Hoody tutorial

Some pictures are of a different towel due to the fact that I had to be at their party in 4 hours and I had to make two!  Yes, it was for twins.  They are too cute and love Mickey Mouse.  This was the best material our store had and it was cute for Hawaii to have a surfer Mickey.  The other two choices were more for quilts.  

Gather all the things you need.  One yard of material can make two towels.  If I am making one I get a yard anyway.  It gives you more material to work on fitting the material design nicely onto the towel.

List:

1-towel

1-yard of material

1-hand towel same color as towel or 2-washcloths

cloth scissors or rolling cutters

pins

straight edge ruler

cutting mat

good eyeballing skills ;)

I started this towel with the straight edging.  You can make it as thin or thick as you like.  The picture below is the thin one and the above is thicker.  It may also depend on your material picture.

Make sure to cute the width of the towel and 1/2 inch more on each side.  The half inch is to tuck under making the nice edges as shown in the above picture.  I like the extra so that when sewing I am guaranteed to catch the material since I can't see the bottom side.  I pin all around in a clockwise rotation.  Then you don't have to stop sewing due to the position of the pins.

I like to use the narrow band for girls and this wide one for boys.  This towel was my first time making it wider and I liked it.

Don't forget to make sure they are even when towel is folded in half before sewing the second side.  Also make sure you pinned it to the nice side.  Trust me, in my rush I have done this thinking I was taking a short cut.

On to the hoody.

I cut as demonstrated from this site.

Or you can just cut the hand towel in half.  Some towels may not be big enough so I use the measurements just in case.  Also I try to keep a nice edge that will make it easier to attach to towel.

Also cut the fabric to size.  I like to add a little extra material so that I can hide the stitches from sewing the towel on.

I like my hoods with a curve at the back.  Put right sides together and sew the top closed remembering to curve at the end.  Use a pen to mark both the towel and the material.

Put the material hood and the towel hood right sides together. Pin.

Sew together and turn right sides out.  Keeping an allowance of about a 1/4 in at the bottom for later installation to the towel.

Notice the nice edge at the bottom of the towel hood.

Pin together the edge to sew.

Sew edge so that the towel does not separate after washes and use.  Learned this from experience.  It makes it more user friendly. :)

And gives it a nice edge.

And there you have your hood.  If anyone noticed, make sure your material design is right side up.  My picture is upside down.  The second towel came out the correct way.

Align hood in the middle and pin only the towel hood to the towel inside.  Matching the 1/4 inch spacing to the towel.  It will help to seal it up nicely when sewing.

I inserted the middle in.  Pin and sew.  The bottom of the hood is a nice edge and therefore I can just sew it.  The towel is less thick in that section.

Here are some clips on the sewing from the inside view.

The corner is secured down.  The overlap is the 1/4 inch gap left when sewing the material hood and towel hood together.

Turnover and pin the material hood down.  Tucking under nicely enough to sew following the sewing on the hood.

Try not to tug too much or the material will pull on the towel inside.

I stitched close to the edge on this towel.  But you can follow the edging width from the hood stitch if you tucked in enough material.

I did the opposite with the towel below.  I sewed the material hood onto the towel first and then the towel hood after.  You can kind of see the sewing line.  Either way is nice.

And there you have your hooded towel.

This was my first tutorial.   Constructive criticism would be helpful, but be kind. :)

Learning her name

 

My daughter will be four this year and is learning so fast.  She can write her alphabet's and knows her numbers.  So I made letters with my cricut so we can post her name on the wall.  She colored them and then I laminated them.  She loves it.  I hope this will help her see what order the letters go in.  She would always write her name in any order, but use the right letters.  Maybe she is a visual learner! :)

Hooded towel, Hawn Style

A friend and her family were moving away and I wanted to send her off with something to remember us.  So I made these matching towels for her and her family.  This was her sons and her husband, minus the hood of course.  And her and her daughters got one in pink.  Same material, just in pink.  It was so cute.  I forgot to take a pic of the pink one.  She loved it and I am happy with how it turned out. :)

Lady bug handout

I was preparing for an activity day for the girls and it was about service.  They had this cute poem at the end on a ladybug.  So I thought the invitations would be cute as Ladybugs.  I made the wings to open to show the invite info.

