T-shirt Redesign part 1, steps 1-3

One cute and easy way to remake a t-shirt is to redo the neckline! I bought a cheap t-shirt from Walmart for $3 in the men's section and changed the neckline. Below are the steps to complete this transformation:

Before:
















Cut off the ribbing at the neckline:
















Pull the existing stabilizer strip over the raw edge of the back of the neckline and pin:















Stitch the back of the neckline down:

Sewing Fashion Show

During the summer I took a sewing class at school. At the end of the semester, one of our final assignments was to participate in a fashion show. Below are pictures of a couple of the items I made:

Brooke modeling the plaid shirt-dress:





























Brooke modeling her purple circle skirt:

retro apron & matching oven mitt

For my niece's upcoming bridal shower I made her a retro-style apron in her favorite colors with a matching oven mitt. The blue fabric features owls (which she loves). She loves to bake and so I hope she gets a lot of use out of these!

From shabby to chic! Desk transformation

Thanks to a wonderful organization (freecycle.org), we were able to pick up this well-loved desk yesterday for Kara's birthday for free! With a lot of scrubbing, some sanding, and painting, we turned it into her most favorite present ever (her words)!

Before we refinished this desk, it was black with some red coming through. Not Kara's favorite! Jeff did some light sanding to remove the bumps and blemishes from the surface and made it nice and smooth:















Next we sprayed a couple of coats of lilac paint. The color was Kara's choice, and I think getting to help paint was what made this present so much fun for her and it made it exactly what she wanted:






























The finished desk in her room:

Clothing Labels

One of my favorite things about taking sewing at Dixie this summer has been designing and embroidering my own labels for the clothes I make! I made 41 (hopefully I'll make that many things to put these labels in!). The design process led me to come up with the name for this blog...

The roll of labels stitched, threads trimmed, and backing trimmed and ready to be cut out:
















My stack of ready-to-use labels in a variety of colors! Some are all white and ready to go in temple/baptism items:

Brooke's mini bedding

While Kara was busy with her crafting, Brooke got into the scrap bag and started hand-stitching cute mini bedding items! Brooke loved having sewing time on the big sewing machine! :)


Front of Brooke's mini quilt (all hand-stitched, then we took it to the machine to reinforce):




















Back of Brooke's mini quilt (machine stitched to the front & batting, then machine quilted together):




















Mini pillow (handstitched and stuffed):
















Kara's stuffies in Brooke's bedding (and you can see the hand-stitched blanket Brooke made too):

Kara's stuffies

Kara has tried to keep herself busy this summer with sewing and crocheting (among other things).

The two teddy bears were self-designed on paper, traced onto the fabric, then sewn together on the machine. She then turned them right-side-out, stuffed them, and whip stitched them closed. She embroidered the faces on with DMC floss. So cute!

The giraffe pattern came from a pattern book, but the colors are all Kara!


Here are pictures of some of the crafts she's come up with:


Teddy:




















Spotty:





















Pinky: