A Year of Footprints

I can't believe that my kids are one! When did that happen.
I wanted to do something different to mark their progress each month. There are a lot of different ideas out there (thanks to Pintrest I have seen them all).
The idea formed while the kids were in the NICU. One of our nurses stamped the kids feet when they were a month old, and continued with their second and third month for us. My husband really liked the idea and suggested that we keep it going and stamp them every month for a year. I was game for that, so I got on Amazon and bought a stamp pad, and somehow it has now been over a year!

We had a big birthday party for the twinners to celebrate their first year. If anyone deserved a big party it was there two strong, amazing kids. They have been through so much, and they have fought and made their way. I am so proud of them. I hurried and got this project done so we could display them at the party.

I now needed to find a way to display the cute footprints. Since I love cross stitching I knew it had to incorporate that as well. I found a great pattern by the one and only Joan Elliot! I love her patterns. And the finished project was outstanding. I now just need to frame them....

Details about the project:

I bought the aida from 123stitch.com. I love this site so much. The colors are "a touch or gray" 14 count and "a touch of peach" 14 count. It worked out perfectly. The names that I stitched for them that are hanging on the nursery wall is on "a touch of yellow", so all the projects fit together well.

The pattern came from a book I purchased online. It is a book of Joan Elliot Alphabets titled "Spell it Out." I highly recommend it.  It has the cutest alphabets featuring bears, faeries, pirates, and other wonderful things.

Colors: She originally designed it with the colors I used for Wilson's name. I then changed it up when I did Stella's because I wanted to make it a bit more girly.

Egg-tastic

I've been working on this project for a while now. I honestly don't remember when I started it, but it ended up going into the unfinished pile.
Now that I'm home all day I have a little time for stitching. I wanted to do a Spring/Easter project and I remembered that I had this sitting somewhere. I had everything I needed to finish it, so I dug it out.

The pattern came from Cross Stitch and Needlework Magazine / March 2013
The design is by Julia Lucas

As you can see, I finished them differently. Mainly because I hate stitching in white. It always turns out bad.







This is after I finished the stitching. They are so cool looking.  I was drawn to this pattern because it was stitched on black.

finishing them into 3D eggs was a pain to say the least.
The tools I used:

1 - Styrofoam Egg
2 - Floss
3 - Pins
4 - Paper Clip
5 - Flat Head Screwdriver
6 - Pen
7 - (not pictured) Glue Stick
8 - (not pictured) Hot glue

 Step 1: Take a piece of floss and draw a line around the egg. This gives a guide so you can punch out a portion of the egg with the screw driver. You can use whatever you want to do this, I've seen it done with an exact o knife as well. But the screwdriver worked pretty good.

Step 2: Use the glue stick and glue the stitch work to one side of the egg.
I have tried this without gluing and its doable, but makes it much harder.  So I highly suggest glue.

 This was my second attempt, so the fabric looks really bad.  I was having a hard time getting the stitching centered on the egg. That is why I highly reccomend glue. And for safe measure I used pins on the top, bottom and each side to help hold it in place.







Step 3: I'm sure you could use multiple things for this, but I used the paper clip. The goal is to stuff the fabric in the part of the egg you dug out. The end result looking like this. It does not have to look perfect. It will be covered up in the end.

Step 4: You now need to repeat the process of Step 2 and 3 for the other side. I used bring springy fabrics that I had in my stash.

This is what it should look like after both sides are all tucked in.


It will have a pretty ugly gap all the way around. so you need to find something that is wide enough to cover it.
I just hot glued some trim all the way around.





And the finished project:

I did a similar project last year as well. Not quite as pretty but you can see it hear.

Nursery

Most of my creative energy has been focused on getting the nursery ready. The finished project turned out adorable. I still have a bunch of ideas that I want to do (it probably won't happen though).

My first project was my teddies. I have been working on this collection for years and years. Whenever my Dad went out of town he would bring me back a teddy. When ever I went on vacation I bought a teddy. I found a lot of them in great little shops and boutiques. When I got a little older I wanted to use them in my children nursery.  Justin was not too thrilled with the idea, but I pretty much told him he had no choice in the matter. I think in the end he's OK with them.

Next was the big cross stitching project. I make so many things for other people, trying to decide what to make for my own children was torture! I had no idea what to do. I had bought the ABC Beatrix Potter patterns years and years ago. I finally decided that I wanted to use that, and I could not find the patterns anywhere!! I looked online again and I could only find 2 and they were super expensive. I was so mad. I decided to look again. Luckily I found them, and they were exactly where I thought it was, I just missed them the first time I looked.

The patterns technically have a character for each letter but I did not want it to be super huge.I decided to do every other letter with a character, and it turned out nice because Wilson and Stella have the same number of letters in their names, and they turned out pretty close to the same size.

For the charectures I just picked the ones I liked. I had to have Peter, and Jemima Puddle duck. The rest I just chose because they were cute.

