Ruffle Scarf Tutorial with Fabric Flowers

I made this scarf for my mom for Mother's Day! It was time consuming for me because I had to restart the whole project three different times (I'll elaborate what I didn't do correctly at the end). Learn from me and make your own ruffled scarf.

May I just say that it is really hard to take a picture of yourself wearing a scarf in the bathroom mirror? But I wanted to show how I intended for the scarf to be worn (looped around the neck loosely and then pinned in place with the flower pins.)

You start this project with a t-shirt. It's a great color of yellow, perfect for May. Iron the shirt if necessary and cut it off underneath the logo. Cut straight through the front and back of the shirt, you'll need both sides and you'll want as few seams as possible. I used a size large shirt.

I used my rotary cutting mat to make sure the cuts were square. I cut off the hem.

I wanted two narrow pieces, so after finding that I had 12 1/2" of fabric, I cut it into two 6 1/4" strips.

My two strips:

The strips will be tubes, so cut each one at the side to make them single long pieces of fabric.

Place the right sides together and sew the two long strips with a running stitch, backstitching at both ends.

Now comes the sewing part. It is key to use an unmatching color of thread when doing the gathering/ruffling stage of this project. Turn the tension on your machine as high as it goes and then increase the stitch length to the longest possible. Sewing 5/8" from the edge of the scarf, gather both sides. Repeat on each side. (You've gathered each side twice at this point.) You'll be removing these stitches later, so it doesn't really matter what they look like.

Next, change out your thread with a matching color (I used white, but it isn't that noticeable.) Using a stretch stitch, sew a straight line next to each side of the scarf. I sewed about 1/2" from the edge. These stitches will not be removed.

Final step for the scarf, remove the contrasting thread ruffle stitching.

To make the flowers, cut 4 3/4" strips from the sleeve of the shirt. They will not be completely even/level at the seam, so cut out the uneven part. (See how the seam kind of goes into a V?)

Here's the tutorial I posted awhile back for making fabric flowers if you want more pictures.

Here's the nutshell version:

Sew two of the strips together and gather the strip the same way as you did for the scarf. Try to stay close to one side of the strip.

To start rolling the flower, unruffle about 1" of the strip. Fold this small part of the strip that will become the middle piece down into a triangle with wrong sides together.

Hand sewing as you go, roll the ruffle into a flower.

This is sort of a ghetto way to attach the flowers, but I wanted them to be movable and ran out of actual pin backs. I do have tons of safety pins left over from my husband and I running 10k (in his case, half or full marathon) races, so it is good to use a few!

Anyway, when I did this project initially, I used the same thread to do the ruffling and the final stitching. I ended up cutting the final stitching in several places had had to go back, rip it all out, and re ruffle and then re-stitch three times. Also, I used a regular length running stitch the first two times (not the stretch stitch) and it just didn't stay too well! Those are the mistakes I mentioned earlier.

I think my mom will love the scarf. She loves colorful things.

I'm sorry that my pictures look so dreary! Maybe that's because it has been raining for four days straight...

Painted Scrap Bins

I was storing my scraps in ordinary shoeboxes. That isn't very fun. Then I remembered my love for spray paint. These baskets were plastic (bright green, from my mom's cast-off spring cleaning/organizing), so I started with a coat of plastic spray paint. It was white. Then I added a coat of lilac non-plastic spray paint.

This was after one application. I was at the end of a can of paint and so it turned a little splotchy (on the inside). I had to sand out some runs and then recoat the whole thing.

That's what happens when you paint outside at night without enough light...you fix your mistakes the next day.

This isn't even all my scraps. I could've used 2 more of these baskets to contain everything.

More Repurposed Flower Headbands

I made these two headbands (tutorial found here) using a shirt that was made of fabric with 5% spandex. That particular blend of fabric works really well for this type of purpose!

Featured on DIY Maternity!

I am sharing my yoga skirt tutorial (with a few extra picture) at DIY maternity! The blog is run by Megan Nielsen who has some great patterns for maternity clothing, but you don't need patterns to make any of the clothing featured on the website! Check it out if you're pregnant. There are tons of great ideas.

Making Garbage Pretty

In our new house, I am anticipating having a crafting 'studio'. It'll be more like a crafting area in our master bedroom, but studio sounds a lot more fancy! I've been making plans for storage solutions that are aesthetically pleasing yet frugal.

I've also fallen in love with spray paint--remember this project? (Don't worry, I'm pregnant, so I only use the paint outside in between the tremendous April rainstorms.)

We have a lot of empty yogurt containers around the house. I wanted to make them look nice. I bought more of the lilac spray paint I used for the recipe box project--I found it was clearanced for $1.88/can, so I bought two cans--and decided to go to town spraying down some garbage.

I set the containers up on scraps of wood so that I could just do one application and sprayed them with the lids on.

Here's how they turned out! I love them and have already filled them with various things like elastic, ribbon scraps, paper scraps, embroidery floss, velcro...the list goes on.

I'll be painting some other things with the paint, too.

I have a vintage project I actually finished a few months ago but am waiting for my dad to build the final part...but I'll be sharing it soon. (He points out that since I have no house to put this large vintage item that there isn't a rush...and he's right.)