Category Archives: Patterns and Tutorials

7 Replies

I don’t know about you, but for the longest time my thread and bobbins have been stashed wherever they fit. In boxes, laying around on my sewing table, in my sewing kit. I was always have to search three or four places to see if I had a certain color of thread.

Now that I have a dedicated sewing space, I decided to build myself a wall hanging (or leaning) thread organizer! It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever made but it could be easily prettied up with a coat or two of paint and it sure does the trick!

Materials:

– Hammer
– 2/12″ nails
– 12″ x 36″ board
– measuring tape
– pencil

First thing’s first. I ran into a little trouble hammering nails into knots and wood grains in my board, so try to get as un-knotty a board as possible.

For average thread spools, you’ll want to put nails every 2 inches (more if you’re doing large spools like for sergers). Using your measuring tape and pencil, put a tick mark every 2 inches down both long edges of your board.

Next, match up the tick marks across from each other with your measuring tape and make tick marks going across the board every 2 inches. You should end up with a grid of tick marks, like this;

Can you see my little tick marks?

Next, hammer a nail in at every tick mark, with an upwards slant to the nail. I found it easiest to start at the bottom and work my way up the board.

You’ll end up with what my husband was referring to as my ‘bed of nails’….

And that’s it! In about 30 minutes from start-to-finish, you’re done!!!

I set mine up so that spools of thread hung on every other row. Then, the matching bobbin can hang under each spool making it super easy to see what I’ve got.

The only word of caution I would extend is that if you’re going to hang this on a wall, bear in mind that it is very heavy. I wouldn’t recommend hanging if there are no studs available. I haven’t tried hanging mine yet. Finding studs in my….er……”economically” built apartment can be….sporadic. At best. But even leaning against the wall, this sure beats the pants off what I had going on before!!!

Tutorial: Reusable Gift Tags

4 Replies

I originally made this tutorial to introduce a new item to my Etsy shop, but my super supportive mother-in-law already purchased the item! So it’ll be a few days before I’ve got more in there. Anyway, without further ado…..a tutorial for making your very own reusable gift tags!

Materials:

– felt (one 9×12 inches makes 6 tags)
– rotary cutter and cutting mat
– thin ribbon (1/8″ width)
– white card stock

I found it easiest to build myself a card stock template to trace onto the felt. I cut each template to be 2″ wide and 9″ long, folded it in half and trimmed the corners then cut a rectangle out of one half. This rectangle cutout will make the window that the card stock will fit into.

I found it was easiest to cut the strip out with a rotary cutter. To cut out the window, I found it easiest to fold the felt in half length wise, trace the window and cut it out with scissors. I also cut a little slit above the window for inserting replacement card stock.

At the end, you should be left with something that looks like this:

Unfortunately, as often happens with me, I got a little engrossed in the process and stopped taking pictures. Whoops! But it’s pretty simple so I think you can follow along without them.

If you want to sew an extra embellishments on the back of the tag, it is best to do it before assembling the tag. I just used a couple bits of scrap felt and sewed them up the center to make a pair of leaves.

If you’re going to add buttons like I did, it’s best to wait and do that at the end. To assemble, just fold the felt in half bringing the tips together. When pinning, insert a folded length of ribbon (about 6-8″) at the point and sew all around the tag as absolutely close to the edge as you can get. I used a contrasting thread for a nice extra bit of detail!

These gift tags are also great to use as ornaments when gifting money! (And could be easily converted into gift card holders if sewn a bit wider)

Tutorial: DIY Placemats With Pockets!

3 Replies

With Christmas fast approaching and my employment still in the “un” category, I’m looking at trying to do an almost entirely handmade holiday season this year. I think kitchen linens can make a great hand sewn gift, and I know my mom appreciated the double-sided napkins I made her earlier this year! Anyhoo, with this type of gift in mind I decided to try out a pattern for placemats with utensil/napkin pockets on them. Cuuuuuuuute!

Materials (for a place setting for 6):
1 yd linen/burlap (heavy)
2 yd coordinating lightweight cotton (1 yd for placemats and 1 yd for napkins)
coordinating thread

As I’ve mentioned before, I absolutely love the fabrics available from Fabricworm.com. I came across this fabulous print from Tegan White for Birch Organics and thought it would work well with the current color scheme happening in our apartment.

