DIY Tee to Tank

Time: 1/2 hour
Listening to: Murder She Wrote

I've been seeing these t-shirt to tank tutorials around a lot recently and decided it was time to make one of my own!  
 

DIY Cat (Scratch) Fever

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Solange
Drinking: Cold leftover coffee

I have a few cat fanatic people in my life so when I saw this kitty over here...I knew I had to whip a couple up.

Cozy Whale Stuffed Animal

Time: An hour?
Listening to: Murder She Wrote
Drinking: Diet Coke

My little niece just needed one of these...so I made her one!

How is that for a backdrop?!

Square Stuffed Felt Horse

Time: An hour?
Listening to: Murder She Wrote
Drinking: Diet Pepsi

I've been wanting to make one of these for my nephew for some time now. So I did it! I hope he likes his little stuffed horse!

DIY T-shirt Dress

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Ellie Goulding
Drinking: Two buck chuck

I've been seeing ideas like this around quite a bit and have itching to make one myself. So here it is!

 

It is actually a skirt sewed onto a t-shirt. I also sewed a belt to go around it to help some of the elastic lie better.  The tutorial I linked to above is super helpful so I won't try to improve on it!

Simple Tank with Contrasting Ties

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Grace and the Nocturnals (my current craft-to obsession)
Drinking: Twinings Chai Tea

My lovely sister gave me some perrty fabric for Christmas and I was itching to work with it. She also happened to send me a shirt idea like this one months and months and months ago...so I figured it was destined!

It is a little bigger than I like currently so I will have to do some tweaking. I do like how it looks on my dressform, though!

A close up of the side and sleeve

Day 333: Sewing a Simple Tunic Shirt

Time: An hour?
Listening to: Christmas Music

I saw this shirt on Pinterest and figured I'd give it a try. I had this kind of sweatshirt material leftover from a previous project and have been wanting to do something fun with it. It was a lot of trial and error but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I can give measurements/instructions to anyone who is interested.

Day 332: Infinity Scarf

Time: Less than an hour
Listening to: Christmas Mix on Spotify

I worked on an infinity scarf tonight--and am happy with how it turned out! Isn't the print adorable?

Day 298: Sewing Halloween Costumes!

I really love Halloween costumes. A day to dress up in ridiculous costumes? Sign me up. Here are some of my past favorite costumes:

Hoot hoot!

Buzz, buzz!

Crunch, crunch!

 

Gnome, gnome!

So here is what I worked on today:

A bear mask for a friend....

And my Elmo costume...

Secret Project Reveal: Sewing a Key Chain

My mom has had some trouble finding/keeping/not breaking a key chain and told me to keep an eye out for one. I saw this tutorial here and decided to make one for her myself last week!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope it lasts for a bit!

Day 271: Sewing Baby Shoes

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Elizabeth & The Catapult, The Civil Wars

I have a new little niece and she is so cute. I found this tutorial on how to make baby shoes and decided to give it a shot today. It was rather confusing so I ended up looking at this one too. Anyways, I'm happy with how they turned out. I ended up adding some elastic to the top to make sure they stay on her feet.

Day 204 & 205: Sewing Easy Skirt

Time: 1 1/2 hours?
Listening to: MasterChef

I had a dress that was a bit too low cut and a bit too short so naturally, I hacked it off and made it into a skirt!

And now I have a new skirt...

Day 200: Sewing Guest Book Quilt

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Gossip Girl (guilty as charged)


I sewed sewed sewed my little heart out tonight! I finally got all those squares sewed up. Yay!

Day 169: Sewing (new zipper!)

Time: An hour
Listening to: A mix my hubby made

I've been lugging around this dress for four years now....a dress with a broken zipper. Finally, FINALLY tonight I put in a new one!

Day 163: Sewing Envelope Pillow

Time: Just over an hour
Listening to: My Week With Marilyn Soundtrack

So I've had my little Oregon embroidery done for a couple weeks now and finally got around to making it into a pillow!

I've made a couple pillows now so I thought I'd give you a little step by step to show how to make an envelope pillow.

