In Petunia’s room there is a chair. A chair of the rocker-glider variety. It has been in there in all of it’s clashing-with-the-room-decor glory for 4 years. I have been meaning to slip-cover it for 4 years. It was something that we already had before Petunia was born and decided it would work for a rocker when she was an infant, even though it didn’t match. Of course, in my mind, it was going to match before too long because I was going to slip-cover it. Yeah, not so fast Super-Mommy. Let’s just say it slipped farther and farther down the priority list as time went by. For some reason about a month ago I got a bug to get this project done. I’m not sure why. But that will happen to me. All of the sudden I am possessed with the desire to just get a project done and am super-focused (obsessed?) until that happens. The silly thing is that I think that I put it off so long because I thought it would take a long time to do. It didn’t. Typical.

I started by wrapping the fabric around the seat cushion and pinning it. I traced a line about 1 inch outside of the pins to give myself a seam allowance and a little wiggle room since this is the first slip cover I have made. I cut along the line, sewed the seams and created an envelope-style closure at the back. One tricky part is that the seat cushion has two little strips with Velcro at the back that wrap around the spindles on the chair back to hold the seat cushion on. I found a way around this with the envelope enclosure. I angled the fabric so that the fabric would leave room for the strips. Sewed lengths of Velcro on the enclosure so it would stay closed.

The back cushion was a little more tricky but still do-able. It has those same type of strips on the upper part of the cushion that wrap around the spindles to hold it in place so, I measured where they were, made button holes big enough for them to fit through, and there you have it! I used the same type of Velcro’d envelope enclosure for the back cushion. Easy to take off and wash!

As a bonus, I created a zippered pillow cover for a lumbar pillow that I had been using that now clashed with the new “throne”. The great thing about this project is that I used all materials that I already had! I love it when I can do that.

Okay, so Petunia’s birthday was two months ago but I’m just now getting around to posting about the reusable birthday banner I made for it. Typical. I’m thinking that celebrating Earth Day with Petunia put the thought in my head about what I do that’s “green” and led me to “Oh yeah, I forgot to blog about the birthday banner!” Better late than never, right?

I love how it turned out! I used all kinds of fabrics, mostly girly since, obviously, Petunia is a girl. But the possibilities are really endless in terms of what color combinations and themes you could use. Let me share with you how I did it. I cut triangles from all different kinds of material, ironed interfacing on the wrong side of all triangles, sewed the two long sides together with right sides together, turned them, ironed them, top-stitched them, appliqued the letters on the triangles, and then sewed a plain white binding onto the top with a functional but cute-looking zig-zag stitch. The most tedious part was printing the letters, and cutting them out of both paper and fabric. I looked for stencils but couldn’t find what I wanted so I just printed the letters out in a font I liked and, voila! Birthday banner. I’m thinking about adding these to the shop …

Last month I did a custom order for a friend of a friend who needed “wedding tutus” for her girls. They were headed to Hawaii for a wedding in which their girls would be flower girls. It was such a fun project! Layers upon layers of white sparkly tulle, satin ribbon and flower embellishments. Alas, only the eldest made it through the ceremony, the little one (2 years old) decided that she wasn’t that into it (2 year olds will do that, won’t they?) but they looked adorable! Here are a few pics of the eldest doing her flower girl duties:

I’ve listed it as a custom item in the shop and I’d love to do one for you! Check them out

Because of the successful sweater refashion, Petunia and I stopped by our local thrift establishment after karate class yesterday, specifically to find “stripey sweaters”. Petunia requested more “sweater clothes” and wanted them to be striped. Of course, when I enter with one thing in mind, of course other things jump right out at me, fighting for my attention much like Petunia does any time I’m on the phone (Mommy’s on the Phone Syndrome). So, as Petunia and I both got sidetracked from the stripey sweaters, we found an adorable straw purse for her and a glittery green, light-up-when-you-walk pair of Tinkerbell wedge-heeled sandals. I barely fought off the urge to go through their extensive section of patterns, only able to because we were short on time. We did also, however, find three fantastic options for “sweater clothes”! Two of them aren’t technically sweaters but they are still great candidates for leggings and skirts for the Little One.

Just finished this custom order for a baby blanket. The parents-to-be are Dallas Cowboys fans so this is an interpretation of such fan-hood! The blocks are star print cotton material and white flannel. The appliqued stars are made from blue fleece, terry cloth, and up-cycled white tee shirt jersey (husband’s tee shirt…he didn’t want it anymore, I promise!). It is backed with blue fleece and bound with star print cotton. The binding is machine sewn to the front and hand sewn in the back.

It was fun to see this one come together…

As promised, here are the leggings I made in a jiffy for Petunia yesterday. I followed this tutorial over at crafting a green world . She did such a great job with this tutorial, I have nothing to add! So I have pointed you to her site if you would like to try this. Do it! It’s so easy…

Here are a few pics of the progress of the project:

My computer apparently doesn’t like the photo of the step where you turn one leg (sleeve) inside out, put the other leg right side out into the inside out leg and sew the crotch seam. It won’t upload it from my camera. But that’s what would go here!

Then you put your elastic in the waist, attaching a safety pin to thread it through the opening you have left in the waistband. Sew the elastic together, sew the opening shut and voila!

Last night I was perusing some tutorials about how to turn an adult sweater into items for Petunia and woke up this morning ready to go! I was so motivated that I started before I had even drank my coffee. That’s unheard of for me. Generally sewing before coffee is a complete no-no for me. Too many instances of early-morning seam-ripping have been experienced. But not today. And it was so easy. Seriously. You can find the other tutorials that I used here .

I was starting with an old, tired gray hoodie sweater that had a zipper. First: cut off zipper.

Second: cut off under the arms so that you have a “sweater rectangle”.

Third: put cut edges together with right sides together, ready to be sewn into a tube. Sew them together using a zig-zag stitch.

Fourth: fold over cut edge (the one you cut right under the arms) with a thin hem and sew with a zig-zag stitch, stretching it as you go. This makes a ruffled effect. This looks best if your thread matches your sweater really well. The dark gray sweater I used was very forgiving. I forgot to take a picture of this step…sorry!

Fifth: fold over the finished bottom edge of your original sweater to make the waistband. I folded it over around 1 inch but you can eyeball it and use whatever measurement you’re comfortable with. Sew with a straight or zigzag stitch, leaving an opening to insert your elastic.

Sixth: attach small safety pin to elastic and thread through waistband. I used my daughter’s waist measurement minus an inch because every time I use her waist measurement, things fall off. Not sure what’s going on there, just telling you what works for me! Sew the ends of the elastic together and sew the opening of the waistband shut.

And there you have it! Petunia is wearing the sweater-skirt with the leggings that I made from the sleeves of the same sweater. I’m posting that very, very easy tutorial tomorrow because, in all honesty, it took more time to edit pics and write this post than it did to make both the skirt and leggings!

Stay tuned tomorrow for the leggings…so fun and easy! Petunia says “Mommy, they’re from your sleeves!”. This really tickles her…

Okay, so Katherine over at sevidesigns.com is always posting tutorials on her site and, silly me, I go and read the blogs that she references. This ends up with me having a much too long list of things that I want to sew, craft or otherwise fiddle with in my “spare time”. (When is that “spare time” anyway???). Well, I didn’t need her help this time. I was thinking about a tee shirt refashion I wanted to do that was inspired by tearosehome and it came to me! I have an ill-fitting sweater that I have meant to get rid of for about a year. For some reason, it’s still in my closet. I don’t wear it. I’m not sure what I expected, that it would get up and march itself into the donation bin? Anywhoo, I thought it would make the cutest sweater-skirt for Petunia. Then I got to thinking (always dangerous): maybe there’s a tutorial out there for this. Oh yeah, Baby! There were several, which I will share with you in a minute. On TOP of that, I happened upon a tutorial for making leggings out of the sleeves of the sweater, which I had thought about anyway but now I see that it is definitely do-able. Seeing the different types of sweaters used in the tutorials inspired me but, as my own closet is pretty bare bones these days, I will either have to raid The Daddy’s side (probably not a good idea) or head to my local thrift establishment (always a good idea!) to see what they’ve got for me. Ooooh, this is gonna be fun!

Here is whipup.net’s take on the sweater-skirt

I love, love, LOVE the ruffley-ness on the bottom!

Crafting a Green World has this take on the sweater-skirt.

Again with the wavy ruffles…love them! And the vibrant colors in her picture gives me all kinds of fun ideas…

The tutorial for the kiddo leggings by way of adult sweater is here .

Well, I’ve done it again…I’m up past my bed time contemplating, writing about, and doing crafty stuff. Going to go get some sleep so as to have the energy to keep up with Petunia as we troll the thrift store for sweaters tomorrow! Happy crafting!:)

Remember the other day when I mentioned that I have a problem? Well, here is the result of said problem:

Just in time to be put in Petunia’s stocking by “Santa”. Along with Christmas Bunny, of course.

Now I just need to finish binding that quilt before Thursday…

The title of this post is not something I would ever have thought I would utter in my lifetime but, today I did. I finished Petunia’s stuffed duckie’s matching Christmas pajamas today and here they are:

Our pajama tops are just gray thermal tops but I used gray jersey knit for the duck’s instead because that’s what I had in my stash. When cutting out the pajama pants from the remnants left over from my and Petunia’s pj’s, I realized that there was this long triangle shape at one end. It looked like it might fit as a night cap for the duck so I cut another one and voila! Night cap a la ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas! She is so excited that he has pajamas that match ours and I’m so grateful that I can create memories like this for her.