Muse of the Morning PDF Sewing Patterns

Tutorial: Ruffle Front T-shirt Embellishment

There are loads and loads of tutorials out there on how to embellish a t-shirt, but it’s so much easier and there’s a lot more room to change up the whole t-shirt concept when you make the shirt from scratch. This tutorial doesn’t go too crazy, but it is an easy way to spice up a t-shirt pattern.

I highly recommend the Practically Perfect T-shirt pattern to use for this tutorial of course, but any t-shirt pattern with a neck binding will work.

Cut out your pattern as directed in your pattern descriptions. In addition, cut out a piece of the binding fabric that is 3 inches wide by 10 inches long.

For this tutorial, I’m making a solid colored t-shirt with contrasting colored binding. I am making the shirt and the binding out of a rib knit from JoAnn’s. I almost always use this same rib knit for the binding – it has a really nice recovery – but this isn’t usually enough to save a rib knit shirt from stretching out of shape. To fix this little problem, when I use rib knit for the body of a t-shirt, I cut it 1-2 sizes smaller.

Mark the center of the strip, lengthwise (my line isn’t showing up too well in the picture).

Set your sewing machine to it’s longest stitch length and sew down the strip, 1/4 inch away from the center. Repeat, 1/4 inch away from the center on the other side of the center line. Leave long tails each time at the start and the finish of your sewing.

Pull on the bobbin threads to ruffle up the strip until you like how it’s ruffled. I pulled it to 5 inches.

Place the strip in the center of the t-shirt front. Line the top up with the neckline.

Adjust your stitch length so it’s back to normal. Sew the gathered ruffle from the top of the neckline, to the bottom and then back up again, following your gathering stitches. Sew just to the side of your gathering stitches. Once the strip is sewn to the front of the shirt, you can gently pull out the gathering threads.

Sew your t-shirt together as directed in the pattern directions. When you get to the neckline, sew the ruffle into the neckline.

Viola! This is one fancy t-shirt!

Kandinsky Inspired Monoprints

I’ve seen a lot of tutorials out there on the interwebs for art projects based on Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky. Most involve painting concentric circles or cutting out circles. I was thinking of something that involved printmaking… no surprise there, right!?

Squares with Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky, photo from NZ Fine Prints

Well as my printmaking students were doing their monoprints the other day, I thought it would make a really great Kandinsky project. So Lil’ Miss and I sat down a couple days later to make these beautiful Kandinsky Inspired Monoprints.

The nice thing about monoprints is that they really don’t require a lot of specialized equipment. The only special thing you’ll need is a sheet of plexiglass just larger than your sheet of paper. You can find these for about $3 each at your local hardware store. I found mine at MECCA (our local art supplies recycling place) for 50c a sheet. The plexiglass is nice because you can place a sheet of paper behind it to guide the child, but in a pinch you could use a baking sheet or something else that’s flat and as big as your paper.

In addition, you’ll need some acrylic paints and brushes and paper.

Place one of your sheets of paper behind the plexiglass so you’ll know where to stop painting. I drew a big circle on the backing paper for Lil’ Miss, just to give her a little guide.

Now paint concentric circles on the plexiglass. You have to work a little bit quickly so that the paint won’t dry.

Lay your sheet of paper over the painted circles.

And rub with your hands, making sure to get the entire surface of the paper.

Lift the paper up very carefully.

Look at what you’ve created!! We like to talk about why some of the paint wasn’t printed on to the paper.

If you like, you can make another print from this exact painting. It’s called a ghost print and even less paint will stick this time. We talk about why this is. If Lil’ Miss has her way, she will make 6 or 7 ghost prints. As she says, “I’m really into ghost prints right now.” LOL.

Now, you could be finished with your project, or….

You can make more! We didn’t wash the plexiglass between paintings because we wanted some of the older color to show through to the new prints. It really gives a depth and a really different dynamic to the prints.

Lil’ Miss painted right over her previous painting with new colors and printed again.

And again….

They are really a lot of fun. I’ve never been that into monoprinting, but this project and working with my printmaking class really got me excited about it!

If you have older kids, you could try with more circles like below:

For more colors, you have to hurry a bit more so the paint won’t dry. Lil’ Miss was taking her time, so this one didn’t work out so well. If you’ve got older kids, they might enjoy the challenge though!!

If you do this project, I’d love to see how it turns out! You might even see if another of Kandinsky’s works inspires other designs for monoprinting!

Linky Parties
Kids Get Arty!

Treasure Baskets For Babies & Toddlers

The way babies learn about the world is directly through their senses- by picking things up and looking at them, feeling them, listening to them, mouthing them, smelling them. The treasure basket, also called a sensory basket is a Montessori concept, it’s a low round basket that is filled up with various items to stimulate baby’s senses.

In strict Montessori tradition, the basket contains 60-80 items of various materials and textures. The contents can be of any material except plastic. The treasure basket it not a static thing, the items can change and be added to as baby explores and changes interests. Baby is always interested and ready to explore as the contents of the basket change. The best thing about treasure baskets is that most of the items can be found around the house.

