Twenty-two Favorite Handmade Toys

One of my favorite things to sew are toys.  I just love creating a little treasure to take with me on a trip and give to my grandchildren.  Below is a list of some of my favorite toys that I've made, along with links to all the details of how you can make it too.  And BONUS: most of these little creations include a free pattern.  So, if you're in the mood to get your creative juices flowing, dig right in! This list is for you. 

1.  Miniature Stuffed Owl, free pattern and tutorial found here. 

2.  Long Legged Santa, a free pattern found here.

3.  Long Legged Rabbit, here.

4.  Seahorse toy, free pattern and tutorial found here.

5.  Teepee, big enough for an adult to stand up inside.  Link to the post here.

6.  Stick Pony from a sock tutorial, found here.

7.  Snowmen from scraps of fabric. Check out this post.

8.  Nativity Finger Puppets, here.

9.  Franklin the frog, here.

10.  A little miniature doll and some doll clothes too, found here.

11.  A fabric fairy house made from an old sweater (or felt). Go to this link.

12.  A fairy cottage made from an old sweater (or felt), here.

13.  This little toy elephant is found here

14.  A toy fish, perfect for a young child. Learn how to use a toy rattle to put inside a toy for pennies, here.

15.  Stuffed monsters, free pattern and full instructions here.

16.  How to create more stuffed monster toys with ideas on how to vary the pattern here.

17.  Stuffed Monkey, link to the free pattern and ideas on how to make a girl or boy monkey. Go to this post.

18.  30 Minute Stuffed Animal, complete directions on upcycling a tee-shirt found here.

19.  Make a mini beaver, link to the pattern found here.

20.  Doll sized 1950's poodle skirt found here.

21.  Doll sized travel suitcase tutorial.

22.  Make a few bendable fairies.  For inspiration, go to this post.

The best thing about this list is that most of these posts offer a simple tutorial that you can use to create your own ideas. Go ahead and make a new toy for someone you love or better yet for a charity that you love. It might be fun to incorporate some of these creations into a New Year's resolution! 

Merry Christmas to everyone!    xoxo Grandma

Fabulous Felt Food

Just like a lot of you, my Thanksgiving weekend was spent preparing a lot of food too. My food was a little different though. And inedible. It was made out of felt. 

A few of my granddaughters are getting a play kitchen for Christmas, and their mom asked if I would make some felt food to go along with it.  I knew it would take a while to make these items and since I had to ship them to her, I worked all Thanksgiving weekend to crate these delectable but non edible treats.

Click on the description under each photo for a link to my personal favorite free patterns which I used to make these felt food delicacies.

 Ice cream cones, Circus animal cookies.....

Strawberries, Donuts....

Carrots.....

Birthday cupcakes complete with little candles.

Slices of cake....(This kit came from a 100 yen store.  If you're lucky enough to visit Japan, make sure you visit these stores.)

Bananas with real stickers....

and oranges. 

I think my food turned out pretty fun looking. Hopefully my little granddaughters will enjoy playing with it as much as I enjoyed making it. 

Happy gift making.  xoxo Grandma

Warm Winter Dress

Nothing shouts warm and cozy like clothing made from shirting flannel! 

I love how the fabric made sewing this dress easy.  Shirting flannel is so comfortable too.  If you've ever worn shirting flannel you understand it feels like you're wrapped in a soft, flannel blanket.

I had a hard time finding a shirting flannel that my daughter liked.  I ended up choosing these black and white fabrics which complimented one another.  They are a perfect match for a classic, casual winter dress.

The big pockets were cut on the bias out of the large check adding a fun contrast to the small checks.

The trim on the large checked sleeves is the tiny checked fabric.  I love the way the small and large checked fabrics were able to play off of one another adding more interest to this dress.

The pattern I used was a vintage Butterick #3842.  

The pattern shows a raglan three-quarter length sleeve, patch pockets and neckline binding.  It also shows a ruffle at the end of the sleeves but I opted to add self-made bias tape from the small checked fabric instead.  This pattern was fun and easy to sew.  I would recommend this pattern and of course the fabric is just amazingly soft and snuggly! Perfect for a chilly winter day.  xoxo Grandma

Linked as my favorite thing I sewed for a child in 2016 to Project Run and Play.  I love the vintage pattern used and the warm shirting flannel.  I want a dress made out of the same cozy fabric.

Brother & Sister Penguin Pajamas

Via Facetime, I let my grandson choose the fabric for his and his sister's Christmas pajamas.  As you may have already guessed, he choice this penguin fabric.  Who doesn't love penguins? 

I sewed the coordinating brother & sister pants using this flannel. To my granddaughter's pants, I added a 5" ruffle from a contrasting flannel to the bottom of each leg. 

To jazz up the white pre-made tee shirts I purchased for these pajamas, I added a penguin applique.  To download your free penguin applique pattern go here.

After you've downloaded the pattern, cut out the pattern pieces from any scrap fabric you may have on hand.  I just happened to have fleece scraps that I used for these penguins.

Use temporary adhesive to attach the pieces onto a pre-made, pre-washed tee shirt.  Next place a piece of temporary tear away interfacing under the back side of the image.  (Tissue paper also works great.)  Now, using a narrow zig zag stitch and coordinating thread, machine embroider around the penguin.

