Quick and Easy Bunting Tutorial

I’ve been meaning to make a tutorial for the Dragonland bunting I made, because it was a spur of the moment, super fast decoration! Well, today is Halloween and yesterday I decided to make a last minute Halloween bunting decoration. So the tutorial is in Halloween fabrics, but of course can be anything! It’s an almost no sew decoration. Almost…

Materials:

Background fabric

Fabric Scraps for Letters

Fusible Adhesive, like Steam to Seam or Heat’n Bond Ultra

Double Fold Bias Tape

Printed Letters

Thread

Scissors

Pinking Rotary Cutter

Step 1:

Cut out the flags. Here’s the pattern I use, but of course, you can make the triangles any shape you want!

Step 2:

Iron on the Fusible Adhesive to the back side of the Fabric Scraps.

Step 3:

Cut the letters out of fabric.

Step 4:

Remove the paper from the Fusible Adhesive (Although this may seem obvious, I sometimes forget this step and iron and can’t figure out why the letters aren’t sticking!). Iron letters to the flags.

Step 5:

Pin flags into the bias tape. I start at the center of the bias tape and the center of the middle letter and work my way out. I also overlap my letter about one inch or so (not a needed detail necessarily, but it’s what I do!).

Step 6:

Sew the bias tape and flags together.

Step 7:

Show off your new bunting!

The forecast today was for a super rainy gloomy Halloween. Seems fitting for a bunhc of ghosts and goblins… It has turned out to be beautiful and we’re on our way to trick or treating. I can’t wait to share our little ones Halloween costume!

Bought or Handmade??

I try handmade as much as possible, but today I had to have this conversation with myself in the store.

My son is going to be a fireman for halloween. What little boy doesn’t love a big red firetruck?? My son’s first halloween he was a month old, I bought a Halloween costume. Last year, I vowed that I would make his Halloween costumes until he truely protests the ‘Mom Made’ costumes… Last year he was Max from Where the Wild Things Are and absolutely adorable (if I do say so myself). I’ve started his costume, but haven’t finished it yet. So today I was at the store and I walked by the kids clothes to look at the toys on my search for the stuffed dalmation… (Yes, if I had thought about that earlier, I would have made that as well. And just sitting here I am thinking, I bet there’s an easy way to make one of those too….) And what was hanging on the Clearance Rack, a fireman’s jacket raincoat… Only one. His size. Marked down 60%. Do I buy??? Or do I go home and finish what I have started….

I decided, hey, just buy it. I mean, it’s there right on the edge of the rack. It’s yelling at me, ‘Here I am on, on clearance just waiting for YOU!’ I picked it up and debated some more with myself while looking for the dalmation. Then, in my opinion (I know some that might disagree with this thought!), I came to my senses and decided to stick with my plan.

Handmade With Love.

Quilt #3

Nope, it’s not done. Nor is it even started… But I took the process challenge, so I’m posting about it as I go.

Quilt #3 is for a best friend from college, for his wedding present. unfortunately the wedding was in June and I haven’t even started the quilt… Bad friend… But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, if that helps anything….

So the quilt is going to be their wedding invitation. Not quite sure yet how it will go together. All appliques? Part appliques? I’m debating… I think I want the tree to be quilted and only the leaves and flowers to be appliqued.

Here’s the invite. It will be interesting to see the follow up posts as I figure this one out!

Featured on Prudent Baby

I’m blushing!! I was included in Prudent Baby’s link love today!! I was sitting here with my husband and his siblings. Honestly, I really did start blushing and everyone started cheering for me! We’re a silly bunch!

The Prudent Baby blog is awesome! Every time I think, I want to make this or that, she has it!  Do check it out.

Thanks Prudent Baby ladies!

Dragon Wings Tutorial

Yes, I’ve only posted about my dragon wings about 10 times, and here it goes again. Only this time I’m sharing how I made them.

OK, here is goes, my first ever tutorial…

Materials:

Fleece

2 metal hangers

Fusible Adhesive, like Steam to Seam or Heat’n Bond Ultra

Eleastic, 18inches

Thread

Scissors

Wire Cutters

Your Dragon is Waiting….  What are you waiting for!

Step 1- Print pattern, or use your own. Print Pattern here

Step 2- Lay the pattern on the fusible adhesive. (I used the Heat’n Bond Ultra roll.) Fold the fusible adhesive so that the non-paper sides are together. Trace pattern and Cut. I added a ¼” width around the pattern piece, but you don’t need to.

