Designer Arm Sling

When my 6 year old broke her arm last Wednesday, the nurse sent her home with your run of the mill, ugly blue arm sling.

Although the doctor said it isn’t necessary to wear it, she claims that her arm hurts less when she does. While taking a closer look at it, I realized that I could easily make her a cuter, softer version. Using the old sling as a template, I cut out two pieces of coordinating fabric and one piece of batting with the bottom of the sling on the fold of the fabric.

This is what the shape looked like when I opened up the fabric.

Then I layered the two pieces of fabric, right sides together, with the batting on top of both fabrics and stitched all the way around, leaving a section open for turning right side out.

After turning it right side out and pressing, I top-stitched all the way around the shape, making sure to stitch the gap closed while I did. After that I folded the sling in half and stitched strait up the side where her elbow sits.

I bought some 1” cotton webbing and a pack of strap adjusters from JoAnn’s and just stitched it on the sling using the original one as a guide.

This little girl was so excited to see the prettier, softer, one-of-a-kind arm sling I made her. It was so quick and easy to put together that I think I’m going to make her a few different ones so she can switch it up every now and then.

T-Shirt Rug

I made the girls a rug to go in their playhouse. It only took about 30 T-shirts from the local Goodwill, a rug canvas from JoAnn's, some double fold quilt binding, and a whole lot of time. I started this thing months ago and worked on it in phases, mostly when I had catching up to do on my favorite TV shows.

Although time consuming, it is very easy to make. First, gather your supplies. It took about 30 shirts to make this rug that is approximately 2 feet wide by 3 feet long.

Then cut your rug canvas to the size you want. This is what it looks like. all folded up right out of the package.

Next, use a rotary cutter and mat to cut the t-shirts into strips that are about 1 inch wide by 5 inches long. Some of mine were only 4 inches and others were up to 6 inches. Precision is so NOT necessary.

Once you’ve got all your shirts cut into strips, you can start tying them into the grid. I used 1 strip for every four holes and tied them diagonally across. Each marked (in blue) square on the grid has 100 holes so I used 25 strips per square. It took me about an hour to do 6 squares once I got the hang of it. I think I had about 115 or so squares to fill so it was a lot of hours of tying.

Here is a view of the back after tying on all the strips.

The last step was putting the binding on the raw edges to the grid doesn’t come unraveled. I just used the pre-packaged double fold quilt binding from the fabric store.

Although it was much less time consuming that the actual tying, it was tricky sewing on the binding while trying to keep all the t-shirt fringes out of the way.

The stitches are far from strait or pretty, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t even see the biding. It is hidden by all the fringe. It just needs to be there or the edges of the grid that you cut will come undone and that would be sad after all those hours of tying.

Here is the finished product.

The girls were happy to finally have the rug they have been watching grow for the last several months and I am happy to get started on my next big project.

Easter Smores In a Jar

About a year and a half ago I made Halloween themed smores in a jar and they were a huge hit. Wednesday morning, I realized that Thursday was the last day of school before spring break and I needed something for the twins’ kindergarten teacher. I ran to Wal-Mart and grabbed some Peeps bunnies, spring colored M&M’s, and a box of graham crackers in order to make an Easter version. I got it home and unloaded from the car just in time to get a phone call from the school nurse informing me that one of the twins had broken her arm.

Despite the fact that the day turned out to be a little crazy, these are so quick to make that I still had time to throw these together. Luckily, I had enough ingredients to make two…one for the Kindergarten teacher and one for the school nurse who did such a great time taking care of my little one before I could get there.

Hope everyone has a great spring break! Luckily, we didn’t have anything exciting planned because we get to spend ours taken care of broken arms.

I’m linking up: