Easy outline onesies

This is my easy task for the Thanksgiving holiday.  I was pretty lazy with it, but still think that they turned out okay.  I have two more onesies I bought for this craft and I probably won't do any more, but maybe a variation, such as filling in an animal outline with polka dots or stripes.

I used instructions from Singing Three Little Birds as my inspiration and the first two tries I completely copied, but the third I used a slight variation.  I used two old onesies that hardly fit her and are a little dingy for the heart pattern and a new 18 month onesie for the owl with the plan to give it to someone else as a gift.

Materials:

Onesie/Bodysuit or T-shirt of choice
Toilet paper roll or cookie cutter
Soft fabric paint (I used this brand, but different color set)
Q-tips (I used these instead of a paint brush, but a paint brush would be easier but more clean up)
Piece of paper or cardboard so that fabric paint doesn't run through to back of shirt (I used wax paper)

Instructions:
1.  Place paper or cardboard in-between the two sides of the T-shirt or bodysuit

2.  Prepare your outline item if necessary.  I shaped the toilet paper tube into a heart for two of these and then used a cookie cutter for the other one.

3.  Put fabric paint (about the size of a walnut) in center of plate and smear around a little bit

4.  Dip cookie cutter (thin-edged) or toilet paper roll pattern into paint, making sure to coat all of the edges thoroughly (it's okay if it's gloppy in places...it gives character) then stamp it onto shirt.  It's important to be definitive and commit to a certain spot at this point, otherwise it smears.  Also, make sure that the sleeves or edges aren't leaning forward to get caught in the paint and that your hand that is holding down the shirt doesn't have paint on it (I know this from experience).

5.  Pick an outline and color it in with the same color fabric paint.  This is where I was lazy and used a Q-tip/my finger instead of getting out and washing the brushes.

Here are my finished products...please ignore the imperfections, again I was being a little lazy.

Dog Cave Beds (old project)

My husband suggested that I put this project on here because he likes it so much.  This is a dog bed that has a cover on top making it possible for the dog to snuggle down under the covers.  The base/filling is two regular pillows that are easily removed, making it easy to clean the cover and change out the pillows when they get old. 

I made the first one for our first dog (Sally Jo) and she wasn't so interested in the snuggling, but our second dog (Hank) absolutely loves it and snuggles all the time.  I made a second one for him ~2 years ago and then my husband volunteered me to make two more for my in-laws two boston terriers.  I don't have a pattern per se, but will give my general directions.  This would be a lot easier with instructional pictures, but hopefully you can get the gist.

I started by buying a microfiber blanket, such as this. 

I cut two rectangles that were the same size as two pillows (I used king pillows for the first one, but given our dogs' sizes I just used regular ones for the others).  I then cut a third in the shape of a isosceles trapezoid with the short side being the same length as the short side of the other two rectangles and I varied the width of the long-side depending on the fatness of the dog.  I think it was ~16-24 inches longer on the long side.  The length of the edge of the trapezoid needs to be ~3-4 inches shorter than the length of the rectangle to create a little bit of an opening on the bed.  I put the long-side of the trapezoid on the edge of the blanket so that I wouldn't have to hem it and it would still have a pretty look.  If you used fabric you could hem it yourself.  Here's what the shapes basically looked like and these are the rough dimensions for the tan bed pictured below (hopefully this makes the measurements make sense):



Now it gets a little more difficult to explain...I then put the right-side of the trapezoid together with the wrong-side of one of the rectangles and pinned the short edge of the trapezoid to the short edge of the rectangle and then pinned the edges of the trapezoid along the long sides of the rectangle (there should be ~3-4 inches left at the end of the rectangle when all was said and done).  I then sewed around the edge leaving ~1/2 inch hem and then turned it right-side out and have the top side of the bed.

At this point I treat the top side of the bed as if it's a single sheet of fabric in the shape of the rectangle (perhaps a more experienced sewer has a better way to do this, but this is how I did it).  It might not make sense until you're doing it, but I try to sew a little above my previous hem to make it look prettier, but I'm not always that good at it (it's a dog bed, so I try not to stress too much about it and the hem is pretty well-hidden given the fabric of the blanket). 

