Flip Dolls and Other Toys that Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab and Go [and printable templates]

My book will be officially released next Tuesday, August 6! (Although some eager friends pre-ordered through Amazon and got their copies weeks ago.) Click on the book image to find it on Amazon. Some fun reviews are trickling in from around the craft scene. I love hearing how others are responding to my toys and illustrations, but I especially love seeing the toys being made from the book! I'll keep up a list of reviews here.

I'm also really glad to share the full size templates available for printing so that you don't have to worry with enlarging. You can find the pdf here.

Below are some of my photos of the actual book - laid out beautifully and full of my favorite colors. I've added a few comments about some of my favorite details.

my toy illustrations on the endpaper - I love it!

This alter-ego may look like Clark Kent, but he's really inspired by John: Super Librarian.

I love the beautiful layout by the design team. I was squealing with delight when I first saw the lovely fonts and color, and oh, the lightning bolts!

These little birdies are probably my favorite toy, and the photographs are so lovely!

I did the illustrations throughout the book, which was great fun!

Both the photographer and design team had a great sense of color and storytelling with these serial photo layouts. 

The Show and Tell chapter is full of my favorite toys: the Bright Ideas Computer, the Plucky Ukulele, and the Perching Birds.

The Knotty Frog was fun silliness to make. 

The Flip and Turn chapter has 8 flip doll patterns, plus instructions to customize the pattern to make your own characters. 

Printable Merit Badges: you earned it.

Merit badges really appeal to my need for external validation. I can just picture Ed Chigliak wrestling a little green man in a trailer park, right now, on my behalf.

What, didn't you watch Northern exposure?

While I was working on my book Flip Dolls & Other Toys That Zip, Stack, Hide, Grab & Go, I spent one particular evening sewing at least 8 zippers without swearing or injuring myself or even breaking a needle. Not too long ago, I'd buy extra needles, expecting to break at least 2, when working with zippers. I'll admit - I was feeling pretty proud. I've come a long way since I started sewing, and gained quite a few skills.

I'd say, I finally earned my zipper badge.

Later, when I was doing the illustrations for the book I remembered that feeling of accomplishment, and I drew merit badges to go with the skills taught in the Getting Started chapter. I've been wanting to make some in some sort of practical and share-able format ever since. Today's the day!

So, if you're collecting new skills (or refreshing old ones), and you need a little motivation - here's a treat for you! 12 printable merit badges for some essential sewing and softie making skills. Most of these skills are included in my book, but these will apply to lots of sewing skills. The pdf below includes the merit badges, along with some suggested accomplishments for earning your badge, and a "Sewing Skills" sash. Once you've earned your badge, print it, cut it out, and paste it on the sash to display for a little External Validation.

I think these definitely need to be uploaded to spoonflower and turned into Sewable Merit Badges. But I'm not there yet. What fun these will be to encourage the little ones as they start learning to sew! Download the files below, and be sure to let me know how you're using them!

Book Give Away

Laura from The Shed is giving away a copy of my book. Hurry over to sign up (and to hear a little bit about the book!) - there's only one day left to enter!

Sneak Peek [with Embarrassing Photos]

I don't usually have much trouble designing with the kids around, but the actual sewing, with pins and projects spread out on the floor and the dining table, the hot iron steaming - that can be a bit tricky.  So during the months I was working on Flip Dolls and Other Toys, my dear husband gave me many weekends home alone to put in some serious hours sewing. He and the kids would go visit the grandparents for a weekend, and I would have 48 uninterrupted hours to make a huge mess, assembly line stacks of projects, and do my hand stitching with a line up of cheesy movies. It was fabulous.

I would keep in contact with John and the kids with a quick skype over breakfast, and loads of photobooth shots of me, cheesing for the camera with the projects I was working on. I was giggling over some of these photos this evening, and thought you might enjoy a peek into my working process. Be warned: there's quite a bit of goofiness, some failed prototypes (read the captions for the details!), a bit of bed-head (with a surprising number of hairstyles over the last two years), and lots of coffee!

Unfortunately, this female super didn't make it in the book, because I made her shirt from the same fabric as her SKIN COLOR. Sheesh. Let's keep it clean, folks.

Coffee, and cheerful first morning. 

Coffee, a drafting ruler, and a frantic second morning.

