Birthday Princess 4.0

Now here's a girl who knows how to open birthday presents. I think in this shot she's unwrapping undershirts. And she could not have been more excited. It was adorable.

Anyway, as you can see she was quite pleased with the Sleeping Beauty style crown and necklace set I made from stash fabric. She and Grace love to play princess dress up, so I know they'll get a lot of use. (I'm thinking about writing up a tutorial for making these crowns. They're definitely a minimum-work-for-maximum-impact kind of project.)

I was excited when she got to the little purse set her mom hired me to make. (It was a bartered hire, just the kind I like. I got four big bottles of laundry soap, and countless hours of babysitting. Plus a couple weeks of dog sitting. And the kind of like-a-sister friend every girl needs. Yeah, I totally overcharge.) Abygail's take included a purse, a keychain, a makeup bag, and a wallet. And stickers! Inside the wallet! Abygail was beyond thrilled.

And I was too.

Happy Birthday Princess Abygail!

Super O!

I'm often annoyed with myself for forgetting to take photos of a project before giving it away. Usually, in the rush to get out the door to the party or shower, I don't take the time to snap a few shots, and then I regret it later.

This time, however, I almost regret taking the photos. This project looked better in my memory than it does here in the photos, which I just pulled off the camera and looked at for the first time this evening.

The model looks sharp, I'll admit (he always does), but the details are sloppy. The cape looks wrinkled and ill fitting, and close up especially, the appliques are a mess.

See?

And see?

But you know, this blog is more about recording my projects and the things I learned while making them than just showing the pretty pictures.

So, while I love this metallic gold fabric (also used for princess crowns here and here), I won't use it again for an applique project -- or anything else that leaves raw edges exposed. It just falls apart too easily. And I really need to work on my stitching technique. How do you backstitch a zig zag stitch without the overlap looking so sloppy? (See the (not so) super O above?) I stuffed the CTR letters to add dimension, which I like, but there are several sections of batting peeking out the edges, which I don't like. There's got to be a better way to do that. And I don't know if it's because they're polyester or what, but both the black and the blue background fabric were impossible to get (and keep) wrinkle free. I pressed and pressed and pressed that thing, and it still looks like it spend a month in the trunk of my car. (Not that anything would ever sit in the trunk of my car for a month, of course.)

It's frustrating to spend time on a project and not have it turn out as well as I'd wanted. And yet, I still count this one a success. I was happy with it when I wrapped it up (it's been a couple weeks now), and all reports say Super O loved it. It was made entirely from the stash, I completed it in just a couple hours, it's personalized, and it's not plastic. Plus it's righteous. What more could a six-year-old want? Perhaps most encouraging, Sam wants one for himself. (I think for him, though, CTR stands for "Choose the Rocketlauncher." He's really into munitions lately, but that's probably and entry for another blog.)