I then sewed a 24 inch zipper at the bottom of the bed (short side of rectangles without the opening) and sewed the rest of this short side of the rectangle together.  I muddled through this, but this tutorial looks pretty good and there are probably a lot more on pinterest.

Once the zipper is sewed on I opened the zipper and then pinned the two rectangles together with right sides facing (it's important to make sure that the hood part of the top of the blanket is in the center of this so that you don't accidentally sew it down when you're hemming).  I then hemmed around the edges with a ~1/2 inch seam.  Once this was done I turned the bed right-side out through the zipper and it's done.  I put two cheap pillows (less than 10 bucks for two of them...my dogs like the firm/fluffy ones) inside and zip it up.

Here's a picture of the finished bed with the dog sitting on top of it whose rough dimensions I used above (you can see that the cover portion of this is quite generous with the extra 20 inches):

Here are pictures of Hank snuggling in the both the beds (he's pretty much taken over both):

(he's the lump under there)

 

Monkey Costume (with banana)

I started this blog to make it easy to post pictures of the crafts I accomplished/copied from Pinterest and other sites.  This particular costume I came up with by myself, with the exception of the banana, so I thought I'd go through how I did it.

We tried putting J in several purchased costumes and she screamed and was very unhappy.  I don't know if she didn't like the fabric or if she was hot.  Anyway, I decided that I would do the costume out of every day clothing/materials so that it would feel like regular clothes and if she got tired of portions of it as the day/night went on I could remove them.

Materials:

Long-sleeved brown onesie, smallest amount of print on the front as you can find (I used this one)
Brown pants of similar material (I used these)
Brown socks (I used some Old Navy socks)
Monkey hat (I used this one, but you could make your own if you wanted)
Brown fabric
White/Beige fuzzy fabric with coordinating thread
Fabric glue
Polyfil
Pink clip (if you have a girl)
Yellow vinyl (for banana)

Instructions:
1.  Cut a circle large enough to cover the logo on your onesie out of the white fabric
            *I used Word to make sure my circle was perfect with paper and then cut it out of the fabric

2.  Sew white circle on front of onesie using zig-zag stitch
            *I used this stabilizer on the back of the onesie, which might have made it easier, but was probably unnecessary
            *The white fabric I chose melted when I tried to iron it, otherwise I probably would have used an iron-on adhesive and perhaps not have even bothered to sew around the edge

3.  Fold brown fabric in half and cut ~1 1/2 inch cane-shaped tube with one edge on the fold (this makes only one seam to sew)
            *I did this free-hand, so it doesn't have to be perfect

4.  Sew seam of the tail, leaving ~2 inches at the tip open, flip this inside out (use a wooden dowel to help if necessary), fill will polyfil (dowel helps with this too) then finish sewing the tip of the tail by hand

5.  Sew end of tail onto back of pants
            *If you have a baby that's going to be sitting for a long time another consideration would be to velcro the tail on so that it could be easily removed

6.  Cut an oval out of the white fabric that covers half of the size of the baby's foot and then 3 small circles (if you have a bigger-footed baby you could do as many as five small circles)

7.  Glue white fabric to bottom of sock in paw-shape

            *You could also use fabric adhesive if your fabric permitted

            *I have a non-walking child, if she was walking I would probably have sewn these on by hand because the glue didn't work all that well, but it was easy





8.  Clip hair on monkey hat with pink hair clip to identify child as girl, if necessary

Here's the final result of just the costume:

9.  In order to make the banana I used this pattern with the modifications listed below:
          1.  The vinyl has a white/beige fuzzy backing, so instead of sewing felt together as she did I just used one piece of fabric which was way easier and I think the vinyl looks banana like
          2.  I used three pieces for both the banana and the skin (this will make sense if you look at this pattern and is what she suggested as a possible alternative)
          I would probably make a slightly smaller banana retrospectively, but I have a smaller baby

Here's my little monkey with her banana

Hope this was useful to someone!