"How do you make... FROZEN?"

The title of this post is due to the Frozen DVD extra "The Making of Frozen" - Lucky (and the rest of us) love this song and will watch it on repeat.  I would still love to see some actual behind the scenes Frozen.  The movie itself is great, too, so if you haven't seen it make sure to check it out!

My neighbor is a super craft mom.  She is super creative when it comes to party invitations and I was THRILLED when she and her soon-to-be 4 year old daughter delivered a snow globe to Lucky to invite him to a Frozen Birthday Party!  As a fellow crafty mom, I really appreciate it when someone goes to the effort to share some handmade love.  I just lamented that my son didn't have any Disney apparel that wasn't Star Wars.  Lucky LOVES frozen so should I make him something to wear to the party?  Yes!

My first idea was to create a more generic snowman (Olaf) shirt by appliqueing three coal buttons to the front of a white T-shirt.  As I was planning Rowdy's birthday party this plan evolved into a complete Olaf character.  I really wanted to try something new, and this would be a great way to practice the complicated, multi-fabric dinosaurs I wanted to make for Rowdy's first birthday party.

I probably could have come up with white and black fabric from my stash, but I needed some things from the fabric store anyway... so why not go pick something out!  When given the choice between sparkly snowflake fabric and non-sparkly fabric Lucky selected the fabric without sparkles (I was shocked!)  I even found some music themed black fabric.  Even though you won't be able to see any complete notes I'll know that the fabric is music themed so I can hear the songs when I look at the shirts.

Why did I buy some Olaf fabric?  I was planning to figure out something for the mouth when I found some licensed Olaf fabric that was on sale.  Why not buy a 1/4 yard?  I realized that there is enough blue space that I would be able to use an Olaf leg to be a tooth on the shirts!  If I cut the fabric JUST right it would work perfectly.  

I found an image of Olaf and traced it with black in Photoshop.  I printed out the outline in a few sizes and picked the one that I wanted.  Using a window, I traced the outline onto two sided fusible adhesive, Pellon Lite EZ-Steam II, and then cut the shapes out of the relevant fabric.

As soon as I cut out Olaf I was in love.  I wasn't sure how the appliqueing would go, but I knew that I wanted to create a little Sneeze Snowman for Rowdy.  Some of the little guys have a tooth, too, so this could be an adorable little mimic.  Olaf calls the little snowmen (aka snowgies) "Little Brothers!" so this would be perfect for Rowdy.

"Mommy, you wear the Olaf shirt, and you can make me a Sven one." - Lucky on the way home from the fabric store.  Sorry kid, you're getting an Olaf shirt.

I ironed the "snow" part of Olaf's body first.  I have some scrap quilting cotton that I use as a press cloth.  When I'm securing this fusible webbing, I soak my press cloth and use the wet cloth to iron on the shapes.  

Next, I ironed on the rest of the decorative shapes.  Look how cute Olaf's little tooth came out!

Before starting any satin stitch, I drew on the approximate boundaries of the snowballs and eyebrows.  I used a straight stitch to mark these lines little better since my air soluble fabric markers can rub off pretty easily as I'm sewing.  

Olaf's arms were so thin that I didn't think a satin stitch would work well.  I decided to use a running stitch to secure these to the shirt and to leave the edges raw.  I reduced the running stitch (#1 on my machine) length to 1.0 and stitched the outlines of the arms and hair. The arms were hard. I really could have used some stabilizer behind the knit fabric because they just didn't want to stay stuck. Maybe a loose zigzag would have been easier.

I used black thread to really highlight Olaf's cartoon nature.  I used a zig zag stitch (#8) with a length of 2.0 and a distance of 0.2.  The needle got stuck a few times (I'm not really sure what is going on but a bunch of thread builds up on the wrong side and I can't move the fabic) but it was much easier than the arms to complete.

