Collared Shirt Upcycle

I have too many pictures.

We had to change the way we stored them all last year about this time, and that's part of the reason I haven't been posting as many pictures during this last year.  I finally took the initiative to go back through all my pictures from the last year and get the ones that I would like to remember so that I can put them here.  Hopefully they'll all make it and I'll be able to remember what was going on at the time...  Stay tuned for some picture-heavy posts.

These next pics feel like a life-time ago (sigh, I miss our turquoise bathroom...).  It's funny to see me with hair so straight and short.

Anyway, my mother-in-law knows I like to tinker with clothes, and gave me some quality collared shirts from someone's wardrobe.

 It's just a thin black plaid, if you can't tell.  Nothing special about it.  Just a collared, button-down shirt.

 This is by no means a well-done tutorial.  I never really know what I'm doing, so I don't think to photograph every step since I'm not sure if it will be a good one :)  I forgot to photograph the next few steps but I just put it on inside-out and put pins in my sides to give the body more shape and show off my waist better (which I super need to off-set my super-flat chest).

Then I cut off the collar and cut off the sleeves just above the shoulder seam.

collar cut about 1/2" above the second button

 Then I shortened the sleeves to be short (it's been awhile, but I'm pretty sure I tried to copy another shirt with sleeves I liked.  In retrospect, it would be easier not to cut them off and sew them back on, I would just shorten them since this shirt isn't THAT big on me.  You only want to do this if the shoulder seams are off your shoulder).  Then I sewed the sleeves back on from armpit to armpit (going over the shoulder) and then ran a seam where the pins were at my sides all the way to the sleeves.  I never even trimmed the excess off, so I could adjust it later if I needed to.  (though I never did.)  I used the extra fabric from the sleeves to cut strips about 1.5" wide, pressed in half and then, well, look at the pic...  (Can you tell I've never taken a real sewing class? I don't know any fancy names for anything.  Sorry!)

 I pinned it to the neck and sleeves.

 Sewed the border on the neck and sleeves.  Note that I cannot unbutton the shirt all the way anymore.  I unbutton all the others when I put it on and slip it over my head.  It works fine, but this is no longer able to be put on like a traditional button-down.  After sewing on the embellishment, I pressed it and top-stitched to get it to lay right.

 The bow was an after-thought.  I took one of the cuffs from the sleeve and tied a knot in the middle.  If you look closely, you can see the button-hold on the left side of it.

 ta-da!

 The bow is just safety pinned on in this shot, because I wasn't sure if I'd still like it and if it would wash well.  I take it off when I wash the shirt.

I hate being in photos alone...

I'm actually wearing this shirt right now with a mustard cardi and different belt.  It's one of my favorites because it's long and hides my kangaroo pouch pretty well :)

Bedtime "Makeover" for Peach

This isn't a very exciting post.  BUT, I like to chronicle my sewing endeavors to remind me that I do sometimes get to do things that stay done.  because most of what I do all day is stuff I repeat EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. and it has a tendency to wear on a person and their sense of self worth.  at least for me.  i like to feel productive  and permanently checking things off a list helps me with that.

not that any of my posts are very exciting...

In the past, when the footies in the kids pjs get holey, I would just cut off the feet and maybe hem the bottom if I was feeling generous.  But this time, I just couldn't do it.  I forgot to take a pic of why (you can kinda see in the final product shot below...) but this particular pair of pjs had super cute feet- they look like little frog faces!  I just couldn't bare to decapitate them, so I decided to figure out an easy alternative.  

I could redo the feet, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary unpicking and I don't own a serger (yet) so it just wouldn't be as nice of a finish.  Then I thought, why not just sew on a bit of reinforcement!  So I place the inside-out foot on top of some spare flannel and 

just sewed around the edge, right on top of what was already there.

Worked like a charm and took a whole 10 minutes!  There is still a hole, but her feet can't feel it and won't be able to make them bigger.  Plus you still get the benefit of the little grippies on the original feet.

Looks like Hazel may get to enjoy frog feet in a couple of years too :)

Peach has a blankie.  She takes it everywhere I let her take it and when she got it, it was actually a hand-me-down blanket from our cousins.  It had already gone through 2 babies before her, and now endured daily punishment from her for 3ish years...  One day I discovered that she had somehow ripped almost half of the crochet border off!  It would be one thing if it were just the crochet, but it was the fabric that was ripped.

SO, I decided to cut off the rest of the border and sew on a new one, keeping the blanket largely intact, just leaving it a couple inches smaller.

removed border

I also forgot to take a closeup, but what I ended up doing was using some large light blue ric-rac I had in my stash (that also matched and since Peach's favorite color is blue....) and sewing it all around the border.  

