me this long to figure out how to find interfacing in Japan but I finally succeeded! I decided to try this tutorial for a pleated purse and it was really wonderful. I feel like I learned a lot about bagmaking from making this.

So, once I got past my fear of fusible interfacing, I decided I could apply it to other bags, and so I made a tote bag, 

and then two little pouches which stand up nicely on their own thanks to fusible interfacing on the lining.

These bags could all use a nice pressing to look polished enough for photos. I don't have time to do it right now, but I did find a nice link which tells you how to press small, fiddly pouches and bags on Nicole Millelieu's (highly addictive) bagmaking blog. I see more bagmaking in my future!

I've also tried making a few tiny toys. I tried this Calico Kitty pattern and made a small cat, along with a bag to go along with it. I didn't do a great job but it was fun to design the clothing and my daughter liked it a lot. I hope to move on to other stuffed animals after this.

And for this kitty or any of my children's dolls, I made a small pillow

which was super simple to make and based on this sweet tutorial at p.s. i quilt.

I've also been rediscovering knitting. I used to knit all the time, but stopped after I had children who kept getting tangled in all my yarn. I'm loving it again. I like the rhythm of having a knitting project handy - actually not just one, but several. One or two small ones, easily and quickly completed, another more ambitious or complicated one, all in separate bags or baskets around the house, and I can pick each one up depending on the circumstance (for instance, a simple, mindless one is perfect to work on while helping my son with his homework). This is perhaps not the most efficient way to knit (or to do any sort of crafting) but I get bored if I have only one project on my needles and then it never gets finished at all!

I completed the baby knitted slippers I was working on and also made a tiny newborn hat, which I'll also embellish with a flower if baby turns out to be a girl.

I posted the link to these slippers in my last post. There are a few nice tutorials out there for crocheting flowers to use as embellishment. Here's a particularly helpful one, at The Handmade Dress. I was making mine smaller so I used fewer triple stitches - once you learn how to make one it's easy to modify.

The hat is just a basic hat I memorized a long time ago. I kind of winged it with the measurement - I totally forget how big a newborn head is. At least knit is somewhat stretchy! I'm embarking on a few teeny sweaters next. I usually knit baby sweaters big so they'll fit for awhile, but I think there's something precious about a sweater that just fits a newborn and I think that's all I'll have time to knit, anyway.

Speaking of tiny and small, I had bits of felting yarn leftover from previous projects so I decided to try making a tiny tester bag to see what kind of gauge I'd get after felting. I might use the rest of this yarn to make more slippers, or to make more bags to carry little figures around. My children love having small bags to slip just one or two little toys in and I love encouraging them to combine handmade things with their store-bought toy play. The handle is i-cord which is amazingly simple to do.  This was fun and so fast!

I actually made one of these small bunnies, which are not only darling but also incredibly speedy, but, again, I wasn't happy with how mine turned out (hence no picture). Clearly, stuffed animals aren't my forte. But if they appeal to you, definitely check out the link on Little Cotton Rabbit!

Finally, we had a few scrapes and mishaps last week, so I made an ice pack holder as well as a lavender rice bag for aching muscles. I think these would make a nice gift for a child, or for a parent along with this beautiful little first aid kit bag I spotted at Maya Made  (and hope to make someday). I made mine very small - the rice bag is about 3 inches by 3 inches, perfect size for a child. It would be easy to make several of these in different fabric patterns and keep them handy in a basket.

I hope you enjoy checking out some of these links - I know these projects were a lot of fun for me to do. If you know of any other tutorials for fast, quick, whimsical and fun projects, do let me know!

Latest quick projects

Since returning from our trip, I've been finishing up other small projects that had been lingering away. It felt like I just couldn't justify moving onto new projects until these were done. Here's the completed pillow I made with a Wee Wonderfuls Tulip Fairy as the centerpiece. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I also made a baby receiving blanket with Echino fabric - a quick and satisfying project. The vivid colors make me happy. The online tutorial can be found here. I love the Purlbee blog - there are a million projects on here I want to try.

In fact, these little felt hearts, below, are also from the Purlbee blog, here:

They are so quick and easy - the perfect way to satisfy the urge to handsew if you have only a few moments.I think they make a perfect and compelling project for a young beginning crafter. The doughnut took a bit longer but I've been wanting to complete some more felt food for Mia's play kitchen. I think the boys were more fascinated by this than she was, though!

I also finished up a few dolls for Daniel and Mia. Daniel's is based on a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls. He decided he wanted his to look like Ron Weasley - but he decided this after we put the hair on. He helped stuff his doll and felt so proud to be part of the whole process. I should have supervised a bit more and made sure the head had adequate stuffing - but I also wanted for him to feel like he helped create his doll. Mia wanted hers to have lots and lots of long, wavy hair. The waves were made by braiding, spraying with water, and then ironing the yarn before undoing the braid. This was my first attempt at embroidering a doll's face once the doll is completed - for some reason it's hard to find online directions for hiding the knots - so I had to improvise. If anyone can give me more tips I'd love to hear them!

Finally, I've been using one of the small baskets I made to hold a tiny baby slipper knitting project. These baskets are proving to be handy for keeping small projects separate from one another. I think I might add a pom-pom to the slippers once I am done with them. These slippers use almost no yarn at all and the tutorial is online here.

It is nice to be doing some knitting again! 

Bird love

I've been obsessed with birds in my crafting lately. Here's something I embroidered onto a baby gown for our new baby:

You can get this design for free and see other lovely things at CraftPudding - I adore her stamps!