Awwww, I want a string of firefly jars to light up my apartment!

I liked the idea of making a place setting for 6. Even if we don’t always have that many people for dinner it’s nice to have extra around in case something gets an irreparable stain or to put serving dishes on. So. Using my roller blade, I cut out 6 15″x15″ squares from the Firefly cotton for the napkins, and 6 19″x15″ squares each of Firefly cotton and my linen for the placemats (the Firefly cotton goes on the back to make them reversible!).

I also cut 6 8″x5″ linen pieces and 6 5″x2″ cotton pieces (or 5″ lengths of coordinating bias tape) to make a cute little pocket for your silverware and napkins!

As was the case with the double sided napkins, ironing with this project is key. Siiiiiiiigh. To make the napkins iron a quarter inch hem on all sides, then fold it over and press again with about a half inch hem. Top stitch using a coordinating thread and you’re done!

BAM! Cute napkins. Done.

To make the placemats, you’re going to want to sew the pocket to the linen before assembling the front and back pieces. This keeps the back neat, without any visible stitch lines making the placemat reversible. So pull out that iron again, we’re not done with it yet!

You’ll want to fold and press the 5″x2″ strips of cotton into bias tape (I’ve talked about how to do that before here), then sew them to one short edge of each 8″x5″ square of linen. This will be a decorative edging on the top of the pocket.

Next, press a half inch hem into the remaining three naked sides of the pocket piece, folding toward the wrong side.

More ironing? Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!

Next, attach the pocket to your linen placemat front. I put the pocket on the left side of the placemat (though a quick interwebs search told me that people do either side) 2.5″ from the left edge and 2″ from the bottom edge.

Once you’ve got your pocket pinned in place, neatly top stitch the three unadorned sides down as close to the edge of the pocket as possible.

Now we’re ready to sew the backing to the placemats. With right sides facing, sew the linen to the cotton backing with a half inch seam allowances on three sides. Leave one of the short sides open. We’re going to turn this inside out so cut the corners to help the fabric lay flat when we do this. You should end up with something that looks like this:

Flip the placemat right-side-out. You might have to use a pencil to really get in the sewn corners and get them nice and crisp. Fold a half inch hem inward on the open edge of the placemat and press (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh). Top stitch around all sides of the placemat with coordinating thread about a quarter inch from the edge.

And blammo! You’re done!!!!!!!

Tutorial: Mending A Torn Dress Shirt

18 Replies

I’m not sure why exactly, but my husband has gone on an elbow-tearing bender with his work shirts. Right in front of my eyes he tore the elbows out of two shirts while putting them on yesterday morning! We’re trying to keep to a budget these days (and try to live frugally and consciously in general) so I decided to try to mend the shirts to avoid buying new ones (four in total!!!). I’ve written up a little tutorial here that I hope is easy to follow!

Materials:
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA – scissors
– iron
– thread in the color of the shirt
– fusible interfacing

Step 1: Interfacing.
To add some stability to the torn area, I first started by fusing a small patch of interfacing to the shirt. Fusible interfacing is two-sided; fabric on one and little bumps of glue on the other. You can see in the picture below the smooth side of the interfacing is in the foreground and the fusible side in the back.

I cut a patch of interfacing about at least a half inch larger than the tear in each dimension. I’ve also found with past experience that round edges are less likely to peel up than sharp corners, so cut out a oval rather than a rectangle.

Lay the shirt on the ironing board then lay the interfacing patch on top of the tear, glue bump-side down (contacting the shirt). Try to pull the tear together as much as possible so that the two torn sides of fabric are in contact. This will make your mending job easier and less noticeable. Set your iron to as high a heat as your fabric will allow and iron with even, firm pressure for about 15 seconds then allow to cool.

Step 2: Sewing the Tear
First neaten up the tear by trimming any loose threads that are hanging off the shirt.

Next, you need to sew the tear itself closed. You’ve got two options for this depending on how noticeable you want the final tear to be. Option 1 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster, but definitely a more noticeable mend and may work better on non-patterned shirts.

Option 1: Set your sewing machine to a wide zigzag stitch and top stitch over the tear, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of the sew and to catch both sides of the tear while sewing. You’re left with a neat mend, but one that can definitely be noticed.

I tried Option 1 first, but since my husband was going to be wearing these shirts to work and potentially meeting clients, I decided to take the time to do Option 2, an (almost) invisible repair.

