Easy Ribbon Topiary & 3rd Birthday party!

Ahem. I didn't realize that I never finished this post. Hahah! I had uploaded all of the pictures and then something must have come up and well.. here we are more than 3 months later! Oopsie! 

So... back in early March I was planning Brooke's 3rd birthday party. She's totally not one of those kids who is obsessed with any one thing. She's an equal opportunity child and likes a variety of things, which I can totally appreciate. I may just gouge my eyes out if everything we had around here was Princesses, Dora, Minne Mouse, or the like. Although, now that I write that.. perhaps that is why we have SO much stuff- we have to have a little bit of everything! hahahaha....hmmm.....

Okay, so the one show she does request to watch on a regular basis is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Since she's a girl, we went more with the Minne Mouse thing and since hot pink and zebra is sort of "in" right now, I picked that as our theme. I was browsing crafty blogs and Etsy as I tend to do and ran across some super duper cool Ribbon Topiaries! I HAD to make one for the party!! I asked my friend if she wanted to have a crafty day with me and she did (yay!), so we hit up Hobby Lobby when their ribbon was 1/2 off (I had PLENTY of ribbon already and needed NONE, but I love a good excuse to get more!!) and got the necessary supplies. I had forgotten the straight pins (an integral part of this project!), so I ran to the store. The GHETTO "$1" store. Side vent: I think that stores that contain the word Dollar or $1, should only sell items that cost a buck. Peeves me off when things aren't a dollar. My pins were more than a dollar, but oh well. They also appeared to have fallen off of a truck from Mexico and to have been used previously, put back in the plastic box and taped up. Again, oh well, I needed them and Kroger didn't have any so this was my only option. 

Okay, so this isn't really a tutorial, but I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to make these little pretties! 

You will need:

* STRAIGHT PINS FROM THE NON-GHETTO STORE (I tell you this for your own health- I was terrified of poking myself and then dying from a flesh eating disease)

* oodles and oodles of yummy ribbon! I say pick a color theme and go crazy with it!

* a wooden dowel rod

* a styrofoam craft ball

* that floral foamie stuff (you will cut it to fit into your pot and will poke your dowel into it on one end and the ball on the other end)

* something to cut the ribbon into the proper lengths (I used my rotary cutter and self healing mat to cut several pieces of ribbon at once- a huge time saver!) 

* time (this was a huge time suck- much longer than I had anticipated!- in fact, I had every intention of making a pair of these, but ended up with only one! I'm not sure if Kelly ever finished hers actually!)

The quick and dirty instructions: 

* Figure out how big of loops you want by making different sized loops in your hand and holding them up to your ball. Figure out how full you want it and then snip a length of ribbon and cut the rest of them to that size. I believe mine were all 5" (or were they 6"?).

* Roll out your ribbon and roll out another one on top, and another, and another.. then make one cut through the stack! You should be able to cut through 4 ribbons at once and go down the length of your ribbon.

* Cut LOTS of ribbon. More than you think. Then once you start, you will end up cutting more. Promise.

* Loop a length of ribbon and overlap the ends while placing it on the ball and pin it. Repeat. You will place these pretty close together so that you don't get any bald spots. 

* I wrapped my dowel with ribbon and hot glued down the ends.

* To cover the green foam in the pot I just rolled up some tulle and placed it on top. Not the best, but it works and I haven't changed it.

* As I made more progress on the ball, I put it on the dowel and worked around it, but initially I just had the ball on the table and started on one side.

I *think* that is enough information for ya?!.... 

 My supplies:

Some of my piles of ribbon.

Ribbon loops pinned on the ball. I had to fill in a lot. I ended up pinning the wider, fat ribbons and then filling in with the thinner ones all around them.

Kelly cutting ribbon w/ the rotary cutter. She thought it was fun!

Coming along nicely!

I ended up cutting up some tulle and poking it in there randomly. I liked it!

Done! Well, as done as it got! I'd like to paint the pot black and glue a band of ribbon around it!

Brooke's hairbow that matched the topiary pretty well actually! (yes, this picture is sideways)

Brooke in her awesome dress (that also matched the topiary!).

 

Here are some pictures from her party! 

The sight of this playroom made my blood pressure rise. Holy shit.

When I was little we always had pinatas at our parties! I was super excited to get one for Brooke. I was super IMPRESSED that now they have these cheater pinatas and all you have to do is pull a ribbon and it opens up the bottom! No bats and hits in the balls necessary! 

Oh Christmas Tree!