The productive mess in action - can you spot the three different projects laid out here?

Not pleased with this square bottomed ukelele with floppy strings.

Sharing secret plans with one of my crocodiles!

Many months, and many ukuleles later... shape and string success!

Sitting pretty with my first finished birdie.

Prototype and finished Bearded Ladies - no more nubby arms, simpler hair, and a scale that matches the other flip dolls.  And I'm still totally sane. No really.

Prototype and finished Conjoined Twins. The bigger one is better, right? Wait, is something missing?

Blue Birds and Robins keeping me company. 
Nothing goofy here, just my favorite little toy. :)

Many months and a move later: 
doing book revisions with my cheering squad present this time.

The book arrives in the mail, and we can't keep our hands off it!

That's me! 
Wait, I'm flipped, too...

Thanks for reminiscing with me. Quite a lot of fun over the last two years! My only regret is that I didn't take pictures of all my mistakes - although the topless super hero is definitely a favorite. I think toy design may be one of the most fun jobs ever - at least one of the most playful, eh?

How about you? Do you mix work and play?

A Successful Scrap Quilt

I've been wanting to make a quilt for our bed for a long time. I considered making a cool tree quilt like this one, or this beauty from purl bee. The colors in this triangle quilt have me swooning. Okay, check out my quilt board already. 

But ultimately, I decided to go with the less expensive, less time consuming scrap quilt. Let's face it, I have a hard time finishing big projects like this, so I thought I'd make it easy on myself and just do squares. I did end up piecing a few squares, so that I could include some fabric scraps - but mostly its just 8" squares. 

As I was assembling it, I questioned my scrappy choice because it just wasn't as pretty as some of those others. I could have at least limited my color palette... But then John and the girls came in and started pointing out the fabrics they recognized and telling me which ones they liked best. That's what this kind of quilt is all about, right? Lots of memories. 

Puppy likes it. And about two minutes later, everyone else was snuggled in, too. So, yeah, that seems like a success. What do you think makes a good quilt?

Heart Felt

 I started this small felt board several years ago as a disciplinary tool. I was struggling with how to communicate good and bad behavior to my toddlers, you know the terrible twos and threes. I thought why re-invent the wheel, eh? So we developed a sort of gold star chart - only its a flannel board with hearts. Good behaviors were rewarded with hearts, and bad behaviors got a black square on the board. [See how I made my felt boards here.]

It was amazing how effective this was at that time. The girls were not catching on to the idea of consequences when I gave them warnings - and lecturing wasn't working, of course. But seeing a heart or a black spot on the chart sort of became a consequence they could understand. 

When the girls did something kind, or obeyed without arguing or said please and thank you - I let them pick out a heart to put on the board. (Each girl had a side of the board, identified this day by their little dress.)

When their behavior was not so good I put a black mark up. Really, the square is totally arbitrary. But it made the bad behavior visible - and they didn't like that. [side note: Black is one of J's favorite colors, so we recently added black hearts as well - which was a little confusing for John, but the rest of us were cool with it.]

When they apologized, or corrected the behavior, they got another heart and they could cover the black mark. They loved that. And so did I. Honestly, I was surprised how easily and quickly this worked. And its been fun to talk about colors and see how the girls arrange their hearts.

Now that the girls are a little older, consequences come a little more easily for all of us. Bad attitudes mean quiet time, fighting over a toy means losing the toy, etc. So I don't really use the black marks anymore. Instead, we made a little felt tree trunk and we started putting all of our hearts together, in one big family love tree - to continue reinforcing good behavior.

They love giving hearts to each other when they are kind to one another. And its good for me, too, to remember to look for those things instead of always pointing out their bad behavior. Sometimes they even give me hearts when I'm kind.  works for me, too.

The little felt board used to sit on the windowsill, but recently I took it apart and put it inside a large picture frame with the glass removed. I just used the cardboard already in the frame - which made this the easiest felt board I've ever made. (I did include a layer of batting between the felt and cardboard, but I didn't glue it or anything - the frame holds it together.) 

Our entryway table has become a little collection of school things, which I'm kind of digging. We refer to the globe and abacus quite a bit now that they are accessible - and kind of pretty, too. We have made other felt board projects for school or fun over the years, so I like having this accessible in the living room too, for a quick school-ish felt-play time. More felt to come, I'm sure.