Option 2: This option is much more tedious than the first because it requires hand-stitching. Using the smallest stitches possible, I sewed over the tear making sure to catch both sides of it. Since this was a patterned shirt, as I sewed I tried to keep my stitches with the white thread to the white parts of the check pattern. I then sewed in a similar fashion about 2 mm around the tear for extra stability.

Tear??? What tear?? Ok, it’s not quite invisible and you’ll never have a perfect mend but this is pretty darn close!!! Keep in mind this image is zoomed in on the tear and when he’s wearing it, you’re really hard pressed to find it!

Step 3: Secure the Interfacing
I find that over successive washes, fusible interfacing often starts to peel up off the fabric it was attached to. To try to keep this from happening, I also used tiny stitches around the perimeter of the patch, keeping to the white parts of the pattern to secure the edges of the interfacing and add extra stability (You can just make this out in the picture above).

Here’s how the wrong side of the repair looks:

I’m hoping these repairs, hold up in the wash and I don’t find myself repeating this process too often! Fingers crossed!

Tutorial: Knitting Needle Wrap

2 Replies

After wrestling with a messy bag of loose yarn, needles and other knitting bits, I finally decided that it was time to make a proper wrap to keep my knitting needles organized. It’s a simple project that takes just a couple hours from start to finish (or less with a few shortcuts!).

Materials:
– Three pieces of your main fabric** cut into the following sizes;
– 18″ x 5″
– 18″ x 8 ”
– 18″ x 16″
– Three 2″ wide strips of edging fabric (or bias tape) cut to 18″ lengths
– Two 2″ wide strips of edging fabric (or bias tape) cut to 17″ lengths
– 2″ x 25″ piece of tie fabric (or ribbon)
– 2″ x 13″ piece of tie fabric (or ribbon)
(Optional: 18″ x 6″ piece of decorative fabric)
– thread
– scissors

**To make your life easier and your project neater, try to choose a fabric without obvious right and wrong sides. A heavy cotton will hold up well. I used the leftover scraps from some curtain panels.

Step 1: Preparing your edging
This step is essentially creating your own bias tape, so it can be a real time saver to just use bias tape for this step instead of contrasting fabric as I have here. To create your edging you’re going to want to make sure your iron is heated up!

First, press each strip of fabric in half length-wise, creating a center crease (wrong sides together). Open up the folded fabric, then bring each long edge to the center crease and press again. You should now have a long strip of fabric about 1″ wide with two long edges folded to meet in the middle. Finally, recreate that strong center crease by folding the fabric in half length-wise again, hiding the fabric edges on the inside.

Press the fabric for the ties (skip this if you’re using ribbon for the ties instead) in the same manner.

While you’re at it, with wrong sides together, go ahead and iron a half inch seam allowance along the long edge of your contrasting fabric for the decorative strip around the outside of the wrap.

Step 2: Sew decorative strip
Take the 18″ x 6″ contrasting fabric you just pressed and top-stitch it to what will be the outside of your wrap on the largest piece of main fabric. Placement doesn’t need to be precise but the top of the strip should be around the middle of the main fabric.

Something to take into consideration if you’re using contrasting fabrics is that the stitching will be visible from the other side. So if you care about that (which I don’t on a project like this) you may want to match your needle thread to the decorative panel and your bobbin thread to your main fabric.

Step 3: Sew edging/bias tape to top edges
Using 3 of the 4 pieces of 18″ long edging, pin one piece of edging to each piece of main fabric along the 18″ side. You’ll want to insert the piece of main fabric into the edging fold so each side of the main fabric has decorative edging on it.

Now carefully sew along the edging as close to the open side as possible. Remember that these stitches are meant to catch both sides of the edging fabric, so check periodically to ensure you are doing so.

You should now have three pieces of your main fabric, each with a strip of edging sewn to one of the long edges.

Step 4: Sew the bottom edge
Line up your three pieces of main fabric along their bare bottom 18″ edge and baste all three together. This basting step makes it way easier to sew the edging on. Now sew your final piece of 18″ length edging around this bottom edge. This stack will be a little thicker than the first edges so make sure your catching both sides of the edging/bias tape when you sew.

(Notice on this picture the stripe of green stitches – this is showing through from the decorative strip on the outside of the wrap and can be avoided as I described above).

