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.

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Kennady’s Birthday cake

My baby turns 4 on Tuesday but we had her party today. She couldn’t make up her mind what kind of cake she wanted. She literally changed her mind several times a day. Right up until I made it, she still couldn’t decide. Since I also had the Cardinals cake to make at the same time, I decided to just do something super easy and made this cake by piping big pink roses all over the entire thing. I hot glued some tulle into pleats in between two cake boards, plopped the cake on top and called it a day. Her party didn’t really have a theme either, we just used pinks and white to decorate so it fit perfectly.

Cardinals Baseball Cake

I made this one for a good friend’s little man. She’s such a good friend that she watched my kids all week while while I was in the Philippines with my hubby and she didn’t even complain about them once. The least I could do was make her adorable little guy a birthday cake when I got back. He loves balls of every kind and wanted a ball cake and they are big Cardinals fans from St. Louis so here is what I came up with. I used a buttercream transfer method to make the Cardinals logo because, unfortunately, I am not an artist.

DIY Valentines

I found this great valentine bookmark and free printable card through Pinterest and thought it would be a fun idea to do with my  8-11 year old Activity Day girls from my church. Some girls had a little more difficulty stitching the hearts than others (I think the difficulties had more to do with listening to directions than it did to actually stitching) but they all had fun anyway. It’s a super quick and easy craft for a grown up to do so I stitched a bunch together for my girls to use as teacher gifts on Valentine’s Day.

Valentines Day

I spent the past week getting all my Valentines crafting done.

I made wreaths for my front door with rolled felt flowers and a big felt bow on each one.

Kennady got a new V-Day shirt.

Since I don’t have a mantle, I decorated the top of the piano.

This frame is one of the easiest things I have ever done, but I am in love with it’s simplicity.

I saw this fabulous idea for mason jars on Pinterest and had to “borrow” it.

The garland is made out of old book pages. My kids were astonished that I would do such a thing to a book (the school librarian has obviously been effective when teaching about how we should treat books), but it was really old and falling apart anyway. I have to admit that I cringed a little bit when I started cutting out the first page.

Finally, I made a felt “Be My Valentine” pillow. The hearts are machine appliqued on and the wording and string for the hearts to hang on are embroidered. I have never done much work in embroidery before and this project made me realize that I could really use some practice.

I think we are all ready to show some love around here, that is if my kids would ever stop fighting.

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