Now to see what she would think of it...  Blankies are tricky things.

I love Peach's morning hair.  This is actually one of the more mild days for her...

Luckily, she was thrilled by the blue and it is dragged around as much as always.

It felt so good to do a bit of sewing, even if the projects were super small, but it sort of whet my whistle and gave me the bug.  I've got a few other projects underway now. :)

Easter

Easter was really fun this year!  The kids are finally old enough to enjoy the egg dyeing (as opposed to The Frog's first Easter, when I ended up sitting alone, dyeing all the eggs myself.  fun.)  I tried to show the kids the trick where you color on the egg in white crayon and then when you dye the egg, the crayon part stays white.  They all took it a step further and colored with all kinds of colors before dying them, which turned out to be a great way for Hazel to be able to participate too.

 Since we have 9am church this year, I made everyone get dressed for church before opening their baskets and searching for eggs.  Here they are waiting for daddy to come down (and I'm sad to say, they didn't actually wait for him all the way.  We didn't realize he had hopped into the shower).

 This is just a funny shot.

 Our kids get super spoiled because they get a basket from the Massachusetts easter bunny and the Utah one :)  Because I know this, I always try to go low-key, but I think I got a bit carried away this year.  on accident.

 The bunny ears and tail were in the dollar section at Target.  I couldn't resist!

 I at the last minute, decided to host Easter for whatever local family didn't already have plans and so my little sister's family and parents came down.

 We took many many photos of all the kids together, and believe it or not, this was the best one.  (If I got a nickel for every photo of my kids with thumbs in their mouths...)

 These little dolls are something I started last year intending to be for easter, but as usual, I had too much going on and I had to bag them for later.  I thought about trying to finish them for Christmas, but all my spare time went to the quilt for my mother-in-law, so I finally got them done in time for Easter this year.  They are topsy-turvy dolls!  One side they look like they're ready for a fancy event, and if you pull their skirt over their head...

 they're dressed in their everyday wear.  I think they turned out so cute!

 The hair is probably my least favorite part... it was annoying to sew and I'm worried it's not going to stay in.  Only time will tell...

Peach wanted to be in the photo once she saw what I was doing.  However, the dolls went into quarantine right after I took these photos because we had just discovered that Peach had LICE.

EW.

It was super disturbing to see those little bugs crawling in her hair, and even MORE disturbing to see how many eggs were in there.  We are so lucky that nobody else seems to have gotten it.  (where SHE got it, I have no idea...)  Needless to say, my spring cleaning got a huge jump-start that day, since I had to wash pretty much everything in the house that could be thrown in the washing machine and vacuumed everything else.

We're still on red-alert around here, but so far so good :)

Sorry to end on such a yucky note.

Quilt Reveal!

So, I'm a thief.  First time I can remember stealing anything.  And let me tell you, I was soooo soooo nervous.  And then to try and fit it into my luggage to go on the plane... that was no small feat.

Let me back-up.

I like to quilt.  Probably not as much as my mother-in-law does though.  She has an awesome machine quilting set-up in her attic that she let me use to finish up this baby so long ago.  And I've pretty much been working on this next one ever since.

Wait, I need to back-up some more...

So, Jay's mom was showing me her stack of quilts and talking about the techniques behind them and all that interesting stuff and then she came to the last one that still had safety pins in it because the quilting hadn't been finished.  She said it was the only quilt that survived the fire when their house burned down about 10 years ago because it had been sitting in the bottom of a trunk, for some odd years waiting to be finished.  The quilt had to be professionally cleaned to get all the smoke smell out of it, which removed all the pencil markings she had made she she would know where to quilt, and so she never got back to marking it again.  Now, she's more of a machine quilter, and she said her eyes just aren't good enough to see to do hand quilting anymore.

I Immediately thought, I should finish it for her for Christmas!

I had no idea what that thought really entailed...

So, the day we left, I snuck into the pile of quilts, frantically ran it up to my luggage (because I knew if anyone caught me in the act I would never be able to pull off lying about it) and used every muscle in my body to cram it into an already brimming suitcase (with my other quilt in there as well...) until the zipper finally closed.  (Meanwhile, wondering how the inspection people would ever get it back in if they were to search my bag.  which they always do...)

We got home and I first thing went to JoAnn's to pick up a lap loom, kinda like this, and set to work.

