1. bright blue elbow patches
2. dress with purse/pocket
3. cozy poncho
4. yellow pants and awesome shirt

Are you thinking about kids clothes week, yet? Have you been spending unnecessary hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration? This year I thought we’d try having one huge kcwc community pinterest board. Doesn’t that sound awesome? If you leave your pinterest username in the comments I can invite you! We can fill the board with tutorials, patterns, fabric, awesome kid clothes both handmade and factory made. Pin your sketches! Pin your lists! Pin your piles of laundry! No, not the last one, unless it’s piles of dirty handmade clothes.

So leave your pinterest name in the comments and then go pin all the amazing things you are planning to make.

Why do I forget how awesome freezer paper stencils are? They are so easy they feel like cheating.

I stenciled this shirt for a just-turned-four year old boy. I stole the design from this shirt, but honestly I like mine more–even if the R did get a little crazy.

1. train bag 2. yellow stripe 3. hot dog shirt 4. color wheel 

For your perusing pleasure, here are some freezer paper stencils from the archives .

Remember how I said there were big changes coming to this little house of ours? This is it! That wall with the beautiful mantel and (very fake) fireplace has been torn down and behind it–surprise!–is a staircase leading to an upstairs! Bet you didn’t see that coming!

Our house is (well was) a duplex and we were living in the ground floor apartment. Preso! Change-o! We now have a two story house with twice as much space! It is crazy and exciting and totally overwhelming.  Be prepared for many before and after posts (as soon as I stop sewing for kcwc).

The temperature has dropped and fall is finally on it’s way! It must be time for another edition of KCWC.  Kids Clothes Week Challenge is a bi-annual event here on elsie marley where I challenge you to sew one hour a day, each day for 7 days.  The idea is that we all have the urge to sew clothes for our children, but we don’t always give ourselves the time to do it.  If you commit to sitting in front of your sewing machine, or tracing patterns, or cutting fabric, for one hour each day, then at the end of the week you will have some very well dressed kids. And a very proud mama too!

If you would like to know more about kcwc you can check out the kcwc faq page. You can also head to the elsie marley flickr group to check out creations from kcwc past or see all my posts on kcwc here.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up! How do you sign up?  Just leave a comment on this post telling me that you are in. Then go tell all your friends to sign up too! Spread the word on twitter, instagram, pinterest, tumblr with the #kcwc hashtag. Slap a button on your blog or on your facebook page. Link to this post and try to get all your facebook friends who sew to join too. I bet your mom would like to be invited. Last year I think there we had almost 700 people sign up. Can we make it to 800? 900? Now I’m starting to sound like a politician! Go knock on some doors for kcwc!

kcwc buttons:

(copy and paste the code under the buttons)

<a href="http://www.elsiemarley.com/kids-clothes-week-fall-2012.html">
   <img src="http://d1yops4utenhgf.cloudfront.net/kcwc-fall12-1.jpg">
</a>

<a href="http://www.elsiemarley.com/kids-clothes-week-fall-2012.html">
   <img src="http://d1yops4utenhgf.cloudfront.net/kcwc-fall12-2.jpg">
</a>

<a href="http://www.elsiemarley.com/kids-clothes-week-fall-2012.html">
   <img src="http://d1yops4utenhgf.cloudfront.net/kcwc-fall12-3.jpg">
</a>

<a href="http://www.elsiemarley.com/kids-clothes-week-fall-2012.html">
   <img src="http://d1yops4utenhgf.cloudfront.net/kcwc-fall12-4.jpg">
</a>

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post. I encourage you to go look at people’s stories of creative block and their cures for it (there are a few pages of comments, so dig a little). Talking about the diffuculties of making should be part of creative blogs, don’t you think? I mean it can’t be all wine and finished projects. Everyone has a dark corner or a box or a garbage can full of failed projects and honestly it is those projects we should be taking photos of and blogging about, because that’s where good ideas hide.

This is an exerpt of a beautiful speech on creativity and making by Charlie Kaufman. This video makes it both easier to cope with our creative selves and harder at the same time. Watch, then watch again.