Baby Clothes Quilt

Even though I have not been on here as much, I have still been sewing like crazy. I have finished almost 9 t-shirt quilts and I am going to start posting them on here for you. 

I also decided that with the next one I make I will make up a tutorial for you so that if you want to make one you can, because they are not as hard as you might think - but they are time consuming, just remember that!

This quilt here was a little bit different from some of the other t-shirt quilts that I have made. This lady asked me if I could make a quilt out of her son's baby clothes. I figured that it could really not be that much harder then any other one so I said yes.

And not it was not much harder, but it took twice as long - because baby clothes are just not as easy to cut because they are smaller - not as much room for error either!

I ended up using almost 150 items of clothing for this quilt. I am always a little bit worried about what my customer will think of the quilt when I get it finished, but she posted on facebook that it was exactly what she had imagined!

 So far I just do a simple zig zag stitch between all of the shirts, but I think I might try something different. If it works well I will share exactly how to do it! (That is not a fold on the back it is the seam, but this picture does not really make it look that way!)

And can you believe that it is May already?! I have a feeling that my move is going to sneak up on me quicker then I want it to!

Fun Flip Flops

The other day while I was scanning blogs - you know my favorite pastime - I found these awesome flip flops. I just loved them, and quickly bookmarked them for later. I should have pinned them, but my computer is taking forever to pin things! I hope I am not the only one!

It just so happens that I needed this great idea sooner rather than later. Last week I needed a last minute activity for the youth of my church - just the girls. Our previous plan fell through at the last minute and we needed something now!

Thankfully my brain jumps around a lot, because I remembered these and headed to JoAnn's to get the supplies. It was easy enough - flip flops and fabric. And it was all on sale! These are what I came home with:

There was also some blue and some white flip flops, but I forgot my camera that night because I was in such a hurry, so you get a picture of what was left. ;) sorry! But green is really my favorite!

The Mother Huddle really gives a great tutorial, so I am not going to try to put one together for you - just go check her out, you will not be sorry.

You just get to see awesome pictures of my feet - which are in need of a pedicure.

And here they are in all their glory. the girls loved these, and I loved that they only cost about $3 a pair - excellent for the budget! They really loved the bright colors, and a lot of them said that they too have trouble finding flip flops because of wide feet, as did The Mother huddle.

Now I am thinking how cute would it be to make a pair of these to match a skirt? I know that my girl would go crazy for them! 

Bridesmaid Dresses

Do you all remember those bridesmaid dresses that I was working on last month? Well, I am finally getting around to posting them on here. I was very happy with the way that they turned out and the girls were also happy with them.

For this particular wedding the bride had her sisters as bridesmaids - which I think is great, I did the same thing years ago when I was married. But she was super nice and told them what her colors were and then let them pick out what kind of dress each girl wanted in one of her colors. I did not do that! But that did make it a little bit hard for me because I got 3 different dresses to sew.

This first one here was for her youngest sister, the nicest, most easy going gal you will ever meet. She was very simple and straightforward about what she wanted - which was awesome! This was a Simplicity pattern - maybe, I cannot remember now, sorry! - but from start to almost finished (just waiting for it to hang before I hemmed it) it took me under 2 hours! She really took this simple dress and made it look great!

This next one I was a little bit worried about. It was a create as you go dress and I have never sewn one of those before. But I had already told them I would do it, so I just figured it out as I went. And it was SO much FUN! I added the straps because she is kind of flat chested and was worried that it would not stay up. You got to love teenagers! lol! This is my picture of it before I took it over to have her see it. But the ruffles/bunches, whatever you want to call them really just complete the look and are super fun. My daughter now wants me to make a party dress for her like this . . . and it is just so cute that I might have to!

My picture of her is not that good but she was really into this guy there, and flirting and all that fun stuff and I did not want to keep bothering her for a good picture. But she loved it, as did all of her sisters - she has 4 like me! They just thought it was to die for.

This story does have a little bit of a sad part to it. I am not all that when it comes to sewing. Sometimes I like to think that I am, but then something like this happens and I realize that I am not. There was another sister was I was sewing for, and we had this great dress in pale yellow with blue netting peeking out from the bottom. It had vertical gathers across the bust and then horizontal gathers at the waist and them the skirt. I am not sure if it was the pattern, the fabric or me, but we could not get it to lay flat at her tummy. Now all these girls are pretty much size next to nothing, and have no tummy. This girl was 19, and thin, thin. But the dress would not lay flat! It kept making her look like she was pregnant and just showing. Then there were also some zipper issues, but we ended up scrapping the whole dress. I felt terrible, because she was the one who came over and helped me cut and pin and everything. She ended up having to go and buy her dress, but she looked super cute like the rest of her sisters.

This family was a little bit last minute about these - I was given the stuff 3 weeks before the wedding, and so I was kind of in a sewing frenzy for a while. I enjoyed it, but now I think that I am going to take a break with clothes and sew some quilts or maybe a bag or two. I hope that you all are having a great day!

Ruffly Scarf

I see these ruffly scarfs everywhere, I actually own one. And it is only one because for some reason I have a hard time shelling out 10 plus bucks for a quarter yard of fabric. I have seen people make them as well. I thought that I would give it a try. I did not use that elastic thread though. Mine was more of that ah-ha moment when you figure out a way to do something.

I was sitting in church the other day and Thing #2 was picking at a fray and it was slowly gathering the rest of the fabric. That was when it hit me that I could just gently pull the threads of the fabric and make it gathered. I got a piece of remnant fabric from the store. I choose this one because the edges were already frayed a little bit so it would be easy to find the threads to pull. Also I thought it would be cute to have a light weight scarf as opposed to my usual thick, chunky ones. I roughly measured out how far I wanted my gathers and then found a thread and started to pull it. You have to do this gently because I got all excited when it was working just like I envisioned and pulled a little too hard on one string and it broke.You can see it here in the picture.

This is me gently pulling on the string to gather it.

So I gathered it all together, I did it the short way of the scarf just to give it a different look. To keep it from coming undone I put a dot of fabric glue when I was done with the gather.  I then did a hem around all the edges and it was done. This picture is of the dot of glue.

And here is the finished product:

I thought that it would be a little cool since the fabric is so light, but my neck was plenty warm when I was out and about today.

Linking up to: Sew Cute, Someday crafts, Sugar and Dots, Sew Much Ado, Little Eme.