Reindeer Webkinz Sleigh Bed - in fabric
Jan. 17th, 2008 12:26 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
elfie-elfie.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
craftgrrlWARNING: this is a shameless "Proud Mom" post, and I make no apologies.
This isn't MY work. (Mostly not my work.) The hardest part of getting this thing done was for me to stand back after showing my 9yo daughter how to do the next step. This is my daughter's completely my daughters, from start to finish.
Background: My daughter Tiger gets invited to an obscene number of birthday parties every year, and in this December birthday case, she got her friend EXACTLY what she'd asked for: a Webkinz reindeer. But it "didn't cost enough". (???) So she had to add something to make the gift seem bigger and better. And plushie reindeer require cushy digs.
Tiger's Pattern:
This isn't MY work. (Mostly not my work.) The hardest part of getting this thing done was for me to stand back after showing my 9yo daughter how to do the next step. This is my daughter's completely my daughters, from start to finish.
Background: My daughter Tiger gets invited to an obscene number of birthday parties every year, and in this December birthday case, she got her friend EXACTLY what she'd asked for: a Webkinz reindeer. But it "didn't cost enough". (???) So she had to add something to make the gift seem bigger and better. And plushie reindeer require cushy digs.
Tiger's Pattern:
She presented me with this pattern she'd drawn up, and asked if I'd help her get the stuff together so she could put it together. All I can say is Thank Goodness I Didn't Have Any Commissions On My Table. We had time to do this properly and with minimal personality conflict. So I showed her how to measure her pieces, label them so no one would be confused, and we went FABRIC SHOPPING! No cheap-o Fabricland cottons for her friend, either, we had to go to the QUILTING STORE! The ladies there have known her since she was a year old, so they got a huge kick out of her choosing fabrics and figuring out how much she needed... and I let her handle all the transactions, from cutting to paying. It seems only 3 years ago she was pulling all the buttons off the button rack and feeding them to her brother... *snif* Oh, wait, it WAS.
She chose solid red and green - your standard Christmas colours. She had to cut each pattern piece 5 times: in red and green, in paper-backed fusible for each colour, and once in stiff interfacing. I tried her on the rotary cutter, but she didn't have the coordination or the confidence to go with it, so I cut the interfacing myself, and she used the shears on the fabrics. Then I showed her how to fuse the web to the fabrics, and then the fabrics to the interfacing. Yes, I know my iron is dirty. It's the one I have dedicated to fusing. :-) Aside from standing at her shoulder, I didn't have a lot to do except count with her as the pieces cooled. (You must not move the fused pieces until they've cooled, or the glue won't set properly. It takes about a full minute for each piece - which is a long time, when you think about it.)
With all the pieces properly fused, it's time to do the fun stuff: SIT AND SEW! She trimmed the fabric edges even with the interfacing, and I started her off on overcasting the edges with a satin stitch. She had a bit of trouble on the curves, so she started each piece just below a curve, and called me to finish it off.
This is the Bernette 80e, Tiger's very own sewing machine. (I won it in a draw, and she swapped her yard sale Kenmore with the really powerful motor for my sissy -- ahem, DAINTY -- lightweight Bernette with a stitch speed regulator. It's that slider you see just under the stitch illustrations. Now both Kenmore and Bernette are in possession of people who appreciate their qualities. Yes, sewing machines possess the sewists, not the other way around.)
She's using the overcasting foot and is practising how to let the feed dogs pull the piece under the needle, instead of trying to feed it herself. Her left hand gently presses the piece in line with the seam guide on the overcasting presser foot, and her right hand makes sure the piece goes in straight. When you're feeding something through your machine and it's in contact with only one feed dog, sometimes the fabric takes a detour to the left, and your needle walks off the edge. When you're overcasting, you have to do the edge in one go, or you end up tying off a bunch of ends in the middle of the edge, and it can look a bit ragged. It's really easy, overcasting.
Gratuitous Proud Mom snap: I love that little smirk on her face. She gets it whenever she figures out how easy something is, and how good it looks.
OK, the fun stuff is over: no more machine sewing. Tiger didn't have the hand-eye coordination yet to but the edges and zig-zag them together in the machine (makes a hinged seam). The reason that wasn't easy is that each side of the feed dogs was grabbing only one edge of each piece - and like I said a couple of pictures up: your fabric tends to walk out from under the needle when it's in contact with only one feed dog. She also didn't have the patience to hand-stitch everything together neatly (ever notice how our stitches get bigger and bigger the longer we've been hand-sewing something?)... so she took a break, was ready to ditch the whole thing, stay home from the party, and just hand over the reindeer at school the next Monday. So I got to assemble the sides and do the work in the deep corners. (For the record: stitch everything together that you can while your box is FLAT. Mom's lesson learned: 9yos may be ready to learn to sew, but they're not ready to sew solo.) While I stitched the box together, she cut, machine-stitched, turned, stuffed, and closed a square mattress and pillow for the bed, and felt a lot better because I hadn't known she was doing all that by herself until these items appeared, and I asked her which toy set she'd scrounged them from. :-) Then I discovered she'd gone into my locked stash closet and taken some of my polyfibre batting without permission. >:-( But I let it slide with a stern look, because I would have said yes anyway, and she hadn't disorganized the place to get at it.
Next mother-daughter lesson: How to let your responsible 9yo use a hot-glue gun without freaking out. :-) She had to be taught how to SPARINGLY apply the glue (because it's just so much fun to watch this stuff ooze out of the tip and trail everywhere like spiderwebs!), and I managed to prepare dinner while she completed the trim by herself at the kitchen table. Yay, both of us! We passed!
Bed with pillow and mattress. Look at the points on those corners! Look at the straight edge-stitching, in matching thread colours! You know what that means? She THREADED THE MACHINE BY HERSELF! @_@ My baby's growing up!
