Prepaid Project #2 ~ Ruffled Flower Shirt

Today I completed my second prepaid project ~ a ruffled flower shirt. I have had this shirt for a few years. I wore it quite a bit when I first got it but sometime during that first Summer I threw it in the wash and it came out with a huge grease stain on the shoulder. Yuck. After digging all of the laundry out of the washer I found the culprit laying in the bottom of the washer barrel - a tube of chap stick. This happens more frequently than I care to admit. Oh how I loathe chap stick in my washer!!! I'm sure there is some way to get that stain out but I didn't know it at the time so my wear-all-the-time shirt sadly got thrown into my old bedtime shirt pile in the closet. However, I like my sleeping shirts to be big and loose and this shirt is neither so it never got worn after that.

I rediscovered this shirt a few days ago and I still love the color of it (especially since it matches my pink tennis shoes so well) so I decided to give it a makeover. Why not? The worst that could happen is that I donate it to DI. Maybe I'll even love it!

I started my shirt makeover by cutting a few 1 1/4 inch wide lengths of white knit fabric.

I sewed a gathering stitch down the middle of each of them and then pulled the bobbin thread to gather them pretty tight into ruffles. Then I pinned them into flower-shaped circles, folding under the edges. What was great about doing it this way was that I could arrange them on the shirt, try it on, and then if I didn't like it I could un-pin it and re-arrange it. I tried it pinning the ruffles a few different ways... I ended up liking the arrangement best with a huge mum-like flower up on my shoulder and two smaller flowers under that one. After I wash it (without a tube of chap stick) the ruffles will stand up and I'll be able to see the pink of the shirt peeking through the flowers so it won't be just a mass of white on the shoulder of the shirt. I love knit fabrics, especially since they don't have to have a seam (as long as you don't mind it rolling). I plan to do a bunch of prepaid projects with my stash of knits.

This shirt is a bit whimsical ~ just the way I like things. I know the style is trendy but at least I will get to wear it for a while, especially since we're having unseasonably warm weather for Fall right now.

I linked this project here:

Prepaid Project #1 ~ Pumpkin Pillow

I made a pumpkin pillow, the first of my prepaid projects, using this tutorial yesterday.

The fabric was left over from a rocking chair that I recovered several years ago. The green pom poms were left over from sewing a curtain panel from my daughter's bedroom. And the brown fabric is left over from sewing a patch on top of an embroidered patch that we wanted to cover up on one of my son's shirts. Yeah for prepaid fabric!!

Prepaid Projects

I have a rather delightful secret...I have a pretty big stash of fabric along with crafts and projects that I started but never finished. (Shocking! I know!!!) Soooo...I have decided to challenge myself to use up those supplies without purchasing additional supplies. Whenever I have done projects in the past that used stuff that I already had I would tell my husband that they were free and he always replied that they were not free, they were prepaid. So, this is the beginning of a long line of "prepaid" crafts. My goal is to do at least 20 crafts or projects from the supplies that I have and hopefully I will do more than that. I don't have a timeline, but the faster I complete my projects and use up my stash, the sooner I can buy more fabric!

I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Owl Fever - Part Two

I just can't get enough of these owls so I decided to make a girl version.

I added eyelashes and flower shaped button eyes to this owl to make this one more girly.

I love it so much that I may end up making a whole parliament of owls!

Coming Soon...

What do you get when you combine all of this with a pair of scissors...

You get these pieces!

What do you get when you combine all of these pieces??

I'll show you soon!

Owl Fever

I have seen a lot of cute owl toys and fabric around lately and I have pretty much gone gaga over all of it so I decided to make my own version of an owl for my animal-loving son.

I started by cutting two head stone shaped pieces of fleece. Then I cut two eyes, two smaller circles for the iris part of the eyes, a nose, a belly, a pair of ears (three pieces each-two front, two back, and two for the colored inset), two wings (four pieces-two front and two back), two feet (four pieces) , and a tail (two pieces) out of coordinating fleece. I also picked two buttons for the pupils of the eyes.

Using a decorative stitch I added my son's initial to the oval for the belly before I sewed it onto the front panel.

Then I sewed on the nose and eyes. It was fun to move the dark part of the eyes around because changing them gave the owl totally different expressions. I decided that it would be fun for him to look a little crazy so I positioned the eyes that way. To put the eye together, I sewed the little dark part (the iris) of the eye onto the big orange part of the eye and then I sewed a button on top of that dark part for the pupils. Then I sewed the finished eyes onto the body of the owl using a decorative stitch.

Next I sewed all the way around the wings and sewed two stitches from the edge of the wings where they curve up to the top to secure the fleece pieces together.

Then I sewed the ear pieces together. First I sewed the small inset triangles on to the front of the ears and then I sewed the front and back pieces together, leaving the ends open for stuffing.

After that I sewed the top and bottom pieces of the feet together and then I stuffed them, leaving the ends open for stuffing.

I did the same thing with the tail piece; sewing up one side, all the way around the curved part and back down the other side, leaving the end open for stuffing.

To put the whole thing together, I layed each wing down against the front of the owl, crossing them against each other, aligning the straight part of the wings with the sides of the body. Then I turned the ears upside down and lined the straight parts up with the top edge of the head of the owl so that the front pieces were against the front of the owl. I did this so that when I turned the whole thing right-side-out all of the parts would be in the right places.

Then I matched the front and back owl pieces together and, using a straight stitch, I sewed all the way around the owl, leaving the bottom open. After it was sewn up and around both sides I turned it right side out to make sure that both ears and wings were sewn in and I didn't miss catching part of the fabric.

Next I turned the whole thing inside out again and pushed the wings down into the owl so that they didn't catch on the bottom stitch.

Then I measured the width of the owl, laying it flat on a measuring board. I cut a circle of fabric half of that width in diameter for the bottom of the owl so that it would stand up straight. Next I positioned the feet and the tail where I wanted them to be, laying them inside the body of the owl, positioned opposite of how they would turn out and matching their straight parts (where I had put the stuffing in) to the edge of the owl. Then I matched the edges of the circle to the edges of the upside down owl and sewed all the way around the circle, leaving a two inch space for turning it right side out. Then I turned it right side out so that I could check the feet and the tail to make sure that all of the fabric was sewn and there were no spaces or holes in the bottom of the seam.

Then I stuffed the owl and stitched it closed with coordinating thread and it was all done!

The whole project probably took me about an hour and a half since I just figured it out as I went along. And it didn't cost me any extra money because I used scraps of fleece that I already had.

**If you make this project and blog about it please let me know!

I'd love to see how your owls turn out!**

Giraffe Baby Toy

I wanted to make the giraffe baby toy that I saw the instructions for on this blog. So I made a pattern and I cut and sewed and the giraffe didn't look like a giraffe at all, it looked like a horse. So I tried it again, with a variation on the pattern, and this time it turned out looking like a dinosaur with a very weird head. So I tried again and it finally came out looking like a giraffe, sort of. I think it's cute!