Easy Wreath Tutorial

I bought a wreath at Michael's several months ago with no real specific purpose in mind. It was on clearance and I am a sucker. I also bought a can of silver spray paint, also on clearance. At the time, these two items were unrelated.

The aforementioned wreath.

Until today.

Boom.

You will need:

A twiggy wreath

Spray paint

Felt or other fabric

Needle and thread or glue

Hot glue gun and glue

Spray paint is known to cause birth defects in California. Thank goodness I live in Wisconsin so I don't have to worry about that. But, you should probably spray paint your wreath outside, or at least not on your hardwood floors (don't worry, it came off. mostly).

Now we're going to make some festive felt flowers to attach to the wreath. This is a little difficult to explain, but I'll do my best. Because that's really all I can do.

Fold a length of felt in half. This piece was 12 inches long and about 2.5 inches deep.

Fold the end in on itself a small amount. Make a little wad out of the felt. It doesn't matter too much what it looks like.

You then flip and twist the long end of the felt around the small inner part. I realize that is incredibly vague. You are wrapping the long tail end of the felt around the base, and twisting it at the same time. In your head you will be saying (or at least I do), "Flip, twist, flip, twist." It is not a science, but the more you do it, the better you will get at it.

When you are finished, you will have a fabulous little flower like this. Secure your flowers by sewing up through the bottom of the flower and back down in a crevice or very close to the original spot you brought your needle up in. Alternately, you could secure with glue as you make the flower.

Repeat until you have as many flowers as you want. Use different colors for variety and different widths of felt in order to achieve different sized flowers.

I made five because I wanted an odd number (OCD will not allow an even amount of flowers) and three wasn't cutting it, yet seven was too many.

I made some red ones to add to the festiveness of the wreath. And because I ran out of the off-white.

In hindsight, it probably could have handled seven flowers.

Hot glue gun those flowers to your wreath and you're done. It took me like 20 minutes to do this whole thing. Not including the time that it took to look for the hot glue gun and curse my husband for hiding the glue gun IN THE GLUE GUN BOX. Seriously, who does that?

Felt Garland Tutorial

Felt is hot. I mean, not physically hot, but it's everywhere in the DIY world. I guess if you lit it on fire it would be hot. It probably burns really well. But that's neither here nor there.

Here's my take on a felt garland. I used holiday colors, but you could totally do it with nursery colors or a birthday theme. Whatevs. This project was really easy. You could even do it without sewing if you have a hot glue gun or some craft glue. Hell, even Elmers would probably work.

You need:

• felt (two sheets of each color. I used red, while, and green)
• two circles to trace (I used one 2.5 inch in diameter, and one 2 inch in diameter)
• scissors
• about a foot of ribbon if you're sewing your garland, about six feet if you're gluing
• various sewing tools (or glue)

Here's my circles.

Trace your circles on the felt. You'll need twelve of each color, each size (so that's 24 of each color, got it?). I found that twelve of the large circle fit on one sheet of felt, whereas I only needed half a sheet for the smaller circles. Cut those bad boys out.

Once you have them all cut out, lay the larger circles out in a line. Do it in a manner that pleases you. I went in a pattern, red, white, green because I knew it would tickle my OCD bone if two of the same color touched, but if that doesn't bug you, go nuts. Then, lay the smaller circles on top of the larger, again in a manner pleasing to your aesthetic.

I ended up with a lovely long line of circles.

Then stack them up in order. Like this:

This kind of makes me want pizza.

I then chain sewed the circles together. Like this:

I've got the smaller circle on top of the larger and I'm just sewing them together.
When I get to the end of one set of circles, I just grab another off my stack
and sew it on creating a chain.

When you have all your circles sewn into a chain, sew your ribbon to the end.

If you didn't want to sew this, you could glue each smaller circle onto a larger circle and then glue that circle sandwich to a longer strand of ribbon. Same basic principle.

Then hang them up and revel in your awesomeness.

DIY Feather Earring Tutorial

I've been coveting all manner of fancy accessories that I've been pinning on my painfully addictive pinterest lately. Today I decided to DIY some feather earrings. It was super easy. And guess what? I made a tutorial so YOU can make some too. I know. I give and I give.

