Table Tent / Fort

For Christmas, my SIL (Melissa - who is also an author on this blog) and I made table tents for our kiddos. We spent a week in August starting our projects together, and then motivated ourselves in the next few months to finish in time for Christmas.

The table tent for my little guy is made out of cotton, with some felt and velcro attachments. It fits easily over a standard card table.

Inspiration mainly came from Sew Much Ado and Homemade by Jill; but I made things up as I went.

Welcome to Tent #19! The door easily ties up and down.



Here's the view from the top. Everything is lined. After sewing all the sides together, I sewed them all to the top.


Here's a side vinyl window. I sewed biased tape to both the outside and inside panels. The window covering ties up just like the door.


On the other side is a vinyl peep hole - the cover is on the inside (keep scrolling to see a picture).


The back of the tent has a forest made of felt, equipped with velcro animals! The animals are a huge hit with my little guy.


On the inside is a felt campfire with velcro attachments for the inside flame, wood log, and marshmallow sticks. Next to the vinyl window are a few pockets for storing all of my little guy's important camping gear.


Here's the peep hole cover from the inside. To the side of the cover is a vinyl picture frame, ready for me to slip a family photo inside!




My little guy LOVED this fort...it was a huge hit on Christmas morning! Be sure to stay tuned to see how Melissa's table tent turned out - I can't wait to see the finished project!

Dog Room Flooring

For Link for Christmas we bought him a new room. He's grown since we adopted him and he was in need of some bigger digs! We decided to get him a nice big crate (he jumps high so we couldn't get him a gate). I wanted to make a nice floor covering for him so it would fill more like home!So I bought a yard of fleece and cut a piece 3'x4'. Then I simply sewed up the sides and sewed a big piece of velcro on one the 3' sides. It was a super simple and I'm happy with how it looks!

And I think Link is happy with how much room he has now!

apron for a swap

I finished up this apron a couple weeks ago for a swap I did with some friends. Loved the pattern and the girl wanted bright colors, so I used this cute fabric I found in town at the quilt shop. The ruffle was fun to do. Instead of using thread to pull the ruffle, the pattern said to sew over dental floss, then pull the floss - it was great, because it didn't break like thread does!

Halloween Decor-Spider

This was actually not my idea. And I didn't even make it, but my cute friend Janie said that I could post it on here because I thought it was such a cute idea! She had a broken umbrella and decided to make a spider out of it. She bought some fleece in the remnants section and used some fiber fill.

For the body she cut a big circle, cut a scissor size cut where each of the legs were, then stuffed the top with fiber fill and hot glued it all into a ball.

For the head she cut a circle and stuffed it with fiber fill and then sewed the ball shut.

Here's her super cute cat!!

Then she hot glued the head to the body. With the fleece she had to use quite a bit of glue, but after holding it for a minute or two it held pretty good.

She bought some googly eyes from Hobby Lobby and hot glued them onto the head. It was a pretty simple project, but I think it turned out awesome! I hate spiders, but for a Halloween decoration I think it's such a great idea and just goes to show that you can make anything out of anything!

Thanks Janie for letting me share this!

Candy Corn Wreath

When I received the October Woman's Day Magazine in the mail, it had a candy corn wreath on the front cover and I knew immediately that I HAD to make it!! This could also be titled the Patience Wreath! It took a lot of patience, 2 bags of candy corns, and a few blisters to make this! For those of you who have not seen the magazine, this is what I did:

First, you get a styrofoam wreath. The instructions said to cover it with black Duct Tape. I did not have black on hand, but I had silver and black spray paint. So I covered it first and then sprayed it.

After the paint dries, pop in your favorite movie (or two) and glue, and glue, and glue!

When that's all dry, wrap some black ribbon around it, hang it up and enjoy!

Candy Corn Decoration

Items Needed:
Styrofoam Topiary
Clay pot
Black spray paint
candy corn
hot glue gun
cute ribbon

1. Spray paint pot and topiary

2. Hot glue the candy corn to the ball parts. (I was going to do the whole thing pointy, but it took me forever. So I did the lower one with the candy corn on the side. It was quite a bit faster.)

3. Hot glue the topiary sides to the pot.

4. Fill the pot to the top with candy corn.

5. Tie some cute ribbon on however you'd like!

I don't know how well it's going to last for next year. I might try spraying it with some kind of lacquer, but I guess we'll see. If it doesn't last. . .it was a lot of work and will kind of annoy me. . .but it is cute, so I'll enjoy it for as long as I can!!

The New Headboard

The old Headboard. I wish i would've taken a picture of this with the bed made, oh well.The new Headboard. The full red squares have the fabric turned down on it to add a little dimension. You just can't see it in this picture.

Baby Shower Gift

My friend is having a baby boy the beginning of November and I'm super excited for her! Here is the gifts that I made for her.

I love these self-binding blankets! They are so easy and so cute!Then I did some appliques. I found a few online tutorials, but I ended up just using light weight stitch witchery. Then I put a piece of computer behind it to help feed it through. It worked like a charm and didn't bunch up the onsie at all! I'm so happy!

Then I made her a few burp cloths using THIS tutorial. I love it by the way!

I've very excited with how it all turned out!

Linen Shelf Cover

In my new apartment I have no linen closet. The only place I had to put my towels, sheets, and TP was a plastic shelving unit I got from Lowe's that I put in our guest bathroom. Well it looked terrible and I wanted to cover it up. I used Make it and Love it's tissue box cover Tutorial found HERE. I just made it to the dimensions of the shelf. Then I added ribbon on the top and had two pieces for the front and added two buttons with flowers so it would stay closed and look pretty!

