We were recently asked to make a super hero cape for one of our customers wee girls to go along with an order of bibs for her little brother. 
We love getting requests to make something a little different from the normal and set ourselves a new challenge so we are always happy to try to make anything our customers ask us for. At Christmas time it was stockings that one customer asked us to do and one stocking turned into many, many stockings as word got around so who knows maybe we will be making a few more superhero capes very soon, we will definitely be making one for our own wee Emmie as when we popped it on her for a quick photo shoot she seemed to love it loads :)
Here's a pic of the finished cape and remember if you would like one made in your choice of style/colours or have another idea of something you would like to see us make we are always up for the challenge so please just ask.
And the best bit is hearing from her mummy that Super Bella loves her cape and is wearing it everywhere she goes, the littlest customers are always the best ones to please :)

The Ikea stools and little lack table cost us £15 for all three, a bargain I thought and we had plenty fabric and ribbon to make the covers without having to buy anything for them :)

The original had the toadstools as very puffy cushions but I wanted something that was more of a cover for the stool than cushions as I figure they will be getting lots of use and would only end up getting flattened anyway plus this way they can very easily be taken off and washed so any little accidents at snack or craft time can easily be cleaned up :)

I used my dining plates as a pattern to create the cover as they were the correct size and sewed on some little white spots and cute wee green ribbon ties to attach them to the stools and then stuffed them with a thin wadding which I quilted in place around the spots to make sure it didn't shift when they inevitably do need washing.

I absolutely love how they turned out and they look so cute in Emmie's wee room. 

You could make these little stools into anything, I'm thinking monster faces, or even a ladybug would be very cute. Lorna has made one for Noah that looks like the cookie monster munching a cookie, very cute indeed.

Have been meaning to share this for a while but only just getting round to it now. Before Christmas I swapped the sewing machine for a saw and a paint brush to make this little kitchen for Emmie's Christmas present. I had spent months trawling Pinterest for ideas of how best to turn the £5 charity shop bedside unit I had into the cutest little kitchen for her and I combined all the best ideas I found, as well as a few of my own, to come up with this.

We started by cutting a hole in the top of the unit for the sink and tap and then measured the back of the unit to cut a piece of wood for the back board. We had some old mdf left over from a previous project that just about fitted perfectly and gave us a little extra to make the wee shelf and supports which, glued and nailed in place I think finished the whole thing off just nicely.

The hob and oven handles were bought from Ikea and the hobs them selves were made by cutting circles out of an ikea placemat which was conveniently in the sale for £1. I wanted to keep the whole project as cheap as we could and reuse as much as possible too so the tap was one we had left over form doing a bathroom remodel in our old flat a few years ago. The sink is a bowl borrowed from granny, I love that I used to use this when baking as a child and now it has a new home as something fun for Emmie. We painted the whole thing in the left over paint from our kitchen as I just love the colour and the basket and frame for her chalkboard were ones that we had already too :)

I managed to find the lovely wooden toaster and jam set on ebay for very little after a few weeks of searching and the pots we bought from Amazon with a gift voucher we had found completely forgotten about at the bottom of our drawer so it kind of felt like they were free too. The one thing I knew I wanted to splash out on though was the felt play food bought from a fellow work at home mum over at mummy made it me. They really are as lovely as they looked on her website and I love that it is also supporting another mummy's little business.

And here is my little munchkin enjoying it on Christmas morning. She loved it and I can see her spending many happy hours playing with it for years to come. I cant recommend highly enough popping down to your local charity shop for a bedside unit and giving it a shot, one day Emmie will be so pleased to have something that Mummy and Daddy made especially for her :)

It was Lorna's wedding this weekend and she had kindly decided that as Noah needed a kilt that I would make one for him, Yay. I did a deal of searching online for a helpful tutorial or anything that might give me a clue on how to make a baby kilt to absolutely no avail :( In the end I resorted to getting my husbands kilt out and laying it out across the floor to have a good look at how it was all sewn together.

The fabric we got from our local fabric shop, in theory it should have been made from proper tartan but it would have been far too heavy for Noah to comfortably wear all day and also too expensive too but there are plenty of cheaper, lighter weight alternatives out there that still give the look you would want for a kilt. Lorna wanted a grey colour as that's what Daddy and Grandad would be wearing on the day and we found some no problem at all.