Here we go:

I started with some feathers from Joanns. These came in a bunch together with a couple other odd pieces. $4.99 less 40%

Cut them to the length you desire. Remove a few of the fringies so that you can wrap the top.

Fish hook earrings and 26 gauge copper wire.

I also decided to use some wooden beads that I had from a broken necklace.
Cut two pieces of wire about 7 inches long.

Put the beads on.

Fold your wire in half, creating a loop at the top.

Insert wire through jump ring of fish hook earring.

Twist, twist, twist. The jump portion has a tiny open spot that you'll want to close with some pliers.

Slide that whole wire contraption down through the beads until your earring is about the length that you'd like it.
Add a dab of glue under the bottom bead. I used Gorilla glue, but whatever floats your boat.

Twist the wire a few times under the bottom bead, up the back, under the second bead, and then continue
twisting it all the way up until you run out of wire. I had some extra feather part that I just cut off.
Do it again so you have a matching set.

This is what I look like in my bathroom mirror. Hot, no?

Boom. Now I'm rocking it.

Halloween Lanterns

I've been super busy in poppyland: sewing costumes, back to school, not going insane while my husband is gone for days at a time, and starting up a new business. But we've also been doing some crafting.

It's my favorite time of year...holiday time! Seriously from October 1st until January 1st I am all a tizzy with crafting and the joy of the season." But wait!" you say, "It's not even October 1st yet." That's right. This year the kids caught the first whiff of Fall and decided it was time to decorate for Halloween. Despite my protests that I didn't want to decorate and am far too lazy to carry the Halloween bin from the basement, the house got decorated in a hurry. Somehow they lured their father up from the deep recesses of his woodshop and conned him into carrying the bin up for them. I bet they told him there was candy or something.

So, two days have passed and several decorations have already been broken and/or commandeered to the boys' room. The boys have been begging for more decorations, but the Summer of Cheap has transitioned nicely into the Fall of Cheap (and I'm sure the Winter of Discontent...zing!); we're making our own decorations. Squee!

Super easy and super cheap...pumpkin lanterns made with jars, orange tissue paper, white glue, and ribbon.

Varying sizes of jars...baby food, spaghetti sauce...whatevs. Here we've accessorized with a
shrunken head in a jar and an antique book of Grimm's fairy tales.

What I did:

1. Cut up strips of orange tissue paper
2. Thinned white glue with water
3. Glued paper to clean jars
4. Affix ribbon to the top of jar with glue or tape or whatever.
5. Optional, but you could put black construction paper letters on the jar and make them say "Boo!" or "Halloween" or "Knock, knock, motherfucker" or something cute, but I have OCD and I just know my kids will rearrange them and make them say, "oob!" or some nonesense thus compelling me to get rid of the entire display.
6. Modge podge those babies.
7. Put some tea lights or those fake tea light things in them and enjoy!

Refashion: Men's T-shirt into Women's Summer Top Tutorial!!

I made this shirt today after coming back from the park. Big Baby was napping and the boys were blissfully watching Chicken Little. Except for when I made Thing 1 be my assistant and take pictures, which he was not very happy about.
Here we go!

This is the original shirt. It's my manfriend's. Or it was! I'd been waiting for this one to be
handed down for about a year now. He never wore it, and it was a nice thin tee from Target.
So, I just went in his drawer and took it. Sucka.

You will need a men's t. This one's an XL and I'm about a S/M.
Some stretchy lace. It probably wouldn't have to be stretchy, but this stuff that I used is. It's a remnant, so I can't tell you more than that.
1/4 inch elastic. Enough to wrap around the upper part of your chest.
Various sewing tools.

Slice off the top of the t-shirt right at the armpit hole, preserving as much of the length as you can.

Measure across your chest. This is how much 1/4 elastic you will need.

 Cut two strips of the lace material the width of your t-shirt, plus 1/2 inch for seam allowance. Sew that into one piece. Or, if your lace material is long enough, just cut one piece plus 1/4 for seam allowance. Sew it wrong sides facing so that you have a circle the same width as your shirt.

