Girls Camp

When I purchased the Cricut with my hard earned birthday money I promised a portion of the machine to my mom as her Mother's Day present! Well, she cashed in that promise when she asked me to help her decorate pillow cases for her young women going to girls camp. We had seen on an infomercial that the Cricut can cut fabric. So I googled for tips and found a nicely made You Tube video demonstrating the "how to". For the Cricut blade to cut the fabric you need to iron on "Seam 2 Seam" (iron on transfer paper) to the wrong side of the fabric. Depending on the fabric it typically works best if you put the fabric side down, as the blade cuts smoother through the iron on paper. But if you do this than you have to flip your image. Of course when cutting over a 100 letters there were plenty of mistakes and costly errors along the way but we eventually found what worked best. The fabric type we chose had a hard time sticking to the Cricut mat so we had to do the transfer paper down and fabric side up. In order for this to work we had to replace the needle twice because once it became dull it snagged the fabric as it cut. After completing this project (28 pillow cases total!) I have officially decided that the Cricut should not be used to cut fabric in bulk! One little cupcake or lady bug here and there is fine but it wasn't made to reproduce a 150 fabric letters!

Their girls camp theme was "In Tune" and each ward had a musical for their ward's theme. My mom's was Annie. She came up with the very clever "The sun'll come out tomorrow..." to add to the pillow case. For that we used the Cricut to cut the words on freezer paper (found in the aisle next to foil and plastic wrap). The shiny side of the freezer paper acts as a temporary adhesive when it is ironed. So I cut 24 stencils with this quote and the girls ironed it to their pillow case and then painted it. After it dries you just peel off the stencil and throw it away. Again this was time consuming so unless you have lots and lots of time (as I was fortunate to have since I was off work for the summer) it is not recommened for large projects!

My mom also had us make drawstring backpacks for each girl. She brought me one that was done by the previous YW president in her ward and I also googled and found step by step instructions on a very helpful website http://www.chicaandjo.com/.
The backpacks are very simple to make and turned out darling. I may make these again as a gift bag for Anna's birthday. To add the name to each backpack we used fabric iron on transfer paper than can go through an inkjet printer. We were able to print each girls name on this paper and then cut them into little squares. After we ironed them onto the backpack I just stitched around the name. I am not the best seamstress so if I can do this anyone can.

All in all I was so excited to have the time to help my mom and of course I love crafting so it was fun to have a project. I know her girls appreciated everything she did for them and of course that makes it all worth it. My mom is a great example of fulfilling her calling to the max and I know she gave her girls a memorable camp expeirence. She is the busiest person in the world and she still goes beyond what is asked of her. The theme of my blog "Our Very Best" comes from a talk given by President Hinckley when he said "When I say do your best, I mean your very best. You are capable of so much more." I know my mom follows this advice as she always 110% to everything she does.