Today’s first topic is frogs. Griff loves his froggy pull toy. He was a little “meh” about it as a pre-walker back in December, but he started becoming interested in pushing it around the floor, and once he began to walk, he discovered that he could drag it along behind him! Here he is doing a tour of the living room and getting a refreshing drink after his long journey. (The diaper on the floor is clean, he grabbed it out of the laundry basket and has been playing with it ever since.)

Given all the Griff froggy-love, I decided to try a frog motif for my first attempt at glue batik. Basically, glue batik involves using Elmer’s school glue gel as a resist instead of the usual hot wax. The gel glue is thicker than normal white glue and holds a design better. Since you can’t soak the shirt in the dye bath (which would dissolve the dried glue), you can either spray, brush or spoon it on. The glue worked very well as a resist, but I wish the applicator on the bottle was a bit finer for better detail. Still, I’ll be doing this again!

I’ve done a few more recent tie dye projects for Griff. This orange one was my favorite.

This blue one came out well, but I liked the back better than the front.

I tried taking a few pictures of the back, but getting a clear image of a mobile baby’s back is not easy.

Hrm.

Let’s try again…

Ok, I give up.

I made this green one with the leftover dye from the frog shirt. Not sure about this one; I may overdye it later.

Since someone’s first birthday is rapidly approaching, and because we’re kinda broke on a budget, I’ve been working on a few things for the occasion. Here’s a first birthday shirt for the little man, done with fabric paints and a freezer paper stencil.

I’ve been admiring the cloth buntings featured on mommy craft blogs for some time now, so I decided to whip up a few of my own. This is just a bunch of 6.5″ triangles; I sewed them in pairs around 2 sides, turned inside out and pressed, and sewed the raw edges into some double-fold bias tape. I got to use up a lot of bright fat quarters that have been languishing in my quilting stash.

And I got to use one of my “fancy” sewing machine stitches, whee.

Here it is all festive in the dining room. The bias tape comes in 9-foot lengths, which seems like a lot until you go to hang something up.

Griff has an amazing capacity to make toys out of just about anything. He recently grabbed my rolling pin off the kitchen island and stomped around the house with it for a good half hour.

Here he is playing with the new outside ball we got for him. And, of course, a stick.

Some evil person decided to put his newborn hat on him as a joke. Griff responded with the most teenager-y expression ever. I guess we can look forward to seeing this nonstop from about the age of, what, 11?