Super hero monsters

It seems like super heroes are now all the rage. All the little boys at O's preschool class are all about super heroes. They know everything about Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Captain America...and, many others that I didn't even know existed. :) I have a hard time keeping up with the names of My Little Ponies.

Since the little monsters that I have been making have been a great success among their new owners, I have been making them. They make great gifts and are fairly quick to make once you have the materials and idea. O carries her monster with her everywhere, and when it is not in sight, we look for it with cats and dogs.

This weekend, I decided to try to make two super hero inspired monsters. Most of O's friends are little boys. She loves "my boys" as she calls them. One of them LOVES Batman, so I decided to make a Batman monster for him. Since he is only two and a half, I did not want to make the monster too scary, so I decided to use Batman material and create Batman's logo for its belly.

I went to Google images and printed out the logo. I cut the Batman shape out, pinned it on the yellow fabric, and cut it out. I decided to put it on top of another fabric and then zigzagged it on its place. I hope it will last. I was happy how well it turned out even though the zigzags are a bit all over the place. :)

My plan was to make a cape for Batman, but I was so excited to finish the monster that I didn't think ahead and sew the cape on before I sewed the whole monster together. Once I had it all put together, I realized that I had forgotten the cape. Well, I tried to take the top part of the monster apart, but the fur started to rip, so I decided this Batman monster can be without a cape. Maybe the next one will have one.

The big brother of Batman fan is a fan of Spiderman. Well, I couldn't go to their house with one super hero monster, so I decided to make a Spiderman monster for the older brother.

I used Spiderman fabric again, but the "web" on his face, I sewed with black thread. It was not all even, but luckily, I was able to hide all the imperfections with the eyes. He looks a bit scary to me, but the new owner did not seem to mind it. Phew!

While I was making Spiderman monster, I was thinking, awesome now I will have a chance to make a cape for it since I have not sewn the monster together yet. I made the cape and everything, and when I was getting ready to sew it on, it dawned on me that Spiderman does NOT have a cape. What a tragic mistake that would have been! And, I am SURE I would have been corrected. ;)

This just shows how much I know about my super heroes. Sigh!

Here are the super hero monster brothers together. I'm happy their new owners seemed to like them.

Crocheted Rattles

A few weeks ago, I pinned a picture of  beautiful crocheted balls on my Pinterest. The link took me to an Etsy store (ATERGcrochet) where I not only found the pattern (for sale) for the balls, but I also saw these beautiful flower rattles. I had to have the patterns, so I ended up purchasing both.

Once I had the patterns, I started to go through my yarn stash, and I realized soon that all the cotton yarn that I had was going to be too thick for these delicate rattles. So, the searching started. The yarn that was used for both patterns was Schachenmayr Catania Cotton. It is 100% cotton and fingering weight which means it is very thin and delicate. The colors are beautiful, and there are lots of options. It is also, of course, made in Germany which then means that it is pretty expensive to buy here in the U.S., and one can mainly find it in specialty yarn shops if they happen to carry it. Well, since I had bought the patterns, and I had decided that I was going to make the flowers and balls, I started to obsess a bit about the yarn. I went online looking for a local yarn shop that might carry it. I looked for Finnish stores to see if they sold it there. I looked online yarn shops. I did Google searches. I went on Etsy. I looked on Amazon. I spent some hours doing this, and I was not going to let it go until I found this yarn at reasonable price.

Interestingly, I found the yarn on Etsy, and the seller had a nice range of colors available. It turned out that the price per skein was great, but shipping was ridiculously expensive since she was selling them from Germany. Well, of course, she was. Not only was I not going to pay $7.95 for shipping, but I also refuse to buy things such as these from Etsy since, in my opinion, one should be only selling handmade items on this site...don't get me started on that. So, after doing some serious price comparisons, I ended up finding and buying the yarn from Angelika's Yarn Store. They were wonderful! The price was good and shipping was a great deal. I was able to convince my friend that she also needed some of this yarn, so we ordered together and split the shipping. Yay for crocheting friends!!

The yarn is beautiful. And, it is so much fun to crochet. I highly recommend it.

Here is my very first flower rattle. It is an exact copy from the pattern. It was so much fun to make, and I am a bit obsessed now with these rattles. Good thing we will be having another baby girl. She will  have lots of flower rattles to play with. :)

I also made another one (on the right), and this time I made up my own color combination. I am pleased with that one as well.

And, here is the ball that started all of this craziness. I chose my own color combination for the ball, and that is what is so nice about the pattern...you can just make up the colors as you go. They are super easy to make and took no time. The only annoying part is all the ends of the yarns since you switch colors after every row.

For each of the flowers and balls, I have stuffed with fiberfill and added a little bell so that it makes a sound. I have been working on baby gifts for friends, and some of these will be send for them. I hope that the babies, who by now are almost 1, will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them. If nothing else, at least, they will add some color to the toy basket. :)

Fuzzy furry friendly monster friends

I love getting my weekly Pinterest email. I, however, turn into this crazy woman who can't put her phone down because I need to keep pinning new craft projects that I just LOVE. And, once I tell myself I am done, I go on my computer and keep pinning more. At the end of it all, I start feeling anxious and overwhelmed. I think (or, share out loud with my poor husband who has to witness this crazy behavior) every week after I have stopped pinning with my eyes all blaring and crazy, "Why are there so many people out there who are SO talented? How do they come up with so many cute ideas? I don't have time to make all of these things? Damn you Pinterest!!!!!" 

And, then I get inspired.

During this week's crazy Pinterest pinning session, I pinned a website Sun Scholars: 30 Homemade Gifts for Kids. They have lots of great ideas and links to either other blogs or Etsy stores. One of the gift ideas was these beautiful little monster friends. I have been sewing baby gifts to friends with new babies, and I thought this would be great gift. So, over the weekend I had a date with my friend, and we ended up at Joanns. Surprise! Surprise! We found the fur that I believe was used in the pictures that I saw on the website. I was getting excited about this sewing project!

I may not be creative when it comes to coming up with new ideas, but I am really good at following directions (in every part of my life). So, that night, I sat down, looked at the pictures of these monsters and started cutting. The fur is super messy, but after I cut the fur, I used my serger which helped that the fur did not keep shedding. I used scarps of fabric that I have plenty of to make the face, ears, belly pocket and legs. The eyes are made of flannel that was left over from the monster patches for the jeans (which, I am happy to report, have held up nicely after many many washes). The heart is a felt heart from Joanns.

My 4-year-old daughter fell in love with this soft fuzzy monster. It is now hers. She named it Ollie the monster (although she sometimes calls it a dinosaur...), and Ollie is with her pretty much everywhere. So, I would say this was a successful sewing project.

Ollie's front.

Ollie's back.

Ollie's face.

My O with her O.

Since the monsters were so much fun to make, I decided to make another one. This one is little bit smaller than Ollie. It was again supposed to be a gift, but after O saw it, she decided that her future baby sister needs a monster too. So, we put it in the box with things for the baby where the monster can wait for her arrival.

Here the two monsters together. Big Ollie and little baby Ollie. :)

I can't wait to for this weekend when I get my email from Pinterest again. Let the craziness start again!!