Mini photo albums

I was trying to think of a small gift for my son’s two teachers and came across acrylic photo albums at the craft store.  These albums consisted of five 4” acrylic circles held together with a metal ring.  I first cut circles slightly smaller than the acrylic pages from decorative paper, punched a hole with a hole punch and glued them onto the pages, front and back.  My original plan was to make some tiny kanzashi flowers to put on the cover but once they were made I couldn’t get them to look the way I wanted without a lot of extra fussing that I did not have time for.  Instead I decided to use some purchased self-stick embellishments from the craft store.  I added some stickers that read “photos” on the cover and was finished.  With some extra time some of the pages could be pre-embellished.  The recipient can add their own pictures to the album and end up with a small, portable brag book.  One of these would make a great gift for a grandparent.   I am already planning to make several more of these.  I saw these flowers the other day and fell in love with them, particularly the ones called Gallery Roses (toward the bottom of the page).  I think the creative possibilities are limitless.

I teach the crafts each year at my church’s Vacation Bible School.  Each year one of the crafts is a picture frame into which I insert a picture of the child’s class.  While trying to come up with ideas for this years’ crafts I came across some acrylic frames at Oriental Trading Company.  Since I had just been working with one of these albums I was struck with the idea to let each child make one page and attach the class picture to this page.  My plan is to provide paper circles, markers, stickers and the like for each child to decorate the page as they wish and then attach the picture as well as a hanging ribbon through the top hole.  These albums are 6” circles, slightly larger than the ones I have been working with.  I’ve ordered several extra for my own use and will post pictures in the future when I get those albums created.

An Iris Sachet

Each week during the school year I attend a Community Bible Study class.  My youngest son goes with me and stays in the nursery while I go to my small group.  This week will be the last time we meet this year and I wanted to make something to take to the nursery attendant that watches him each week.  Her name is Iris so I first looked for machine embroidery designs featuring that flower.  I finally settled on doing a bit of silk ribbon embroidery and making a little sachet.

The iris is an easy flower to create with ribbon embroidery as it is created with a lazy daisy (or chain) stitch and some straight stitches.  I found a lovely video on YouTube that showed numerous ways of creating this bloom but I went with the simplest form.   The hand-dyed silk ribbon I used came from RibbonSmyth and was lovely but the too-long delivery time on my order makes me hesitant to order from them again.

I began with a six-inch square of white dupioni silk and marked a four-inch square in the center.  Turning the square on-point, I marked three straight lines representing the stems and machine stitched those using a triple stitch and rayon thread.  Next, I embroidered the flowers and the leaves (which are simple straight stitches with a twist).  I trimmed the finished square to four inches and basted a length of ribbon to the top corner for hanging.  Next I cut another four-inch square of fabric and sewed the two right sides together, leaving a space for turning.  I made a small muslin “pillow” and stuffed it with potpourri.  I used batting and fiberfill to stuff the sachet and hand stitched the opening closed.  I used more of the silk ribbon to tie a bow at the top.  I hope Iris will enjoy her new sachet.

More Burp Cloths

I found this picture of some burp cloths I made a few years ago for a baby gift and thought I would add them to the one I posted last week.  These were a little simpler as I only bound the edges with a fabric strip.  They were for a momma with a silly sense of humor.  You really can create something fitting to the personality of your friends.  Tina recently posted pictures on Facebook of some darling ones she made with jungle animals and ruffled edges.  I hope these inspire you to try some for your next baby gift.

My posts have been less frequent in the past couple of weeks.  Life has been on a crazy-busy schedule with some travel and a long term project on my work table.  I'm hoping to get cracking again after spring break.  Watch for my Bag of the Week post coming tomorrow.  It will make you think of spring!

Simple Gifts

A friend (though not a close friend) has a new baby and I wanted to make a little gift to send to her.  I stitched up this burp cloth with the baby’s name and added some binding and a little ruffle to make it more special.  This couldn’t be easier.  First, I preshrunk the cloth diaper and trimmed the ends to make them square.  I embroidered the baby’s name on one end and bound the other end with a fabric strip.  I made a ruffle and sewed it to the end with the name and then covered the seam with another fabric strip (these strips were cut on the straight of grain).  One trick I have adopted when sewing trim strips like this is to use a decorative stitch to do the final stitching.  In this case I used a serpentine stitch which easily catches both front and back edges of the trim strip without having to worry too much about what is going on underneath.

My friend Kathy once talked to me about the obligation that comes with receiving gifts.  She notes that sometimes a gift is not worth receiving because the gratitude that the giver expects in return is emotionally not worth it.  Or sometimes the recipient is an acquaintance where an elaborate gift would be inappropriate, might even make them uncomfortable.  Other times the situation doesn’t warrant a big gift.  I am always on the lookout for small, simple gifts for those times that you want to tell someone you are thinking about them.    I would love to start a dialog here and have you share ideas for simple but lovely gifts for these occasions, babies, weddings, hostess gifts.  Please share in the comments section.