Webkinz reindeer approves. Tiger's gift is just about complete... but how to wrap? It's too big for a paper party bag, and too soft for paper gift wrap...
(Last picture, I promise!)
I grabbed a big chunk of voile from the remnants of my "Goth Moth" cape lining, and serged the edges with a rolled-hem stitch and white woolly nylon thread in the upper looper. (No, I'm not ready to let my very responsible and capable 9yo daughter use my serger, even if she thinks she's ready.) Tied it in a pretty pouf at the top, with the handmade birthday card hiding the contents, and she's off to the party on the 8th.
I wish the birthday girl's parents had taken a picture of Tiger's face when they asked her where she'd bought the box, because they wanted to get one for another friend. I have never seen such a wide: "FIGJAM!" grin on her face as in that moment. (FIGJAM = F***, I'm Good, Just Ask Me!)
Cross-posted to![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sew_hip and my journal, too.
She chose solid red and green - your standard Christmas colours. She had to cut each pattern piece 5 times: in red and green, in paper-backed fusible for each colour, and once in stiff interfacing. I tried her on the rotary cutter, but she didn't have the coordination or the confidence to go with it, so I cut the interfacing myself, and she used the shears on the fabrics. Then I showed her how to fuse the web to the fabrics, and then the fabrics to the interfacing. Yes, I know my iron is dirty. It's the one I have dedicated to fusing. :-) Aside from standing at her shoulder, I didn't have a lot to do except count with her as the pieces cooled. (You must not move the fused pieces until they've cooled, or the glue won't set properly. It takes about a full minute for each piece - which is a long time, when you think about it.)
With all the pieces properly fused, it's time to do the fun stuff: SIT AND SEW! She trimmed the fabric edges even with the interfacing, and I started her off on overcasting the edges with a satin stitch. She had a bit of trouble on the curves, so she started each piece just below a curve, and called me to finish it off.
This is the Bernette 80e, Tiger's very own sewing machine. (I won it in a draw, and she swapped her yard sale Kenmore with the really powerful motor for my sissy -- ahem, DAINTY -- lightweight Bernette with a stitch speed regulator. It's that slider you see just under the stitch illustrations. Now both Kenmore and Bernette are in possession of people who appreciate their qualities. Yes, sewing machines possess the sewists, not the other way around.)
She's using the overcasting foot and is practising how to let the feed dogs pull the piece under the needle, instead of trying to feed it herself. Her left hand gently presses the piece in line with the seam guide on the overcasting presser foot, and her right hand makes sure the piece goes in straight. When you're feeding something through your machine and it's in contact with only one feed dog, sometimes the fabric takes a detour to the left, and your needle walks off the edge. When you're overcasting, you have to do the edge in one go, or you end up tying off a bunch of ends in the middle of the edge, and it can look a bit ragged. It's really easy, overcasting.
Gratuitous Proud Mom snap: I love that little smirk on her face. She gets it whenever she figures out how easy something is, and how good it looks.
OK, the fun stuff is over: no more machine sewing. Tiger didn't have the hand-eye coordination yet to but the edges and zig-zag them together in the machine (makes a hinged seam). The reason that wasn't easy is that each side of the feed dogs was grabbing only one edge of each piece - and like I said a couple of pictures up: your fabric tends to walk out from under the needle when it's in contact with only one feed dog. She also didn't have the patience to hand-stitch everything together neatly (ever notice how our stitches get bigger and bigger the longer we've been hand-sewing something?)... so she took a break, was ready to ditch the whole thing, stay home from the party, and just hand over the reindeer at school the next Monday. So I got to assemble the sides and do the work in the deep corners. (For the record: stitch everything together that you can while your box is FLAT. Mom's lesson learned: 9yos may be ready to learn to sew, but they're not ready to sew solo.) While I stitched the box together, she cut, machine-stitched, turned, stuffed, and closed a square mattress and pillow for the bed, and felt a lot better because I hadn't known she was doing all that by herself until these items appeared, and I asked her which toy set she'd scrounged them from. :-) Then I discovered she'd gone into my locked stash closet and taken some of my polyfibre batting without permission. >:-( But I let it slide with a stern look, because I would have said yes anyway, and she hadn't disorganized the place to get at it.
Next mother-daughter lesson: How to let your responsible 9yo use a hot-glue gun without freaking out. :-) She had to be taught how to SPARINGLY apply the glue (because it's just so much fun to watch this stuff ooze out of the tip and trail everywhere like spiderwebs!), and I managed to prepare dinner while she completed the trim by herself at the kitchen table. Yay, both of us! We passed!
Bed with pillow and mattress. Look at the points on those corners! Look at the straight edge-stitching, in matching thread colours! You know what that means? She THREADED THE MACHINE BY HERSELF! @_@ My baby's growing up!
Webkinz reindeer approves. Tiger's gift is just about complete... but how to wrap? It's too big for a paper party bag, and too soft for paper gift wrap...
(Last picture, I promise!)
I grabbed a big chunk of voile from the remnants of my "Goth Moth" cape lining, and serged the edges with a rolled-hem stitch and white woolly nylon thread in the upper looper. (No, I'm not ready to let my very responsible and capable 9yo daughter use my serger, even if she thinks she's ready.) Tied it in a pretty pouf at the top, with the handmade birthday card hiding the contents, and she's off to the party on the 8th.
I wish the birthday girl's parents had taken a picture of Tiger's face when they asked her where she'd bought the box, because they wanted to get one for another friend. I have never seen such a wide: "FIGJAM!" grin on her face as in that moment. (FIGJAM = F***, I'm Good, Just Ask Me!)
Cross-posted to
sew_hip and my journal, too.