I first started on the few flowers whose markings were still visible.  After finishing those three squares, I thought to lay out my work when I noticed how all I had just done looked like the work of a Kindergartener compared to the beautiful quilting Pam had started...

Feeling a bit dejected, I carried on.  and on and on and on.....  I can see how a quilter becomes quickly proficient - even the smallest of quilts naturally lends itself to much practicing.

Most of the squares had only a couple of subtle lines or loops left from the cleaning, and so I would scour the flowers that had already been quilted in other squares (thank goodness there were repeats!) and I would figure out which one it was most likely to be, and then try to draw it on, freehanded.

I worked on it almost every night for a couple of hours until I felt a bit burnt out in October (and feeling like I should be thinking about Halloween costumes...) and took a little break.  Then November started, which is when I start panicking about Christmas presents, and I quickly jumped back on the band-wagon.  Finally I had done everything I could see, but there were very intricate borders that had no markings to go on and there was no way I could free-hand those.  I tried a few techniques, all failures, and decided to wrap it up and get the opinion of a master quilter - hoping I could finish the rest during their week long stay.

Pam was very surprised, it was awesome!!  She says she didn't even notice it was gone! score!!  

There are benefits to living far away... knowing me, I'm sure I would have inadvertently blown the whole thing in casual conversation.  

"you don't feel like something from your house might be missing do you?  just checkin'.  no reason..."

Upon further inspection, Pam realized that I hadn't gone around the handles of all the baskets in the outer 9 squares, and I knew then that there was no way for me to finish while they were in town.  We went to my favorite quilt shop's end of the year sale and picked out a binding fabric (and some more fabric for my next quilt. hehe).

Well, 3 months later, I finally finished the quilting and man, am I relieved!  Here it is!!

I wish it were easier to portray the quilting in the photos, but it's really just not the same as in person.  This quilt definitely has much MUCH more quilting, and much more intricate quilting than anything I've ever done.  I really love the look of hand-quilting. It just feels so much more authentic and true to the art form.  (though don't get me wrong, I now officially understand just how much longer it takes to do it by hand.  I machine quilted my sampler quilt in only a few hours!!)

All the white squares have a flower with about 20 petals on it, and a 1/4" border

Each basket has one of 7 different flower patterns between the handle and the body.

The baskets themselves also have quilting in them.

the back side

And a little something to record a bit of its history.  (This was done on my embroidery machine, very quickly, by comparison!)

Jay had to fly to Boston at the beginning of March, and so he took it with him to hand deliver for me :)  These photos are kind of bad because I finished that tag the night before he left, and I remembered, lying in bed, that I didn't get to take any photos of it yet, so these are not taken with natural lighting, as I prefer to do...

So now you know what else I've been doing, instead of blogging!  There's probably one other major thing taking up my time, that I will hopefully be able to blog about soon.  The time is not quite right yet. :)

Alphabet Quilt!

I've been taking American Quilting's Saturday Sampler quilting "class", which is basically, you get a couple of quilt block patterns and fabric each month, you can sit in on a 15 minute explanation (which I never did, because I was always in a rush with someone waiting the car for me, usually...) and you must turn in your work the following month on time, or you have to pay $5 to get the next patterns.  I just got my last blocks and couldn't help but hurry and finish them last week!  Our final class is in June and we find out how they are all supposed to fit together!  I'm so curious, because they are all different sizes.  I thought it would be fun to show them all off here, before they are assembled.

This year was called an "alphabet quilt" because we got patterns for each letter of the alphabet.

A is for Album

B is for Bachelor's Puzzle

C is for Chimneys and Cornerstones

D is for Duck and Ducklings

E is for Evening Star

F is for Friendship

G is for Grandma's Choice

H is for Hayes Corner

I is for Illinois

J is for Johnnie Around the Corner

K is for Kansas Star

L is for Log Patch (or Lincoln Logs)

M is for Morning Star

N is for Night & Noon

O is for Octagons

P is for Pineapple (my favorite!)

Q is for Quartered Star

R is for Rambler

S is for Shoofly

T is for Turnstile

U is for Union Square

V is for Virginia Reel

W is for Whirling Whirlwind

X is for X Block

Y is for Yankee Puzzle

Z is for Zigzag

Something this class taught me is how much I value picking out my own fabric.  It was at times annoying to spend so much effort working on something with fabric I never would have picked out myself.  Because of this, I probably won't do another class, but it was great to have an excuse to sit down and sew every month :)

I'm planning to quilt it at Jay's parents' house because his mom just bought a long-arm quilting setup!! wahoo!!  I'll show the final product once it's finished :)