Down on the Farm–A Countrified Dress

I have been seeing cute short flouncy dresses for summer everywhere.  I really wanted to make a white version, except the fabric I ordered had too much sheen in it.  In other words more appropriate for my daughter than myself.

So I looked in my stash and found a vintage flower print cotton that I had bought super cheap, and I had enough yardage to make the dress.  And it looked like it would make a great print to be “country” enough for the Farm Party.

Enter The Farm Party Dress.

Really wishing I owned a pair of cowboy boots, but I don’t.  Here I am wearing it with heels, but I will definitely be wearing flats for the birthday party this weekend.

Down on the Farm–Burlap and Gingham Banner

I just finished up making the birthday banner.  I thought I would give you a sneak peak.

There are many examples of burlap banners out there.  Some are painted, some are sewn.  Mine was a strange hybrid of ironing and gluing.

And I never do things the easy way.  Here is the up close shot.

For those crazy people wanting to know how I did mine.

1.  I picked a font I liked and printed out the letters I needed, then I cut them out.

2.  I traced the letters onto fusible craft weight interfacing (non sticky side).  I traced the back or negative side of the letters, so that once I put the fabric on, you could read them correctly.

3.  I ironed the fabric onto the sticky side of the interfacing.

4.  I cut out the letters and I cut out the shape I wanted for the bunting out of burlap.

5.  I hot glued the letters to the burlap bunting pieces.

6.  I cut thin strips of my gingham (or any fabric you are using).  I needed to tie my strips together to make them long enough to hold all the bunting pieces.

7.  Lastly I hot glued the bunting to the fabric strips, folding the bunting pieces over at the top and hot gluing that side down to the back, so that the top had a nice finished edge.

Down on the Farm Week–Gingham Shirt

I’m busy preparing for my son’s second birthday party, which is a farm theme.  I plan to show a few items that I have made.

First up is a little shirt for my daughter.  This one was super simple, which is why I tackled it first.

It would have been even easier, if she had already owned a white tank top.  Since she didn’t, I had to quickly sew up one, and then add the red gingham to the bottom.

And yes I said shirt, even though it looks like a dress.  For the farm party I plan to have her wear it with a pair of cutoff jean shorts…shown below.

Birthday Parties

My son’s 2nd birthday is coming up.  I wanted to do a big party with a bunch of great food, homemade banners, dessert table, tableware, games, etc.  And as the date is getting nearer, I’m realizing that sometimes looking on the internet or pinterest for ideas just gives you a false expectancy of what parties should be like. 

Most people don’t have the time to pull together such fancy and creative parties.  Or a lot of times if they do, they buy a lot of the things, or are planning for a month(s) in advanced. 

So for me, it’s time to get realistic and let go of most of my ideas.  I have a week left to pull off a few things for my little horse and farm loving boy! 

This is part of his party invite, he personally helped me put all the characters on it.  And he loves Old MacDonald, except he calls it “Old Donald Moo Moo” just as listed above and then likes to say the EIEIO part.

Summer Challenge Week 3

I’m noticing a trend that I keep getting the things done for myself first.

Well the next one I accomplished was sewing up a new bow front tank for myself.  Again I dug into my stash of fabric and picked out a vintage looking small floral print.

I ended up liking this top a lot.  It was great for a girls night out last week.  I am realizing that I need a few more tank tops to put into rotation in my closet, so I will most likely be looking for more inspiration and trying them out.

And yes, I chopped all my hair off.  Something shorter for the summer!  Goodbye to the last two years of growing it out.

Summer Challenge Week 2

This week I choose to modify some jean shorts using a pinterest idea as inspiration.

I really loved the “aztec” inspired print, but I didn’t have anything like that in my stash.  And I didn’t really feel like running out and buying anything just for this project.

So in looking at my stash, I knew it was either going to be stripes or floral that would get added to my shorts.  I had a pair of light wash shorts I bought last year that were a little too short for my taste and didn’t really seem to go with anything.

So after adding a bright pink floral fabric….I got this.

Now I’m kind of wondering if I should leave them as-is, or if I should distress them to look like this (except keeping my floral band on the bottom)?

This blog has a tutorial on distressing that I might try.  DIY - perfectly distressed skinny jeans tutorial from Say Yes to Hoboken.

But for now these shorts are the perfect length, and great for casual wear!

Use the Library as a Resource

In following different blogs I would see sewing book reviews, or mentions of patterns from books.  The sewing books can be expensive at times, and you often don’t really know what is all included.  I was elated when I found out that usually if a book is popular enough, the library will carry it.

I mentioned wanting to make a pair of shorts from Oliver from a sewing book….this one in particular.

I finished them quite a while ago, but I finally got around to photographing them.

They were called the “Treasure Pocket Pants”, but I turned them into shorts.  It was fairly simple to follow, and I did my first faux fly…which I love, it makes the pants/shorts look more professional.

So if you are wanting to get into sewing, a great place to start is your local library!

Another Way to Loosen a Shirt–DIY Oh No

I choose another item in my closet today, or more correctly, my drawer.  I own quite a few t-shirts but I never wear most of them.  These particular t-shirts that never get worn are too nice to qualify as workout or lounge wear shirts, but not nice enough to actually want to wear out of the house.

Take this brown striped t-shirt.  I believe I got it at old navy for $5 last year around this time when they were having a big sale.  It’s actually really comfortable, and it fits just fine, but it might be a tad on the tight side.

So I thought I would jump on the bandwagon of adding a floral print to my stripes and try and alter the t-shirt.  First I added a small pocket to the front of the shirt.  If I was smart I would have stopped there.

But as you can see from the photo above, I tried to replace the back of the shirt with the same floral non-stretch fabric.  Most times you see this done, it is only a panel at the top, in fact I have done it before on this shirt.

There is a reason you should only replace the top panel.

I wanted to make the back panel a little wider so the shirt had a little more room to it.  What I didn’t expect was to have way too much fabric vertically so that it bunched up all over the place.

I tried to fix it by sewing it down and creating a fold to take away some of the fabric.  You can’t really tell that anything has been done, but it might look slightly better now.

Except now there is a slight hiccup on the side.

I still like the shirt, and most people probably won’t notice the little problems.  But if attempting this again, I would not replace the whole back panel.

Summer Challenge Week 1

I’m going with the one I think will be the easiest and help my closet the most.

Challenge:  Too add fabric to a shirt to make it looser.

This week I will have multiple posts, because I actually have quite a few shirts I don’t wear that can be modified, and hopefully get more wear.

So shirt number one is a little red number.

I added some lace fabric in the back.  I had the lace leftover from another project, but you could always get a remnant at the store too.

I went with a triangle piece, because I really wanted it wider at the bottom, and only a slight difference at the top.

For days I want to be modest, I can easily wear a cami underneath, this picture was taken without one….obviously.

And when you get back to the front, the little bit of lace on the back, definitely fixed all my problems in the front.

6 Week Summer Challenge

1.  Add fabric to create contrast to jean shorts.

2.  Sew up a bow front tank top for myself.

3.  Sew a foldover bag/clutch.

4.  Sew an interesting shirt for my daughter, using this picture as a basis for the pattern.

5.  Paint some artwork for the dining room.

6.  Loosen up some shirts that are too tight by adding different fabrics.