Thursday, October 8, 2015

Abundance of Pumpkinheads!

I LOVE Autumn!  The only problem is we live in Scottsdale, Arizona!  Not exactly known for our beautiful fall colors....unless of course we take a day trip up north (on my To Do list).  

What's an Autumn girl to do when there are no visible signs of Autumn's Glory out her window!  Well, I'll tell you!  She makes PUMPKINS!!!!









This is just a sample of my PUMPKINS!  These and many more are available in my Etsy shop "PUMPKINHEADSTUDIO".  Come in for a visit!



Tuesday, July 28, 2015

WOW!  I'm such a bad blogger!  Sorry I haven't checked in for so long!  So I have a lot to catch up on.  I've been super busy with projects, building a house and new studio (I'll post on that when I have all the photos organized) but today I wanted to share a project I made for my Great Nephew, Caden!

Caden loves pirates and maps and adventures, like his Dad.  I wanted to create something for him that he could play with now but keep in his room, even as he grows older.  So I created this...


I had a (embarrassed to say) large pile of old jeans.  You know the "I can do something with that" kind of pile.  So I started out by cutting each of the states (following a pattern I bought off Etsy from CarolinaSquirrell) being careful to highlight special features, such as pockets or embroidery, etc.   See next photo, IL has a pocket with a PEACE sign on it!  How fun this was!


My next step was to connect all the states and attach them to a large piece of duct cloth (or is it duck?)  Double faced, iron on interfacing worked perfect for this step!  I just needed to make sure that there was enough overlap of the states to keep them from separating.  Some states were thicker than others so this was a bit of a challenge but it worked out.   I then outlined each state with a zig zag stitch being sure to use a heavy needle in my machine.


I even included Alaska and Hawaii in the bottom corner!   I wanted to have this large and soft enough that he could lay it on the floor, or drape over his bed, but I also wanted to give him the ability to hang it on the wall one day so I added plenty of grommets along the top edge.


Finally, because Caden is a little pirate and lives in Virginia, I found a cute pirate boy patch and attached it to his home state.  I had a bunch of really cute pirate flag charms (left over from my invitation making days) and thought these would be a perfect way for him to track all the states he has explored!  I tied a little red string to 50 charms and attached a little safety pin to them.  I asked Caden's mom for a list of all the states he has visited and went ahead and "pinned" those states, sending a baggie of remaining charms to his mom (he's was only 4 after all).


This was such a fun project for me to make, not just because it was for Caden, but in general.  I can imagine it made from anything; recycled T shirts would be really cute.   I love the idea of reusing rather than buying new.  Like I always say, "It's not always what it is.  Sometimes it's what it can be"