Dress to Skirt Refashion

I am really trying to make my way through the pile of clothes I have set aside to refashion. This one took me ALL week to finish. Once I decided what I wanted to do with the skirt (which took the longest amount of time), it went pretty fast. I had to take out a couple of seams and redo them, but I am beginning to accept this as part of the process.

I loved the fabric, but it was too big and not very flattering at all. I thought about keeping the gathered waist and just taking it in some on the sides. Then I looked at the skirts in my closet that I actually wear and realized I need to make it more fitted. I used a skirt from my closet to make the pattern and even put in an invisible zipper. I also used the existing lining for the lining of the skirt.

It is far from perfect, but at least it is wearable.

Happy Crafty Tuesday everyone.

Long Overdue

Some long overdue photos of my wet, crusty from dinner children.

Harper is all about posing for the camera. I need to take advantage of this in case it is short lived.

Here's the crustiness I mentioned above.

The 6 O'Clock Scramble

My mother and father-in-law gave me this cookbook for my birthday. I heard about it while listening to the Meal Makeover Mom's podcast. It sounded right up my alley. I have used it the last 2 weeks for meal planning. So far I am loving it. All of the recipes are less than 10 ingredients. She sorts them by season so you can plan you meals according to what is in season and what you can find locally. The recipes are pretty quick and easy, which is a must for me. Plus there are lots of vegetarian meals.

Harper has gymnastics on Friday afternoon for 1.5 hours so I have been using this time to plan our meals for the next week. I had gotten out of the habit of planning our meals. It makes life so much easier knowing what we are having for dinner instead of me scrounging around at the last minute.

Here are some of my favorites so far:

Honey Sesame Spaghetti

Cool Tortellini with Artichokes and pepperoni (I used veggie pepperoni)

Mediterranean Quinoa Salad

Reversible Garden Toolbelt Tutorial

Grab a pair of old jeans and let's make a garden toolbelt. I used a pair of women's jeans, but any size will work.

Cut the legs of the jeans off like so.

Then cut straight up the middle on the other side of the seam.

I also cut up the side removing the fly, but leaving the belt loop. I just forgot to take a photo.

Then I trimmed the bottom and sides to make them all straight.

Use a cup or glass to round the corners.

Then take a scrap piece of material and fold it in half. Make sure it is big enough to cover the blue jean piece.

Fold it in half wrong sides facing each other.

Top stitch along the folded edge.

Place the folded edge right below the belt of the jeans. Pin in place. This will create the apron side.

Top stitch starting right below the belt where you pinned the apron piece. You don't want to sew the opening for the belt closed. Sew all the way around using the blue jean piece as a guide. I just lined up my foot on the edge of the blue jeans.

You can see in the photo above where I started and stopped sewing. Trim the apron piece so that both pieces are even all the way around.

Sew a line down the middle of the two pieces to create two pockets on the apron side. I sewed with the blue jean side up so that I wouldn't run into anything that might break my needle. I also used a denim needle for sewing the toolbelt.

Decide if you want the apron side or blue jean side in front. Then thread a belt through the opening in the top of the jeans.

Who's ready for some gardening or at least some gummy worm eatin'?

Ruffle Tank for Me

This week I finally finished a tank top I have been wanting to jazz up for months now. I used some lightweight knit that I got in the remnant bin at Joann's to add some random ruffles. I am lovin' that this is in style right now because it is so easy. I want to ruffle everything now. My husband snapped this photo really fast as we were rushing out the door to go to my brother's birthday party. I REALLY need to work on my modeling skills. Yikes. I tried cropping it so that my head was not in the photo, but decided that the unflattering expression was better than being headless.

Here is a close-up of the tank top all pinned up. I sewed these two rows on first.

Then decided it needed a couple of more rows.

I also finally got around to making this belt. Although I did not get around to photographing it.

I know I said I was taking the summer off, but it is hard to resist making these little guys. I have been brainstorming on a couple of new owl patterns. I will have to see if any ideas stick.

