Repurposing Day 18: Felt Flower Poufs

I'm doing another re-post today for a repurposing project.  This is a cute and easy way to spice up an old sweater, cardigan, scarf etc...enjoy!  I promise I have new projects to post soon!  After making my felt stockings, I've had a ton of leftover felt. So, I decided to try making these flower poufs, which ended up being very easy!! You can pin one on a sweater, headband, barrette, use it to decorate a package...the possibilities are endless!




First, you need to cut 8 felt rounds, the bigger the circle, the bigger your pouf will be.



Then, you are going to take four of the circles and fold them into fourths


Once they are folded, you need to pin them together to form a circle like pictured below. Use lots of pins because they are a little tricky to work with at this point.


After you have them pinned, simply sew them by hand in the center. Mine does not look pretty and I just kinda randomly sewed. This will not show in the end, so you basically are just making sure that nothing comes loose!



After you have sewed the first four circles, you will take the next four and do the same thing. Once they are folded, just layer them right on top of the four that are already sewn, and continue attaching so that you now have two layers of four folded felt circles.


After everything is attached, remove all the pins and you have a cute little pouf!! See, none of the messy stitching shows!

Repurposing Day 17: knit pant refashion tutorial

Confession: I'm TOTALLY cheating for today's repurposing post.   I did this post a few months ago and I'm re-posting today for my repurposing project.  I was in Florida for 4 days and it really set me  back for my repurposing projects, so I'm playing catch up!  But, hopefully you will still enjoy this little project!

Lula has a pair of pink knit pants that she wants to wear every day.  They are size 2T, but Lula wears a 3T and is quite tall for her age.  So, needless to say...they are pretty short.

However, she is very skinny and now that she wears underwear, she doesn't have that diaper bulge.  So, the pants fit great in the waist...maybe even a little loose.

I decided to turn them into capris so she can still wear then for awhile longer. 

First, I just cut them off at the length I wanted.

I decided to add a band of fabric to the hem for interest.

I just cut a strip about 2in wide and measured the length around the hem and then added a bit for a seam.

Iron the ends under about 1/4in and stitch

Fold and iron in half and stitch ends closed.

Finish off raw edge with a zigzag stitch

Then, iron the knit under about 1/4 inch and pin the fabric hem on.

Stitch in place about 1/4 inch from knit hem edge. 

I made it so that there would be a little gap in the fabric hem.

I made another strip of fabric similar to the hem and tied it, then hand stitched it in place in the center of the waistband

I love giving clothes a second life!

DIY Roman Shades Using Mini Blinds

I have finally made some roman shades for our bedroom.  
It has taken me forever to start the project, but once I did it was so fast and easy! 
I found a few different tutorials online (here and here) on how to make roman shades out of mini blinds.  I adapted them and this is the method I came up with. 
Here's what you will need to make 2 shades:
2 cheapy mini blinds2 yards of fabric (more or less depending on the size of your windows)hot glue gunfabric gluescissorssewing machine

All the tutorials I found were "no sew" which required gluing the fabric.  I prefer sewing to make things look a little more professional, so I cut my fabric to size and turned under the edges twice, then edge stitched all around.  I ended up with a large panel of fabric.

Now you need to take apart your mini blinds.   Open it up and fully extend it.  Clip all of the "ladder" like strings that hold the slats together.  Do NOT clip the larger inner string that goes through the center.

Now pop off the white circles at the bottom.

Now you can clip the larger attaching strings.  This will allow you to take off all the slats.

Your blind should now look something like this.

Next, you want to measure out where you want the slats to go on your roman shade...aka how many folds you want.  My fabric was 42 inches long, so I just made a slat every 7 inches.  Using a ruler, draw lines on the back of the fabric with a pencil.

Now you are going to glue the slats on the lines you made.  Using fabric glue on the convex side of the slat, smear it on.  I tried to smear the glue a little so that when it dried, it wouldn't look like a distinct hardened line of glue from the outside if that makes sense.

Glue them all on as straight as possible.  Make sure your fabric is really smoothed out so that there won't be any wrinkles on the outside.

Now place your mini blind skeleton on the fabric, and weave those strings back through the holes in the slats.  You may have to pull the fabric away from the glue a bit to get it through, but it shouldn't make anything fall apart.

This is the part I couldn't figure out.  You need to attach the top bar of the mini blind.  All of the tutorials I saw attached it like this...but as you will see, the pulley strings (which you need to raise and lower your shades) would be  covered up if you did it this way.  I don't know if my blinds are just different or if I was doing something wrong, but I knew this would not work for me.

