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Winter Sleepsack

When Bryn started wiggling herself out of her nighttime wrappings, I bought a second-hand sleepsack that I loved - but my Bryn grew out of it so quickly!  I decided that it would be cheaper to make one than to buy another, which is not actually true, when I could have been working during the hours I spent on it.  But it's far cuter than anything I could have found in a store.  Here are the pictures. 

I used fabric I had in my quilting stash, since it's basically a wearable quilt. I took measurements off the sack that I had purchased, and made it much longer so that she'll be able to use it for quite some time.

I've been wanting to pratice appliqué for a while - all my previous attempts have turned out badly - and so this was a perfect time to try.  I scanned a small piece of the front fabric with my printer/scanner and used my computer to enlarge and trace one of the moons on the fabric to make a pattern for the big moon I wanted to appliqué. I cut the moon and a couple stars out of the lining fabric, and stars out of the fabric I used on the front.  I appliqued the outside and batting layers together, mostly to help keep the batting in place when I wash the sack.

I had to buy zipper coil and pulls from a local supply shop and build my own zipper, since it's hard to find a 2 meter long zipper that's the right weight!  It was pretty easy, though, and it allowed me to put 2 pulls on so that you can open the zipper from either end.

The hardest part was trying to figure out how turn turn the thing right side out after sewing the armholes and neckhole and the zipper.  I searched the internet and enlisted the help of my sister (seamstress extraordinaire!), but we couldn't figure it out.  In the end I unstitched the armholes and just bound them with bias tape that I had on hand from another project using the same lining fabric.  And I think that's not a bad solution after all, since the bias binding will stand up to far more wear than just a seam.

Now that the sack is done (it took me at least a month, since I could only work on it while Bryn was sleeping), it's spring and it's getting too warm for such a heavy sack.  So I'm making a summer weight one.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Bryn's Ladybug Birthday Cake

For Bryn's first birthday I decided to make a ladybug cake.  I got the idea from Cake Decorating Corner, but I couldn't find the right Pyrex bowls, so I searched ladybug cakes again and found Jenny Cisney's blog post.  I used her ideas for the body shape.

Here are some pictures of the cake, along with a basic idea of how I made it.


I used a 9" Pyrex bowl and a 9" round cake pan for the body, and a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup for the head.   A double layer cake batch filled the bowl just right, and a second double layer batch was enough for the cake pan, the head (about 1 cup of batter, I think), and 6 cupcakes.

I used a half-batch of Wilton's Chocolate Buttercream Icing to glue the body pieces together - I made it pretty stiff.  I used Wilton's Buttercream Icing with strawberry juice reduction instead of milk, to start the red colour and to give it a strawberry flavour.  It took a lot of red food colouring (the good Wilton 'No-Taste' red gel) to get the colour so rich.  It didn't look red at first, but it turned quite red as I let it sit.  I made all the icing the day before.

I used black food colouring on another half-batch of chocolate buttercream icing for the face and spots.

I covered the body with a flat layer of red icing.  I then piped on the white (eyes), black and more red using star tips (#16 and #17).  It looked pretty neat with the flat red and just the spots and face done in stars. Next time I might make the flat red layer much thicker and just add the black with the piping bag.  It would sure have saved a lot of time and my hand wouldn't have been so tired!

Thanks to Renee Bowkett for the first 2 pictures!

The First Post...

I've been more crafty than usual lately, and I wanted a place to share my craftiness, so here it is.