Step 5: Sew the sides
Next, baste the overlapping sides of the fabric as you did along the bottom edge (this is visible in the picture above), then cover these with the 17″ long edging strips. The sides of the main panels are 16″ long so you should have about an inch of overhang with the edging. Center the edging so you’ve got a half inch of overhang on either end, then fold under and pin before sewing.

Step 6: Sewing the ties.
This is another easy shortcut for this pattern. Instead of making your own ties, you can simply buy lengths of coordinating ribbon. If you’re making your own ties you should have them pressed as you did for the edging. Top-stitch the ties as close as possible to the open edge.

Once you’re ties are made you can sew them the right side of your wrap on the inside. Try to line them up with the center of the outside decorative strip.

Step 7: Pockets
The final step is just to sew some pockets to hold your needles and notions. Top-stitch straight lines from the bottom edge of the wrap to the top of the second pocket (8″ height). I sewed one of these lines every 2 inches because I rarely use really chunky needles. My size US19 needles barely fit in a 2″ pocket, so if you have a lot of chunky needles you may want to consider different spacing. I also left a larger pocket on one side to hold odd shaped bits and pieces.

And that’s it! You’re done! Go ahead and fill your new knitting needle wrap! As you can see in the pictures below, I also chose to label some of the pocket with needle sizes I commonly use, but keep in mind that this prevents reorganization of the roll in the future.

Stuff, fold, roll, and wrap! And away you go with your very own handmade knitting needle wrap!

Hand-Sewn Felt Embroidered Baby Onesies: Tutorial

5 Replies

Since all my friends simultaneously decided to hop on the baby train about a year ago, I’ve been making adorable (if I do say so myself!) hand-sewn onesies for the little booger machines. I’ve given a sneak peak before in my previous post showing what I made my nephew for Christmas and now it’s time for a tutorial!

This week I made a couple onesies for some cute little baby girls and took pictures along the way. Check out this cute skull with a bow onesie!

Here’s what you’ll need for this project;

Materials List:
– onesie
– felt
– embroidery floss
– scissors
– fabric glue

Seems like for a new born baby you’d buy the newborn size (0-3 mos.) onesie, right? Not always. Some of my friends have birthed behemoths….er….I mean, healthy-weight…..babies that actually never fit the 0-3 mos. clothing size. You might want to consider purchasing a 3-6 mos. onesie, the baby can always grow into it!

When getting started I take the time to first sketch my pattern out on a piece of paper. This gives the nice advantage of reproducibility if I save the paper template for future projects.

Use this template to trace out your pattern onto a square of felt and cut the pattern.

Although I reinforce the felt with embroidery, I always like to first adhere the felt to the onesie with fabric glue. This helps to hold the applique in place while I’m sewing and adds a little extra strength to the final product.

I use bottled glue instead of spray glue because I find that when working with small pieces of fabric like this, the spray glue can get a little messy. I try to keep the glue away from the edges where I’ll be sewing because putting the needle and thread through the glue repeatedly really gums it up and leads to tangling while trying to embroider.

Center your felt cutout on the onesie. I usually try to position it so that it will center on the child’s chest, but it can be pretty cute to sew something to the bum of the onesie.

For both a decorative detail and additional strength, I embroider around the edge of the felt with a complimentary color of embroidery floss.

Standard embroidery floss is actually composed of 6 thin threads. I find it is too difficult to work with the floss at full thickness so I separate out 3 strands to embroider with. Just hold on to the 3 you want to use, gently pull on the 3 you’re setting aside and it should separate pretty easily (the longer your thread, the more likely it is to tangle).

I used blanket stitch to embroider around the edges of the felt applique. Blanket stitch is a really easy way to add a cute embellishment that I’ve shown before in my double-sided napkin post.

To do blanket stitch, first come up through the fabric from the bottom, then put the needle back down through the fabric about 1 cm over and 1 cm down (or whatever spacing you’d like), and pull the floss through. Leave a little slack in the floss, don’t pull it all the way through.

When bringing the needle back up, bring it up on the edge of the felt across from where you brought the needle down. Make sure to bring the needle up inside the loop of floss left on the top. Pull taught.

Here’s a nice YouTube video describing the process if you found that a bit confusing.

Embroider around all edges of the felt to give it a cute hand-made look.

