Silhouette Shape Challenge: Stenciled Whale Bag

Hi everybody!  I was making this tote last night because my current church bag is seriously falling apart!  I saw this bag on MADE, and loved it.  I found the very same napkin sets at Target in a blue/green variety.  I also picked up the red pack, but that tote is still in progress…well I made it, picked it apart, and am waiting to re make it. :)
Enough chit chat----onto the finished bag!

Front before stenciling

Back of bag

I decided that the blue side would be super cute with the free whale shape from last week, and then I could enter the weekly challenge!  I fired up my silhouette this morning, applied a vinyl stencil…

Quickly painted (and even left a mess on the desk!)

Used a hair dryer to quickly semi-dry the paint, peeled off the vinyl, and Tada!

A super cute whale on a super cute bag.

I would have hung it up to get a photo, but it’s still drying! 

I used a swirl shape by Miss Kate for the waves instead of the included waves.  Overall, I love the bag and will soon fill it with all sorts of busy activities for my one year old at church!

Thanks for reading!

~Lynette~

p.s. I’m also participating in a challenge with the blog Silhouette Challenges.  Anything goes this month, so enter if you’ve made something with your silhouette! Details HERE.

Making it Ours: Vanity Area Jewelry Holder and Wall Art

 

This series is documenting my husband and I’s projects that make our 1960’s home ours.  Some are simple, and some are not!  I hope you enjoy this post.

Hey there!  Today, I’ll show you something I did to make my vanity area feel more like mine.  Let me explain something about my house.  When you walk towards the bathroom, you turn right and where the bathroom should be, you keep walking to the bathroom door.  Before you hit the door, there’s a full on vanity area with a sink, large counter, and mirror.  Then there’s a full bathroom on the other side of the door as well.  It’s super nice because with only one bathroom in our home, I can get ready while my husband does without being in the same bathroom. 

The bathroom is pinned for a major remodel (like paint is peeling off the wall and our shower has a nasty insert in it) that was supposed to happen this past winter, but with everything that occurred in January, it didn’t happen.  But someday it will.  The vanity will also be painted and have a little done to it, so these projects I’m showing today are to get by until we really fix the area up.

I made this canvas for the wall.  The picture quality is a little poor because of the poor quality of light in the vanity area.  Such is life.  I got the saying from a Kohl’s clothing tag---for reals.  I liked it, and thought that it could encourage me to get ready more often than I was with a demanding newborn.  Well, nearly a year later, and I’m still only wearing makeup to church---oh well!  I do have (more) cute clothes now, yay! (I started out with 2 shirts I would wash every other day…ya, great huh?!?)

I had this bulletin board from my craft room that was on the wall before the remodel.  I got a paint sample from lowe’s along with some white that came with the house and painted this stripe design.

Here’s it all loaded up with my jewelry that I don’t wear because I have a grabby toddler around these days.  At least I get to look at it when I get ready everyday, right? ;)

Thanks for reading!  Have a great day!

~Lynette~

Ruffles and Trim Shoe Refashion

Hi everybody.  I hope you had a great weekend.  I did.  On Saturday, my husband went to work to use the shop to work on one of our vehicles.  I was left home, and my husband said that I didn’t have to clean if I didn’t want to.  (I had literally exhausted myself every day last week from trying to get so much done.  I needed a break, and was glad to take it!)  I finished and knocked out 3 different projects.  This shoe refashion was one of them.  It’s not super original, but I really like how it turned out.

Here’s the before.  I bought these shoes 6 years ago, and they were definitely showing signs of wear.  I have glued down the silver linings a couple times.  It needed it again, so this time I used E6000.  Love that stuff, but can’t stand the smell of it right now. Yuck.

The bows have even been repaired at least once, and were just looking really sad. I was ready for a change.

The bows came off…

I made a tube of satin-y fabric, and flattened it so the seam was in the middle.  Then I gathered it using my easy way to make ruffles, and glued it to the shoe.  Once that was done, I decided I needed some trim.  I got a few inches of trim from Joann’s, treated the ends with Fray Check, and glued the trim on top of the ruffles. 

So for just a few dollars, I ended up with a new look to some very old shoes.  I’ve looked for over a year for new ones, and just haven’t found any I liked.  So I’ll make do for awhile more with the refashioned version! :)
Thanks for reading,
Lynette

Project Maternity: Interchangeable Blooms & Buttons Top Tutorial

Hi everybody!  How’s that for a long title? Here’s my latest and last (for a minute) Project Maternity Project.  I have a few other maternity projects on my list, but I’m tired of them for the moment.  I have some non-baby related projects to show you in the upcoming days.