So, instead I flipped the top bar on its side and glued the fabric on the underneath side. (it will make more sense in the next few pictures) For this part, I used hot glue.  The other tutorials say to use fabric glue because hot glue might disintegrate over time.  I felt like fabric glue wasn't strong enough to hold this heavier piece. So, I guess we will see if my shades hold up.  I figure the worst that could happen is it starts to fall off and I just re-glue it. 

Now you need to glue back on the bottom bar. First, pull the strings through the holes and make knots.

Pop those little white circles back on and hot glue the bar flat against the bottom of the fabric.

You are not quite done!  See how I glued the top of the fabric to the top bar? It's hanging from the under side.  The only problem is now that tacky white bar is exposed.

Notice my solution? Much better.  I just took an extra strip of fabric, turned under and sewed up the ends and hot glued it onto the white bar.  It's not even noticeable now.

And you are done!! It's so easy!! Now, I was prepared to add another layer of room darkening fabric, but I actually think mine are fine the way they are.  If you like your room super dark, you could add this step.  

They look nice up or down.  (Pardon the paint on the windows, they still need to be scraped!) 

The fabric folds pretty nicely when pulled up.  Sometimes you may need to help the folds a bit with your fingers to make it look nicer. 

And in case anyone is worried, right after I took these photos, I attached some little thingies to the window panes up at the very top to wrap the strings around to keep them out of reach of the kiddos.  I don't know what the technical terms are, but you know what I'm talking about. I was stressed out about doing this as soon as they were installed for safety reasons!

I really am pleased with how they turned out! And it was so much cheaper than buying them!  Here's the cost break down for me:
2 yards of Joel Dewberry fabric in Napsack @ $9/yard = $22 (tax + shipping)
2 sets of mini blinds off of Amazon @ 5 each = FREE (because I had giftcards earned with swagbucks!!)
TOTAL:  $22

Store bought roman shades start around $35 each...so making them yourself will save you a ton...plus you can totally customize them to be exactly what you want!!
I'm planning on making another one for the living room. Now to figure out what fabric to use...

How To Make a Modern Silhouette

{I'm re-posting this project from last year for Mother's Day! This is a fabulous gift for anyone who's looking for something easy, crafty and personal to do last minute!}

Happy Mothers day to everyone! I made this simple silhouette of Lula for both of her grandmothers for Mothers Day. It turned out so cute that I plan on making a larger scale one for Lula's bedroom.  Here are the instructions for making one:

Materials:

Decorative paper (I just used some scrapbooking paper from Hobby Lobby)
Exacto knife or scissors
Profile photo of your child printed on cardstock
Spray adhesive
Picture frame
Black acrylic paint
Paintbrush or Sponge brush









First, I outlined the profile with a black marker, simplifying it as much as possible. Don't forget to add in an eyelash and neck!

Next, I simply cut it out with an exacto knife.

Next, I flipped the photo over and painted the backside black.  I did about 2 coats to eliminate any streaking:

After it dried, I sprayed some spray adhesive to the back of the silhouette and attached it to the scrapbook paper.  DONE! So easy!

There are so many options and variations for this project. You could do the silhouette out of the decorative paper on a solid background. Or you could make the silhouette white on a printed background...you could probably do it on fabric, or just do the traditional black on white.

Green Project for a Green Day--Cloth Wipes & Solution

I posted this last St. Patty's day and thought I'd bring it back out from the archives...enjoy!

Lula's cloth wipes have been mysteriously disappearing and the ones that are left are getting a little nasty.  So, I decided it was time to make a fresh batch!  I found some flannel in fun colors on sale and cut them into a bunch of rectangles.  I just used an old wipes container as a guide and cut my flannel so that it will fit nicely in the container.  

I used a blanket stitch to sew two pieces of flannel together so that they are fairly thick and durable. Notice I did not worry about making them perfect! Once you wash them, the edges will fray a bit and they are being used to wipe a baby's butt after all, so no need being a perfectionist on this project!

Once I was done, I had a nice new stack that fit perfectly in our cute wipes container!

And now for my  homemade wipe solution: 

Basically you just need about 1 tsp of Dr. Bronner's soap and about 2-3 drops of tea tree oil. Mix it with a few cups of water and pour over the wipes.  Tea tree oil is naturally anti-bacterial and smells great! Much better than the store bought wipe smell.  Some people prefer to put the solution in a spray bottle and spray it on a dry wipe before using.  I prefer the other method just because it's one less step! Either way works, though!

There is your green project for St. Patty's day! Enjoy!