The hardest bit was deciding what length of material I would need to make it fit around Noah's waist once all the pleats were in. I ended up just sort of hoping that the width of the fabric would be enough and then measured how long we needed it to be. A kilt at the correct length should just sit on the floor when you kneel down in it, hmm good theory but try get an 11 month old baby to kneel on the floor whilst you hold up some material to get the right length, not very easy hehe, so I ended up cutting the fabric much longer than I needed so that I could adjust the length once all the pleats were in and this turned out to be a really easy way of doing it :)

The tartan we had chosen was really easy to match the pattern up when folding the pleats and I folded and pinned each one in place and then hand sewed them all in place both front and back so that you couldn't see any of the stitching just as it would have been on a proper kilt. It was time consuming but I actually really enjoyed doing it. Once all the pleats were in we tried it on Noah a few times until we were happy we had the correct length then trimmed and turned over the waist band and added the finishing touches of a frayed edge to the front and the little buckles.

I think it turned out really well, Lorna bought him a little wasitcoat, kilt shoes and a sporran to go with it and Noah looked so cute on the day. Can you see his little cravat that I modified out of one of the adults ones to make it match in with all the wedding parties ties and his wee flashes made from ribbon :)

This week we are working on a new bib for our own wee guy, Noah. He is very good at nicking all the new cute boys designs before we get a chance to sell them, or his mummy is. His daddy says hes always wearing all our profits :) but this time I decided to make my fave little nephew something special just for him.

I found this picture in one of my many trawls for inspiration and knew straight away that I had to turn it into a bib for Lorna's special wee guy.

We have some lovely Riley Blake chevron fabric in blue and white that we have used in the past for burp cloths and I thought it would be perfect for the background. The scrap box was raided for the rest of the fabrics to make up the tiny little animals and Noah's ark itself.

I love doing projects with little fiddly bits in it like this, there is something so satisfying about watching it gradually grow and transform into the finished item when you add all the little bits together :)

I started by drawing and cutting out paper patterns of all the little animals and then transferred these to my trusty heat and bond (I'd be lost without it hehe). Then its time to iron all the heat and bond pieces onto the fabric scraps I'd chosen and then arrange them in place on the bib and one by one iron them all in place. Then for my favourite bit of sewing them in place :). I did think about using free motion machine embroidery for this but to be honest its such a small fiddly project I thought it would be better to do it on the machine but by turning it mostly by hand (Note to self this is good in theory but causes blisters on my thumb :( and takes ages) I think the results are well worth it though, what do you think?

Then all I had to do is hand embroider on the little faces and sew it up.

And here is the finished bib, I hope the wee guy likes it :)

Its Emmie's first birthday coming up and as we also have my best friend’s wedding the same weekend I think something a bit special for Emmie to wear at both is called for. I had looked in the shops for a really pretty wee dress, I wanted something that wouldn't scream with my purple bridesmaids dress but not match it either, but no such luck :( So if I cant buy it then I figured I might as well make her something.

Now I have never made a dress before, Lorna has some grand plans for me to make myself a bridesmaids dress to wear at her wedding in October, hopefully there will be a successful post to follow on this :), so this should at least be a bit of practice and on a much smaller scale.

Im not a huge one for patterns on anything, I prefer to make things up from scratch by myself but I had found this really cute free pattern for the little geranium dress from made by rea. 
Its a newborn dress and Emmie is nearly 1 so I got out some of her little dresses and using these and the little geranium pattern I created a pattern that would fit her now. I also wanted it to be pretty full in the skirt so am going to add in a lining to the skirt and an extra layer of ruched fabric to the bottom of the lining. I will leave this hanging longer than the main fabric to give a nice contrast strip at the bottom. I’m also going to pop in a pink sash and bow at the waist, should be really pretty when it’s done.

Pattern done it was time to cut it out, I get really nervous cutting lovely fabrics just incase I haven’t quite done my calculations right so I started with the lining just to be sure. It went together really nicely and all was going fine until it came to putting the lining and the main dress together. Apparantly I hadn’t worked this bit out exactly right and my extra ruched layer at the bottom of the lining ended up being the wrong way round L A lot of unpicking and re pinning and stitching later and Emmie’s little dress was finished and looking really lovely. Im very proud of myself for making it for her and it will definitely be one that is treasured long after she has grown out of it.

The finished dress along with a very cute nappy that matches just perfectly :)

And here it is in action, Emmie and I at my best friends wedding, looks just right with my bridesmaids dress.

We are having a joint babies 1st birthday party for the babies from our antenatal group, it’s so lovely seeing them all growing up together, and we decided to do a “secret santa” style birthday pressies for them all. We had done it at Christmas and it worked really well and was lovely seeing them all opening their wee parcels together :)

Emmie and I got her wee friend Oliver to get a gift for and rather than buy him something I thought we would make him a wee road playmat so he could play with all his cars on it for years to come.

I love having a new project to get my teeth into and when it’s for a very special little boy it makes it all the more fun.

Here’s a pic of the finished playmat kindly sent to me by Oliver’s mummy with all his wee cars ready for playing on it, I think it turned out great and most importantly Oliver and his mummy loved it :)