I wasn't sure how to feel at this stage of the project.  Olaf looked so clean without the stitching. He is much less clean now. I am glad I am doing this practice before doing Rowdy's birthday shirt.  (Note from future Rebecca:  Ironing out the applique after I was done sewing made it look MUCH cleaner.)

The irises on my Olaf are tiny.  Super tiny!  I used a star stitch (#30) size 5.0 to secure these to the fabric.  I had to practice this stitch on scrap fabric so I could get the pattern down and know where in the sequence I needed to put the needle into my fabric.

For the rest of the face, I used the zig zag stitch (#8) with the following settings (the first number is the stitch length and the second number is how close the stitches are to each other):

• Nose & Eyes: 1.0, 0.3
• Eyebrows: 2.5, 0.3
• Mouth: 2.0, 0.2

I couldn't find what I did for Olaf's coal buttons in my notes, but looking at the pictures of the wrong side of the applique helped me figure it out.  I used the same treatment on Olaf's buttons as I did on his arms and hair.  

I love love LOVE dressing my boys in matching outfits.  I plan to do this as long as they will let me.  I printed out a few different Snowgie (Sneezes) versions so I could get one that would be the right scale for Rowdy's onesie, even if it wouldn't be scale with the applique Olaf.

I constructed this applique following the methods I used for Olaf.  I ironed on the shapes and then with an air soluble marker drew the lines where I needed to stitch.

The eyes are a little bigger than Olaf's irises so I was able to do a zig zag stitch around them.  Here are the zig zag stitch settings I used for the Snowgie:

• Body: 2.0, 0.2
• Eyes: 1.0, 0.3
• Mouth: 1.5, 0.2

I've found that wider zig zag stitches are much easier to work with when I am on the edge between the quilting cotton and a knit shirt.  I really should look into stabilizers and how and why they are used when you are doing applique.

Look at my little frozen buddies!   I can't believe how well these came out.  It is really hard to see the snowflakes on the white fabric, but I don't even care!  These are adorable! I know I am tooting my own horn here, but I am so unbelievably proud of these shirts.  

I think I selected good characters to make shirts with.  Snowmen are much easier to create in a flat drawing than a human based character.  

The boys LOVED their shirts. 

These were some of the last pictures that I took on my trusty Canon SD 70D before the shutter wore out completely.  This happened the week of Ryder's first birthday, so we rushed to get a new camera in time.  Phew!

I have so many great pictures of Rowdy in his shirt, but you can't see the snowgie!  

We all had a blast at the Frozen themed party.  The "real" Elsa was fantastic, although Lucky was terrified and didn't get off my lap for any of the activities.  At the end of the party he started showing Elsa the animals he was playing with and even gave her a hug as he was leaving.  He was sad Anna wasn't there, but she was off "baking a birthday cake for Sven." Carrot cake, of course.

The party favors were awesome!  We got to take home an Elsa cape and some Sven ears.  These are super welcome additions to our dress up box!

These outfits have now been worn multiple times and hold up really well in the wash.  Unfortunately they do require a quick press after washing to straighten the shapes back out.  I'm not sure if a stabilizer would help this or not, but I'm super super in love with how these shirts came out.  

In my next post, I'll share the applique shirts I created for Rowdy's first birthday party.  Here is a little sneak peek at my week of applique:

Sometimes it takes me a long time to post projects here on ChemKnits. I need to edit the images (crop, adjust levels, reduce size) and turn my notes into real words someone can read. If you want to get faster sneak peeks into my work, make sure you follow me on Instagram!

With the storm on its way, sharing the joy of my little #snowmen feels appropriate. I am super proud of these #Frozen t-shirts I created this year. Maybe I should try some other animal characters next. 😎😆💜❄⛄ #applique #SewersofInstagram #sewing #Olaf #Snowgies #arendelle #frozenfans #doyouwanttobuildasnowman #littlebrothers #brothers #frozenfever

A post shared by ChemKnits Blog (@chemknits) on Mar 13, 2017 at 7:05pm PDT

This post contains some Amazon Affiliate links.  All of the product selections and opinions are my own, none were solicited.  