I get these crazy ideas that I can make just whip something up quickly on the sewing machine! I saw a shirt made with ribbon and cut to look like a Christmas Tree! In typical Tracy fashion, I said, "I can DO that!!". So, I set out to do just that! I picked up a few of these shirts last year on super clearance. I think I spent less than $1 on this shirt from Target at the end of the season. Well, also in typical Tracy fashion, I thought I'd make the "tree" better than the example shirt I had seen. So... I used many more ribbons and different trims. Looks cute all laid out there, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. Then I remembered I 'd have to sew those suckers down. But, first, I had to cut them in the tree shape. My first order of business was sewing the white ruffle to the green polka dot ribbon though.

Then I moved all of my ribbons to my cutting mat and used my acrylic ruler to cut them into the tree shape.

Ooooh, la la!

Then I had to teeeediously cut teensy strips of iron-on fusible interfacing, and iron it on. Not bad until the ribbons got skinnier (or curvy) and smaller in width!

There's all of the pieces with the interfacing ironed on to one side. The next step is to peel off the other side of the interfacing then lay it out on the shirt and iron it down, being sure to keep your lines straight!

Oh and don't forget to heat seal the edges of your ribbons before ironing them down! *If I was at home I would use my wood burning tool instead of a lighter. Mostly because it is fun. OH, and using a lighter this many times makes your thumb sore from flicking the Bic so many times. That sounds weird.

There it is all ironed down! Pretty!

I sewed down every ribbon. Yes. I sewed two lines on each ribbon, one at the top and one at the bottom.

That left lots of threads to snip on the front...

and on the inside!

But, all of the tedious work paid off. It is super cute! :)

Boo for busy!

So, along came the weekend and then the week began with two days of  teacher training. That, combined with my sweet baby boy that enjoys eating 2-3 times a night = a tired mama with not much time to blog! I DID, however manage to eek out some projects since I last wrote!

Saturday morning I got a wild hair and wanted to make a plush ribbon teether for Benjamin.... I had a 2 year old helper for this one and I even got breakfast served to me in my sewing room! It turned out to be a VERY productive day!

I started with lots of ribbons in lots of colors, two fleece circles, and pins!

Then I pinned them on and pinned the fleece.

Sew around, leave a space to turn it, then turn.

I stuffed it with batting and a few jingle bells!

Then I added the ribbon to the space where I turned it and top stitched around the whole thing. You can skip this step and just  hand sew the opening shut, being sure to catch the ribbon.

Personally, I like the top stitching. It isn't pretty, but it's cool and Benjamin likes it! :)

And then in walked hubby with this:

MMmmm!! Soo cute! Egg sandwich with a turkey sausage face! Kinda makes you wanna do this:

Arrrgh!

Back to crafting!

I FINALLY was able to machine sew the binding on to Benjamin's quilt! It STILL is not done though.. that would be because in order to finish it, I have to hand stitch the binding to the back. Let me just say that hand stitching is NOT my idea of fun!

I pinned it on.

Then sewed it on.

And then I got to that gap where the binding meets. I looked at the quilt-a-long I have been using to help me (thanks Bree!!), but try as I did.. I could NOT for the life of me do the funky  thing she did with the ends. I think I cut them a smidge too short to be able to fold them over on top of each other like she did. So.... I had to think. And, think hard. Because, at this point if I would have messed this up, I would have slit my wrists. For real. I figured out that I would just sew straight down, snip the excess, then sew it to the quilt like the rest of the binding. The picture above shows how I just sewed straight down there.

See? Then I snip snipped that excess off on the right.

I layed it flat and then sewed the gap there.

And looksie, I did it.. and IT WORKED!!

And, drum roll please... bah duh bah duh bah duh bah duh....

QUILT BINDING IS DONE!!!

*takes a bow*

Since I still had some time on my hands, I got cracking on a pacifier clip for Benjamin, since I lost his (which *amazingly* showed up right after I finished this one!).

It's easy peasy. I just sewed a fabric sheath, turned it, top stitched, sewed a clip on one side and an elastic loop on the other. This owl fabric is sort of nostalgic for me. It is what I used on my vey first (pretty crappy, I might add) tag blanket. Ben has a coordinating crinkle tag toy hanging on his infant carrier as well (not crappy, I might add!) ;)

Okay and if you EVER need to turn a sheath of fabric for whatever reason, you MUST get one of these nifty tools!! I picked it up at Joann's for half off, plus my teacher discount, of course. So, it was pretty cheap actually, but SO rad!! It sort of makes you want to turn tubes of fabric for sport!

This is the one I have, it came with three different sized tubes! Love!

And.. my final Saturday project was re-usable snack bags! These are SO AWESOME!! I have plans to make a ton of these and sell them! These two are fabric bags with a fabric lining and velcro closure.

The ones I make to sell will have a nylon lining and I will have more sizes! :o)

Brooke loves these as well. She thinks the velcro is fun!