First off, you need to measure your pillow form. I've happened to always use square pillows so the long/short side doesn't really matter. Pick the longest side (or your favorite square side) and wrap your measuring tape around it--overlapping 4 inches. Add 3 inches to that. With my square pillow, it ended up that the length would be 30 inches.

The tricky part for my length is that my embroidery piece was not 30 inches long. I measured my little map piece and it was 11 inches. 30-11=19. I wanted my map to be in the center of my pillow so I needed two pieces to sew on each side of my map of 9.5 inches.

Whew!

Ok, now on to your width. Measure the length and add 3-4 inches to that. My width (being a square and all) ended up being roughly 15 inches.

Here is the picture of my map piece sewed together with my two 9.5 inches.

As you can see, my pillow had one more tricky part...
















My map fabric piece was only about 11 inches high. And I needed it to be 15 inches! So, I cut two pieces of 30x4...and sewed that to the top and the bottom.

So now my pillow cover is finally the size that it should be at. Now you need to finish the short edges. Fold your fabric over twice and sew down the middle. I left about 1/4 seam allowance but I wasn't too picky.

Ok, now comes the fun part!

With the pertty side up, place your pillow in the middle.

Fold the sewn sides over the pillow so that they overlap by a couple inches.Then pin the two overlapped fabric pieces to secure it.

On the loose sides, draw a line to show you where you want to sew. This seems like you will be closing up your pillow, but you won't! The overlapped parts won't be sewn shut and those act as the envelope part of the pillow.

Once you mark where you want to sew, pull your pillow out and sew two straight lines across the top and bottom--following your lines.

Once you finish your sewing, trim your excess off and you should have a pillow case much closer to the size of your pillow. Here is what mine looked like:

Now flip it inside out and insert your pillow!! Here is my finished back:

Once you make a couple of them, they are so easy! Enjoy!

Day 162: Sewing Swiffer Covers

Time: An hour
Listening to: MasterChef!

So, I made six Swiffer covers this evening. Three were too small to fit onto the Swiffer. Boo. I should probably always turn on my brain when I begin sewing...

Anyways, here are the three finished ones!

Day 77: Sewing Curtains

Time: A couple hours
Listening to: Project Runway All Stars

I'm sewing up a storm! We have french double doors leading from one room to another and we've been wanting to add some curtains to help give some privacy when we have guests coming to stay with us. We have family coming tomorrow so tonight is the night!

I chose a nice, light cotton fabric so it didn't make the room feel dark. Here are some pictures.

Curtains!

Close up of the fabric

Day 52: Sewing Fabric Cards

Time: One hour
Listening to: Archer (show my husband was watching)

I saw this cute little post about making your own stationary and decided to make some of my own out of fabric scraps I had laying around. If I was to do this again, I would probably iron my fabric first but I really didn't feel like getting my ironing board and iron out. In my dream house, I will have a whole room dedicated to my ironing board so never again will I have to set it up, haul it around, etc. Then all of my fabric will be incredibly ironed. It will be a beautiful world.

But until then I will make little notecards to send out amongst the people of this world.

Day 37: Sewing Matchbox Car Holder

Time: 2 hours
Listening to: David Bowie

I saw this adorable tutorial on homemade by jill and I knew that I had to make it for my little nephew! It was so fun to make...and to pick out those matchbox cars!

All rolled up

Six spots for cars and even a road

Day 21: Sewing a Simple Skirt

Time: An hour and fifteen minutes
Listening to: Simon and Garfunkel

My friend, Bethany, and I went to the fabric store yesterday which is probably a bad idea. I think both of us left with more fabric than we intended to get!

I decided to make a skirt today with one of the fabrics that I got. I made an easy elastic skirt! I used 2 inch elastic and about a yard and a half (maybe 1/4) of fabric. It ended up being more fabric than I wanted when I tried the skirt on so I hacked some off and resewed a bit. This skirt took me longer than necessary but that was mostly due to my lack of planning!

My summery skirt to get me through the winter!

My photographer (husband) wasn't home so this is the best shot of me wearing it!

Yes, I did hang it on the wall. I like this idea....clothes as art, right?!