Felt Baby Blocks

Well folks I entered the wild world of sewing when this beauty showed up for Christmas from Mama Mayhem.



I did have a sewing machine prior to that that I had picked up at a garage sale for $15. It was SUPER old. It came with a servicing receipt  from 1963! My old machine was persnickety and more frustrating than fun to use. I did bust it out from time to time. For example, I used it to make the roman shades in our bathroom revamp. Most recently I had tried to use it to make this pillow, but I got so frustrated with my machine being crappy that I ended up sewing it by hand--not fun.

Enter my new shiny flashy machine. I love it. And I love my new baby. So I decided by first project would be something for my babe.



There they are together. I love it how it looks like Max is winking!

It is a fairly simple process. I used felt fabric in three different patterns, but I think more patterns would have been more fun. The foam I got was 3" thick so my blocks are 3" square.



I cut the fabric in 3 1/2" squares to allow for 1/4" seams.



If you don't have  a rotary cutter, go buy one now. You will love yourself for it. And sorry for the wonky focus of this photo I was trying out Mr. Mayhem's new 50mm prime lens. I don't quite have the technique down yet.

Once you have all your squares cut, sew two of them right sides together.



You end up with this.



Continue in that fashion until you have four in a row (you need 6 total for each block).



Again with the 50mm lens...sorry. Now, sew one square on each side to make it look like a "T". Remember to keep right sides together.



At this point you are going to start making the cube. Keep sewing right sides together until you end up with this.



Sew two more sides, but be sure to leave one open to get the foam into. I did sew a little ways on both sides on the machine to get nice corners, but I left a 2 1/2" gap in the middle to stuff the foam through.



Turn the block right side out! They already look cute.



 Now it is time to cut the foam. I have been told that the best way to cut it is with an electric knife. I don't have one, so I had to improvise. I used the most fine tooth saw blade I could find from Mr. Mayhem's hacksaw. It worked like a charm. If it is just a serrated knife the foam will be cut jagged and the blocks won't be perfectly square.



I drew a line at 3" on both sides then Mr. Mayhem and I each took an end of the saw blade and pulled it back and forth slowly making sure it was lined up the whole time. I felt like I was cutting down a tree in the olden days. I even said "Timber!" in my head each time we reached the end of the foam.

I stuffed the foam in the felt and hand stiched them shut. I don't have pictures of the last two steps. Bad blogger...

Here is the finished product.



Max is a little too young to interact with them too much, but he seems interested and I'm sure as he gets older he will have lots of fun with them!



This was a great project to break in my new sewing machine. It was quick, easy, turned out cute, and it was pretty cheap too. I got the foam at hobby lobby with a 40% off coupon for $3.50 and the fabric was 60% off at JoAnn so my total there was $3.19. All in all I would call it a success.

Love,
Natalie

Minion Nursery Complete!

Well folks, with just one week to D-day (AKA My due date) the count down is nearing completion. Luckily for me the nursery project has already  been completed. Mr. Mayhem and I had fun using our new camera (our biggest baby splurge!) to take some nice photos of our hard work. 

We are so happy with how everything came together. It really puts a new mama's heart at ease to know that she has a safe, calming, and comfortable place to bring her newborn home to. 

This first photo is the view as you come in the door. The crib is to the right and the closet is to the left. 

Mr. Mayhem decided that the baby and I needed to be included in the photo shoot. I think this angle gives a good idea of the layout of the room. Remember this first nursery post where I was hell bent on changing the rug? Surprise...it ended up working, and I love it in the space. Amazing how things just work out some times.

Here is the view of the other side of the room. His bed looks so empty, but from what I have read that is the safest way for baby to sleep.  That bear on the crib makes heart beat sounds to sooth the little guy to sleep with reminiscent sounds of the womb.

We opted for a mesh bumper because we have heard concerns about babies being suffocated by the regular kind! I love the crisp white look too. It keeps it simple.

 Let's take a look at some more of the details!  You might remember this little minion from this post and the growth chart ruler from this post! They both add so much fun and interest to the space.

Mr. Mayhem built these shelves from corbels we bought at the home improvement store and some wood we found in the basement left from the previous owners. They turned out great especially considering their humble beginnings. 

Baby Mayhem's first photo got framed and put on the shelf with a little minion friend. My mom bought that minion for us not realizing that it was a Dracula minion with a cape and FANGS! I cut off the cape, but those fangs are still there and crack me up. My mom was so embarrassed when she realized in was a vampire.

We are especially excited about our new rocker glider that we got as a gift (we are so thankful for all the generous people around us!). It is so comfy and will be great to rock the little one in.  Mr. Mayhem built those book shelves on the wall as well. They are knock offs of these Ikea picture ledges. The pillow I sewed, and then Mr. Mayhem and I used this method to paint on the minions.

Like I said, the nursery is done, but that doesn't mean I don't have more ideas for the future. I think once the baby is born and we have announced his name, I will buy the letters to spell it out and intersperse them with these minions on the top shelf.  I may paint them or decoupage them with cute craft paper. You will just have to wait and see! I love the little bit of the cornice box that you can see in this picture!

Now all it needs is a baby! I will let you know when that addition happens. Any day now!