Here's how the penguin will look from the wrong side of the fabric:

When you're done your penguin should look similar to this one.  Have fun using my new penguin pattern to make penguin Christmas pajamas for your little ones!  xoxo Grandma

Refashioned Lace Dress

 

I love lace clothing.  Nothing looks classier than a girl of any age in pretty lace! This lace creation started out as an adult women's dress.   Right before my oldest daughter got married, she purchased a beautiful lace dress direct from China that looked like this (it was a Kate Middleton copy-cat dress):

Sadly, the dress didn't fit my tall daughter.  She also has long legs and the dress was definitely designed for a short person.  This dress has been hanging in a closet for years and has never been worn. The fabric is golden layers of classic beautiful lace.

 I pulled the dress out of the closet and decided that this was the year to refashion it into a wearable article of clothing for my granddaughter.

To start the refashion, I used Simplicity pattern #1476A, view A but added long sleeves since this was going to be a winter/Christmas dress. 

I cut the skirt and the bodice apart.  The original dress had pretty lace around the skirt and I left that intact. 

To give you an idea as to how short the dress was originally, I only needed to cut 2" off the original skirt to make it fit this almost 3 year old.

   

I carefully unpicked the zipper and reused.  The sleeves were simply cut down to scale.  I reused the gold lace that edged the original dress to edge the neck and the bottom of the sleeves.  To finish the dress, I made a simple 3" gold sash which I permanently attached at the waistline.

I loved that the lace was so easy to sew.  This is now a wearable holiday dress for my granddaughter.  The nice thing is, my daughter can finally enjoy this dress but on her daughter instead of herself.  xoxo Grandma

The Witch & Her Witch Hat

If you've waited until the last minute to make a costume, keep reading because this is an easy, one hour witch costume that will be a crowd pleaser.

This granddaughter, pictured above, inherited the The Very Hungry Caterpillar costume from her cousin.  The costume wasn't what she wanted because while she was visiting me a few weeks ago, she would look at me and say, "Dama, do you know what a witch says?"  Then she'd say, "Look at me, look at me," and I'd look at her and she'd say, "He he he heeee....Dama, I want to be a witch!" 

How could I deny this darling girl, who can not pronounce her "G's," from having a witch costume? The next day, this little helper became my "pin" girl and handed me pins and more pins as we refashioned this old black lace dress of mine into her new witch costume:

To make this costume, you'll need:

• An old black dress or skirt
• A long sleeve black knit top
• A dollar store witch hat

To make this costume, here's what I did:

• Cut off the lace skirt from the dress. 
• Cut off 3" from the bottom of the black shirt.  
• Baste over the top of the skirt black, glittery tulle. 
• Add gathering stitches all around the skirt.
• Pull the gathering stitches until the skirt is the same size as the bottom of the knit shirt. 
• Pin the skirt to the shirt.
• Sew the shirt to the skirt.

The witch dress is complete. Wasn't that easy? 

To glamorize a dollar store hat:

• From the inside of the hat, tack in place leftover tulle.
• Tack or hot glue bright orange ribbon and stripes of black glitter tulle to the side of the hat.
• Tie the ribbon and then the tulle into a knot.

 

I'm not sure why the umbrella is in the above photo but I do know she loves her "zoo" umbrella and who knows, she just may need an umbrella on Halloween night.  I know, I used one quite often when I was a child but I grew up in the rainy part of Oregon and my costumes were never this much fun!  Year after year, I usually dressed as a hobo.  Yup, pretty boring costume. So, this little witch is much cuter. 

In an hour, this witch costume was ready for this happy little witch whom I'm positive will enjoy this costume and laugh her cute little witch laugh whenever she wears it.  Happy Halloween everyone...he he heeee!  xoxo Grandma

Make More Monsters

This post is a continuation of this post right here, "How to Sew a Few Monsters." Check it out and then join us back here to learn a few more monster tips and tricks to making your little creations unique. You'll be glad you did, because these little guys are fun to create and are pretty cute too.  All children will love the gift of a monster or two.

You can click here for the free pattern.

In my pile of fabric scraps, I came across the brown fur you can see I used in the monster in the title photo. I've sewn on this heavy fur enough times to know that to machine embroider eyes on this stuff would be a little difficult.  So, this is what I did: 

1. Cut out an oval from the head area.  From fleece, cut out an oval 1/2" larger that the oval you originally cut out.  Pin the larger oval to the hole.
2. Sew the oval to the hole.
3. This is what the face area now looks like from the right side of the fabric. Draw a face onto the fleece, using a fabric pen.  Find some buttons and sew those onto the face.  Sew on a pom pom for a nose.
4. Sew some arm shapes together.  Turn them and stuff them.  Baste the ends together.  Now pin on the arms to the basic monster and sew the front to the back, leaving an open space to stuff.

My next monsters you can see below were changed a little too from the basic pattern: 

Here are a few more suggestions to changing up your monster's look:

1.  Use plastic animal eyes. (These are a quick way to add perfect eyes to you monsters.)
2.  Off-center the eyes.
3.  Add only one eye instead of two eyes.
4.  Add pointy horns that look like triangles instead of the curled  horns like in the original pattern.
5.  Hand sew pom poms onto the monsters for fluffy noses.
6.  Add ears to the top or side of the monster's head.
7.  Don't have enough fabric to add the arms?  Just like the furry monster, cut your arms out separately and sew them together, stuff them, sew the arm's opening closed.  Baste them onto the body and you'll have movable arms.
8. One final monster I created was for a baby, into that monster, I added a few rattle elements. 'Not pictured'

If you think of more ways to make these guys unique, let me know! I'd love to hear all about your creativity! Enjoy creating!  xoxo Grandma
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