Crafting with Serenity

I've been having so much fun lately trying out all the great ideas I've seen around blogland that I haven't had time to share them!  Worst of all, I seem to have lost most of the links for where I saw them originally, although I think most of them come from Teach Preschool.  But I'll share our pics anyway!

Serenity saw this ad from Jo-Ann's and said, lets get supplies and make this right now!!!  I love that she was so confident we could figure out a way to make anything.  I wasn't ready to teach her crochet just yet, so we decided to use the picture as inspiration for a painting, and this is what we ended up with!  Such fun and she was so proud of it.

Colorful hand prints =)  She rubbed her hands together to practice color mixing.

She wrote me a note!  I am SO excited to start adding words to our projects. Scrapbooking is surely on the horizon!

Marble painting

Winter Tree

Spring Tree

Summer Tree

Fall Tree

Sewing with my three year old!

Sewing with my three year old!
Whenever Serenity sees me sewing, she asks if she can help too.  I’ve tried lots of ways to get her involved in my projects.  I let her hand me things, put pins on the pincushion, and even press the foot pedal of the machine for me.  She loves helping, and does a really good job paying attention when we’re working.  When I was doing some hand stitching, she even would take turns pulling thread through after I’d take a stitch.  So when I saw little felt buttons at Jo-Ann’s, I knew it was the perfect way to get her started with her own project!

At first we started with a rectangle of cream felt, and I cut out a heart from light pink felt for her to appliqué.  I used embroidery floss and a big needle.  We tried it with plastic and dull needles at first, and while it worked, it turned out to just be easier with a regular poky needle.  She is very careful not to touch the sharp part of the needle, and I make her sit very still so she doesn’t accidentally poke anything.  I hold the fabric while she sews.  Her stitches are random and all over the place, but it is just the cutest thing =)  Eventually we’ll work on that but right now she’s just going straight up and down through the fabric.

Then she chose where she wanted to sew on the felt buttons and flowers, and she did it!  I helped her find the first hole sometimes, and helped her to sew knots to tie it off.  She can cut her own thread too.

She was so excited she took her sewing in to show and tell.  She said she was going to tell her friends “I love it!  You take the needle and DON”T TOUCH THE POKY PART!” 

Class Art Auction Handprint Quilt

My baby is in school!  Preschool, and just two days a week, but still.  She loves it, and I’m thrilled about that!  And I get to volunteer with her class, so more fun for me too!  Our school has an auction every year to raise money, and each class makes an art project to sell there.  I spent many happy hours on google over this project! =) 

We settled on doing a handprint quilt.  Stick with what I know =)  The kids are just three so we wanted to keep it simple, bright and fun!  Here’s how we did it:

I cut out 9.5 inch squares of muslin, because after testing with Serenity it seemed like I needed squares at least 9 inches to hold her handprints if we used both hands.  I had on hand red, blue, green and yellow fabric paint, and enough bright fabrics leftover from Serenity’s birthday to make four patch squares to alternate with the handprint blocks.  So that was our color scheme.

I made a sample paper with four choices for the kids: Dinosaur, Butterfly, Heart, and Fish.  Then they had four choices of color.  Having the paper made it really easy, the kids could just point to the one they liked!  It was important that each one had the hand or hands in a slightly different position so I could tell what the kid wanted to make without having to keep track of notes.  The other mother working on the project with me fortunately has nice handwriting, so she wrote the kids names on each square.

We had everything ready to go before we arrived at the class.  We taped the squares to a piece of cardboard with wax paper on top so the fabric wouldn’t stick to the cardboard if it soaked through.  That way the square had a nice firm surface for hand stamping and drying.  It was easy!  Just be sure to paint the hand with a good layer of paint, and then press the hand down.  Kind of rub your fingers across the palm and down each finger to make sure you get a good print.  The first print was a little too light but we got the hang of it quickly. 

After it dries I added tails, antenna, eyes, and smiley faces to the appropriate shapes with a fabric pen.  Oh, and I outlined the hearts to make it more obvious.  We have a pretty even mix of shapes and colors that the kids chose!  I’m glad they liked all the options!

Then I just pieced the squares together, alternating with four patch in some bright pretty solids.  I had some great Dr. Seuss fabric that made a perfect border, and I did a quick running stitch in Perl cotton down the diagonals of the four patch blocks!  Simple, fairly quick, and super cute!