Making: Toy Bag & Play Mat for Duplo

A few days before Christmas I had a quick idea, my son was getting a few Duplo boxes for Christmas (we found a special deal on Taobao on the famous 11.11 sales) and as I suddenly realised he’ll need some extra storage for the colourful blocks, I remembered the lovely playmat I’d seen on pinterest five years ago (or around then) that you could easily build and sift through the blocks, but then once finished you can draw it all up and hang it on the back of the door or somewhere out of the way for next time.

I googled up a few photos and tutorials, but for these first attempts, I followed the very straightforward Fabric Mill idea. It was great and used up some fabric I had in the stash leftover from birthdays through the year and other bunting adventures… the smaller ones are for smaller children who also got their first batch of Duplo this Christmas, so a useful bag for them for the next year.

The one I made Felix is bigger, around a metre wide at least… and now that I’ve sewn it up, next time I’ll put the drawstrings on both sides… kinda like the Swoop Storage bags I later found… (you can sew your own, or just buy them from this small business!) as that distributes the drawstring gathers a little better and less likely for the bag to be too heavy. As right now, with the amount of Duplo Felix has (about 4 boxes of the stuff over the last 2 years) is just ok, but it’ll get too heavy if we have more.

What storage ideas do you have for Duplo or Lego? I love something that can serve two purposes, like a playmat and a bag. I’m really happy with how neat this was to sew, it was a bit of time getting the circle flat and neat and matching the two fabrics up… but the stitching part was super quick and very easy to put together.

The Vera Bradley fabric I’d got from my very small fabric shop (it usually doesn’t have much on offer, it’s like the bargain cotton bin at Spotlight - if you’re Australian you’ll know) but the green and pink colour combo was intersting to me, but I had no idea how to sew with it… my sewing teacher declared it for quilting and not good for garment sewing… so I’m happy I’ve used it here… I love the khaki green with it.

Duplo is our preferred building block right now, as Felix is 3 years old and very happy using this size block, but I know eventually it’ll be Lego and that stuff is small.

What are you sewing at the moment? I tried a green velvet dress last week, that just went so wonky everywhere... Wrong pattern I think! Will try a skirt next!

Why Hullo My Foxy Friend

How are you?! It's been a while, but like I mentioned when I was last here, I'm making things, but just haven't got space in my day to photograph and blog as well. You just do stuff and there's no time to stop and reflect.

Here's a foxy little friend I made for a new little human... she was born in September but for some reason with her I was DETERMINED to make her something by hand, so I finished it early this year, and popped it in the post a few weeks back. Or was it months back? CAN'T REMEMBER!

She's just a lovely little fox, this one!

The fabric is a piece from an all recycled stash from my mother's friend Chris who has oodles of scraps after lots of successful quilt-making. I drew up a pattern on butcher's paper, and then kinda winged it! It worked! It was so nice just pottering around here and there in the sewing room with toymaking... I wanted to get a friendly face, so googled a lot of toys and tried to get a little curious happy expression... what do you think?

Curious!

I'm keen to make more... I've already started a green dinosaur! They're so easy really and a great scrap buster!

Hope you've been having a lovely year so far... I can't believe how quickly time flies! We've just got back from a quick family holiday in Auckland, which was lovely! I might get some photos together soon! My Husbie was also away in Shanghai for work, and we also got to have a wonderful brunch with sewing & blogging bestie Adey and her family. My baby is now a little boy, and we wrapped up breastfeeding recently, so he's extremely independent now! Work has been great, and I've been doing lots of on air projects and events this year already. We're so lucky and lovely right now at this stage in our lives...  and I would hashtag BLESSED but I find it creepy... and saccharine and sappy. LIVIN' is much better.

LIVIN',

Love Veronica Darling xoxo

29/31 A Button Snake

OK, Mamalyf just got real.

I've made a learning toy for my child, and yes I saw it on a Montessori page that my friend shared on Facebook and yes I'm a learning nerd (my mother was an early learning educator for her entire career) for children's things and yes... I'm showing this to you because once again, I'm blogging every project I make in December and have made 31 projects and whilst I'm a bit behind in my blogging, I'm being honest and real and maybe a bit boring...

But HEY.

I have always wanted to be real life Mama here, real life seamstress and real life babe (self confident today, obviously!) and this 'no frills' stuff I keep talking about is quite important to me. Especially since I really looked at what I was writing about last year and what aspects I enjoy in blogging and sewing and creating and blah blah blah.

So, yes! Here's a learning toy and here are the instructions for you to make your own via this Montessori on a Budget blog (my FAVE kind of blog is always about thriftiness), and if you have an automatic buttonhole function on your sewing machine this takes no time to make. Because it's a learning thing as well, it doesn't have to be super perfect and matchy-matchy... it has to function as a button snake!

I've NEVER heard of a button snake before, and now... it makes sense! I've seen my child spend half an hour (sometimes longer) putting a lid on and off on a container... so why wouldn't he love buttons (he calls them 'ball') and threading them through buttonholes. I'm hoping this would be a great project on the aeroplane. We'll see.

26/31 A Kitchen Curtain

Some more practical sewing, but in a month of daily sewing there's got to be practical sewing. I used to sew a lot, and quickly and just anything, but in a month of my life now, there's got to be the projects that are completely practical and TOTALLY useful to everyday life.

This is a curtain for a child's kitchen cupboard... you know how fun it is as a little child to pretend cook and pretend wash up? My friend made her little girl a small kitchen from a second hand bedside table! They attached a back bit so that pots and pans can hang, painted it all white and removed the drawers so this little curtain can fit along hiding the bigger pieces of play cookware! I love the rainbow candy stripes!

It's about a metre by 30 cms and just folded over and stitched for the casing (for a rod or elastic I think!)... simple and practical. I'm sure it'll look gorgeous!

xo

Awesome Adventure Blanket Toy

I think this is a much more interesting blog title for us grown ups, because in reality this toy is BORING. But for babies, it's potentially the cutest and loveliest and funnest thing ever. Maybe even the funniest!

My baby is 6 months old now, and tends to get bored of toys so I'm forever swapping things around so he never gets used to anything for too long and learns about stuff (which is why I guess we have toys?) in different ways and over different days. SO! I had a spare 15 minutes while he was outside cooing and being a great baby, and as we were off to the hairdressers (which is a great place for babies - how much do they LOVE the blowdryers!?) and thought I'd make him a play toy from ribbons and leftover scraps.

It wasn't hard at all to make (as you can see it's pretty straight forward) but Baby Darling played with the tabs and ribbons and spaghetti straps one by one... it looks to me that babies adore tags and little things they can touch, get their fingers into and flip around. One of the mums in my Mama's Group showed me a shop bought blanket, so that's where I got the idea from... as when you're a kooky old seamstress who doesn't throw anything out, I've just gotta grab the time to make a million of these.

And of course, I can't find it anywhere now, so I've either cleaned it up with the 'out of rotation' toys already or it's been eaten by the dog. Oh my darling but naughty dog.

Love to you guys!