Rock And Roll Baby

Maybe it’s just me, but shopping for baby clothes can be a bit overwhelming on the pastel cuteness.  Don’t get me wrong, I like a cutely dressed baby as much as anyone else, but I do get sick of all the pastel blues and greens and I really get sick of all those cute-sy teddy bears!

I was really exited to find this tutorial for making newborn gowns from old t-shirts on This Mama Makes Stuff.  I have to say that the pattern and tutorial are surprisingly simple, but I have been working with a lot of knit fabric lately.  I spent a few hours making two gowns and I love the results!

I had a similar gown like this for Little Miss and I loved the ease of diaper changing.  Hers was Winnie the Pooh, Transformers is much more us.I think I might have to add a stencil to this one to make it a bit more special, but it’s still way better than pastels and bears!

I have a bit of knit left over and I think I will be making some matching hats and maybe a few fancy rags.  Now I just need to get a few more t-shirts, I would love some classic concert tees to work with.  If anyone has any cool shirts to trade, let me know.

Friday Favorites and Stuff

Once again it’s time for Friday Favorites, as always featured sellers are listed from left to right, top to bottom.

wtf Contemplation Collection – banished

Bird Bath, stained glass and copper – GloriousGlass

Live Moss Terrarium Kit – MissMossy

Tiny Gnome Village – MoontsyAndFloontsy

Green Glass Alligator Eye Wire Wrapped Ring – kimsjewels

Mealy Monster Land Ben – mealymonster

I have a full weekend of crafting planned and several projects already half done.  A new Sienna Dress, with a monkey, for Little Miss and some manly projects for Little Sir and Little Bun (Check out all these little boy tutorials on luvinthemommyhood).  What crafty stuff will you be working on this weekend?, see you guys next week!

Meat Bag

I finished making the plarn for my project yesterday afternoon. I pulled all of the bags out from under the sink and sorted them out by type/color and I hit the jackpot with some large red bags, woohoo, red plarn!

So as I’m cutting my plarn I’m thinking about how nice it is to not have all those bags under the sink, how I need to make a cute bag holder, and that I really need to make some reusable shopping bags for myself (I’ve made a dozen and given them all away). Then suddenly I remember how every time I buy meat they put it in a plastic bag so the meat juices don’t get on anything else and how I always throw my meat bags away, because who wants to have a bag of meat juice under their sink, ewww? Throwing those bags away annoys me and I decide that I need to make something that can be reused.

Light bulb moment! I’ll fuse some plastic bags together and make a reusable bag just for meat! Fused plastic is pretty sturdy and I can just wash the juices off and use it over and over, yay (I think that I might even try and put it in the washing machine if it got really dirty). I even had the perfect plastic bags, they were super thin and clear.

Using my iron I fused 3 bags together (I cut off the handles and the bottom and fused them double layered). If you haven’t fused plastic before here are some instructions. The clear bags look kind of like waxed paper when fused, because they are super thin there are a few holey areas, no problem, I’ll just patch them with the scraps. I also fused the left over handles from the red bags to make my meat appliqué. I cut the edges even and zigzagged them together and now I have fancy, reusable meat bags.

I fused the letters to the bag, on one I zigzagged the edges and on the other I left it plain, I want to see if it will hold up to regular wear or if the letters will fall off. I like the patchy look, kind of creepy and Frankenstein-ish, funny for a meat bag. I have some left over letters and I might make a couple more of these or maybe I’ll use them for something else, now back to my plarn.

Mini Mushrooms and Plarn

Lately it seems like every time I go to Etsy I see another jar of moss with some tiny mushrooms arranged on top. I like them, but I’m not going to actually buy a jar of moss. I think what I really like are the mushrooms, so I found a tutorial for making mushrooms using wooden drawer pulls on AlphaMom. It was really simple, the kids can help too, and now I have an entire family of mushrooms to live in my plant pots. I really like the tiny white flowers on the Scottish moss they used (I would buy that if I could find it locally).This is just their temporary home, I have a giant teacup and saucer planter (similar to this one) that I’m going to fill with herbs for my kitchen and they will all live in there once the plants are established. Now I just need some miniature garden gnomes.

Speaking of my kitchen, did you know that at night when you turn your kitchen light off that the plastic bags under you sink multiply like rabbits? Well they do and the other day I woke up to this: Now I definitely can’t throw these out so I decided to make some plarn. There are some easy instructions for making plarn here. I have cut up 20 bags and I still haven’t made a dent in my collection. I will be packing up some of these bags and taking them back to the grocery store today, they have a bag recycling bin there, but I’m going to get a good stash of plarn built up too, I have big plans and I need to make sure I have enough. Have you ever worked with plarn?, is it hard on the hands? I’m going to crochet with it, I think it might be difficult to knit with.

