Sewing: Quilted Floral Front Sweatshirt (McCall's M6992)

When we visited San Francisco last year I managed a quick trip to Britex Fabrics where I spied this beautiful quilted photo floral fabric in their remnants section. It was still a splurge so I only bought half a yard. And this past weekend, thanks to some fantastic eggplant french terry from Raspberry Creek Fabrics, I finally sewed with it.

These two fabrics paired together perfectly for a dressy sweatshirt (that is a legitimate, though contradictory description, right?). I used McCall's pattern M6992 and it was such a quick project. I simply cut two of the front piece--one from the french terry and the other from the quilted. In fact I'm anxious to find a fun plaid to front another sweatshirt.

And I have enough of these two gorgeous fabrics left that one of my girls may end up with a dress or tunic. Just hunting for the perfect pattern given that this quilted fabric doesn't have any stretch.

Happy MLK Monday!

Sewing: Quilted Cocoon Dresses

I sewed these two giggly girls some Cocoon Dresses with the pattern by Trine (of Groovy Baby and Mama) for The Sew What Club.  They are so cozy and cute in this quilted knit--we love them.

I lengthened the sleeve of the original pattern and left off the ruffle but I'm excited to sew the original version in a lighter weight knit when it warms up.

The grey quilted knit is from Raspberry Creek Fabric and the navy floral quilted knit was found in this Etsy shop. The Cocoon Dress sewing pattern is part of the Sew What Club subscription.

I love sewing for these girls!

Printables: Pink and Gold Puppy Party Birthday Papers

I loved designing this 5x7 single card puppy party invitation for Tess's birthday! Isn't this a cute little pooch? She was inspired by our own yellow Lab. 

I wanted a cute, yet simple and modern face and couldn't resist adding a party hat and bow tie to make it more festive. This little puppy became the mascot for our Pink and Gold Puppy Party, adorning labels and tags and even cornhole game boards.

I was inspired by some morrocan cement tiles I was looking at for another project and so I created a bone and paw pattern in pink and gold for a suite of party printables. I love the look of the puppy face against this background.

The party invitation includes form fields you can edit for your own party details, and the suite includes extras such as these cute photo folders (I used them with "wallet sized" prints from Costco but they'd be great with instant prints from your phone or camera), puppy face tags, poster sized puppy faces for cornhole boards or posters, thank you tags, thank you cards, party hat templates, doggie bag tags, and lemonade bottle labels.

I also included my template for tracing this little puppy face on a canvas bag, t-shirt or backpack for a fun coloring activity at the party. Our guests loved coloring these bags!

In addition, I've included a huge selection of patterned bone and paw papers, which can be used for lining trays, cutting buntings, wrapping bottles or candy bars and anything else you can think of. You can purchase these party printables in my Etsy Shop.

For a little extra i adeed some gold glitter to the invitation and party hats. Click through for a quick how-to!

Party: Pink and Gold Puppy Birthday

Somebody had a birthday party! And she wanted a puppy party! Makes sense since our family recently adding a darling yellow lab to our family. So this little lab became the mascot for Tess's puppy birthday party, with a dash of pink and gold added by me to make it extra fun for girls.

I had so much fun designing this birthday party! I happened to be looking at concrete tiles in Moroccan patterns at the same time, so I incorporated some fun geometric patterns with paw and bone motifs as backgrounds for all the printables.

I made paper party hats with gold tissue paper pom poms and a dash of gold glitter, puppy ear headbands for the guests to wear (I hung these on a bronze "tree" with tissue tassels), traced puppy drawings on blank canvas bags for the guests to color, found white puppy plush animals to wear little party hats and go home as the party favor, and of course came up with a puppy inspired party menu.

There was Pink Paw Lemonade (my re-labeling of Simply Lemonade individually sized bottles), PBandJ sandwiches cut in the shape of dog bones, a gold dog bowl (which I spray painted) filled with strawberries, "doggie bags" filled with white milk chocolate bones we made with molds, and of course, birthday cake.

I have been loving the naked cake trend so I tried one with moderate results.  It tasted amazing as it was vanilla buttermilk filled with strawberry buttercream and topped with vanilla buttercream. But I left the decorating until the minutes the guests were arriving so the giant fondant bone was a pretty rushed effort. Tasted great though!

The girls had a great time dressing as puppies with their puppy ear headbands and some face painting provided by Tess's older sisters. They also colored their puppy bags and played a game of cornhole for small prizes.

I created a puppy face line drawing on the bags to make it easy to color.  I printed a stencil of the drawing on my Cricut machine but you could also print and trace the drawing on bags (it's included with my party printables). 

I decorated the cornhole boards with plain white paper and poster sized puppy faces to tie in with the theme. (My party printables file includes these large puppy faces set up to print two on a 20"x30" print.)

What fun we had! 

As a thank you we took pictures of each girl dressed as a puppy and holding her new plush puppy, which I printed wallet sized and sent home in a photo folder.

Tess looked adorable in her pink pleather and gold Maren dress and our lab was the perfect photo prop. I loved celebrating another year with this little girl!

Party Resources: (including affiliate links)

Tess's Dress:  The Maren Dress sewn by Aesthetic Nest
Birthday Invitation and Printables: Pink Puppy Printables from Aesthetic Nest on Etsy
Blank Canvas Bags
Fabric Markers: Sanford Stained by Sharpie Fabric Markers, Assorted Colors, 8-Pack
Puppy Ear Headbands Tutorial
Gold Tissue Paper for party hat pom poms and tassels
Plush Puppy Favors: Douglas Cuddle Toys Bichon
Tess's Yellow Lab Plush: Aurora Myoni Yellow Lab
Cornhole Boards to decorate with puppy face
Dog Bone Cookie Cutter for PBandJ sandwiches
Dog Bone Chocolate Mold for white chocolate doggie bag treats
White Chocolate Candy Melts

Sewing: Puppy Purse Tutorial for WeAllSew

Remember this cute Maren dress I sewed for Tess? I made a darling puppy purse in pink faux leather and gold to go with it. Tess just loves it! It's the perfect little accessory.

I've got a tutorial for this purse with free pattern on the BERNINA WeAllSew blog today. And there's a whole birthday party to go with this ensemble, which I'll share later this week!