By Colette Bream via Etsy
DIY Children’s Teepee
If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time you may have caught on that I love a teepee for a kids’ space. And if you know me in real life, you may know that I love to build a good tent. Finally, this Christmas, I decided it was time. I was gonna’ sew one of these bad boys. I was pretty much terrified, but took the plunge - and was pleasantly surprised how well it came together!
I used a canvas drop cloth from Lowes and some homespun rusty red gingham I’d had laying around for the contrasting fabric. I love this tent.
The poles are dowels I cut down to 5’ at Home Depot, with some dowels slipped inside the trim around the back three panels to keep it sturdy.
I took the process slowly and figured out how to attach matching tie-backs with loops for the entrance.
The tops of the poles have holes drilled through them with some thick twine wrapped in and out and around and around to keep them together.
This gift turned out to be pretty popular.
(P.S. - I’m working on a bit of a tutorial for this. As I usually do, I poked around a number of tutorials and took a little of this idea, and a little of that, so you can certainly find all the same resources if you look around. I’ll include links to those in my next post. But stay tuned for my version…)
Little Girl’s Purses
I’d been hoping since her birthday to buy Little L a cute little purse. She previously had walked around with a shopping bag, or her brother’s bucket as a purse draped daintily over her wrist. But after finding everything was too cheaply made, too ridiculously tacky, or too expensive I decided to make one. Actually I made two.
The first one I used a large fabric sample I had in my stash and folded it over, sewed the sides and boxed out the bottom by sewing over the corners. I pretty much free-styled. (Both the pleat on the front, and the bow on the side were happy accidents to cover up mistakes.)
The second purse I kinda’ sorta used this tutorial for inspiration - though I didn’t follow it completely, and obviously made it a more little-girl-size.
I love that cute matryoshka fabric. I think I kind of wish this was my purse. ;)
It was crazy how many of the kids’ gifts I made this year. That was a lot of factors working together:
me trying to be frugal + they’re at a fun age to make things for (especially L) + I don’t have a lot of home projects to work on right now until we move into our house.