The hearts were part of there service to show love to someone and send love notes.  It was a hit and the girls loved it.

We had five stations.  The first was to make a phone call to tell someone you love them.  The next was to decorate cookies to give to someone you love.  Third room was to make a prayer list for those to pray for each day and post it in their room.  And the fourth room they made cards to give away.  The last room was a heart card from me and my assistant to the girls expressing our love for them.

Fruits of Labor

After all the hard work I finally get to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

After battling cold after cold since the beginning of December I finally am here.  My children and I have all gotten the cold twice.  My daughter is on her second round while my son and I are finishing our second round.  Thankfully, my husband has not gotten it.....yet?

So my first day of some energy, this is what I decided to do.

Remember my garden.  I planted this sweet potato.  It grew like crazy.

Here it is in the corner.  I planted purple sweet potato's next to it and look how it has grown.

 Another pic.  The purple ones are thriving but the green leaved ones are going crazy.

So picture this with ten times more lush.  So today was the last day to have my niece and nephews.  So I decided to pull out potato's and see what we find.  They had fun.

 This is the original potato I used.  I put it half in water with miracle grow until it started to grow roots.  Then I planted it in a pot after which I planted in the ground.

 After digging around, I could have filled four more buckets of dirt.  I am sure I have missed some and will go look for more tomorrow.

 On the process I found this huge worm.  Did I mention HUGE!  Totally grose.

 Found this many potato's.  Did not bother to count them.

 In the year I have successfully started an avocado plant.

 After three tries, finally have a thriving papaya plant.  I may finally take to my Tutu for New Year's.

 And transplanted two more tomato plants.

It has been a great year for gardening and look forward to next year.  I will start new eggplants and work on perfecting my tomato gardening skills.  I have killed one plant already.  Let's not talk about it.

Christmas Cards and stockings

Here is my little Christmas blurb since Christmas has come and gone and I was too sick to post about it.  But it does not mean I did nothing!

With nieces and nephews and kids of my own, our house was full of people and lots of stuff going on.

First is my families Christmas cards that I made and we sent them out.  (Still have two more to send, I ran out of postage, you are still loved!)

 So I chose the snow globe design from the doodle charms Cricut cartridge.  Now for our picture.  We have yet to take them.  So when the snow fell onto Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, I had to drive my family up the saddle and take as many pictures as we could.  We basically had to race the clouds to catch the best pics.  And it was great fun.  Thanks to my sis for taking the adventure with us and snapping all the pics.  I also took them on a small hike in which we used one of the pics from.

Pictures all chosen and ordered to size.  My snow globe was ready and I proceeded to glue.  One side first and then exacto knife the edges off.  This started to hurt.  So I found the craft scissors I got a while back and that worked great.  After the first side was finished I glues on the second side and after it dried I cut the edges of it and voila!

Our cute Christmas card.  I had my sister design the writing for the bottom.  Which of course consisted of our names and "Mele Kalikimaka a me Hau'oli Makahiki Hou!"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Ok, next project.  We made stockings for the kids cause they forgot them in Oahu.  So if I make for my niece and nephews I have to make for my kids too, right!?  So bring out the scrap material.   My Mom made the pattern and my sister, Mom Andrea, cut out the material.  After the kids each picked their own material.  All the more fun for them.  Then onto the sewing machine I went.

After I finished they got to pick the ribbon to accent the stocking.  They totally loved it.  I would like to say they loved it more then the goodies Santa put inside.  :)  But that's just my opinion.  The green one was two different material so I folded the top so that you can see it.  Cute aren't they.  :)

Christmas Ornaments

 Here is what I have been up to.  My messy corner of Christmas gifts that I have been working on.

You can see in the upper part of this pic I was making glass ornaments with glitter glue.  I tried the drip ornament and this glue.  Tip: Hawaii is too humid.  I started these in October!  They are still not dry.  That is why the green and blue have dark spots that are dry and lighter spots that are not.  I even put them in front of the fan, ALL DAY!  Ugh! Moving on...

So instead I had these glitter balls I purchased on sale last Christmas.  So these are what I made instead.

Then I made little covers for them or tags with scrap paper I had and could not throw away.

See the ornament inside.  :)

Did I mention I used my cricut to put the year on them.  Having so much fun.  I will post my lanterns next that I made for my niece, nephews and my kids.