Week 8 - No-Sew Baby Blanket

Okay, so these next two weeks are going to be extremely busy for me.

Today's post is a quick and easy one. The next few weeks will be similar, simple and quick.

This week I made a super cute baby blanket for a friend of mine who is having a baby next month! These types of blankets are very easy and fun to make. I've made these as bigger blankets for adults as gifts many times before.

I know this is a no-sew project, so it doesn't really teach anything about sewing. Still fun though!

I originally got the idea to make this specific blanket when I was digging through a bin at Goodwill! I found this piece of fleece with the adorable world map design. The new parents that I made this blanket for are like my husband and I in the way that we both love anything with an international theme! I immediately thought of them and their coming baby. The perfect gift for them!  

First, gather all the supplies. The blanket I found at Goodwill was one of those free gifts for donating to an organization and it already had finished ends, I imagine that originally the fabric was a whole yard, with the finished ends though, it was just under one yard. So unless you find this same fabric, (or a "free gift" blanket like this one) you will need 2 yards of fleece. One yard of pattern fleece for the front, and one yard of solid matching fleece for the back.

  

(Don't forget to cut off the salvage edge!)

Also, make sure you wash and dry the fabric before you start so that they're pre-shrunk.

I got one yard of fleece for the back and had to measure the front fleece and cut the back fleece to match the measurements.

Then I laid the front and back together on a clean surface. Make sure you place the outsides out.

As you can see in the photos above I cut notches in the four corners of the blanket. Measure a five inch square in the corners and cut it out. This will help to form the corners of the blanket once you start to tie them together. 

 Next, start cutting the fringe along the sides of the blanket. Cut in five inches, using the corner notches as guidelines. Make each fringe about one inch wide.

   

It might take a while depending on how big your blanket is but once you are done with the fringe you are almost done!

 

 Start to tie the back and front pieces together in double knots. This also may take a while!

 Once you have tied all the fringe pieces together your blanket is done!

If you are giving this as a gift you can tie it together with the salvage edges you cut off earlier! It makes a very sweet looking present I think! 

I hope you enjoy making this for someone special in your life!

 

Week 7 - Pillow Case Skirt

Hi! I hope you all are having a nice week! I sure am. It's my first full week on the summer schedule and I love it! I have so much time to get things done around the house!

This week's project was a fun one! 

Yesterday I made a skirt out of a pillow case! I first saw this on pintrest a few months ago. I looked at all the different tutorials and decided to take this project into my own hands. I made my first pillow case skirt a while back for me to wear on Easter. It turned out okay and I got a lot of compliments, but I wasn't fully satisfied. I had an idea for how I could make it better. Hence today's post!

I didn't have any cute pillow cases that I wanted to cut up so I kept my eye open at yard sales. Last week I found 4 super cute/perfect-for-skirts pillow cases! 

What I learned from this project - I would say I learned how to sew with elastic, but I didn't really SEW with elastic, so I'll just say I learned how to work with elastic.

Note: Making this skirt the way I do in this post unfortunately only applies if you have a very small stature, (like me). Otherwise you can make it for your favorite 10 - 12 year old. Ha!

Cute huh?

First, gather your supplies. (Pillow case, matching thread, elastic measured to fit your natural waist)

 Measure from your natural waist to where you want the skirt to fall. This totally depends on how tall you are and how long you want your skirt to be. I wanted mine to fall mid-thigh.

Turn the pillow case inside out and mark where you just measured. 

 

Cut where you just marked.

Depending on how wide your elastic is, (mine was 3/4 inch) pin down enough fabric to feed the elastic through. Don't forget your seem allowance! I pinned down 2 inches. Always remember to start pinning along the existing seem so that everything lines up.

 Finish pinning all the way around.

 Start sewing where you pinned with about 1/4 inch seem allowance. Sew all the way around the waistband.

 

You can barely see it in this photo but I double stitched around the whole skirt as well. Just to make sure it wouldn't fray.

This photo better shows the double seem.

At this point in the sewing I realized I totally forgot to leave an opening to feed the elastic through! Ha! So I did a little seem ripping right along the existing seem and started feeding it through with a safety pin pinned to the end to help get it through.

Once the elastic is fed through the waistband, overlap the 2 ends of elastic and sew up the opening, sewing the elastic along with it to secure it. I sewed over it a couple times just to make sure it would hold.

 And you're done! Here it is from the back and front again. I really enjoyed making this skirt and plan on wearing it a lot this summer!

I hope you enjoy making yours!

 

 

Week 6 - Vacation + Treasures

Hello all! No, I didn't forget to blog last week. My husband and I went on a mini vacation with some friends. After we got home we were here for one day and then we went to visit my parents for the weekend. After all was said and done I had no time to sew! I will try my very best to keep up my weekly blogs, during the summer though I might have to take a couple weeks off because of busyness. We shall see! 

I don't have a sewing project to share with you today. I will post this weeks project later on. Today I wanted to share some cool stuff with you! My husband and I are really big on garage/yard sales! We love them! Last weekend was a huge garage sale weekend for us and we got a ton of awesome things! I wanted to share a few of them with you. 

Sweet little vintage Avon elephant perfume bottle! 

Antique typewriter! It works! 

Cool book about the culture of the Middle East from 1964. I think the cover art is fantastic!

More kitchen storage! Yay!

Carl Zeiss lens on a sweet vintage camera!

Oversized vintage powder compact. I've never seen one this big! 

And my favorite find of the weekend...

Vintage/retro floor length dress! I saw this from a 1/2 mile down the road and had to have it! The lady sold it to me for one dollar! It looks like it's never been worn! Score! The color of the dress is definitely more coral/peach but the pictures make it look hot pink. My plan for this dress is to hem the bottom so that it fits me. I haven't decided if I want to hem it just a few inches to make it floor length for me, or if I want to hem it up to my knees to make a super cute short dress...I guess you'll just have to find out.