Monkey See, Monkey Do on Facebook!

I love making cute flannel burp cloths for friends who have babies. I have made them for my own boys and they both useful and eye-catching. Every time I give them to someone at a shower, someone mentions that I should sell them.

I now have some for sale on Facebook.

I posted pictures of burp cloths I have for sale on Facebook. Go “like” my Facebook page and you can look at them!

Upcycled Button Sleeve Shirt

I like having something new to wear.

I like it even more when I only spent $.60 on the new clothing! How did I do that? Read on….

The black shirt is my favorite t-shirt (it’s from Gap.) However, it is just a tiny bit too short. I’ve had it for quite awhile and I guess it shrank. So not only did it get new sleeves, it got a new band around the bottom, too.

How did it only cost $.60? I found this gray striped shirt at Target. It was marked at $3.60, but I had a coupon I’d printed off Target’s website for $3.00 off a clothing item of this brand. I bought a size XXL to get the most fabric possible.

Here’s a description of what I did to add the banded bottom.

I wanted to use the factory-serged edge from the original shirt to avoid hemming it. I don’t have a serger and I don’t really love putting a perfect hem into something like this.

From the gray striped shirt, I cut two pieces using the hem as the new bottom of the shirt. I measured and allowed a 1/2” seam allowance on one side of the pieces. I used the existing seam as the other side seam. (Does that make sense?) Then I sewed up the other side to make a tube.

To attach the tube to the bottom of the shirt, I slid the raw edge of the gray and white striped fabric under the black shirt’s original hem. I pinned (a lot!). Using black thread, I sewed stretch stitch right on top of the black shirt’s original hem to secure the new gray and white striped piece!

Ok. Onto the sleeves. I wanted to use the factory-serged edges again for the sleeve bottoms.

Sleeves taper a bit from the armpit to the wrist. So I measured to see at what point the striped shirt’s sleeve width matched the black shirt’s sleeve width. I cut it off a little bit longer to have extra for seam allowance.

Then I pinned it (making sure that it overlapped with the black shirt’s original seam) and sewed it onto the black shirt with the same stretch stitch.

Repeat with the other sleeve.

Hint: Rolling the sleeve a few times allows it to fit onto the arm of the sewing machine. You’ll have to stretch it a bit.

Here you can see how long the sleeves ended up. I wanted them to be a little bit shorter.

After considering a few options, I decided to roll the sleeves, tack them, and add some faux buttons.

I used some gray jersey scraps. I sewed two tubes about 6” long and about 1/5” wide. Allow for 1/2” seam allowance and leave them open on one end. I clipped the corners so they would be nice and square after turning and pressing.

Turning the tubes:

I pressed both tubes and then top stitched them each. I did not use a double needle; I just sewed each one two times. After my struggles with my double needle tangling thread this summer, I haven’t used it.

Anyway, after neatly rolling the cuffs about three times each, I hand sewed the strip to the shirt, catching both ends….

And then I added a nice green button on top of that.

I repeated it for the other side. Now it is a nice, cute, easy shirt to wear as the weather gets warmer!

I still have some gray and white striped fabric left. I’ll have to come up with another project to use the rest of it!

Budget Wall Art Update

I was {finally} hanging my wall art in our bedroom last week.

But the original scrapbook paper birds I’d made just weren’t looking all that good to me anymore.

So I decided to get some pictures printed. I could look at cute pictures of my boys all day long, so why not put them on the wall?

I had already spray painted some frames, but I rounded up a few more and sprayed them with the same lilac paint. I printed out all the pictures in black and white. That gave them a nice uniform look.

I hung all of these myself! {SO PROUD!} I measured and leveled, too! My two-year old was super impressed to see his mommy using a hammer.

The frames are all inexpensive and printing pictures in either 4x6” or 5x7” sizes is inexpensive, so this project cost less than $10. I bought some of the frames at a yard sale last summer and some of them I already had. Printing the pictures only cost a few dollars.

Braided Belt (Pinterest Inspired)

I have two sick little boys at my house. Poor kids.

My sweet baby had his first ear infection last week. Plus, he got a tooth, so he has just been a mess. Now the older one is sick with a cold.

Due to these events, I didn’t sew at all last week.

By Saturday, I was really wanting to create something.

I had pinned this tutorial from Delia Creates for making braided jersey belts. It seemed simple and something I could complete with materials I already had and in a short amount of time.

It was the perfect project to make after a week full of sick kids.

I put it on and my two-year-old told me, “Mommy, that looks cool.”

(He’s two. Where did he learn to talk like that? From me? I didn't think anyone said 'cool' anymore.)

My belt secured his stamp of approval.

I made a few changes to the tutorial.

1) I used five strips of knit fabric instead of four.

2) I used scraps of interlock knit, not a t-shirt. I had to sew pieces together to have long enough strips to make a belt. I was able to hide the seams in the five strand braid.

3) I strongly suggest using a heavy duty needle.

It was hard to sew through the layers to attach the D-rings to the belt, but the heavy duty needle didn’t break.

I made a bracelet, too. Love these colors. It makes a great wearable teething toy for my little 7-month old.

Anyway, my poor boys are still sick, but I know they'll be better soon.

It'll be nice to not live in quarantine.

Hints on Making Rolled Flowers

I love color.

I really love bright colors. So I made a few rolled flowers and attached them to pins.

I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here. Meaning I’m not going to over explain this project.

There are zillions of tutorials out there on making rolled flowers. Search for the topic on Pinterest and I’m sure you’ll come up with lots of blogs telling you to just take your glue gun and a scrap of fabric and blah, blah, blah, it’s super easy to create scads of pretty flowers. This is actually my fourth or fifth attempt at this project.

Seriously.

I’ve tried the glue gun (and made a mess of my fabric with residual glue on the front of the flower). I’ve tried hand-sewing. But that didn’t work to keep the flower flat after about two rows of rolling.

So I thought I’d provide a few hints that helped me be successful during this attempt in creating some colorful flowers from scraps of fabric using my glue gun.

I used some knit fabric scraps. You could use quilting weight cotton fabrics, but I’d suggest cutting them on the bias to avoid too much fraying. But knits won’t fray! Love it.

Cut a few strips of fabric about 1” wide (doesn’t have to be uniform) and about 12” long. Tie a knot at the end.

I found that the key to making nice-looking flowers was to glue in tiny amounts at a frequent interval. Meaning this project took a long time. (In the past, I’d put a whole line of glue between rows of rolling and it would squeeze onto the front of the flower and ruin it.

Anyway, start with a tiny dot of glue. Keep the fabric away from the glue with your finger. Now put the glue gun down and roll 2-3 times and stick the rolled fabric to the glue. (Be careful not to burn your fingers. I did.)

Now keep adding tiny bits of glue, rolling a tiny bit of the fabric, and then stick the rolled fabric to the glue.

When you get to the end of the fabric strip, you can hide the end by sticking it to the back of the flower with more glue.

I glued my flowers to pins.