ChemKnits went Live!

I went live yesterday.... three times to be exact.  It feels strange for me to be talking to you guys in real time since so many of my videos and blog posts are published WAY after the fact. The closest I get to "live" is on my instagram feed, and many of those are really later-grams.    I've been watching some live sales on Facebook in the last few weeks, and was wondering how easy it was to accomplish.

I've been thinking about doing a live dyeing demonstration for a long time.  There are many logistics to consider: my messy house, my delightfully rambunctious children, my barky dog.  How can I talk on camera AND show my work space at the same time?  I decided to make my first live attempt simple.  I had two KnitPicks boxes that were ready to open.  Why not unbox my yarn orders live?  I was planning to do an unboxing of one of the orders anyway, but this gave me an excuse to try out the different live platforms.  

Going live on Facebook was really easy.  (Do you follow ChemKnits on Facebook?)  I entered my description and watched the browser count me down and I was live.  I did this attempt in the middle of the day, so I wasn't expecting anyone to be able to join me... but you did!  It was so fun to get comments live!  

Facebook really wants you to use Facebook video.  I have noticed that they don't promote YouTube videos as much as other types of linked content to followers.  I have a lot more followers on YouTube, so I wasn't sure if it would make more sense for me to go live there.  Going live on YouTube is a lot more complicated.  You have to download encoding software and then figure out how to use that software.  Yikes!  I picked a free program (OBS Studio) and gave it a shot.  

I knew what would be in the box this time, because I had saved this box specifically for an unboxing video.  I had no idea that I would end up doing it live, though.  Unfortunately, I couldn't see the comments while I was doing this video so I had no idea how many of you were watching.  I am disappointed that live chat comments disappear after the live event has ended.  

Filming live was a rush.   My videos are often long and fairly unedited.  I get a lot of positive feedback on my rambling enthusiasm.  I finished my second video and was super excited to try going live again.  Shortly after the boys woke up from their nap, I found TWO packages on my door step!  Love Knitting had graciously offered to send me some of their exclusive yarns, and I couldn't wait to see what was in the packages.  I decided to wait a couple of hours and to try going live on YouTube one more time.  This time I made sure that I could read the comments as they came in.  

In the future, I'll try to do a better job reading the question outloud before responding.  I also know that there are some technical difficulties where the sound was skipping out.  My internet service is worse in the evenings, so I'm sure this is related.  Please continue to give me feedback and I'll work to improve the quality.  

I've always enjoyed interacting with you guys, but I especially enjoyed interacting with you in real time.  I think that there will be more live video events in my future.  If  I am going to plan a large dyeing adventure, I'll try to schedule the event in advance so you guys can plan to tune in. What kind of live broadcast would you like to see?  

Crochet Dinosaur Appliques for Party Hats

Back before Rowdy's first birthday I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do for his birthday photoshoot.  I decided to keep many of the details similar to Lucky's cake smash, but Rowdy was going to have a Dinosaur birthday party.

I still had some of the crochet applique whale birthday hats that I made for Lucky's first birthday.  I was able to make these hats using the same color yarn as the turtle butt diaper cover Lucky wore for the smash cake.  The yarn colors were on backorder at KnitPicks and I didn't have time to wait, so I decided to try to match the colors with some food coloring.

Each miniskein I dyed was 6 g of worsted weight wool.  There was more than enough yarn for me to complete 6 applique dinosaurs.  

The Bronto and Steggy the Dino-Rawrs Applique crochet pattern is absolutey darling.  I love that the pattern includes step by step picture instructions in additional to the written pattern.  This made it really easy to understand the placement of the stitches.  

The dinosaurs needed some blocking but they look so much like the sihoulettes of the species they represent!  The instructions for fastening off were particularly fantastic.  It was one of the cleanest projects I've ever finished.  I'm going to change how I fasten off from now on!

