Sewing

I am so excited to share this tutorial today! Christmas is right around the corner and I’ve been working on a few homemade presents for my little 19 moth old girl. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen together and she can play for the entire duration of our dinner prep with my measuring cups and mixing spoons. When I stumbled upon a wooden mini kitchen at a second hand store last month I knew it would be the perfect project to refinish and give her for Christmas.

A play kitchen can’t be complete without mini pots, pans, utensils, and of course play food! I started searching around on the internet earlier this month and completely fell in love with all of the Melissa & Doug brand wooden fruits and veggies, I think they look classy and I’d thought they’d make a good fit with the rustic/vintage look of her kitchen. However, I wasn’t ready to spend $25 for just a few pieces. I looked up “diy play food” on Pinterest and found a ton of tutorials for felt food, which inspired this fabric food project. So here we go…..

For this project you’ll need:

Citrasolv. This is an all-natural cleaning product that I found at Whole Foods. I’ve also seen it in the cleaning section of my local grocery store. If all else fails there’s always ordering online.
Vintage Food Image, you can download here. In order to transfer, you’ll need to print with a toner based printer. Since I have an ink jet at home, I ran to a copy center and printed it there for a couple of cents. If you want your food to be double sided, print two copies. Images courtesy of the Graphics Fairy
Scissors
Cotton balls or Q-tips
Spoon
White or cream colored fabric for transfers
Cotton
Needle and thread/sewing machine

Image Transfer Process

Cut around each veggie/fruit and place it ink side down on the fabric
Apply Citrasolv to a Q-tip or cotton ball and rub the back of the image, the picture should be easily visible once the Citrasolv is applied
Grab a spoon, and using the flat side, rub the image
The paper may begin to rub away and that’s OK. The ink is transferring to the fabric below.
Rub the entire image. Don’t be tempted to remove the paper to check you progress, lining the picture back up exactly where you left off can be tricky.
Remove the paper and marvel and the beautiful image transfer you just completed!

Repeat this transfer method for each of the pieces. If your’e doing a double sided veggies you’ll need two of each. And if you’re going to do all of them at once you’ll definitely need a helper. The rubbing part of the transfer cramps up your wrist.

Next, trim around the edge of each set, making sure that there’s an inch or so between the edge of the veggie and the edge of the fabric. Next, place the inked sides together, matching up the edges of the fruit as close as possible. Sew around the fabric, about 1/4″ from the colored veggie edge, leaving a 1″ opening. Pull the fabric right side out through the 1″ opening and fill with fluffy cotton to your desired plush-ness. And finally, tuck the edges of the opening into the center and sew along the opening.

TA-DA!!! All finished. Now all that’s left is to wrap them and stick them under the tree. I’m thinking I’ll add some fabric bread, muffins, and eggs to her fabric food set. Hope you enjoy the tutorial

*****UPDATE**** If you’d like an adorable denim whale but aren’t up for making it yourself, you can buy one from my shop here**************************************************

I don’t claim to be a seamstress, in fact my sewing skills are novice at best. But when I stumbled upon a denim whale on Pinterest the other day I couldn’t help but make a denim whale for my baby girls nursery.

The inspiration came from a whale I pinned off of this Finnish blog. The pictures were great, but she didn’t give a pattern. In fact she noted in her post that she draws her own pattern right on the fabric. That wasn’t going to work for me. I love to draw, but I also love to erase and redraw until I’ve got something just the way I like it. The idea of erasing on denim didn’t really appeal to me.

So I drew my pattern out on notebook paper {which you can see pictured in my tutorial} and made a few changes. I wanted my whale to be a little more friendly, so a gave him some cartoon-ish features and made his lest anatomically correct.

The pattern isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But I’ve used it to make two whales so far and it’s worked great for me. The following tutorial is of the second whale I made, the dark blue guy pictured above. I did a few variations at my little brother’s request and I ended up loving the changes.

My second whale has topstitched fins that we filled with fluff. The first whale has floppy fins and tail, which I think suits him just fine. Also, on the second go around I topstitched where the belly attaches to the top of the body. This gave him a very distinguished, whale-like upper lip which I liked better than the embroidered smile I gave the light blue whale.

Remember, my pattern is free. Feel free to use it to make whales for yourself, to give away, or go ahead and use it to make whales to sell. However, please do not claim the pattern itself as your own or sell it in any way. Also, if you repost this idea on your own blog please link it back to my blog and the original pattern. Enjoy!

The All My Friends are Flowers Denim Whale Tutorial

First, download the pattern HERE.

It’s five separate PNG files that should print on standard 8″ x 11.5″ printer paper. Because it’s printer friendly some taping of the pieces is required. Instructions are given on each sheet describing how they should be put together.

Next, find an old pair of jeans that you don’t mind cutting apart. I’m a little sentimental about jeans. My favorite pair bit the dust this summer when the butt tore wide open on a hike where I was chaperoning a bunch of my high school students. Yeah, it was bad. They’d been sitting in my drawer since August because I couldn’t bear to part with them. Well now I don’t have to! They were washed and turned into a stuffed animal for my soon-to-be-born baby girl.