Kid’s Build and Grow at Lowe’s

Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores have cute workshops for kids on Saturday mornings. We stumbled upon one in progress this morning and they herded my kids into the fun.

Includes

They are free and include the cutest little work aprons and goggles. This week was a flower rain guage for the garden.  The kids also recieve a patch that they can sew on to their aprons to show what projects they’ve completed.

Project

We picked up the bag and brought it home. The instructions have nice pictures so our five-year-old could piece it together by herself. The nail holes are pre-drilled so its easy for them to bang them into place. Adding a little paint was the cherry on top!

Visit here to sign up for one in your area or find out times and locations.

Pettiskirt Success!

I used 4 yards for the light pink skirt, and 5 yards for the fuchsia ruffle-fluff. If I had to do it again, I’d use around 8 yards for the fluff, and 6 for the skirt. I wasn’t happy with the see-through-ness of the skirt and would have liked it to be a bit fuller. I pulled the how-to’s and some great tips from this forum:

http://sewmamasew.com/forum/index.php?topic=242.0

This was a once in a life-time project. (meaning, I’ll never do it again!) It took me about 10 hours.

A note: These pictures were taken before the skirt was laundered. It actually looks better (more crinkly and limp) after going through the wash…at least I think so.

Cutting a Silhouette

A super-easy project and super-cute! I will be pairing mine with Martha Stewart’s family tree fan chart.

Take a Picture

Take a picture of your subject with a bright background. I used a window.

Clean up your Picture

I imported the picture to photoshop, changed the color to grayscale and increased the contrast to darken the silhouette and brighten the background. I used the photofill tool to fill in any light spots on my silhouette and fiddled with the eyelashes and hairlines.

Then, I flipped the canvas horizontally, so that I had a mirror image to print out. (And, I’m cheap. I printed a light gray sillhouette to save on the black ink.) Print!

Cut the Silhouette

Stick your printed silhouette to the BACK of your black paper, so that when you cut it out your silhouette is facing the correct way. Remember, you printed a mirror image. I used sticky dots to adhere the printed template to the back of the black card stock. Cut carefully around the edges of your printed template.

Finish

Peel off the printed template being careful not to rip off any small angles. Place your silhouette on a contrasting background and frame!