I also made this bird and leaf applique pouch, from a Japanese kit from Hobbyra-Hobbrye.

This is the sweet back - a simple bird on a twig.

I got the kit because I had never done applique before and thought it would be a useful way to learn that as well as some quilted pouch techniques. Plus, there are a lot of projects that I want to do that are just not getting off the ground because I'm just not getting the concentrated time I need to do the prepwork for them.  I love the kits I've found in Japan - there are some pretty decent ones here.  I feel ready to tackle designing something of my own now.

Speaking of kits, I can't wait to try a fleece ball from Ikat Bag's new shop.

But that will have to wait for now. We're off on a trip to the countryside - have a good week!

Needle book and other tiny projects

My projects are getting tinier and tinier. Here's a needle book I made the other day. I did the tree free-form style. I had a strong craving to embroider an autumn tree somewhere (although the hot weather has just now kicked in here in Japan), and this was the result.

Finally a place to store all my needles! It's only about 2 inches by 2 inches. The only problem is that Mia thought this was a little book I made for her, and keeps trying to grab it. I suppose a small felt book will be my next tiny project.

I also made her some small bags out of linen. She prefers the brighter one while I prefer the (as yet unfinished) subdued one. A great way to use up yo-yos.

Finally, the ultimate of small projects - a tiny hairpin.

I made a lot of mistakes with this, but it was just a first try, to see how it works, and oh, it's so much fun. Here's the wonderful tutorial by Mairuru.  I'm going to make more of these this weekend - we're going on another car trip outside Tokyo. I'll be giving a talk on diaper-free babies in Japanese at a workshop. More when I return - and please do stick around, because I am planning a giveaway in the next few weeks!

tiny pincushion tutorial

The children and I have been working on a lot of projects - mostly sewing, beading, and some papercraft - so I'll post about that next week. In the meantime here is a brief tutorial for a tiny pincushion made with a bottle cap as the base. You can whip these up in about 2 minutes! Very addictive to make.

You'll need a bottle cap, a small amount of fabric and a piece of ribbon wide enough to cover the side of the bottle cap, a bit of batting, and some thread and glue.

Cut your fabric into a circle somewhat bigger than the bottle cap, as in the photo above. (How big you make it depends on how big you want the pincushion to be - but this is a forgiving project and you don't have to be very precise.)

Glue the ribbon around the bottle cap. While it dries, start a running stitch around the perimeter of the fabric circle. Kind of like you're making a fabric yo-yo.

When you're done, gather it in, and fill with some batting. 

Next, gather in all the way so you close it up, tie it with a knot, and then glue it upside down inside the bottle cap. Quick and easy! 

I like that the cap prevents your pins and needles from going through all the way to the other side and poking you by accident - a problem I've had with my other handmade pincushion. I also love how tiny these are. You can glue a fabric or felt circle on the bottom if you like. If you don't have ribbon, you can use bias tape or make your own bias tape out of contrasting fabric. I did that for some of the pincushions in the photo below. You can also use felt, maybe even cut with pinking shears, instead of ribbon. I think I'll have to try that!

Sewing on Mt. Fuji

We escaped Tokyo over the weekend for a little weekend trip with friends to Mt. Fuji and a lake called Yamanaka-ko. While the rest of the group went into a hot spring and went swimming, I dug into a bag of felt and fabric scraps I'd brought along for some handsewing projects because it was so wrenching to be torn away from my sewing machine just when I'd started falling in love with it so.

Before I left, I made a new skirt and a dress for Mia. The dress was made of Japanese double-gauze fabric (which I adore - two more double-gauze fabric dresses are in the works right now), and was loosely based on the pillowcase dresses that you see tutorials for everywhere. I sewed elastic in the front and back and then made bias tape out of the material that I used in the armholes and for shoulder straps because I had no ribbon. I realize I am much happier winging it when making a dress rather than sticking to a precise pattern. I made a matching scarf out of the same double-gauze fabric with a pale pink striped cotton backing on the other side.

I also made a skirt out of a small piece of Heather Ross's Far Far Away fabric by Kokka, combined with a tiny ruffle made of Rowan fabric.

This, too, I made without a pattern. I just made each tier a bit bigger than the one on top and then used my newly-learned ruffling techniques (making a loose running stitch along the top and then pulling gently on the bobbin threads to gather) to experiment. I learn something new with each sewing project. This time I learned that I have to pay close attention while cutting fabric so I don't ruin the design - there are no whole unicorns on this skirt anywhere, which was a great disappointment!

I also made some bags - a tiny treasure pouch for Mia to carry small toys in and a larger tote bag for me out of canvas. I especially like the button detail on the bottom.

We went to a few really nice places on this trip. It was balm to my soul to be away from people and buildings. I was raised in the countryside so living in cities all these years and raising my children in urban areas has been hard for me. 

Mountains and water were everywhere and the weather was cool, although foggy. The fogginess made it challenging to take good photos, and in the end we never did get any good photos of Mount Fuji, although we drove up partway by car and then hiked a little bit up the mountain.....just a bit.

We also went to a children's nature park where they could play around in the water....

make things out of wood....that woodpile, heaven for my little boys! and saws and chisels and hammers and nails everywhere....

My brave friend allowed her foot to be used as leverage while the kids were wielding their saws...!

While the others were busy with their activities, I hand-sewed a bunch of little felt things and also got started on some embroidery at last. I don't think I was too successful with my first batch of felt mascots at all, but my children loved them and loved being able be involved in choosing colors and that's all that matters. 

As evening approached we got settled into an inn...

and then ate a lovely dinner

Sparklers afterwards....so much fun on a summer evening!