I’ve been feeling a bit scatter brained lately so this post is all over the place.

How was everyone’s weekend? We didn’t do anything except buy toilet paper and stuff like that from Target. Wow, how exciting huh?

Well we did play with binoculars.

They’re screaming fun! (Well for Isabelle)

Oh and I did get sewing done! Not this one but a tank top.

This one is the alteration on the pattern I showed before, in muslin, from ISBN 4579111494. I liked the band at the bottom but wanted it a little thinner than my test shirt. But I went overboard and made it too thin. I still love it. Well except for the color. What can brown do for you?

Oh and because this post isn’t random enough, here’s the drawing:

And also to make this post even more random and all over the place, here’s a video.

We were in the car and Isabelle was singing “Happy Birthday” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. It was so cute that I grabbed Alan’s cell phone and started recording. But when we got home, I checked the clip, and realized you can’t hear her. So I edited it just to the last bit where I’m singing and Isabelle is doing the hand motions.

Thank you everyone for the recipes!

And look! I’ve been drawing again…finally. I have another one all drawn up and ready to go for tomorrow (or whenever I get to posting again).

Yes. I know, I just went to the fabric store last week. But really, if you were me, you wouldn’t say no either.

And plus, I got to take pictures like this when we were there.

And I came home with….FABRIC! Bwa ha ha ha!

It’s linen. I had in mind to make more tops like the green top and the blue top with some alterations.

Alterations like this. No, I haven’t gotten back to sewing. I’m just playing catch up with pictures. This is the same pattern as the blue shirt from ISBN 4579111494. I just altered the hem. It has a wide band on the bottom. I don’t know if you can see that from this picture.

Yeah, so the plan was to make more of these shirts. That is until I remembered that we’ll be getting very hot weather in the summer. Then I thought maybe I should be making tank tops. No shirts. Tank tops. Shirts. Tank tops. I’m wishy washy like that.

Ok. Off I go to not sew with my new fabric or patterns, but to argue with myself on what to make. Have a good weekend and may you be more productive than me!

Meet Isabelle’s new dolly, Maggie! She is inspired by Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Remember my original idea was to use felt for the hair? Well that didn’t work out. Isabelle kept kept taking it off, calling it a hat. I don’t know what she did with it so I went the yarn route. The strands are all painstakingly sewed down. It was hard work but absolutely worth it, it’s a better fit.

I remember when I was little, I loved playing with dolls with removable clothing. So with that in mind, I made this dolly with removable clothes, using velcro.

I also did removable shoes. That might not have been the best idea. Isabelle keeps taking the shoes off saying, “oh no!! HELP! Shoooooes!” and wanting me to put them back on.

Isabelle likes her Maggie doll. But she doesn’t see it as Maggie. She just says, “dolly”.

Back to the drawing board? Ahh…forget it. Isabelle likes her fine enough to dance with her even though she doesn’t call her Maggie.

So I ended up cutting a pair of socks up, not the ones I took a picture of, but one of the pairs I drew. I cut them up and turned them into a sock elephant. I had a hard time taking a picture of him though, because Isabelle was running off with him. I’m going to say it again but wow it’s hard to take pictures of soft toys with a toddler around!

I did manage to finally get this picture of him by himself but it’s not quite accurate. He’s falling over so you can’t tell he’s all wonky.

His head is too small for his body. It’s not noticeable in this picture. I probably didn’t cut in the right place. And I should have stuffed his head more before I sewed it up. I didn’t notice though until after I made up his body. Then the size difference was waaaay obvious. And his ears are funny. I took such care with his arms and legs and ran out of steam with his ears. They’re not tucked in and just funky.

But Isabelle likes him and that’s all that counts.

Hee hee. My daily comic, continued from yesterday. Did everyone figure out what I was talking about yesterday? Or did you think, what a weird comic. What’s with her and the alligator?

Well, here he is, the monster.

Run away! Run away!

Oh wait, he’s not that big.