Wrong sides facing so that the seam is on the inside when you sew it to the shirt.

Using a seam ripper, cut a rip out part of the seam in the bottom of the t-shirt. This is going to be the top of your shirt,
and the casing for the elastic.

Edge stitch the lace to the front top of the shirt (what used to be the bottom). I'm doing this before I
put the elastic in the casing so I don't accidentally sew the elastic. My lace didn't need anything done to it
to prevent it from fraying; if yours does, then do something to it. Like folding and then sewing, fray checking,
zig zagging or what have you.

Using a safety pin or bodkin push the 1/4 inch elastic through the casing. I like to double the end of the elastic
before I put it on the safety pin so that it doesn't pull out part way through the
mother f@#$ing casing.

Try it on and figure out placement for your straps. I just put them so they'd cover my bra. I had a hard time deciding
whether to make the straps out of lace or knit, but in the end I went with lace. I think I like it.
Thing 1 wouldn't help me with pictures anymore at this point (even though I put his ninja costume him!), so
I had to do them myself.

The rear view.

I left the bottom (where we cut the top off) unfinished for more of a bohemian, deconstructed look. Plus I'm lazy.

Car Seat Crotch Strap Cover: A Tutorial

The frozen tundra is no longer frozen! It's hot and big baby is sportin' her short shorts which means that her car seat straps are coming perilously close to pinching her thighs. And that's just no fun :( So today I whipped up a little cover for her and thought that some other chubby babies out there must be in the same thigh pinching boat. And a tutorial was born.

You'll need to take some measurements before you begin sewing to create your pattern. It's super easy. Measure the crotch strap's length and width (without the latching mechanism). Find a cup that generously covers the entire circumference of the latching mechanism when the cup is placed on top of it. I should have taken a picture of that step, sorry.

To make your pattern, triple the width of the crotch strap. Mine was two inches, so 2*3=6. This is the the length of your rectangle. The height is the length of the car seat strap plus .25. So mine was 1.25+.25=1.5. Alrighty. My rectangle now measures 6 x 1.5. Draw that out and find the middle of the rectangle by folding it in half. See my fold line in the picture below. Set your cup right on top of that line, overlapping by .25" in and trace it. Now cut that out.

Ignore the wavy cutout on the left corner. Do not add a seam allowance.
Cut two out of your chosen fabric. I used a corduroy so that it would be a little stiff,
but that's not really necessary. You can add interfacing if you want, but also not
necessary.

You'll need some bias tape and a 1" piece of hook and loop.
I used some fusible hook and loop which worked nicely.
Although I ran into a snag when I applied one side to the wrong spot,
but I was able to pull it off. Phew.

This is precisely how you do not put your hook and loop tape on.
You should have the hook tape on one side of one piece of fabric,
flip the TWO pieces over so that you're looking at the other piece and
attach the loop tape on the SAME side.
So, in the picture that we're looking at, the tape piece that's on the left side here,
should be directly underneath where it is in the picture.

Grab your bias tape. One side is wider than the other, this side should be in the
back so that you don't have to worry about whether you're catching the back when you sew.

Start on one side of the circle.

And ease your way around. You can pin it, but I'm really lazy.
In fact, I'm so lazy that I chose white bias tape just because
I already had white thread loaded in my machine.

I sewed two lines because I'm rad.

Cut a little snip in the end of your next section of bias tape
so you can butt it up nice and close to the circle.

Like this. In hindsight, I'd cut mine a little deeper and angle it so that it
matches the curve of the circle.
Sew all the way to the edge of the fabric, back tack, and snip your thread.
Then fold the bias tape around the corner and press it flat with your finger and sew it down.
Sort of a mitered corner, but not very precise.

I have no idea with this is portrait orientation, but no matter what I do
delete, re-upload, swear, it won't show up right.
Anyhoo, this is what it looks like.



Super chub is safe.

And someone's happy!
Again in hindsight I would have used a slightly
larger cup to make my circle bigger, but hindsight's 20/20 and this will work.