Isabella - an embroidered portrait

I wasn't sure how this project would turn out so it hasn't even been instagramed-- 

WHAT?! I know! 

We headed up to the Sacramento area for a week after the new year to hang with family while Matt was on a business trip. I wanted to take something with me to do... and I had pinned a couple of embroidered portraits for ever ago... though mine ended up looking nothing like the originals.....

I LOVE IT! It took hours. HOURS. I think I worked on it for a couple weeks in my free time.

 So much fun to play with thread like this. 

 I snapped some in progress shots- first I found a photo I liked and then I traced it onto the fabric and used that as my guidelines. As you can see there was trial and error. I started the embroidery with straight stitching as in my original pin and then hated it so ripped it out and did more searching for portrait embroidering and decided to go more organic with it. 

I jumped all over trying to make sure I was going to be happy with the overall look

Once I felt comfortable that it was going to work out I went down to the super labor intensive/time consuming clothing part. I really wanted it to look like her clothing 

 Here's a comparison. I was almost done but something wasn't right. So photoshopping them together helped point out the problem. Somehow her chin had gotten pointy in the transfer so I pulled out the bottom of her chin and redid it rounded 

just pulling up that chin made the whole face look right. 

P.S. If you check out my Pinterest Embroidery board you can find a lot of really neat examples of this type of embroidery. 

Dabbling in watercolor

I started playing with water colors this last summer. Here's my first one of Bella at the pool. Both the kids recognize who it is so....at least I did something right! Haha

**Edited** to add the original photograph... sometime I am slow to think of these things! 

Isabella's quilt

So rewind to when Bella was turning one. This was her gift from me. An absolutely delicious  star quilt from Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee line. I pinned this one and couldn't get it out of my head (  apparently it isn't her original idea either) But who ever came up with it was genius! I LOVE it.

 It is a generous double size quilt

 And hand quilted in a purl cotton. 

 Bella still hasn't used it (or the peacock quilt for that matter) but they are both in her room. I am sure she will use the peacock one when we get her in her own room (right now the kids share a room). The kids literally have loads of handmade blankets so I don't feel too bad saving some of them for when they don't have to be washed at least once a week... They love all of their blankets. Infact they know whose are whose and do not want to share them.... 

 Someday soon this will be gorgeous on her bed. 

And a little bit of one year old Bella... in some adorable oliver and s shorts made by mom... which we probably never blogged. I actually spent yesterday going through all of Bellas handmade baby stuff for a cousin that will be arriving in December... and unfortunately I don't think we blogged most any of them.

Time sure is flying by!  

Bella's Wall

A lovely lady whom we attend worship with finds vintage handkerchiefs with hand embroidery work on them and adds lace to them. I love that she builds on someone else's art. And gives them another life. She is also nice enough to give them to people when she is done. They are so pretty that I told her I was going to frame the one she gave me. So the next week she brought me even  more (queue excitement!)
I grabbed this shadow box frame at ikea when we went last year for this project and finally found the time to get this project done.
It required figuring out how to fit them all in and show off the lace. And then stitching them each onto the backing -of course now I am wishing I had stitched more, but I figured I would show you anyway since more then likely it will take me another year to get it taken apart again...

I love looking at it. Wouldn't this be fun to do with family pieces?

I added it to Bella's room for now. 

I just realized her room already looks different from this again... oh well it's a semi updated picture!!! 

Scraps

 I used to do a lot of applique. Now... not so much. I still have a massive quantity of small amounts of solid fabrics. So I decided to make myself a crazy out of my normal comfort zone- bright and cheerful quilt. It was more work then I expected all of that cutting and sewing together to get the angles... because of course who makes a pattern or template ahead of time (not me) 

Despite all of that. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this thing. Seriously makes me so happy to see it! 

 We photographed it back in December - I have no idea what happened or why it's taken me so long to get it loaded up here

 But look at how small Bella was!

Yummy Baby Bella. Seriously this child might be the end of my sanity. 

But she's worth it! 