This is probably my most favorite refashion EVER.  And I’ve done a few of them (that’s the understatement of the century!).

I came up with this project on a Friday around midnight.  I’ve decided that when my husband and I stay up late, my brain comes up with it’s best creations.  I have yet to show you something I made for my kitchen that was a late night discovery.

This project was inspired by my lack of options in my maternity wear.  I ended up with 3 black shirts and a gray shirt, among some others.  I wanted a flowered top, but I didn’t want to be stuck with one color scheme.  I realized that if I had buttons, and circles of knit, I could make as many color combos as I wanted.  And I have!  I also did this with a plain white shirt so I can wear it with black or brown skirts.  I can coordinate the flowers with the colors in the skirt, and it works like a charm!  When I want a simple look, I wear it without the flowers.  The buttons add some charm without being too much.  LOVE this project!

Ready to make your own?

What you’ll need:

Buttons

T-Shirt  (I used a V-neck Liz Lange for Target Maternity top, but  this can be done with any neckline and a non-maternity top too)

Thread, Needle

Knit to cut into flowers (think old t-shirts)

First, you’ll want to take your buttons and sew them to your shirt.  I did it by hand (I had just enough time to do the project and didn’t want to fiddle with my machine), but could do it by machine.  Ashley over at Make it and Love it has a great tutorial on how to do this.  I haven’t tried it, but you could if you wanted!

You can do as many or as few buttons as you want.  I got tired at 9.  I kept the buttons quite close, so the flowers would overlap quite a bit.  I also used different shades of black/white/gray buttons, and different sizes for variety.

Now comes the fun part.

(yes, I write on my scissors.  That’s so I remember which ones are fabric only. :)

Take your knit and your scissors.  I folded/arranged my knit so I had two layers stacked together.  This way I could cut out two flowers at once.

Cut out circles.  I just eyeballed it.  Knit can be trimmed and fixed as you go because it doesn’t fray, so I love just winging it.  If you want to use a pattern, just use something in your home like a jar lid to trace and cut out.

Keep cutting, using your different colors and different sizes until you get several circles.

Then take 2 circles and stack them how you’d like.  (We won’t be attaching the circles together for added versatility, so just grab a couple and go for it, you can change them as much as you want later!)

Now grab those stacked circles and fold them in half.  I figured out later that it worked best to have the smaller circle on the outside (so I should have folded it the opposite way as this picture, but it’s not rocket science so don’t stress).

Now take your scissors and make a TINY snip in the middle of your folded circles.  I tried to use the very tips of my scissors to prevent me from making to large of a cut.

Now unfold your circles, and stretch the hole to fit over your buttons.  You just created your first flower!  If you holes are too small, you can cut a bit more to get the right fit.  Some knits are more stretchy than others, and they do stretch out with use.

Repeat until all of your buttons have cute little flowers around them.  As you can see, some buttons had multiple color layers, while others only had one.  It’s up to you, have fun with it and make it yours!

Make the circles in several colors, and change them out to match your mood!

****Oh, and as far as washing, I would suggest removing the circles before washing. I like to turn my shirt inside out because my dryer has been known to eat buttons, but it’s broken so that’s probably why!****

If you do this project, I would absolutely LOVE to see a picture!  Also, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!

Thanks for reading, as always

~Lynette~

Project Maternity: Maternity Clothing Inspiration Round Up

Hi everybody.  I had other things planned to share today, but it’s not happening today.  We are having another major drain back up (the 2nd in 3 weeks) and we’re dealing with that this week.  We found the first part of the problems Valentine’s Day after dinner.  We were working all evening on that one, so needless to say our Valentine’s Day was lame this year!  I left my house and escaped to my mom’s house yesterday because I didn’t want to deal with it.  And today I’ll be over at my in-laws doing laundry.  Turns out that we’ll be installing a brand new set of sewage/drain pipes this weekend for our whole house (thank goodness we have a smallish house and only one bathroom to fix!).  Sounds like a fun weekend doesn’t it?  So if I’m hit and miss the next couple weeks, know that I’m dealing with messier situations (quite literally!) ha!

So today, I will show you some of my favorite DIY maternity projects. I have them all posted on my DIY Maternity pinboard, but I will directly link you to the blogs they come from.

