Quick Craft: Felt Appliqué

I'll call this less of a how-to and more of a... do-try-this-at-home post. It doesn't take a ton of skill, just some time and inspiration. I grabbed my own while perusing Etsy.

I currently have two co-workers who are close to having little ones of their own, and a joint baby shower was on the schedule. I wanted to make them each something personal, but not make one better than the other. Solution? Two little zip-up jackets from Target, a pile of felt, and some paper.

I first took a rough sketch of the space I had to work with, taking note of where the pockets fell. Then I sketched out my designs and cut them out, piece by piece. The paper went on the jackets first, to make sure I'd gotten the sizing right, and, after a few tweaks, I used the paper to cut out the pieces in felt.

Next up, a needle and embroidery thread. I wanted the stitches to look chunky and not quite perfect, to add a little charm. This is by far the most time consuming portion, but hand stitching has always kind of felt like cheap therapy for me. Nice and calming while being productive.

Hello Mr. Fox! A foxy look for a sure-to-be-handsome little guy.

For the awesome, flat-track-racing momma-to-be of a little girl.
Their last name starts with H, hence the letter in place of a number on the race bib.

I was happy with how both turned out, and the girls who received them seemed to really love them too.

You could transfer this idea to pretty much any fabric item: A pillow, an adult-size jacket, a handbag, anything! Give 'er a try.

Quick Craft: Crew Neck to Cardigan

In spite of my ongoing goal not to cave in to buying throwaway fashion, there are times when I just get the urge to haunt the Forever21.com sale section. Where else can you find an ill-fitting dress for $4?! Anyway, a couple years back I picked up a lace crewneck pullover. I liked the idea of wearing a camisole under it, and it was a fun, interesting shade of minty-jade green (a color nearly impossible to capture in photos, as it turns out. NONE of the coming pics really do it justice).

Shocker: It didn't fit. The arms were fine, the body was fine, but the length was just way too short for a girl of 5'8" like m'self. So, into the scrap fabric bin it went. ...For two years. Suddenly a weekend or so ago, inspiration struck when I was rifling through the bin. If I simply sliced this pullover up the middle, it would be a pretty cute cropped cardigan!

The shoulder at the top of the image almost shows the actual color...
No option of light I could find allowed the camera to actually capture it.

I got to work.

Measure twice+ to determine the center, then snip away.

Hemming the cut line will prevent raveling.
As for thread, when you don't have a perfect match, a little lighter is always better than darker.

I hand-stitched my two pin lines, mostly because my machine is on the fritz and I don't trust it on anything out side of basic cotton. As this was both a synthetic and stretchy, I wasn't willing to risk it having a mechanical tantrum and forcing me to scrap the whole thing.

Et voila! A slice, a stitch, and a new addition to my wardrobe. Two bucks well spent.

Sheer Coverage

Sheer panels are not a new idea in fashion (ahem, 1990s), but I love them all the same. The problem is, well, they're see-through. That's an earth shattering observation, I know. But I'm a girl who likes fashion to also be functional, and if something is designed only to be worn with a strapless bra (or *shriek* none at all), I will probably think twice about purchasing.

Here's where an easy DIY comes in. Can you thread a needle? Tie a knot? You can probably do this.

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I ordered a dress online thinking it would work for both a fall wedding coming up and to wear to work. I love a two-fer. The cute sheer panels at the shoulders added a little visual interest and I couldn't beat the price. I was annoyed to find when it arrived that the sheer panels fell directly over my bra straps. It broke up the lines of the dress and - friendly reminder - no one wants to see bra straps at work.

What to do without losing the aesthetics of the sheer panels? Why, line 'em in a stretchy nude fabric of course. I'll let the photos show the step-by-step, but basically I just traced a pattern, cut out my nude fabric, and stitched it onto the inside of the sheer mesh. Sound simple? It was. Check it out:

Remember those leaf-rubbings from grade school? Same idea.
Just lay paper and trace around the raised seams
Perfection not required - It needs to be a little larger than the area you'll
be sewing it on to.

Not cute, but useful.

Pinned my pattern onto the tank top, and cut around it.
Again, perfection not required. You want it a little big.
The excess can be trimmed off once it's sewn on.

Since my nude fabric doesn't have a top or bottom side, I just cut
two of the same pattern piece and flipped one over.