Valentines

We don't really do Valentines day around here. Usually a fun dessert is all but I love the decorating part, it goes up when I take down Christmas  This year I added the architectural LOVE letters. I decided to save the roughly $20 and make them completely from supplies around the house. It was actually super easy and fun. I did splurge on sparkly Modge Podge (totally worth it!) 

(please pretend I dusted and straightened... or don't lol) 

oh and I found some Red and Pink lights for the Tee Pee- the kids love having lights in there! 

 Last night I made another Hopscotch top for Isabella out of an old GAP tshirt that I had laying around. It took an hour from first cut to finish. I reused the hems to save time. This shirt is so much fun to make and is just so cute! 

 I wanted to get a cute picture of the kids together but instead I got a bunch of them being goofy. But there my kids so I don't know why I would expect anything else. I love these two crazy faces!

 Bella is growing up so fast. 

Who does she think she is?!?

PS Don't forget to enter the giveaway for the beautiful hand knit scarf. I am totally jealous of all of you who are getting a chance to win it! 

Playing Dolls

I was despairing over finding Bella a decent baby doll. Of the non creepy sort. Baby Dolls are incredibly personal so I am sure that some of you might disagree with me on what I find acceptable. I had a cabbage patch doll that unfortunately had a tragic death when Brinkley chewed her face off, I loved her. She was bald and blue eyed. 

Unfortunately those dolls have been redone and are kind of ugly now. Luckily I have an awesome Mum who went on a hunt for Isabella's Christmas present and found this version (and let me just say I was creeped out searching for them because the ones with hair are soooo very not right) and she did a little recon to make sure neither of them had hair and they even have blue eyes. The only down side is that they are mini.... and they were dressed hideously... as in so bad I had naked dolls for a while. So I whipped them up some clothing the other day. 

I used stash fabric left over from previous baby shower gifts and made little diapers. 

And for size reference this was a newborn onesie that I took apart and remade in miniature. Also it just dawned on me that you can see the inch marks behind the doll... duh...

I still need to make at least one more outfit- though why I feel the need to have clothed dolls when my kids are half naked most of the time I will never know.

I'm not planning to go all doll clothes making crazy on you guys- promise! But is this even interesting? Or should I just keep this to myself?

Who knew...

Who knew pattern sewing was not as hard as I thought it would be... I have actually ventured into it a few times recently (additional project pictures to follow soon I hope) 

The pattern is the popular Hopscotch dress by Oliver and S 

The blue one was worn about a hundred times before I got around to taking a picture. The green one was my second attempt and I borrowed Mums serger.

I made them in the 12-18 size and they fit Bella perfectly now (8 months) the arms are just a little long. 

She is growing up so quickly that I can barely remember her small. 

She finally has a second tooth coming in (as of last Sunday) and though she managed it a few times before, today is the first time that I feel she has truly grasped the forward motion crawling. It's very goofy, she kind of drags and hoists herself forward. She of course screams at you the whole time because she knows you could just give her what she wants with out all the exercise and that makes her so angry.  Hoping my chunky monkey will thin out just enough that her shorts stop cutting of circulation to her legs (you think I kid)

Don't get me wrong though I love every bit of this chunky girl and her fat cheeks. 

Happy Halloween!

I enjoyed Micah's birthday mobile so much that I ended up switching it up for a Halloween one. It only took a whole month to get a picture of it! 

We dressed the kids up on Saturday to get pictures of them. If one child is hard to photograph two is nearly impossible! Ever since seeing this video on youtube I knew I wanted to dress them up as bear cubs.

 Micah's outfit was re-purposed from a sleep sack Mum made him after he was born, it was WAY too large (obviously) I redid it into a pants suit and added the hood with ears. I also made Isabella's pants and both of their shoes. Lets just say this is a good example of why I don't sew clothing.

 Also I think Micah grew since I made his outfit last month. But I am still happy with them since they are just costumes! Isabella was a little irritated about the whole thing. Micah on the other hand seemed to really enjoy tromping around in it. And doing anything but sit still.

Hope you all have a good holiday!