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Welcome to my Blog

I am a grandmother to 4 little girls. I blog about the things I make for them, review patterns, provide tutorials on how I've dealt with techniques or problems, which I hope may help others, and give links to the (mostly) free patterns I use. Every so often, I do a 'Best of..' post listing the best free patterns I've found under specific headings - babies, girls, boys etc. Enjoy the Blog!

Tuesday 14 June 2016

Baby Dining Seat Harnesses

Home-made baby sitting harnesses (for sitting at table)



When our little granddaughter, baby I, was coming on holiday with us, we guessed there might not be high-chairs / baby seats available, either where we were staying, or in restaurants while eating out. So I thought I’d make a seat harness for travelling. Now we have 3 baby granddaughters, and, when they visit our home, our one purchased plastic booster seat is not enough. So we've also been able to use the harness at our home for the visiting babies. 

I'll tell you in detail how I did it on another post, so you can copy my ideas if you wish, and I will also give some other ideas I've found, if my approach doesn't work for you. My design, and those provided free by other people, are intended for personal use. 

Wednesday 8 June 2016

More Finger Puppets



I did a couple of posts on designing templates for and making finger puppets earlier this year, and since then I've been making a few more. The children, especially little Jane, like to play with these atop a dolly peg (in lieu of a finger). This is what I call a dolly peg, in case you don't know. My mother used to use these to peg washing on the line, but you can still buy them.

When I picked her up from nursery this week, she randomly picked out a monkey and a penguin from my box of finger puppets, and had them chat to each other all the way home as she rode in the buggy. 




She was intrigued that Monkey has a tail, and Penguin does not. You can see Monkey and Penguin, lower down on this post. If you'd like some other ideas for children's finger puppets, or how to make your own, read on.

Sunday 5 June 2016

A Third Set of PJs

With three grand-daughters, I often find myself making three of everything! The next pair of PJs were for Rose, the littlest grandchild. I had some nautical fabric that I liked, and had in mind for the trousers, and also some striped T-shirt fabric to make a top. 


I didn't use a free pattern for the top, as it happens. I had a Burda pattern that had been kicking around unopened for some time, so I thought I'd give it a try. It has popper openings on both shoulders. (Well, I think the pattern may have called for buttons and button holes, but as you'll know by now, I avoid these wherever possible. My husband's good with the hammer on the poppers. And I'm rubbish on the sewing machine with button-holes.)
However, there are a number of nice free patterns for T-shirt style tops available. Some with envelope necks, which I think are great for young ones, especially at bedtime. I'll do a whole post on free T shirt patterns one day. 

The trousers were from the Jereli pattern, which you can find details of here.

 You can find out more about the making of this set of pyjamas after the jump.

More PJs

Time to make more pyjamas!  I wrote about Jane's pyjamas with a kimono style top  here. So now it was the turn of  Fleur, my oldest grand-daughter. She also needed summer pyjamas. The Jereli pants free PDF pattern has come into its own again, this time accompanied by the Izzy Top. 

Izzy top in two sizes. (You'll see why two sizes, later.) The material has colourful balloons, and the yoke is lined with a bright cerise material with little white dots.


Jereli trousers, with a minor modification: fasten-up turn-ups, using fabric to match the Izzy top.



Full details of these pyjamas, made from free patterns, can be found after the jump. I'll also expand on how I made them and hopefully provide some useful tips.