Book Review: Make Your Own Toys

Sue Havens has written a little gem of a book with Make Your Own Toys. It begins with a short primer on toymaking basics including a list of terms and hand-drawn illustrations. I'd probably learn something if I bothered to read it. I always skip those sections in craft books but then end up needing to go back to them to figure out what the heck I'm missing.

The patterns are hand drawn and on the last few pages of the book. Each has instructions on how much to enlarge so you will need a photocopier. I do like this aspect of books because when it comes to plush and other projects, you can make them whatever size you want as long as you enlarge consistently.

Overall, there isn't a lot of variety in the projects. There are a couple of different ways to construct the plush and a few different shapes. But wow, there's some eye candy. As you can see from the cover, she uses amazing fabrics and combines prints and textures effortlessly. It's great fodder for inspiration. I just want to run out to the thrift store and fill up a bag on $3 day. This book makes you want to cut up the sweater you're wearing these guys are so cute.

I think this book will work well for all levels of crafters. If you have kids, you could totally help them make most of the little guys. If you're experienced, you could whip most of these up rather quickly. The instructions are well written and I enjoy following the illustrations.

Earth Week Sponsor . Monkey Travel Club

My second sponsor for Earth Week is Monkey Travel Club. We have one of her pencil cup cozies covering up a Mason Jar full of diaper dust (a must-have if you use cloth -- it really absorbs odors in the diaper laundry). We had originally planned to do a sock monkey theme in the nursery but it pretty much fell apart. We have this cozy and two handmade sock monkeys. Since Zadie asked to play with them the other day, they're no longer part of the decor. There is just too much other cuteness in the world to make it work.

Our monkey fits perfectly into the room despite the lack of theme. I just love how soft my the yarn is and that Ginny added a lemon button as a special touch. Ginny is a seamstress who makes amazing quilts, bibs, bags and even designs and sells her own patterns in her other Etsy shop, iSew. These cup cozies are really eco friendly. Instead of wasting the cardboard sleeve every time you buy a cup of coffee, use one of these. They're a great conversation starter and will last a long time. She also makes super cute owl items and a bunch of different monkey items.

Check out the flickr group for the Monkey Travel Club to see monkeys and owls on various adventures. He really gets around! Giveaway now closed.

Amy Butler's Patchwork Crib / Playtime Quilt

I bought Little Stitches for Little Ones from Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago using a hoarded birthday gift card (my birthday is in October). It's an absolutely gorgeous book with amazing photos and lots of images of Amy Butler's fabric. The format of the book is nice because it has a sturdy hardcover with a spiral binding to lay flat. All the patterns are in a cute little pocket. Overall it's great for inspiration because it's just so beautiful. Because of that, I bought a previous book of hers called In Stitches.

I decided to start with the quilt project because we really needed something for Zadie to play on in our living room. This is a perfect size. I nabbed this photo during naptime.

The book is really lacking in diagrams (and often photos of the completed pieces -- if you're a visual person and not good at following written directions then this probably isn't the book for you).

So, as you can see, I made my own quilt map using photocopies of the 4 diagrams that were in the book. I then color-coded the blocks so I would have a better visual. I also made a little key of the fabrics so that I wouldn't make any mistakes when cutting or piecing.

The fabric is the Funky Monkey line by Erin Michaels for Moda. I bought it a couple of years ago. The pattern calls for 4 fabrics but since I had so many I decided to add two more. I wanted to use the green number print and the crowd print to add some more color. If I hadn't, this would have been too baby-ish with all the pink and aqua. The green gives it a nice punch. Since the pattern of the blocks repeats, it was easy to make the switch.

The back of the quilt is the fabric that has the monkeys in a crowd. Half is cream and half is red. I put all of the cream pieces facing up and all the red pieces facing down so there wouldn't be an orientation to the quilt. I also used regular quilt binding that you can buy from the store. I just didn't have time to do any more ironing and cutting.

I absolutely love this. It turned out really well and I'm sure we'll have it forever. The hardest part was the cutting and a technique for quilting called stitch-in-the-ditch. I hadn't done that before and found it kinda challenging. But now that the quilt is finished, you can't tell how bad of a job I did. I also used really thin quilt batting. It's good for a play quilt but for my next quilt (see this post), I'm going to get something thicker.

I made the Etsy homepage!

One of my Etsy friends, iSew, and I made the Etsy homepage yesterday. The people over at EtsyLabs have been making all these Christmas gift buying guides for The Storque. This one was for boys ages 3 - 7. There was some pretty great stuff on the list and it was the first time I got a product featured there.

Ginny, the mastermind behind iSew, does these amazing sock monkey gadget cozies. Since our future baby's room will be all sock monkeys, we might be talking to her about a little something something someday soon.