Yes Mr. Alligator isn’t very big at all. He’s the same size as the sheep. In fact, he’s made out of the same bed sheet as Mr. Sheep. I imagined a whole menagerie of bed sheet animals. But I’m actually quite tuckered out, what with all the climbing of trees to get away from the monster that is Mr. Alligator. Wink wink.

Making this alligator friend was hard. Yes hard, hard, hard. See his mouth? It’s not quite right. The mouth on the alligator from the book looks different. It’s a straight mouth but then goes down as it gets closer to the body. Whereas mine is just straight. I couldn’t figure that part of the pattern out. The pieces didn’t match in that area so I didn’t know what to do. I think I’ll have to try it again, make a Ms. Alligator. That is after I’ve recovered from Mr. Alligator. Whoo making friends is hard.

Oh almost forgot. He’s from 978-4391624205. That’s the ISBN-13 number. The ISBN-10 number, which I’ve used before is 4391624206. Why the two numbers? I just learned about this right now. I was looking at the back of my book and realized that number wasn’t the same as what I’ve shared here before. Turns out the copied and pasted ISBN-10 that I got from Amazon is an old standard. I always wondered why Amazon Japan had an ISBN-10 and an ISBN-13. So I went looking up ISBN-13 vs ISBN-10. But it’s confusing because you can’t find this book on YesAsia using the ISBN-13. It uses ISBN 10. Yeah…confusing.

Trying to take pictures of soft cuddly toys while you have a toddler in the house is ummm…HARD. This drawing doesn’t even begin to show what happened.

I put the sheep down, in the kissing position, on the ottoman for pictures. Isabelle grabbed them and ran off making kissing noises. When I finally got them back, I put them down again and kept the ottoman away from Isabelle. But she thought this was a new game. She pushed the sheep off the ottoman and pushed it away like I did. Ha ha ha! Then I tried the stool, which she pushed away. Back to the ottoman, back to the stool, back and forth again and again! Aaaah!!! Finally, with Alan’s help, I got it done…barely…

Oh and I’m trying something new with my photos. I actually quite like it but you lose the details. Click on them if you want to see them like regular without out the photoshop action.

The introduction: Mr. Sheep meets Ms. Sheep.

Ms. Sheep tries to play coy but…

It’s love at first sight.

Hee hee. Ok sewing talk. Ms. Sheep’s face came out funny. It was pointy and weird and I smooshed it down, when I embroidered her face. But it still looks funny.

I also decided to use furry flannel for the body. And you can tell it made a difference in her size. The flannel has more give so she’s bigger.

Oh and as if I didn’t bombard you with enough pictures. Here’s the final one, where my little monkey just couldn’t be kept away any longer.

Oh and almost forgot…she’s from ISBN 4391624206. So you don’t have to go searching for it.

He’s a little rebel, a little rosy cheeked rebel.

Why is he a rebel, you ask? He bucks convention! He’s different! He stands alone! (Literally, since there are no other sheep, yet). What in the world am I talking about?

His big ears are backwards, the cheeky fellow.

And Isabelle’s reaction (as a daily comic)? Because he sure doesn’t look like a rabbit now!

Ok serious talk now, or I should say sewing talk. Mr. Sheep (from 4391624206) is made out of an old, too small, ripped bed sheet. What fitting material for a toy sheep. And he is stuffed with filling from a pillow I made. I was impatient to stuff him so didn’t wait to buy stuffing. I ripped open the pillow and used the stuffing instead. So he’s totally recycled! Isn’t that awesome? So anyhoo, the sewing I was going to talk about.

I screwed up his ears, well obviously since they are on backwards. But not only that, they’re also larger than the rest of him. What happened was, for his ears, I sewed on the pattern line. Then when I started making his head, and it went wrong, I changed over to a .5 cm seam allowance. So it’s only a teensy bit too large but I can see it. So what do you think? Does he look mostly like he’s supposed to?