Pinned on - Don't stretch the fabric. It should be lying easily
over the area you're covering: No wrinkles or pulling.

Stitched - Again, perfection not required. I used large stitches
to accommodate for the stretch in my dress fabric.

Et voila! "Sheer" with coverage!

Ready for action. Bra-strap-less action.

If you don't have a janky old tank top lying around (jank top??), there are lots of options for buying that kind of fabric by the yard; Try here, here, or here for starters. Go forth and cover up... without looking like you are!

Someday Has Come

Remember that room I've been calling my "someday sewing room"? I hope so, I've been calling it that for two and a half years.

........

That was a cringe break. I know I needed one.
I called myself out waaaaay back on June 13th of 2012 when we were about 5 months into living here and everything we moved in and didn't know what to do with immediately got dumped in this room. It was a white carpeted, junk-filled nightmare. Remember?

It evolved from there, especially when we had to clear the place to get our new floor, but was never truly functional as what I wanted. But now, oh-ho yes, now it looks a little something like this:

Yes, that's a small kegerator. Yes, I'm an awesome wife. Thanks for noticing.

Now excuse me while I go craft/sew-something/stare-googly-eyed at my clean room (that last one is the most likely option).


*Notice the desk-like tables? The larger table with the cutting mat on it is the former dining room set up. That makes two pieces of the former dining room at home in the sewing room: The light and the table/chairs. Yay for using what you've got!

Hack It: Leather & Lace Crew Neck Sweatshirt

I don't know about you, but I find it really hard to pass up a great deal. So when I spotted a crew neck sweatshirt on super sale while browsing OldNavy.com with a 30% off coupon next to me that made it a whopping $2.80... YES. The issue? The only size left was an extra large.

I waffle between a medium or large at Old Navy usually, but for under three bucks I was willing to take the risk and hope I could tailor it. It arrived a few days later, in all it's frumpy, boxy, deliciously comfy glory:

First step: Knocking it down to size. I tried it on, and eyeballed how much would need to be shaved off the sides. I popped it onto my dress form (God bless the dress form) and pinned what I thought would work.

After a try-on and narrowing the sleeve a little bit more, I ran the sewing machine down my line. Then again for good measure, about 1/8" away from my first line. I don't have a serger, so two stitch lines offers a little more security. Since sweatshirt material doesn't really ravel, I was good to go.

Lace time! There are a couple ways you could go about this: Since the lace is fairly see through, I chose to just drape a big hunk over the area of the shirt I wanted to add it to, pin it in place, then carefully (oh. so. carefully) trim along the already-there seam line of the sweatshirt with some sharp scissors. You could also use something like parchment paper (we're looking for a sheer quality here), sketch out the area, then cut it out and trace it onto the lace lying flat.

Then, well, stitch 'er on. Machine (my choice) or by hand would work just as well if getting the area into your machine is too tricky. I decided to do that little triangular piece that's always on the front of sweatshirts too for good measure. 

So now we've gone from here to here:

And, tada!

Selfies are not my forté, but I tried (dude, it's hard to take a picture of your own back!!):

You could do this with any crew neck sweatshirt in any color (if there isn't already one in your closet, there's a link to the Old Navy options up at the top of this post), and lace is sold at any fabric store. If you like the idea of the faux leather lace, I picked mine up at JoAnn Fabrics a few months back (they don't seem to offer it on their website). Online, google "lace by the yard" and you'll get roughly a billion results for your web-shopping pleasure. 

Happy hacking kids!

Pillow Talk

Now that our anniversary has come and gone, I can show you what I whipped up for one of my gifts to the hubs. We've been nerdily following (and by following, I mean twice now) the traditional wedding gift list for each year. Have you seen it?

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So since this year is cotton, I knew a great t-shirt was on the list. But it wasn't enough. A search of 'vintage ski' on Amazon and I found just the thing: A 25x25 piece of fabric printed with a vintage ski poster advertising Norway. I can sew, 20's and 30's style art is just my jam, and my husband's family is Norwegian.

We have a winner.

I won't bore you with a pillow making step-by-step, but here's a great tutorial all set to be learned from. I ordered a 24x24 pillow from Amazon as well (a little smaller than the fabric for seam allowances), and for the back of this pillow, I used a nubby upholstery fabric I had a remnant of from another project years ago (funnily enough, it was making pillows for my parents' house).

 I like the art on the pillow front even more than I expected to, and another pleasant surprise was how great the colors work with the rest of the family room. And Nate? He loved it. Which was really the best part of all.

Frosting

I feel like we lucked out with the lot our home is on: While we're at the end of a cul-de-sac, we have a greenbelt in back and on one side, and the neighboring house is set in such a way that we have pretty much total backyard privacy. In fact, you can only see our neighbor's house from one window: My some-day sewing room.

I don't know how familiar you all are with sewing clothing, but when you're making it for yourself... well, there's a lot of off and on. And you know what's not great when you need to change your clothes 5,000 times? Neighbors and an open window.

Winner: Etched Glass, bottom left.

Enter Artscape window film. I'd heard about how easy it is to use on a few blogs I read (like this one), and it pretty much was. But first, to the Home Depot display to choose my 'design' (pic above). Next, facing the installation...

Installation ingredients.

The instructions were a single sheet - woot! - and pretty much consisted of cutting the film to the size of the window, spraying the window down with water mixed with a little dish soap, and squeegeeing (is that a word?) out the air bubbles.

Cutting was fairly simple: I measured (a lot), then lightly marked the paper backing with a pencil and snipped as smoothly as possible with scissors. Then, just as the instructions mandated: Peel, spray, stick, squeegee.

Finished product!

My trouble came when I realized that my film wasn't quite long enough to do both windows, so I had to switch it up and do two large pieces on the bottom 3/4 of each glass pane, and two small pieces for the 1/4 left up top. Luckily the line is pretty subtle, and with my window decoration it is nearly invisible.

Same view, before and after.

The light is hardly different from the window with the blinds up, yet the view in is totally obscured: Perfect! I can't get over how much more open the room feels without those dark horizontal lines always being in the way.

Before, during, after.

With the price ranging from $20-$45 per box (depending on design - they have some elaborate ones), and ease of installation, what's there to lose? A pretty low price to pay on all fronts for a little extra privacy.

Update: The day after installation I was unhappily surprised to find a bunch of tiny air bubbles had formed. I squeegeed again to no avail, but the next day they had disappeared completely, leaving the film smooth and perfect. So if that happens to you, don't despair! Just wait another 24 hours.
Also, I find the seam is even less visible now that the film has fully cured and dried. Hooray!

Make It: Gorman-Inspired Print Hoodie

There's little I love more in my wardrobe than a good hoodie. Zip-up or pullover, lightweight or thick, they all have a use and a place in my heart. So when I saw an amazing triangle-print crew neck floating around Pinterest recently by the Australian brand Gorman, I drooled, I ogled, and I found out it was not only no longer made, but about $150 originally anyway.

Nope.

But it got my wheels turning, and inspiration struck: Sponges. One shopping trip later (Target and Michael's), and I was home with everything I needed.

I played around with paper first, figuring out how large I wanted my triangles to be, then simply traced the pattern onto a sponge, and sliced with a ruler and an X-acto knife. Stamps: Created.

Queued up the Project Runway and Fashion Police on dvr, stuffed my hoodie with an old torn apart shoebox, and away I went.

painter's palette = plate covered w/foil

Slip cardboard inside to protect from paint seepage!

Due to dry time (about an hour+), I ended up finishing the next day in a few spurts: Each side, then the back. My protective cardboard inserts collected any paint seepage, and those were dry by that time too so I could re-use them as I flipped the shirt around from section to section.

Just when I thought I was ready to show off my creation to the world, I realized just how ugly the inside of that hood looked from the paint seeping through. Ack! But easily fixed: A scrap of soft gray waffle knit in my remnant pile was pinned in place, and a couple runs of the sewing machine* was all it took to be problem solved.

The finished product was official:

The Gorman version is oh-so-much chicer and more beautiful in every way (which is as it should be for the price), but I'm pretty stoked with my results. A cozy hoodie that I can throw on and look like I tried - at least a little bit - is what I was going for, and I think I got exactly that. DIY success!

Cost breakdown:
Hoodie: Target men's department, on sale, $8.49 (orginally $12)
Paints: Michael's, $1.99 each ($8 total)
Sponges: Target, pack of 4 for $1.75-ish (and I only used one)
Total Cost: About $18



*I'm happy to break down this hood lining process further if anyone's ever interested. I developed it myself, and it's quite easy and can really change the look of a basic hoodie. I've done it a lot - No pattern-making skills required! Let me know.