Road Trip!!

Now some of you may think that the prospect of a 14 hour car trip with 5 kids would scare any sane person out of their minds.  Which either means that I'm insane, or I know secrets!!!  We had a 14 hour (drive time) road trip planned for this summer.  My hubby was going to be travelling a lot this month, so once the kids were out of school, we packed our bags and headed south.  I love to surprise my kids on the day of the trip with fun goodies to help keep them entertained.  Between those goodies, movies, and my audio books - I was looking forward to a nice peaceful ride.  And believe it or not... I got it!  A few potty stops, a few food stops, but we made good time and there was little fighting or screaming!  YEY!  Really - when you think about it - when the kids are trapped in their seats and I have an audio book (so I can ignore the barbie movie they are watching for the 10th time) I'm one happy camper!  The only thing better is when my hubby is with  me so I can crochet and sew and listen to an audio book while he drives :P

Well to prepare for the trip, I made a few fun goodies for the kids - I started out by making these (click on the image to go to her blog for instructions) The kids LOVED these - they love to color and draw and can spend hours happily entertained with colored pencils and paper. The roughest part was cutting out the dvd holder part - get a couple extra cases if you are going to do it to practice on - you can find the cases pretty cheap and the cutting takes some practice (at least it did for me.)  I also went to Hobby Lobby for some matching fabric for the inside and paper for the outside.

I also made these - i love how they came out and the kids loved having them - i stuffed them with their coloring cases, and books and other goodies and they loved it.  I mostly used left over fabric from the big quilt we made for my sister-in-law and her family for Christmas.  I also used a sheet of plastic canvas to give it stability, and some batting that I used spray adhesive to attach to the plastic canvas.  The pockets were just pieces of fabric folded in half, seamed and stitched in place.  The handles were using the plastic-y canvas type handle stuff (I got it at hobby lobby in the fabric area) and melted the ends with a lighter to seal them.  Then i sewed one end into the seam at the top and added snaps to the other end.  I started writing up an actual pattern for this - and left it back home :)  I will include it with all the dimensions and stuff when i get back.

Old Jean Made New

Ok so I have 5 kids, which means that I have a lot of jeans with holes in the knees.  With the weather warming up, my kids had a need of shorts and less need to holey jeans, so I took this weekend to do some re-furbishing.  I'm SOOO excited about how these turned out!!  All this was done with two pairs of my kids jeans and the leftovers of the Jelly Roll I used to make the table runner for my sister.  I started by making a double fold bias tape out of the fabric, and covered the edges and sewed them on about 1/8 in from the edge. (The butterfly and embroidery on the second pair was already there)  

The purse was done by using the bottom of one of the cut off legs.  I hemmed the bottom and covered it with another strip from the jelly roll.  I folded down the top and frayed the edge a bit - then using yarn, created the handles by threading it back and forth about 5 times - the single crocheting around them.  

For the headbands, I cut a strip of the leftover leg about an inch thick and took another strip from the jelly roll.  I put the wrong sides together and sewed about 1/4 inch from edge down both long sides.  The jelly roll piece was wider than the denim so when i turned it right side out and pressed it there was some of the colored fabric showing on the same side as the denim.  I then measured my kids head and put a strip of 3/4 inch wide elastic into the ends and hemmed them.  Sorry I didn't take pictures during the process, but I didn't think of it..... Anyway - what fun stuff can you do with your worn out clothing - now i just need to find time to do the rest of their holey stuff!  They were so excited about their "new" clothes!

If any of this is unclear, feel free to ask and I will try to do better - maybe when I work on the other pairs this week I can take more pictures for clarification.... :P

Scarves

This pattern was part of another kit from the Hook and Needle club through Annie's Attic. The kit came with 3 different scarf patterns, but after making this scarf, I enjoyed it so much I wanted to make it again. This first picture is the scarf I made using (mostly) the yarn I was given and (mostly) the pattern I was given. I accidentally did the first couple rows different from the pattern, but ended up preferring it that way. The pattern asked me to do 2 rows of sc after the beginning ch and then no rows of sc on the other side. Instead I did mine with the chain right in the middle and a row of sc on either side. Also - I didn't worry about gauge since it was a scarf, but that ended up being a problem since I ran out of yarn.... So i found a fuzzy yarn that was the same color and did the border round with that.


I ended up liking the fuzzy yarn look a lot, so I found some spare yarn I had lying around and modified the pattern a bit and made this scarf. Both scarfs used a bit more than a skein of yarn total.


Ok here is how I made the second scarf - the first one wasn't my own pattern - though mine was heavily based off of it. Click on the image - then right click and choose "Save Image As"