Putting together the pattern was pretty time consuming. I had to map out each letter, and then insert the character where they would best fit. I also had to make up some of the patterns. They were missing corners and such because the animals were technically paired with different letters.

I was in the hospital a lot, so I was able to finish these pretty quickly. My Mom helped me out and got them framed.

Next was my small cross stitching project. These cute little animals were in an issue of CrossStitcher. They were in a free kit to make little ornaments. I thought they were perfect for my woodland creature themed nursery.

Years ago I saw in a magazine hoops wrapped in ribbon. I did that for another project and it turned out super cute, so I wanted to do that again.

The other obstacle was there was only 5 patterns and I needed 6. I like things to be symmetrical. I decided I could probably design my own. I created the little bunny. He was good addition. And I think I was not too far off so it looks like it was not designed separately from the group.

 The memory board my awesome sister-in-law made. She had made me one before, and she has some cute ones in her house as well. Each button she covered herself with a little owl from the material. She also stitched there names on it. I absolutely love it. It is the perfect addition to the nursery.

My mother is amazing, but you all know that. She made these adorable quilts for the twins beds. She also made the bumper pads. They originally started out as just the little yellow and brown owl material. And then they evolved into the quilts you see here. My mother never does anything half a**.
She also crocheted adorable granny square blankets.

The rocking chair belonged to Justin's Grandma Stella. I think it is a great addition to the nursery. The crocheted blanket my Grandma Wilson made for me years ago. I love seeing it in the nursery now. It always makes me smile.

 I love love love this growth chart. My cousin Lisa made it for me. It matches everything so perfect.

One of our wonderful nurses in the hospital started stamping the kiddos feet each month. Justin and I really liked this so we wanted to keep it going when we came home. The first 3 cards were made in the NICU, and the last one by me. I thought each month I will stamp there feet and make a card for their wall.
I have an extra set of stamped feet, so when they are 1 we want to put them all next to each other to see how they have grown.

 So that is my sweet nursery. I had a lot of fun decorating it and to see my kids in it is a dream come true. I love them so much. I can't even imagine my life without them. And I'm so grateful that families are forever.

More Baby Gifts

On top of the projects I have been working on for my own kiddlets, I have done two other projects for friends and family.

The first project was for my new niece, Ingrid. She is a total cutie! I have made her two older brothers blankets, so I had to make one for her. I was extremely upset about the whole project I almost didn't even start one. I went to go buy the blanket at Joann's and they didn't have any. OK, no big deal, I went to Michale's. They did not have any either. Not the end of the world, I got online to find one. NO ONE HAS THEM. I looked all over for one, and apparently they don't make the baby sized one anymore. I could of bought a normal size blanket and cut it to the size I needed, but it would of been twice the money.
I now had to find something different. Joann's had another style, its just not a pretty as the other ones. And the blocks go around the edges instead of the whole blanket being blocks. I know I totally over reacted about the whole thing, but I was pregnant, and that's my excuse and I'm stickin' with it.

I found the alphabet pattern in a book I recently bought. It is a Joan Elliot alphabet book. I love Joan Elliot designs, they are my absolute favorite. Thanks to Facebook, Joan even got to see the finished project. (its really not that big of a deal, but I thought it was pretty cool that she told me she liked it).

The next challenge was sewing it together. I am by no means a master seamstress, that is my mother. I have totally piled on the projects for her since I found out I was pregnant. She is making quilts, and bumper pads, she crocheted adorable granny square blankets for them, plus on top of it all she alters wedding dresses. When the baby was finally born, our babies were only a few weeks old and we were at the hospital all the time. The day before I was going to give it to her it still was not done. I felt terrible asking my mother to do it for me, so I tried to do it myself. I was up until one in the morning trying to get this sewed together. It to FOREVER! but, only due to my poor sewing skills. I have the knowledge, but not the skills.
I had some minky for the back, and I got it all pinned together, and in the end I swear I sewed and unpicked each side at least twice. It kept slipping and turning out terrible. I finally got it done, and it turned out alright, but it took way to long.

 This is the blanket as I was trying to pin it together. I have a nice big kitchen counter that is the perfect size, so that was helpful.

 Close up of one of the letters

 ALL DONE! and wrapped up.

The second project is for my best friend Monica and her new baby boy Luke (aka Wilson's new best friend). He is such a cutie. I got to go over to her house the other day and he just cuddled me for almost an hour, it was great.
Anyways, I got the pattern out of Cross Stitcher Magazine issue 232. It was from May of 2010. I have been wanting to stitch this design since I first saw it. When I found out Monica was preggers I knew exactly what project I wanted to do. It is really simple, but really cute.

The design in the magazine was stitched on a cute pok-a-dot aida, but they unfortunately don't make that any more either. I had to settle with plain blue. It was a breeze to stitch up, and I have had this finished for months thankfully. All I had to do was stitch the name and date and frame it and it's all ready to go.