I was only 4 weeks late

but I finally got my girls’ Easter dresses made. I bought the fabric and pattern for the dresses a few months ago, but I just didn’t find the time to actually  make them before Easter. I buckled down this weekend and did the little girls dresses,  my older daughter’s skirt, and a hair accessory for each of them in just 2 days. Needless to say, my house is a wreck because not much else got done.

More baby stuff

Just a few onesies, burpcloths, a bib, and a headband that I made for baby shower decorations, they were also my gift to the mom to be.

Baby Boom

My friends have been busy making babies lately and I been busy trying to keep up on making their baby gifts. I also had a good friend who hired me to make her husband’s client’s wife some onesies for a baby gift. What a huge compliment! When it comes to crafting, baby gifts are my absolute favorite thing to do so I have had a lot of fun coming up with all of the following baby gifts:

For the following onesie, I dyed it using black tea. I just soaked it in the hot tea until it was the shade I wanted it. I don’t drink tea, but I had seen on Pinterest that it helps immediately sooth sunburn so I bought some to treat the sunburn I acquired over Spring Break. In case you were wondering, it didn’t do a thing for my sunburn, but it works great for antiquing onesies.

For this onesie, I decided to try embroidery again. It turned out better than the first time I tried it a few months ago. I think the embroidered owl is sweet.

Here’s the back of the onesie.

And although it’s not baby related, I’m throwing in a picture of the newest sling I made for my broken armed monkey. She loves Dr. Seuss and I have some scraps left over from the Dr. Seuss quilt I am making the twins’ kindergarten teacher so I made her day when she came home to this:

What’s a mom to do

when she gets a message from the school on Wednesday night that Friday is wear your favorite college shirt to school day and her kids have long outgrown their favorite college shirts? I refuse to pay for overnight shipping for anything, so ordering them online was NOT a possibility either.

Luckily, I still had some Hanes T-shirts in their size from a pack I had bought a while back, some blue acrylic paint, and freezer paper all on hand. I found a picture online of the logo I wanted to use and printed it out, made a couple of freezer paper stencils from it, watered down the acrylic paint just a little bit, and went to work.

Here’s a link that tells how to do freezer paper stenciling if you are interested. It’s really easy.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2121330_make-freezer-paper-stencils.html

The girls are were excited to show off their cougar pride at school today. They will most likely be the only BYU fans in a sea full of Florida school t-shirts. 

I’m linking up:

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: