memorial day "crafting"

We have been finishing a bedroom, hallway, and two closets in our basement.  It's been a long slow process since we're doing the work ourselves.

Things are really coming together.  We've finished priming, and painting the ceilings and trim white.  Soon we'll roll the wall color, but yesterday we finished up the white by painting the doors.  There are 4 of them, and it took up a lot of the day, but I got them done!

It's not much fun to look at pictures of white doors, but I'm proud of them and wanted to show them off (and I'm hoping that by showing the progress I made over the weekend, it'll push me toward finishing other things up in a timely manner.)

And so, without further ado . . . my white doors!

Since I'm such a go-getter, while I was waiting for paint to dry between coats, I started taping off the ceiling.

And there you go--the sum of my "craftiness" during the Memorial Day holiday.  What did you do with your "extra" time . . . as if there really were such a thing?!

car seat re-cover

This little project was started before Graham was born, but got interrupted by his birth and didn't get finished until yesterday.

The carrier car seat we own had an awful plaid, lumberjack-ish pad with almost no padding.  So, before Graham came, I decided to redo the padding and sun visor in a gender-neutral, but much cuter fabric.  I got the pad done the week before Graham was born, but other things came up, and I didn't finish the sun visor right away.

Then, the weather here in Utah became extremely cold and rainy for the past two months, so it became unnecessary to finish the visor until recently.  And, while the weather here still is not sunny and warm, I refuse to believe that the wet, cold weather can last much longer.

I've gotten off topic, so without further ado, here is the car seat with new "upholstery."

Without a pattern for a car seat pad and visor, I wanted to make sure the new ones would fit, so I tore apart the old ones and used the pieces as a pattern:

Everything seemed to fit perfectly, and I was able to fix a few things about the old pad that I didn't like . . . namely that the top and bottom edge came off a lot because the elastic had been stretched out and wasn't holding the pad on very well.  Also, I used two layers of batting to make Graham's ride a little more comfortable.

Hopefully, I'll have time for more sewing over the weekend.  Have a great one!

dress to skirt refashion

A friend of mine approached me about a week ago and told me she bought a dress in the children's department and wanted me to turn it into a skirt.  Intrigued and slightly disbelieving, and agreed to take a look at it.

Turns out this thin friend of mine bought matching mother/daughter dresses: one for her five-year-old, and a size 16 for herself.  Looking at the dress, it seemed like the remake wouldn't be that hard, so I dove right in.

The dress started out with this pretty doily-like bodice, which is cute on a little person, but rather matronly on an adult waistband:

The first step was to detach the lacy overlay,

then cut the bodice even with the back (approximately 3 inches above the seam at the top of the skirt.)

I then serged around the raw edge, folded it over to meet the existing seam, pinned it in place, and sewed around, leaving a gap for the elastic.

I added elastic and sewed it shut.

Start to finish, the project took about an hour and a half and I think it tuned out beautifully!

It's nice to get back to being creative!  See you soon!

Linked to:

Blue Cricket Design

donut day

I've been a slacker.  I haven't been crafting much since Graham was born.  I've hemmed pants and repaired holes, but pure creation has been on hold while we finish a bedroom in the basement for the oldest two troublemakers to move downstairs . . . also, there's the adjusting to the newest troublemaker.

Graham will be two months old tomorrow, and I will begin crafting, sewing, and posting again next week.

For now, here are a few pictures of one of the sweet things we did today:  we had donuts with chocolate frosting.

See you next week!  I've missed you.

coming home from the hospital - girl

The outfits I made for a little girl were a pattern of my own design.  I used cotton fabric as the bottom layer with drapery sheers for the top two layers to create a light, flowy dress.

I used green because I feel like pink is so overused for little girls.

I liked how they turned out, but I think I may end up doing some embellishing on the yoke because they look a little plain.  (I have time to play with these because I certainly won't be using them for my sweet baby boy!)

coming home from the hospital - boy

This is the first baby that we haven't known the gender, and this is also the first baby that I've been bold enough to trust my own two hands to make the little bundle an outfit to come home in . . . or 4.

"Why four?" you ask?

Well, because we didn't know the gender, and each of our babies has gotten bigger than its previous sibling, with our youngest weighing in at 9 lbs 2 ozs (which is why I also opted for my first epidural, people.)  So, I took with me to the hospital two outfits for a boy, and two outfits for a girl (one each in newborn size and 0-3 month size.)

I finished up the boy outfits and was completely in love with them!
 

From the get-go, I wanted to applique a tie onto a white shirt, which I was able to whip out quickly. 


The pants were a little trickier for me to settle on a design I liked.  Finally, I decided to use (Simplicity 5534 - out of print), except that I wanted a flat front.


I wasn't exactly sure how much to take out of the front pieces, so imagine my relief when Dana at Made posted a tutorial for flat front pants during her Celebrate the Boy!!  I still used (Simplicity 5534), but I altered the front pieces the same way Dana altered hers for the flat look.

So, the pants for my baby boy are brown corduroy with a flat front . . .

and an elastic back!