Freezer Paper Painting--Minion Pillow

Hello blog friends! We have been making quite a bit of progress putting together our minion nursery for our little guy. I'm 35 weeks pregnant, so it's about time to wrap things up. We hope to finish hanging some shelves and order a chair this week. Once those are in place, I will give you the grand tour, but for now I want to share a fun project the Mr. and I worked on yesterday. We made this pillow!

The technique is called freezer paper painting. I found a nice tutorial of it on this blog.  We finished our project, and Mr. Mayhem looked at me and said, "When do we put it in the freezer?" So I will take this opportunity to point out that you will not actually use the freezer, just freezer paper. ;-)

As you may or may not know there is no minion fabric in existence. Hence, the need to create my own. I started with plain white canvas/denim type fabric. I sewed a pillow case to fit my pillow form. I am probably the most amateur sewer on the planet, so I did not create a tutorial for that. I'm sure there are lots of good ones out there if you need it. 

We started with a minion image from the interweb. Mr. Mayhem worked his computer magic to simplify it into something we could cut out. Then we placed freezer paper over it and carefully cut around the design with a sharp razor blade knife. 

In case you don't know what freezer paper is. (Mr. Mayhem didn't) It is in the ziplock bag aisle at Wal-Mart. 

 

I didn't get any pictures of the cutting process, but this is what we were left with. It is important to remember that you want to remove the black part, not the white part. You are creating a stencil.

Once we had our images cut out we ironed them on to the pre-washed pillow cover that I had sewn.  Put some sort of fabric between the paper and the iron. We used an old pillow case. I would also like to stress here: DO NOT USE STEAM!!! It must be a dry iron or your paper will be wrinkly and not provide a good seal. We experienced this. Pictures to follow.

 Once the image is adhered to the fabric you are ready to paint. There are two options for paint. 1)Buy fabric paint. 2) (what I did) Use regular acrylic craft paint with some textile medium mixed in. Either way you will be able to wash your project with out the paint washing off. I used Anita's textile medium and paints.

You simply mix in 2 parts paint to 1 part medium. Easy. It does make the paint a little bit more runny than with out it, but we didn't have a problem.

Carefully paint inside the stencil. I painted this minion because it was ironed correctly and therefore easy to paint.

Mr. Mayhem painted this minion because it was the one that we had used steam on. You can see how wrinkly it was. He carefully painted to make sure no paint seeped under the stencil.

Good work, honey!

 After we finished painting yellow, we decided that we didn't like it. It was too close to the white, and we didn't think it would stand out enough. Luckily we hadn't removed the stencils yet, so we just painted over it with grey paint mixed with the textile medium.

When the paint was dry, we carefully peeled away the freezer paper. We were left with our cute design! 

 Here it is in the current nursery chair. We will hopefully be swapping it for a glider rocker this week or next.  I love how the pillow turned out. It is simple, but cute and special. It really coordinates with everything in the room and does a nice job bringing the theme to this corner.

To catch up on other nursery projects so far go here, here, and here.

Growth Chart Ruler

Everyone and their dog on pinterest has been making a DIY ruler growth cart. With my little one on the way I decided to jump on the bandwagon too! I think the look is such a fun, oversized, comic take on a traditional school supply. While ours didn't turn out quite as authentic looking as we planned, we love how it looks in our little guys space! Here's the play by play!

We purchased a 6ftx6inx1in. piece of oak. It was presanded, but Mr. Mayhem went over it with fine grit sandpaper just to be sure.

After a good wipe down, we stained it with Minwax in Puritan Pine.

 Mr. Mayhem stained it (wearing my dishwashing gloves) while I ran for the hills to avoid any fumes that would cause the baby to come out with a third arm or something.

See how pretty the color is!?

We then drilled two holes. One at the top and one at the bottom. We wanted to be able to attach it to the wall very securely. It will be close to the ground (1 foot up), so we didn't want the baby to pull it down once he starts wiggling around.

We then carefully measured the hash marks and taped them off to paint them. We did three different lenghts. 3 inches long each foot, 2 inches long every 3 inches, and all the rest were 1 inch long.

See what I mean in this picture. Little, medium, and long lines.

Then I hid out somewhere and probably ate some chocolate while the white spray paint went on. We had originally planned to use black, but decided with the white trim and furniture in the room, white would be a clean, contemporary look.

We (Mr. Mayhem) did 2 coats then we carefully pulled the tape off while it was still wet. I think this was my favorite part of the project.

Here it is with all its cute little lines. 

To add the numbers we used some 2 inch stencils I got at Hobby Lobby.

Measured carefully. 

Then taped them down and covered everything securely with newspaper. (Proof that I did help with this project...just not the stinky paint parts :-) )

Another round of paint.

It is starting to look like a ruler.

The numbers were a little bit uncrisp for my liking. I think if I changed one thing about how I did this project it would be to buy some stencil adhesive and actually stick the stencils down to the wood to prevent the over spray. Or paint the numbers by hand. Using one of those vinyl cutting systems with adhesive vinyl would work too, I just don't have one. 

To finish everything and make it super durable, Mr. Mayhem did three coats of Varathane Matte water based polyurethane.

We started the ruler at 1ft and then were careful to measure and hang it 1 ft off the floor so it will be an accurate measure of height.  I think it will be so fun to mark my little man's growth through the years. I love that we can take it down if we ever move. We are also planning to document any future children on this ruler as well. The ruler