So far it's worked great!

Picture Board

My fridge is covered with baby announcements and other family/friend pictures. I was getting a little sick of the clutter on my fridge so I decided to make a picture board. I decided to only use items I already had to make this.

Items:
Cardboard Box
batting
Piece of fabric the size of one side of the box
thin ribbon
thick ribbon
staple gun & staples
embroidery thread
needle

I cut one side of the cardboard box and then placed a same size piece of batting on the box. Then I covered it with the piece of fabric and flipped it onto it's back. I took my staple gun and staples and placed one staple in the middle of each side, and then stapled the rest of the fabric to the box.
After that I took the skinny ribbon and cut it to the different sizes I wanted and then staples them to the back as well.
I tried stapling the ribbon down where they met in the middle but the staple wouldn't hold. So I decided to sew it in. I took a bigger needle and some embroidery thread and sewed each intersection of ribbon.
Then I took thicker ribbon and cut it in two pieces, staples to the back on opposite ends of one side and then tied it in a bow so I could hang it up on the wall.

And there you have it!

I decided to try and make this dress which is the Simplicity 3823 pattern. I'm really happy with how it turned out! I had to alter it slightly for it to fit my shape in the midsection. I used scrap pieces of white fabric and made the top so I could change it to how I needed. I also changed the midsection. I made the front midsection the brown and then added ties in the back. But for the most part I followed the pattern to the "T"!Just being silly!

Dog Leash

I decided to make Link a couple of leashes. We want to get him one of those retractable ones, but he's just a puppy and we decided to have these kinds first to teach him how to be on a leash. But I didn't want to spend too much money on them.

I went to JoAnn's and bought some belting found in the trim by the yard section. The blue and white one worked perfect by itself so I just took one of those clippy thingys, fed the belting through and folded it under and then sewed a square and an X to keep it in place. With the handle I did the same thing but left a loop big enough to put my hand through.

With the red one I decided to sew pieces of fabric on the sides to spruce it up. I took 2" pieces and ironed them in fourths then zig zaged the strips onto the belting. Then I made the clip and handle the same way as the first.

I got the idea from Anna Maria Horner's tutorial found HERE and just changed it to what worked better for me.

Another Camera Strap

When Lisa posted her camera straps she really inspired me to make one of my own!This is another great project for scrap material! I made a dress out of this material (which I'll be posting soon!) and loved it so much I decided to use the scraps for this. Also I learned how to do ruffles (which I've been terrified to do but they are actually super easy!) Lisa posted some great links for this, I used Nursery Rhymes and Sweet Times tutorial found HERE. I didn't used the fusible fleece and it worked great for me.

I used decided to put the yo-yo on here because my strap is pretty thin and I wanted to put in a lens cover pocket so the flower covers the bulging of the cover when it's in the pocket like the picture below.

Doggie Toy

My husband and I just adopted a cute little Chipin (Miniature Pincer Chihuahua mix). We didn't have many toys for him, so one day while I was making something else I decided to make a little tug toy for him out of some scraps.

He is a boy, but since I just used scraps I didn't care that I used pink and purple!

The scraps are about 12" X 28". I twisted all three pieces up and tied them together, then I braided them really tight. I only used thread to tie the ends up, but I used a ton. He's only a puppy so it holds, but once he's older I'll have to come up with something more durable.

Thus far he's loved playing with it. He loves playing tug of war with Brian. It's pretty darn cute!

Head Bands

Here are a few headbands I made with a friend. I got some good practice making the rosettes. And I always love making the yo-yo's! But I burnt my finger quite a few times trying to hot glue the flowers to the headbands. Oh well, I think they turned out great!

Date Night Jar

I have made other date night jars, but I just seem to find more and more that I like and that are cute! So I decided to make another one. I found a jar similar to the one above at Ikea for like 4 bucks. Well for how many "ideas" I had they all just didn't fit. So I went to Hobby Lobby and found a similar jar and used a 40% off coupon and got if for $3.50. So it wasn't a total loss. I'm sure I'll use that other jar for something fun! Anyways, so all I did was use scrapbook paper, cut it down to the size of a normal paper and print off all the ideas on the white side of the paper. Then I cut it up, folded it up, and stuffed it in this jar. I glued ribbons on as well just make it pretty! I got some of the ideas for dates HERE at My Creative Stirrings. The great thing is a lot of these ideas were either really cheap or free!

Hemming Workout Capris

I am only 5' 3" and it's hard to find capris that are actually capris! I normally just roll them up, but these I'm using to workout and for running. So rolling them up wouldn't work because I'd be jumping up and down and they'd come unrolled and then I'd just get bugged. So I decided to hem them.

First I measured where I wanted them to fit, then I cut off that excess portion.Then I rolled them up and inch and pinned as much as possible so the material stayed as flat as possible.

I don't work anymore so I've really been learning more and more about my machine. I've already learned so much, and I know there is tons more to learn! Anyways, I have this niftly stitch just for hemming. (I'm sure everyone does, but I just found mine!) (Oh, by the way it's the bottom stitch on the left in the picture).

Instead of sewing on the back, like I normally do, you sew along the front of it so the stitch shows. I am so happy with how it looks!

After you sew it, you flip it inside out and trim the excess material off.

And you have nicely hemmed workout capris, or any pair of pants for that matter!