I wanted to add just a touch more sweetness to this little skull so I also cut out a bow in pale pink felt. Just cut two pieces, one larger oval and one thin rectangle.

To form the bow, pinch the oval in half along the long edge, then fold the edges back onto themselves.

I added a little stitch at this point to hold it together while I used the thin rectangle segment to wrap around the center of the bow and stitched it all together.

Hand-stitch the bow to the skull and you’ve got one adorable onesie!!

I’ve probably made about 20 of these over the past year or so. Once you get the hang of it, it usually only takes about 1.5-2 hours to pull a onesie together!

Here are a few other ones that I’ve made over the past year…

I’ve linked this onto parties over at Thirty Handmade Days, So You Think You’re Crafty and Nap Time Crafters. Head on over and see what other crafters have linked to the parties!

DIY Mixed Flower Bridal Bouquet: Tutorial

2 Replies

I got married last week in a small family-only civil ceremony on Jones Island in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington. It was perfect! It was really important to both of us to have the things we wanted without breaking the bank. For me, that meant a couple small DIY projects. One of these was the flowers.

Photo credit: Matthew Land
http://matthewland.com/

Getting married in such an isolated location puts some limitations on vendor availability. I really just had two florists in town to choose from and at a starting price of $125 for a bridal bouquet, I chose neither! Instead, I bought my wedding flowers from the grocery store!!

I popped into the grocer a couple days before the wedding to scout the flower situation and found out when their shipments of flowers come in so I could buy the freshest flowers with the largest selection. I chose three mixed flower bouquets in a purple and yellow color scheme for a total cost of $28 (that’s $97 savings!).

Materials list:
2-3 bouquets of flowers
Green florist tape
Straight pins
Elastic bands
Shears/scissors
Ribbon/hankie

Step 1: Strip your flowers.
While all those leaves and filler bits look great in a bouquet in a vase, they get in the way when trying to construct a bridal bouquet. So before getting started with any arranging, you want to strip your flowers of ALL leaves and organize them by flower type.

Step 2: Pick your “Show Off” flower.
Once you’ve got all your flowers laid out, you’ll want to choose one or two flowers that will be the center of your bouquet. This should be a larger flower and should be your favorite. I chose the Gerbera daisy as the focal point for my bouquet.

Next you want to select a few flowers to surround your center flower. When adding these it’s nice to work in odd numbers and to keep things even. I add three stalks of flowers around the daisy (pardon the blurry photo!).

Step 3: Florist tape.
Take the time to arrange these few center stalks. When you’re satisfied, use florist tape to hold them in place. Florist tape is a stretchy green tape that’s a bit tacky, so when you wrap it around itself it will self-adhere. It’s what boutonnieres are often wrapped in.

Step 4: Add more flowers.
Next you’ll want to add a few more flowers, in the same even manner as above. If you’re going to add odd flowers, try to balance them with an odd flower on either side of the bouquet. Here, I’ve added clusters of purple flowers evenly spaced around the yellow. Secure the stems with more florist tape every four or five stalks.

If you’re going to add flowers unevenly, try to balance them. For example, in my bouquet I added a yellow lily and orange carnation to one side, then some white daisies to the other (see finished pictures).

Step 5: Add your “filler” and greenery.
Once you’ve got your bouquet built up a little, but not quite finished, it’s time to add your filler and greenery. I added stalks that stood up straight to the back of the bouquet and added looser more droopy stalks to the front of the bouquet.

As the bouquet gets larger it gets more difficult to secure the stems with florist tape alone. I wrapped the florist tape with an elastic band when I found it was getting a little unwieldy, just to make sure everything would stay nice and secure.

Step 6: Add finishing flowers.
The final step is adding a few flowers to the outside to fill in the bouquet and to surround the filler and greenery. I just added flowers until I was happy with the size of the bouquet, making sure the central showcase Gerbera daisy was always visible.

For the final step to keep things nice and tight, I secured the florist tape with straight pins.

Since the bottom of the bouquet would be visible, I also took the time to give the stems a nice even blunt cut at the bottom. I don’t have any pictures of it, but as a final step I wrapped the bottom of the bouquet in my granny’s handkerchief to cover the florist tape.

And voila! My finished bouquet! (I’m hoping there might be a better picture when we get our photos from the photographer. I’ll update the post if I find a better shot).