With These Hands

18 million years ago (it seems), one of livejournal friends posted a link to a baby pants tutorial.
Well I finally used it!

There was once this happy cow who was placed on a little onesie courtesy of a very cool lady who has a very cool etsy shop.
We loved this onesie and got lots of use of it.
But babies grow, as they are wont to do.
I didn’t want to give up the jovial bovine, however.
So he went into a pile of “SAVE THIS OR I WILL DIE!” clothing and things in the bottom of the boys’ closet.
Yesterday I started to try and do something interesting and fun with some of these items.
Including the cow and the moon.

The before:

And the after:

Wee pants for Noah!

I had an old cut-up sweatshirt from a few years ago that came in handy.
I made the patch by cutting the screenprinted part of the onesie and using steam2seam fusible webbing.
After I ironed the patch onto the pants I did a simple straight-stitch along the edges.
I then took some more of the onesie solid black material and made a waistband through which I fed 3/8 inch elastic and voila!
Baby lounge pants!
They are cozy and adorable.

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I soon took scissors to two more favored onesies.
(This one is another from the aforementioned etsy shop.)

Before:

Truth be told, Mike was never a fan of that puffer fish.
I LOVED it.
You never see baby clothes like that!
I could not give it up.
So I made Matty a hand-me-UP!
Is there such a thing??

After:

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One more.

Before:

Now this dinosaur guy was from Matty, he grew out of it, it went to Noah, then he grew out of it.
These kids and their GROWING!
Well, I liked that dino, so he is now residing here:

I thrifted the green shirt from the Salvy and added the dino using above method.
He looks happy, no?
ROAR!
Matty likes it!

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materials used:

re-purposed tees/onesies
thread
fusible webbing
elastic

October 13th, 2008 ★ No Comments »

Semi-makeover?

So years ago, when Matty turned like 8 months or so, we got tired of feeding him in his little blue rocking chair thingie, so we headed to Target to spring for a highchair. (Poor sentence structure alert!)
The selection was ick then.
But it was more about function and price than anything else.

This is what we got:

And really, the ONLY reason it even looks cute is because of Little Face. Aww, he’s so little here! (Where did 4 years go???)

We put the highchair away once Matty was big enough for the table.
And then along came Noah.
He too started out his solid food days in a wee infant chair.
But when he turned about 7 months, we knew we needed to go get the highchair.
It’s actually still in near perfect condition.
Save maybe for one stubborn-ass Blues Clues sticker that just won’t come off!
I refuse to spend too much time on it though, save my sanity.

Anyhoodle, I was right sick of looking at that beige (BEIGE!) seat cushion, so I set to work to make a new cover.
The home decor fabric that I picked up was on sale and I only needed a yard of it, so it was about 6 bucks.
I picked red because red is AWESOME. And it has dots!
I wanted to do it with minimal spending of the dollars, so instead of buying batting, I simply made the cover double-sided and slipped the old (washed!) cover inside, then stitched it up.
Kinda like a duvet cover? Minus the buttons.
I needed to add the little elastic doohickies on the bottom so it attached firmly to the chair itself. That was easy.
And I made a hole for the um, stem thing? Yeah, that was a bit more challenging, but I survived. Used a zigstitch for that.
And well, that’s about it.
It came out a bit smaller than the original cover, my head got wonky regarding the seam allowance, oops.

I like it though.
Mike said it’s fantastic and this pleases me.
Noah, well, he looked at it and pounded on the tray. Which I took as a sign of approval. And a sign for more Cheerios.
Kids.

August 18th, 2008 ★ No Comments »

I was actually productive last week. Yay!

To make my rounded corners, I use one of our large cereal bowls to make ‘em all even and nice. Works well.

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Lots of love for these sweet totes. Hand embroidered felt hearts are on both sides of bags.

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I feel like this fabric reminds me of pimentos olives. And then, martinis, of course.

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Modified messenger. I tweaked this tutorial. I like how the gussets give it a sharp, box shape.