Let’s start with the basics.  When you get pregnant, your pants stop fitting really fast!  I tried a couple belly band tutorials, and using regular knit just didn’t keep my pants up!  What a a problem!  I ended up learning about this method, and absolutely loved it.  I had to sacrifice a few old undershirts, but I’ll get new ones later.  Pants staying up, and new undershirts later!  If you can’t sew, I bet you can cut!  This tutorial is just for you.  I wore these over my unbuttoned/unzipped pants for a long while before breaking down and making maternity jeans.  Check out this lovely tutorial at DIY Maternity.

The rest of my round up is tops, but I do have some dresses pinned, so you can check that out.  And I covered what I did with pants in this post.

For some of my matenity clothing,  I simply bought tops a couple sizes too big.  I have very small shoulders, so my necklines were too big and gaping open most of the time.  This tutorial at Mad Mim shows you a quick and easy fix for cinching in necklines to make them less revealing, and super cute at the same time.  I will be doing this to non-maternity clothes that have huge necklines as well!  She also gives a fabulous tip on making any shirt a shirred maternity top.  Her secret is instead of using a zig zag stitch to attach the elastic, you use a straight stitch!  It makes the shirt bunch up less—hooray!  I haven’t tried this method, but it is on my list for sure!

Now isn’t that top just amazing!  I love the front.  I would add sleeves to it, because I’m not the sleeveless/tank top type (and it’s cold outside right now!), but I love it.  Head on over to Happy Together to see the tutorial.

Now this and the next top are going to get combined to make me a top like this.  I found a men’s dress shirt at a thrift store for $2.00, so I thought I would give these projects a try.  Head on over to DIY Maternity for the full tutorial.  (By the way, this website specializes in maternity and nursing DIY projects—it’s a gem!)

This one is adorable too, and it’s anthropologie inspired—even better right!?  This is another project brought to us by DIY Maternity.  I love the neckline/collar of this shirt (although it’s tricky to see in this picture---you’ll have to look at the tutorial for that).  For the tutorial, click here.

Well, I think that’s it for me today!  I am really hoping to get a couple little projects done to show you soon, but we will see what our plumbing projects bring us! :)  Hope you’re having a great day!

Thanks for reading!

~Lynette~

Project Maternity: Maternity Pants from Regular Jeans

 

(Picture with extra layers so you don’t have to see what you don’t want to! :)

Hi there!  Let’s just pretend that today is tomorrow instead of a week later, okay?  Last week was a busy one for me.  I can’t even remember why, but just trust me on that one! :)

Today I’m going to show you how I made maternity jeans from regular jeans.  I purchased 3 pairs of jeans from Old Navy’s clearance rack.  I spent about $11 on each pair.  So for LESS than 1 pair of good maternity jeans, I got three pairs.  2 I love, and 1 I wear around the house because I hemmed them a bit too short (and I tried to wear them today and they were a bit too snug and just too frumpy—live and learn).  (whoops!)

I used a combinations of this tutorial from DIY Maternity and this tutorial from Running with Scissors.  They were both very helpful, but I combined some of the points from each. 

What I used from DIY Maternity Tutorial:

I liked that she sewed the elastic straight to the pants.  This way, when the pants are washed, the elastic does not get twisted in the casing.  I also liked that she cut out the zipper completely, and that she sewed the casing and jeans right sides together to get a finished look.

What I used from Running With Scissors Tutorial:

I loved that she kept the back of the pants and only cut the front.  This makes the back higher, which helps prevent showing too much.  It also imitates the mid-rise jeans I’m used to wearing, so I don’t feel uncomfortable. 

For the knit casing, I used an old undershirt instead of regular knit.  I’ve found that using the undershirt knit for belly bands like this one from DIY Maternity is great too.  So I used that idea for the waistband of the pants as well.  And one undershirt worked well to make 2 pairs of pants.  I will show you how I cut it in the pictures below.

Here’s my undershirt unharmed.

I knew I would only be making one pair with this undershirt, so I gave myself a little more seam allowance room.  I was using about 3 inch wide elastic, so if you’re using narrower, you definitely can use one undershirt for two pairs of pants.  I used the navy blue undershirt (pictured on jeans above) for two pairs and it worked well.    I simply took the bottom part of the undershirt, folded it wrong sides together, and used it like the casing.

With these tutorials, I’ve ended up with some pants I really love wearing.  Because of the tutorials, I don’t really feel like I have your typical ‘frumpy,’ maternity jeans.  It’s a great feeling to still feel cute, even with an expanding belly.