Before blocking

Blocking the dinos

The finished dinosaur appliques are perfect.  I know that so much thought went into these designs and I really appreciate that they are so small and simple to create.  

I loved the sparkles at the top of Lucky's 3rd birthday party hats, so I decided that I would create rainbow garland pompoms.  I didn't have enough yarn to create yarn pompoms like I did for Lucky's first birthday.  I purchased a couple of garlands with this project in mind.

As much as I love the stars, with the bigger garland you can almost see lime green in there.

First, I cut a 6" piece of tinsel and stripped an inch of the sparkles from either end (to expose the wire.)  

Next, I folded the garland in half and twisted the ends together to form the bobble.  If the bobble looks too rounded give it a twist in the middle to make it more pom-pom-y.

Finally, I inserted some ribbon into the end of the wire so that I could easily hold the pompom in position on the hat when I glued everything together.  (My hands aren't small enough to grip the wire inside the hat and my glue gun can't reach all the way to the top, either.)

I had all of the pieces ready to go so now it was time to assemble the hats.  

I used some hot glue (on the inside!) and the ribbon closure to attach the tinsel pompoms to the top of the hats.  

I love the applique stegosauruses, but since they are two color they don't quite have enough contrast on the hats.  I really wanted to make sure I had two opposite hats for the photo shoot.  Ulimately, I decided to use just the long neck sauropods on the hats.  Keith and I ended up pinning the crochet stegosauruses to our shirts for the party so they didn't go to waste!  

I love the rainbow sparkles at the top of the hat.  I think that the dinosaur complements the colors in the bobble wonderfully even if there is no lime green.  

Soon I will share the pictures from Rowdy's first birthday photoshoot, hopefully before Rowdy turns 2!  I love being a crafty mom, but it takes way less time to create the projects than it does to edit the images and finish up the posts.  I plan to go big for the kids' first birthday parties but to hold back a bit for future birthdays.  Stay tuned for many more dinosaur crafting projects!  

Dyeing Yarn using Rice Soaked with Food Coloring

As Lucky would say, "Wait, What?"  Why on earth am I trying to dye yarn with food coloring absorbed rice?  When I dyed Easter Eggs for the first time there was a lot of left over food coloring.  I hate to waste food coloring!  I couldn't use the dyes mixed with glitter and oil for yarn, but what would happen if I tried to use this rice that had absorbed food coloring to dye yarn?  

I tried a few different ways to transfer the dye from the rice to the yarn.  First, I added dry yarn to the damp rice and shook it up.  Although the rice looked blue, I added both pink and blue food Easter egg dye tablets (dissolved in vinegar) to the rice when I was dyeing the eggs.  The first yarn looked blue, until I added it to a steam bath.  Then the yarn turned purple!  I was so surprised.  

I was really aggressive with the yarn.  I was rubbing rice all over 100% wool, and so I was definitely risking felting the fibers.  I wanted to try this again with less agitation to the fibers.

For the second yarn, I surrounded my yarn with rice in the steam basket itself.  I didn't want to agitate it but with the addition of water from the steam maybe some of the color would transfer.  

The resulting colors were really cool.  There is a lot of subtle speckling and light dusting of color along the yarn.  You can see that the pink dye must have all gone into the previous yarn, so we're left with a really pretty blue.  

The variation is super lovely, but do I recommend this technique?  No.  There was a lot of starch deposited on the yarn and it was hard to remove the remaining grains of rice from the fiber.  The yarn felt a bit stiff.  I used miniskeins for this dyeing project, but imagine trying to wash and remove rice from a full skein of yarn!  It was a lot of fun to do the experiment, but I don't think I'll be repeating it in the future.  Maybe I'll try to examine using other absorbent materials to transfer dye to the yarn, but hopefully something that would ONLY transfer the dye and nothing else.  Do you have any suggestions?