Questions from the Tooth Fairy

K lost her first tooth last night in her sleep (is she really that grown up?), and with her sharp little six-year-old eyes managed to find it nestled in her white chenille bedspread (thank goodness!) -- leaving us with an important task:  Finishing the Tooth Fairy Pillow today so that it will be ready for tonight's hijinks and hullabaloo.  Originally we had cut the pieces out of wool felt with the idea that K would sew the pillow herself, but she assured me that she would not be offended if I assembled the thing while she was at school, so I set to work.

I tried to keep the stitching neat and sturdy but still childlike, as though K had had a hand in it -- not hard since my hand-sewing skills leave a bit to be desired.  I wanted to stuff it with wool batting but chose K's favorite bamboo since she's the one who has to sleep on it.  I do hope she likes it.

Now.  Questions. 

1. What is the going rate for baby teeth these days?  K said something like "maybe a dollar?" but my fairy is just not sure.
2. Would a little present be appropriate along with the small amount of money the fairy is likely to leave?  Like a new toothbrush, perhaps?
3. How on Earth does my fairy get the teensy little tooth out of the pocket without waking the excited child?

The (doubly) green artsy blanket

As promised, my weekend project:

"It's a cat bed for two cats!" exclaimed K.

It's really a free-form sort-of patchwork felted sweater-blanket -- or, as one seller on Etsy described their version of it, an Artisan Crafted Repurposed Felted Wool Blanket.

It's made from the trunks and sleeves of maybe 12 or 15 felted wool sweaters, zig-zagged together with lapped seams (that just seemed the sturdiest way to do it) and edged on the sides with ribbing cut from another sweater. I considered making it reversible by doubling the sweater pieces, but a) I wasn't sure how to do that, b) I think the backs of the sweaters are softer to the touch and would be nicer to have against your skin anyway, and c) I kind of thought that two layers of sweater would make the blanket too heavy. At about 76" x 87", it covers our queen-sized bed. (I didn't mean for it to get so big, but you know how things go...)

I washed it in cold on my machine's "hand-wash" cycle, and dried it on high (I dry everything on high; it's just a bad habit I have) and it came out soft and fluffy, if a little fuzzy. I plan to go over it with a sweater stone but I need to buy a new one when I go to the fabric store, so for now I'll live with the fuzz.

I love that this blanket is made from repurposed materials (hence the name), and I love that it feels like wearing an extra sweater in bed without the uncomfortable bulk of actually doing so. It will compliment my pillowcase quilt nicely (that's for another post) and making it is a step toward developing more of my own designs. I also love that it is green.

The overseas contingent

These are the last of the felt rabbits -- the ones who seemed a bit wonky next to their pastel cousins or who just plain didn't fit in with the in crowd. Together they form their own brand of post-Easter cool-cat nonchalance, and I like it way more than I'd thought I would. So when a foreign friend asked if she could have one of the "Easter rejects," it seemed natural that they should all go together. I hope she doesn't mind.



Making the bunny bag to be their home added just the right amount of closure to the felt rabbit project; I feel I can put the felt and the floss into a box for a while now and work on something else. I love the fabric for this bag because it reminds me so much of the bunnies themselves, sort of tall and elongated with a round, flat bottom.

Now to get this project off to Australia and move on to new and exciting things. Look for a plan-it-through Thursday post later in the day. Looks like it's going to be a warm and sunny one!

Repurposed

Remember the chococolate-and-vanilla blanket that I felted? The one where the binding got all puckered? I got tired of seeing it sitting on the floor of my closet, where it stayed because it was too sloppy-looking to put on the bed, so I butchered it. In my new favorite sewing book, Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing, there is a marvelous felted-wool baby blanket project, and I happen to know a relatively new baby, so I thought I'd give it a try. It has a gloriously colorful patchwork binding that was too much fun to make.

So much fun that I ended up making two blankets! Heather's project called for an appliquéd monogram, but a) I am afraid of appliqué and b) I liked the simplicity of the blankets as they were, so I left the monograms off. Not bad for a day's work.

As far as Studio Saturday goes, I did not meet my goal of moving my old desk into K's room -- though there is still hope that that might happen today. I did manage to get all of D's books downstairs, and even had him sort through them and choose some to give away, which left enough room to move the travel books and atlases downstairs, too. That leaves me with most of the second Billy bookcase empty; I'm keeping two shelves full of photographs, negatives and cameras because they qualify as "art," and because they occupy K's attention when she's in here and I'm busy with other things.

Because I got carried away with the sewing yesterday, I may not work on any sewing projects today, but we'll see. The bug has bitten and I am eager to get to dawni's quilt.

Peeps you can keep

Who better to great you on Try-it-out Tuesday than Peter Cottontail himself, the first of my branchings-out into new territory. He's a wool felt rabbit just about the size of a Marshmallow Peep but with (in my humble opinion) tons more character. I plan to make about 7 more of the little creatures in different colors to give to K for Easter Day, along with a little drawstring bag she can carry them to church in for some quiet play. It was fun to work with the wool felt and embroidery thread, and to fashion the charming little critter in a relatively short time.

This project came from Cynthia Treen's Last Minute Fabric Gifts.

If you're looking for some entertaining and informative reading, you could do worse than to go over to the Peep Research Page .