Thanks for reading!

~Lynette~

Tutorial Tuesday: Jeans to Capris with Cuffs

*I apologize that I didn’t get this posted earlier.  I was busy helping family yesterday and today, and didn’t get this written as quickly as I wanted.  While moving all my files when I redid my computer, somehow I lost this tutorial’s p.ictures!  I searched on my back up discs and found them this morning! Phew!*
These pants are the ones I bought for $6.00 last year.  I embellished the pockets, and I love these jeans.  However, they were the ‘short,’ length.  The length worked alright for awhile, but they were a tad shorter than I liked.  So, I chopped off parts of the legs and converted them into super comfy capris.  Do you want make your own?  (It’s pretty easy!)
What you’ll need:
Pair of pants to make into capris
Capris to measure length by (or you can just try on and mark the length desired)
Sewing supplies (machine, scissors, etc. etc. etc.)

First, lay your pants out on the ground or a flat surface.  Lay a pair of capris that you like the length of on top of the pants.  (If you don’t have capris you like, try on the pants and mark them with pins or a fold where you want the pants to be).  Don’t stress about exaggerating the length for seam allowances because this is where your cuff will start.

Cut your pants to the length desired.  I used scissors because I didn’t want to get my cutting mat out, but if you want to, that’d probably work better! :)

I folded my pants so I could make sure the lengths of each leg were the same.  Just to be sure! :)

We’re going to want to use the bottom of your pants for the cuff so you have that nice finished edge.  Cut that to 4 1/2 inches.  (If you want a bigger cuff, feel free to cut it that way!)

My pants were bootcut, so it had a bit of a flare on the bottom of the pants.  I placed the cuff over the bottom of the pants, right sides together.  I pinned where I needed to take in the cuff so it would look right. 

I sewed so the seam was right next to the existing seam that was the outside of the pants.  You can barely tell I took the cuff in.

I turned the cuff inside out, cut the excess off, and used my “overlock stitch,” on the raw edges.  I also tried it on one of the cuffs with a zig-zag, and it worked great.

(A better look at the finished raw edge.)

Now, you’re going to take the cuff, and place the wrong side of the cuff on the inside of your pants.  Pin it so you have about an inch clearance. (I pinned where the edge of the cuff was on the inside).  Then sew with a zig-zag or overlock stitch around the leg of the pants.
*A note about pinning:  When pinning, make sure you line up the outside seam of the pants and the outside seam of the cuff.  The inside seam will NOT match up if you tailored the cuff to fit your pants.  Nobody will notice it, so don’t stress.  Just make sure you line up those outside seams!*

We’ve sewn one edge to the pants, but we have one edge loose.  Turn the pants inside out so you can see what you’re doing.  Pin the loose edge, and sew with a zig-zag or overlock all the way around your pants.

This is a view of the pants inside out once the cuff is completely sewn on.

Now turn your pants right side out.  They should look like the picture above.

Fold the cuff up, and tack it down using a straight stitch on each side. 
After washing these a few times, I’m thinking that I may want to tack them higher in the cuff so they don’t fold over in the dryer. I did mine below the yellow stitching on each side, so I would suggest maybe doing it a bit higher if your machine can handle it.
Trim threads (like I clearly hadn’t done yet when taking these pictures).

And done!  You have a comfy pair of capris for summer and got rid of the pants that were too short!
~Lynette~
P.S. What kinds of tutorials would you like to see?  Are there any tutorials you’d like me to try and I can tell you how it went?  Tell me in the comments!

Thrifty Top Thursday: Cream Ruffles Shrug

This thrifty project took a top that I had two of.  I cut one up and made this shrug (and kept the other one in the closet).  I made it right before it started to warm up, so I’ve only worn in a couple times.  It’s cute and spices a plain outfit up.

Tutorial found here at Make it and Love it.

What I did different:

I didn’t hem the ruffle around the edge of the shrug.  Raw edges worked for me because I was lazy I like them.

There was something else, but I can’t remember.

Oh yes.

I cut it a tad longer than the tutorial did (but I’m an adult and it was made originally for a little tike).  Because of that I didn’t have a ton of fabric left over.  I barely had enough to make the ruffles, so if you’re going to do this try using a coordinating color of knit or two shirts.

(And to keep it real, my sister shot this as I was running in the house to change for the next pic.  Thought you’d like to see the back of the shrug anyways!

 

Hope you’re having a fabulous day!

~Lynette~