We are the annoying people who come to your kid's birthday party with homemade presents. It's okay for now I guess, but in a few years, when your kid wants Legos and we bring hand-sewn madras shorts or something, it's going to be really embarrassing for our own children. For our daughter's best friend's fourth birthday birthday a few weeks ago, my wife hand-sewed a stuffed fox (sort of along the lines of the stuffed mouse she made for another 4-year-old last winter). The kid in question loves reading and watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox with his mom, so a fox was an easy decision and I decided to make a book to go along with the animal. The kids and I spent a beautiful morning wandering around the city taking pictures of the stuffed fox in places the birthday boy would recognize. The basic story we made up was along the lines of book/movie, with a Detroit fox who gets cramped in his tiny house, so he sets out to find a new one. This house was too big:

 
He eventually decides that he wants to live at the birthday boy's house, but he finds out he needs to bring the boy some chickens before he can live there. So he tries to catch a "chicken":

But he's just not fast enough, so he drowns his sorrows in a glass of cider at Slow's Bar BBQ (a restaurant owned by the birthday boy's family; we actually ran into him while inside and narrowly averted disaster by hiding the fox behind my back).

The fox returns to his neighborhood and sees his friend (the fox my wife made for our daughter) and she tells him he's been trying to catch pheasants, not chickens (and that chickens are easy to catch).

He can even buy them at Honey Bee Market la Colmena:

But instead, he chooses to follow his fox instincts and steal some chickens from the urban farmers of North Corktown:

With two chickens in hand, he makes his way to his new home. The last page of the book showed him on the boy's porch, and we hid the stuffed fox right by the door before reading the book to him.

Once we were done shooting the photos, we uploaded them to Shutterfly and used their software to quickly turn them into a gift book (full disclosure: Shutterfly has advertised on Sweet Juniper before, though this post and production were not undertaken as part of any advertising campaign or sponsorship---we just like the product enough to keep using it).

After less than an hour of taking pictures, we were able to create a really personal book where the character went to really familiar places like the birthday boy's favorite playground and even his dad's office (his dad, a realtor, is the one who helps the fox figure out where he's going to live). We were able to include a picture of his dad in the book, as well as get a small image of the recipient himself in there via the pictures on his dad's desk:

It involved some planning (the books take about a week to get printed and shipped) but it really didn't take that much time to get it all done. And the birthday boy and his parents were really appreciative. Wood highly recommends Kata Golda's book Hand-Stitched Felt for making these easy stuffed creatures. 

Previous Project: Old-fashioned bed roll

When I decided to go camping with my college friends a few weeks ago, I realized I didn't have a sleeping bag. I investigated the options on the market, and the cheap ones seemed too cheap and the expensive ones seemed too high tech and annoying. I'm a bit obsessive about buying things that are made in America when possible, and those options for sleeping bags were pretty expensive. I was interested in the Duluth Pack camper's roll, because it reminded me of what soldiers/campers must have used for hundreds of years before polyester microfibers were invented. At $200, it seemed like a silly investment for infrequent use.

My wife reminded me that she made (but never shared here) a quilted sleeping bag for our daughter to use during nap time at preschool. She offered to help me design/make a cheap bedroll to use on upcoming adventures.

I bought the last two yards of a roll of 10oz tan cotton duck canvas at the fabric store. It was on sale for $3.27 a yard. I bought another yard of really cool blue plaid canvas in the same weight (and at the same price). I also bought a few yards of soft but cheap wool fabric in tan as a lining for the bag. I think all in all I spent about $16 on fabric and notions (including a zipper we ended up not using).

Because I wanted the bedroll to be water resistant, I decided to try my hand at waxing the canvas. Waxed cotton is one of my favorite materials, so it was fun to try to figure out how it's made. I bought a box of paraffin bars and rubbed the wax into the canvas until it had a glossy/oily feel. Then I used an iron to melt the wax into the fabric. I read somewhere that soldiers used to use this technique to waterproof their canvas tents in WWII. The fabric started to look and feel really cool even after the first application, but I ended up doing about ten applications of wax. Luckily, I had some help for some of them:

To make the bag, my wife basically sewed in the lining and then folded the tan canvas over itself and sewed the bottom and about 2/3 the way up the other side. She added a few feet of the blue plaid at the top of the bag. She bound the entire exterior edge, splitting the binding into two sides to leave an opening at the top that closes with buttons. The top of the bag has a zipper-pocket that I stuffed with my clothes to sort of have a pillow (that's a great feature on the Duluth Pack roll).

After the sewing part was done, I added a few more layers of wax until it was really stiff, and then melted paraffin to seal all the edges and seams.

I really love the look of the tan canvas, almost like a pair of Filson double tin cloth pants.

I finished it off by ordering a pair of bedroll straps from the Arena Leather Shop who make a lot of stuff for Civil War re-enactors. I could have made them myself I guess, but they were only about six bucks. All in all, I'm guessing I spent about $26 on materials for the bedroll. It worked great and it's surprisingly water resistant. It spent some time on the bottom of the canoe and didn't even get wet. It's way heavier than a typical sleeping bag but it has a timeless look I really love:

The bag was plenty warm and when used with that ratty old Hudson Bay trapper blanket it was pretty perfect for summer camping. I was able to use the blanket for a pillow most of the night, and I'm sure they'd be plenty warm together through October.

Previous Project: Red Chambray Dress

Knitting has helped tear me away from my sewing machine, and I love being able to make something without sequestering myself in our dark basement tied to my sewing machine for hours. I bought Kata Golda's Hand-Stitched Felt hoping to find quick, easy projects that I could make completely by hand, and I was not disappointed. Not only is wool felt lovely to touch and work with, but there is something incredibly satisfying and meditative about hand sewing. (I try to relax and enjoy the process when I'm machine sewing, but more often than not I work in a frenzy and emerge from the basement harried and covered with a million stray bits of thread and fabric.)

I made the little gal pictured above in one night after the kids were in bed. I only had one night to do it, because the next day was our niece's birthday party, but one night was plenty of time. The only modification I made to Kata's pattern was that I made the shirt out of fabric instead of felt to match a quilt I'd recently given to the birthday girl's baby sister.

I highly recommend this book if you're interested in getting into stuffed creatures but are a bit intimidated by a sewing machine, or if you just feel like taking a break from your machine. It could not be easier, and the end result is pretty adorable.

(it might be hard to tell from the picture, but the doll is about 12 inches tall.)

Previous Project: Unlicensed Lion King Playset