I was trying to find a good spot to photograph. Miller thought it would be funny to stick his head into the shot. Very funny little stinker.

I am still putting the garden toolbelt tutorial together. I hope to have it up tomorrow.

Happy Crafty Tuesday everyone.

Team-Up Thursday- Shoes

Cara came up with a list of wonder theme ideas and from it I chose shoes. She is so good at coming up with creative theme ideas.

Look at her sweet shot of her little boy's saddle shoes. So incredibly adorable. I love, love, love the perspective of the shot too. My shot is from girl's night out last week. We had pedicures and then went out to eat. It was a great night. Can you guess which toes are mine?

For more Team-Up Thursday go visit Megan.

Creek Stompin' and Pickin' Up Trash

On Saturday Harper had some friends over for a play date, so my husband took Miller to the park. Once at the park they decided to wade in the creek and look for crawfish. They only found one and it was dead, but Miller was in heaven. He kept begging to go back for some more creek stompin'.

Yes, he did bring it home with him. He had to show Harper after all.

Mitch found this old plate too.

So on Sunday we packed up and headed back to the creek. Mitch grabbed a garbage bag to take with us because he said there was so much trash in the creek. The kids really got into picking up all the trash. It really makes you understand why we need to avoid plastic.

We only covered a small section of the creek and filled up this trash bag. We even found some crawfish that were actually alive. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Harper's Birthday Party

We survived the second round of birthday parties. Even though we kept it pretty low key with just family, it still felt like a lot of work. I am glad that the birthday's are behind us. Is that bad?

For Harper's party I made two different kinds of cupcakes, which seemed to come out ok. Until I tried making the frosting. Something went terribly wrong. I kept adding sugar to make it thicker and then tried adding more butter. Needless to say it was a failure. So I scrapped it and decided to make the whipped cream frosting from this recipe. I have made it a couple of times so I knew that it would turn out. I whipped the cream then my husband took over because I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Have I mentioned baking is not my forte? The cupcake and frosting recipes were from Martha Stewart's website. I was not impressed with the final result so I don't think I will be making those again.

The kids did have fun dipping the dum-dums in sugar. They ended up doing all the suckers all by themselves. The end result was not completely what I had envisioned, but I am learning to come to terms with this. The kids liked the fact that they got a cupcake, ice cream, and candy.

Make a wish.

Since we kind of had a garden theme going, I made garden tool belts for the favors. For the two younger cousins, I made more of an apron using an old pair of blue jeans and some fabric scraps that I had in my stash. For the two older girl cousins, I used the pockets of the jeans and made them reversible. Then I added some belts that I found at Goodwill. I put gummy worms and some candy raspberries in the pockets and these were more of a hit than the actual tool belt.

Front view of the reversible apron

Back view

The 3 pocket apron

Back view

Harper's cousin on the left is wearing the reversible apron on the opposite side.

I did take photos so look for a tutorial next week. Also in case you missed it, I posted the T-Shirt to Cardigan tutorial yesterday.

Happy Crafty Tuesday everyone.

T-Shirt to Cardigan Refashion Tutorial

I lucked out and found two of the same shirts on clearance at Target. They were super cheap and extra lightweight.

I took the larger shirt and cut it down the middle.

Then I cut all the way around the neckline.

Then I chopped off the arms right below the elbow.

Then starting at the bottom hem I cut up the middle at a slight angle until I reached the neckline. Then repeated on the other side.

Next I grabbed my second shirt and cut off the top part right below the arm pits.

Then I cut that piece into three sections.

I took one of the side pieces and attached it to one of the middle pieces. The side piece with the seam will go around the neck. I did this with the other side piece and middle piece as well.

Lining up the hem I pinned the pieces to each side of the shirt. Then I sewed each side stopping about two inches from the end. I did not attach the two side pieces at the collar. Since I wanted to make sure the hems matched up, I sewed these pieces together at the very end. Then I finished attaching it around the neck to create a collar.

Voila.

Your lightweight t-shirt cardigan is complete.

Wrap it around and pin the side for a more fitted look.