Step 3- Lay the fusible adhesive on the wrong side of the fleece and iron on. I never iron fleece directly. I always use a thin piece of cotton between the iron and the fleece.

Cut the fleece around the fusible adhesive wing pattern.

Step 4- Time for the wire cutting! Get out your hangers and wire cutters.

Hanger #1- Clip off the hanger piece. Then bend the hanger at the middle of the straight bottom piece, so that you have an upside W. Next, lay the hanger on the dragon wings and bend the hanger so that it somewhat aligns with the top edge of the wings. This doesn’t have to be exact by any means!

Hanger #2- Clip the bottom into 2 piece and the sides into 2 more pieces for the ‘bones’ of the wings.

Step 6- Next step, putting the wings and bones together.

Remove the paper side of the adhesive and lay out this set of wings with adhesive up. Layout the ‘bones’. Lay the second piece of fleece over the bones with right side up. Iron. This ironing step takes a little while to get the fusible adhesive to adhere to the fleece, so be patient. Last part of Step 6, cut out the dragon wings!

Step 7- Stitch! First, stitch around the edges. Second, stitch alongside each of the inside bones

Step 8- Elastic. Almost done… Add two 9inch pieces of elastic to the back side of the wings, spaced about 5inches apart. Although these lengths for the elastic were made for 2 year olds, they even fit some adults. Lastly, Stitch the elastic to the top and bottom of the wings.

And WA LA! You’re done! Get those wings flying!

Please excuse the photography! The lighting in my crafty room is not set up for photography… That’s a whole ‘nother project…. I considered making another set and taking better pictures along the way, but with Halloween just around the corner I decided to post what I have.

Comments and questions are greatly appreciated! Like I said this is my first ever tutorial, so I know there is room for improvement for my next one. I’d also love to see pictures of other little dragons.

And if you’d like to own a pair, but want someone else to make them… Check out my etsy site!

The Process Pledge

Tonight I am taking the Process Pledge! The process pledge? It’s a motivator to share the process of my quilting… 

I, Louise, pledge to talk more about my processes, even when I can’t quite put them in the in words or be sure I’m being totally clear.   I’m going to put my thinking and my gut feelings out there.  

Probably not all that exciting for some, but it’s the little crafty things like this that excite me!

Party in DragonLand

All the posts about the dragon wings were leading up to something bigger than just a pair of dragon wings for my kiddo. We were planning a dragon themed birthday for our two year old with all sorts of dragon fun. Including dragon wings for everyone. Well, the kiddos at least. Although there were some parents who wanted thier own. (You know who you are!)

I am working on my first ever tutorial for the dragon wings. Hopefully I can post that really really soon….

And we had a cave and dragons thanks to Dad’s craftiness….

And last but not least, our other fun and crafty activity was dragon eggs! We had some trouble making these. We followed a recipe from online, but it didn’t really work out for us… 

The recipe called for:

1 cup flour

1 cup used coffee grounds

1/2 cup salt

1/4 cup craft sand or sandbox sand

3/4 cup warm, not hot, water

small plastic dragons

And then cook the eggs at 125 degrees for about 25 minutes.

A few things happened… We couldn’t get it to form the dough that it was supposed to form into, so our eggs were a gooey pile of the mush with a dragon sticking out! We cooked them anyway and they got harder, but they were still a bit playdough like. So we were able to mold the eggs and then bake them again at 300 for a while, probably about a half hour. 

We made a few other alterations… We needed a lot more mix to make our eggs. But we didn’t have any more used coffee grounds so we had to ditch that ingredient. We’d start with the recipe portions, but added more dirt and flour until we got to a thick, gooey cookie dough like consistency dough. At this point we’d form the eggs as close to an egg shape as possible, bake them, shape them again and bake again…

I didn’t keep track of the actual portions, but maybe I’ll make another batch and do a tutorial about that too…  hmmmm…. 

However we got them made, the kids didn’t care. They only cared about hatching them to find their baby dragons inside! Dad made a table with a water box to soften the egg for the hatching process. The kids loved, loved, loved this.

 

Dragon Wings Update

Previously I said that the second set was going to be perfect…  Wrong…

Third times a charm. For real! When it comes to my dragon wings it took a few tries to get it just right. But we got it…. 

Tutorial coming soon!

update… Tutorial is posted here