Posted by Ethne~
I made tooth fairies for the girls
for their birthday. What prompted
this was not my innate desire to make tooth fairies or celebrate their
aging. In fact, I’m afraid of their
aging. I’d rather they’d stop for a
while and just be my sweet little girls and not lose their teeth and go through
that gawky awkward stage. [I do have
hope, though, because my friend, KS’s girls pretty much skipped awkward and went straight
to adorable, hipster (albeit sometimes sassy) tweenagers.]
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| KD: Possible loose tooth, Mommy. Bottom left. Me: I'll pass, thanks. |
But KD told me recently that her
bottom front tooth is loose. I
didn’t check it to see because I’d rather not even believe that’s possible. It’s not possible. Just to verify my ignorance being truth,
I asked my friend, SH, who has a daughter just a bit older than my girls, and
she said that B lost her first tooth right around her 5th
birthday. What?!? I’m sure she’s lying. I still haven’t checked KD’s tooth. I figure if the tooth is loose, there’s
nothing I can do about it anyway.
But I am not a slacker Wom-Mom. I know when those teeth actually do fall
out, there won’t be loads of notice (a few days? less than that?) I need to have tooth fairies in the
wings (haha), ready to hold teeth for exchanging into money. [Shaun tried to say kids still get
quarters for teeth and I reminded him that was 30 years ago and they probably
get like $20 per tooth now. He
nearly had a stroke so I think we’ve compromised at $1 per tooth. Maybe we’ll fork out 5 clams for a molar
or something.]
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| Shaun surprisingly just rolled his eyes when I brought home these bat wings for Theodore for the vampire birthday party (seen here on my sister's cat Largie). I thought they'd be a stroke 4 sho. PS, Theodore has no teeth. |
I’ve seen a ton of cute tooth
pillows on Pinterest, and we’ve even done a tooth pillow here on the blog, but I
modeled the girls’ fairies after the fairies Thrifty Nana made Whit and me when
we were little girls. Ours still
exist, but I can’t find them since we moved, so I’ll post a picture when they
are unboxed – someday. I have a
good memory, fortunately.
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| Many a photo was taken on the girls' birthday to get one where they were all looking. Sometimes you take what you get. |
Materials: you need about a fat quarter yard
of the fabric of your choice.
This will be the fairy body/dress and arm. A scrap of fabric for the money
pocket. You need about a yard of ribbon; 6 inches of lace; and
miscellaneous items: pieces of felt in white, “skin color” (don’t get me
started on how hard it is to find this), blue & pink; black
& pink puffy paint; “hair color” yarn (your choice of color); little
flower for accent in hair; craft glue; matching thread;
loose craft batting; and beads.
Pattern: I made my own up from the memory of my
fairy from childhood. It’s not a
skinny fairy, more like a stuffed pillow fairy. I decided I wanted my fairies to be
slightly bigger than my childhood one, because I had to make the pocket big
enough to hold more than a quarter (right, Shaun?) The size of the ‘U’ shaped pink fabric I
cut out is roughly 4"x10". Just
guess. I didn’t use a pattern. For the fairy arm, it measures about 1"x3". I cut out little feet and a
hand from the tan felt, leaving the ‘wrist’ and ‘ankles’ a little extra long so
they would have enough to sew into the seam with the dress and
sleeve.
I cut out wings in a shape kind of
like butterfly wings with one more lopsided than the other, and left an extra
bit of length to sew into the seam of the dress.
I took the approximately 1 yard (it
was a little less, but close) of ribbon and cut it in
half.
NOTE: Some pieces I used my pinking
shears (the arm and pocket) because those are tiny and I didn’t want to have to
bother with turning over the teeny little edges and turning the sleeve right
side out. Since the fairies aren’t
going to be extreme play items, I thought the 'pinked' edging would be just fine
and likely won’t fray much, if at all.
Plus, it provides cute contrast.
I cut out the money pocket to be 2"x3". 3 sides are with pinking
shear, the top is turned down and sewn to be a smooth pocket
edge.
I cut the lace to be the width of
the dress.
Before any other sewing can occur,
you must sew the money pocket and lace onto the dress (the good side of one of
the dress pieces). This is now the
front of the dress. Lay the front
piece on a flat surface and gently lay down one wing toward the ‘U’ curvature
end of the dress, center one piece of ribbon, lay the other wing on top of it to
match up, and pin in place. The
wings and length of ribbon will face INSIDE because once sewn, you turn the
right sides out and they will pop out.
Now lay the other ribbon, long side facing in again, about the right end
of the money pocket. Pin in
place. Center the feet in place at
the end of the fairy dress – feet facing inside again.
Gently lay the other dress piece,
right side of the fabric facing in, with all of the edges matching up with the
front piece of the dress. Pin
together. I sewed all the way
around, leaving an opening at the bottom of about 2” for turning right side out,
and being careful not to sew over my pins which could break my
needle.
Now turn it all right sides
out. Check to make sure all the
feet and wings and ribbons got sewn in completely. Re-sew anything in a little further if
it didn’t get ‘caught’ the first time around. Seam-ripping is a part of crafting,
Friends, though luckily I only had to use my trusty rip-ster once this project
(miracle!)
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| Don't mind the stains on my ironing board. They are from steam long ago; it's clean. |
Make sure all of the edges are
nicely turned out and then start stuffing.
I made the fairy nice and fluffy.
I thought of it as the fairy flying and her dress was billowing in the
wind; or that, duh, she’s a tooth pillow, so she needed to be puffy. (Thrifty Nana thought she was “fat”. Actual quote.) When the fairy is stuffed to your
liking, sew the opening shut by hand.
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| I did a hidden stitch to sew the hole up. Any old stitch will do; expert not required. |
You can sew the arm together without
turning the fabric if you cut it with a pinking shears like I did. Just sew it, leaving the ‘cuff’ of the
sleeve open, stuff it up, and then insert the hand and sew the ‘cuff’
shut.
The hardest part was the face. I actually had to take a break from
face-making to go to McDonald’s to get a large Diet Coke and a Large Unsweetened Iced Tea with No
Ice. It was serious. I am not an artist, Friends. Crafter: yes. Artistic eye: yes. Artistic ability: slim to none. Ability to create faces:
kindergarten. You can just look and
see what I did.
The hair I made loops around my
fingers with yarn and then tied it in the center, perpendicular, like a
bow. This I glued
on.
I sewed the arm and head on. Since I have twins, I wanted the fairies
to have personalization, so I made little necklaces with pink buttons and ‘k’
and ‘e’ beads. Super
cute.
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| KD's fairy hanging on her bedpost |
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| KD added this fairy lantern that I got for her on Girls Trip '12 to the hand of the fairy on her other bedpost. So adorable. |
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| Easy Mac's fairy has already lost her head, so she has to be re-set with some Fabri-Tac |
The girls think these are
adorable. They look a lot like the
ones Thirfty Nana made for us when we were kids – except they’re bigger. TN says that their heads are too small
for their bodies. I think she
doesn’t like them very much cuz she's biased to her original version. Well, TN, it's not 1983 anymore, kids get more than a quarter for teeth evidently. And that’s mean, especially since she knows how hard making those faces
was for me. She just doesn’t even
know anything. I think they’re
sweet. Maybe they’ll end up
bringing the girls $20 per tooth just to show TN how cool they really
are. I wonder what Shaun will say when I explain to him that the girls need megabucks from the tooth fairy because my mom said their fairy heads are too small?
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