Day 73: Where to begin???

I have spent almost the ENTIRE afternoon and evening hunched over some sort of craft.  My head and neck are killing me, just from being bent over for so long, and I never even got CLOSE to finishing Miss Penny's craft today- i barely got hers started (and that was AFTER she went to bed, but more on that one later!)

A little back story on this one before I get into the good stuff:  Iris's class has to do a class project every year for the big school fundraiser.  This year, we are doing a quilt with the kids' symbols on it.  Iris is a moon, and well, a moon is kind of hard to "quilt" traditionally speaking, so I used this double sided web interfacing stuff. (Picture below) that you iron on to the wrong side of the fabric, then peel the back off of it, then Iron it to another piece of fabric.  I then used a very basic blanket stitch to go around the edges of the moon.

So, back to today.  I was walking around Jo-Anns with Penny, trying to figure out what to make for craft, and I thought about the quilt block that I made last week.  So, Penny and I went to the fabric side, picked out St. Patrick's Day fabric, got this Pellon fusible webbing stuff, and called it a morning.

Once we got home, Penny took a nap almost immediately, she has a horrible cold and just isn't feeling well.  So, Iris and I started working on her Shamrock Pillow case.  There was quite a bit of supplies needed for this one:

Fabric
Fusible Interfacing
Pillowcase
pencil
stencil (if you have no artistic ability like myself)
damp cloth
iron (Susie, i really do own an iron!)
scissors
and probably some other stuff that I am currently forgetting

Steps:

1) Trace your stencil onto the smooth side of the fusible interfacing

2) cut near the stencil but not directly on it

3) iron your cut out interfacing to the back side of the fabric

4) cut on the lines of your stencil

5) peel the backing off the interfacing (you will cuss and scream and grouch about this, because it is the devil!)

6) place your cut out fabric on whatever it is you are making (in this case, a white pillow case)

7) place a damp cloth over the pattern
8) iron the pattern 10-15 seconds in each spot

Now, you could just be done at this point.  Once it is adhered and cool, that interfacing will make it stick and it is not going to go anywhere.  but, i just don't like the unfinished edge look, so I made:
9) blanket stitch around the edges of the fabric

• bring your needle up right on the edge of the ironed on fabric
• follow the edge of the ironed on fabric about 1/4 inch or so and put the needle back through the fabric, don't pull the thread tight, leave a little loop
• come up directly under (about and 1/8 of an inch) from where you just put the needle in.  
• slip your needle under the the loop that you left
• pull tight
• repeat
• (Or, just follow this video link :-p http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkSE2TTF4s)

It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't that bad.  I edged Iris's Shamrock in probably under 90 minutes.

After the girls went to bed, I started Penny's pillow.  I got to the point of ironing her shamrock onto the pillow case and had to go out to get things for Iris' birthday at school tomorrow.  Which led Mike and I to almost 2 hours of additional crafting... We used the insanely large crocheted flower that I made a few months ago, and put it on a wooden dowel rod to become a flower and stem.  Then, Mike, VERY patiently, glued a ribbon all the way down the dowel rod.  It turned out very cute.  While he did that, I made 2 prince/king crowns for the class out of felt, because the kids LOVE playing dress up!

Now, it is almost 11, we have a fish who is on his last fin :( and I hope that we get SOME sleep tonight.  Hope Fish pulls through, but it isn't looking good for him.  He is almost 5 years old though.  That is pretty impressive for a gold fish!