Last week we three went up to the civitan community flea market. I kinda still don’t know what civitan is, but the flea market was completely awesome and I really wanted to buy like everything. I settled on just a few items, including these wonderful vintage glass buttons.

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More wooden handle purses for the summery summer. I use this great online supplier I found via ebay. They are reasonable, and they ship quick.

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And finally, I did 2 more skirt to purse reconstructions. Found these cute skirts on ebay, on the cheap, of course. I wanted to do one with a pink lining, one with a black lining. And so I did.

The before please (there’s Matty’s head over to the right there, ha.)

And the afters:

And together:

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Materials used:

canvas
twill
cotton
cotton blends
glass buttons
plastic buttons
interfacing
dmc thread
craft felt
wood/bamboo handles
nickel magnetic snaps

July 9th, 2006 ★ 1 Comment »

I did it again.
It’s the perfect way for me to “fit” into a size 5 skirt.
Well, okay, it’s the only way.
I can fit all my junk in there now. Ha.
This skirt I picked up on eBay for 5 bucks. It was brand new with the tags still on.
Gotta love eBay.

The before:

And now?

I had just a smidge of the waistband and fabric left, so of course I made a happy matchy little wristlet pouch.

Indeed.

Materials used:

recon. cotton skirt
interfacing
cane handles
zipper
turquoise cotton fabric

June 20th, 2006 ★ No Comments »

I purchased this skirt last week at the Salvation Army. I paid 4.99 for it. A little high in my opinion. The thrift stores around here seem to have a rather high markup. Something I have to get used to I guess.
It was a simple pencil skirt in a frighteningly small size six. A size six, I am not. Didn’t matter, I had a vision as soon as I saw her hanging there.

Before:

And after:

So pleased with how it came out. I couldn’t get a good shot of the lining, as my camera batteries died. I used a dark brown cotton to contrast with the light cream exterior. It’s a lovely combo.

Materials used for this bag:

thrifted cotton skirt
interfacing
cotton lining
cane handles

May 14th, 2006 ★ 2 Comments »

But not hair bands.

Action!

Materials used:

different cotton print fabrics
various twill and denim
1/4 braided elastic
thread

April 21st, 2006 ★ 1 Comment »

Another hobby of mine is thrifting. I love thrift stores and thrive on sorting through junk to score something cool for next to nothing. I don’t get to do it often enough because quite frankly Matty’s not a big fan of it. Maybe it’s that old musty smell at the Salvy.

So here is a skirt that I picked up recently. I really loved the skirt itself, but knew that I no matter how many alterations I did to it, that 20 inch waist was set in stone and there was no other alternative than to hack it up and make other pretties with it.

Before:

And after:

Materials I used in addition to the yellow print:

twill
wool felt
embroidery thread
interfacing
zippy zippers

I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with that lace piece yet, it came off in one long strand and just screams at me to do something creative with it. But I’m at a loss so far. We shall see.

April 12th, 2006 ★ No Comments »

This was Mike’s, he has his fill of it and gave it to me.
I was letting it rot in my closet because of it being like a friggin belly shirt.
Sewing machine to the rescue.

Before:

And now:

I added the requisite blue band, plus the double wide bias tape to trim the sleeves and the bottom (with cute ties!).
I used the same stretchy light blue fabric to make my fancy lady there. (Attached with double-sided fusible webbing.)

December 20th, 2005 ★ No Comments »

I have a long torso.
And big boobs.
And I’m tall.
And I’m “curvy”.
So all this means is I can’t easily buy cute tops that fit me properly. (Re: cover my tummy and don’t ride up)
Which sucks, but then I just do this to my existing clothing to make them more me-worthy.

Before, just a plain striped Gap top:

After, a hot interesting, long, ooh-la-la top:

I scooped the neck, added some stretchy black fabric as a band, attached some double wide bias tape for the back tie, and fashioned a cute birdie applique to the front. (I attached that with fusible double sided webbing.)

I used this cute little guy as my stencil (I simply silhouetted him out in Photoshop):

December 16th, 2005 ★ No Comments »

Boring Old Navy top:

Now with some purple-y flair:

December 12th, 2005 ★ No Comments »