Eco-Friendly Fancy Rags

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to use up my knit t-shirt scraps from the Sienna dress for another project and today I’m sharing what I made, fancy rags. Using old clothing for rags is nothing new, when I was growing up we had a drawer full of rags cut from old stained shirts, but these are a little nicer.

I cut up my dress leftovers and two old white shirts from my scrap pile (I really can’t throw anything out and it’s really more of a mountain) into 5” x 7” pieces. Using my colorful thread from old projects I zigzagged around the edges of two rectangles layered together. This was a great way to use up leftover colors of bobbin thread, I cleaned off two whole bobbins, yay!

For the white ones I tried to sew right along the edge and I rounded the corners when I came to them. I got smarter on the colored ones and just sewed near the edge, making the corners square, and trimming the edges closer to the stitching when finished, they look much neater, lay flatter, and it’s a lot easier. On the top left you can see I even used the printed part of the shirts, just remember to turn it to the inside. I will be throwing these in with my regular wash, I expect them to last quite a while and if I ever use them for a particularly nasty job I won’t feel too bad throwing one or two out along the way.

I will be keeping these on my kitchen counter in a basket and they will be used as a substitute for napkins, paper towels, Kleenex, sponges, and dish cloths. I have 24 and I will slowly be making more as I use more of my knit stash. I am excited to switch over to these and am hoping to create even less trash and save a little money as well. Slowly I am trying to make my household more eco friendly and this is just one more small step.

Lilblueboo Pattern Review

Last weekend was $.99 clothing at the Goodwill, my favorite time of the month, and this month I was on a mission for some super cute knit fabrics to make my new pattern. The Goodwill I go to is smaller, but really nicely organized, all the women’s clothing is sorted by color. All I had to do was find a few cute patterned knits and go to the coordinating color section to find matching extra knits, super easy. It was also fun because it didn’t matter what size the shirts were(smalls seem to have the best designs). I came home with this:

Using the Sienna Dress Pattern from Lilblueboo I made this awesome dress for Little Miss:

I was so excited when I got this pattern and have been waiting to try it, I had to find the perfect knits. It has lots of step by step photos and a lot of tips for working with knits, which I thought was going to be difficult (it wasn’t!). I also really like the different sleeve and skirt options for this pattern (I used a tapered sleeve and ruffle for this version), I will be using it over and over and the dresses will have different looks. Don’t forget the opportunity to embellish the fabric is endless. I also have to mention how impressed I was that the pattern pieces matched up so well, a lot of times the commercial patterns are difficult to match (all those notches and dots), not this pattern everything went together smoothly. I highly recommend this pattern, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be, finding/reclaiming old knit fabric is so fun, and the dress is super soft and comfortable! Don’t forget to stop by her blog for more tips and tutorials.

I also brought a few more knits home to work with, you know I spent more that $2.00 on $.99 day, right?

And some cute tops for me and an almost brand new baby coat for next year, the bargain saving high is great and I can’t wait to make a couple more dresses. I also have a plan for the left over knit from making these dresses, more on that later this week. If you want to see what other people are making from her patterns check out her flickr group.

Figure It Out Friday…

…Or what the heck should I do with these. 

I’m taking the day off crafting today because of a silly crafty mishap.  Wednesday I poked my finger with a pin, we’ve all done it, it hurts, there’s usually a little cussing, a little blood, and we get over it, but not this time.  All that pop tab crochet has aggravated it and that little poke is now infected and very tender.  Don’t worry I’ve soaked it in hydrogen peroxide and now it’s covered in antibiotic ointment and a Yoda band-aid and I’m sure it will be all better soon, so in the meantime I’m back to cleaning and unearthing crafting treasures from my basement.

Years ago (like six or seven) I worked at the Holiday Inn delivering room service.  In room service everything is little and fancy (and overpriced): tiny little salt and pepper shakers, miniture bottles of soda, and a itty bitty jars of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.  Little glass jars, with metal lids and I couldn’t just throw them out.  I have at least 100 of these little jars (probably a lot more), 1.2 oz., metal lids, glass, and about 2 inches tall.  They’re so cute and smaller than baby food jars (I have some of those too).What should I do with them?  I don’t want to use them to hold supplies, I want to make something with them.  Originally I saved them to put single use/sample sized bath salt in, but I haven’t really made any bath products and probably never will and if I did I don’t think I really need 100 little jars of bath salt, so lets hear your creative ideas.

Have a crafty weekend and I’ll see you all next week!