I have a couple sensory baskets. One sits front and center in the living room where baby can crawl right over and get into it. The basket came from the thrift store and the items inside were found around the house.

Most of the items in the basket aren’t “toys”- wooden spoons, cardboard tubes and pieces of paper are all good items to include. Our baskets even have a couple lone socks in them because the baby really likes to chew on socks. I’ve even included a wool hat- it’s perfect for baby to try on, to chew on or to use as a bag.

In addition to the main basket, I’ve placed some other baskets on other shelves in the house that the baby is allowed to get into. My hope was that these baskets, set there appealingly with interesting items in them would catch his attention and keep him from getting into other, less desirable things in the room. So far, it’s working! He dumps the baskets out and I come along behind a while later and pick them up, and then he gets to dump them out again. He seems to like the dice basket especially.

Baskets can have a large variety of items in them, or they can be themed. I have a basket of large dice and a basket of silicone baking cups that all stay in their own basket on a shelf. In the kitchen, I have a basket of kitchen tools similar to ones he might see me working with. The three main baskets though, are a conglomeration of items. I try to change some of the items in the baskets every week so that it stays fresh.

Here are some ideas of items to put in your sensory baskets:

Metal Items, like:
a cup
spoons
a small tin
tea strainer
mini muffin tin

Paper Items, like:
cardboard tube (toilet paper or wrapping paper)
piece of cardboard
crinkly paper
sturdy lacing card

Wooden Items, like:
wooden spoon
play people or figurines
a bowl
fingernail brush
blocks
soft hairbrush
wooden egg
honey stirrer
wooden rings
nesting doll
large beads on a rope
peg clothes pin

Natural Items, like:
shells
natural sponge or loofah
driftwood
a small stone or pumice
a pinecone
small straw broom
small basket
coconut shell
sheepskin
rattan ball

Cloth & Yarn Items, like:
cloth balls
sock
small stuffed toy
doily
silk scarf
ribbon
fabric that is soft (flannel or fleece), shiny, rough (burlap)
bean bag
ball of yarn
tassel
large pom poms

Odds and Ends, like:
large dice
silicone baking cups
instruments – jingle bells, maracas
brushes- pastry brush, hair brush, paintbrush…
spice jar with a few spices or things in it to make a little noise

Of course, be sure that all the items in the basket are safe for babies and kiddos who put things in their mouths!

Artist Trading Cards

Back in my Nervousness days (anyone remember Nervousness?), I made a lot of ATCs and mail art. They’re probably out there buried in a bunch of ATC or mail art collections (my username was wundergirl back then if anyone has one). Now that I have a studio, time and artistic energy again, I’ve been making them again. Nervousness is gone now, but in it’s place several new sites for trading and contributing to mail art have sprung up. Lil’ Miss loves making ATCs also, so we spend a good deal of our art time working on them.

Lil’ Miss and a friend making ATCs at a recent event.

What are ATCs?
Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) as we know them today were popularized by Swiss artist M. Vänci Stirnemann in 1997. Inspired by hockey trading cards, he put together an exhibit of more than 1000 trading cards. At the end of the exhibit, he encouraged viewers to create their own ATCs to trade for one of his.

Since then, the popularity of ATCs has grown and grown. Artists trade via websites on the internet or at face to face trading events.

There are only two rules for making ATCs:
1. They must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches.
2. They must be traded, never bought or sold. (There is a version of ATCs that can be sold- they’re called ACEO – search on etsy for examples)

Lil’ Miss and her friend are trading at an event.

It’s easy to understand the popularity of ATCs. They are small and quick to make. This also makes them quite addicting. They are a really easy way to try out new techniques and since they’re traded, never sold, they provide a very easy way to attain some really beautiful art.

A couple of LIl’ Miss’s ATCs – These are collages, we made the papers that she collaged with and the background is from a recycled watercolor picture that I cut up.

ATCs and Kids
ATCs are really kid friendly because of the small size. A very small surface can be a lot less intimidating than a large piece of paper. I find for Lil’ Miss, especially, that painting and collage are a lot easier on the small ATC blanks.

Some drawn ATCs by Lil’ Miss

Most art mediums will translate to the miniature size of ATCs. Oil pastels, watercolors, and sticker collage are Lil’ Miss’s favorites. She’s just beginning to work with paper collage. Her sticker collages are generally a collection of stickers that she likes and then comes up with a theme for… like “things that are pretty” or “things you musn’t do”.

I’ll probably post some ideas for getting kids started with ATCs in the future.

No surprise that I like block cuts for mine. The one on the left is made of a couple blocks on a collaged background. The one on the right is a gradient block print. I got the idea for that saying (Kiss and Make Art) from LinoCutBoy. I’ve also been doing a lot of water colors on cards too. I never really got watercolors before, but I’m really enjoying them right now.