Jimmy Miracle

My old friend from school just opened a new art show in NYC this week. He's used hundreds and hundreds of strands of sewing thread to suspend reclaimed items and give the effect of lasers. I think it's really brilliant and I'm proud of him, so go check out the rest of the work here.

T-Shirt Makeover- Quick and Granny

The whole granny-chic thing has been around for a while now, but doilies have really taken the spotlight lately. (Have you seen the Megadoily?!) I've been itching to stick some doilies on everything, so I was really excited to see a bin of little 99 cent ones at Joann's the other day. (I know, it would be much cooler if they were actually vintage doilies, but whatever, we're faking cool here.)

Today, I realized that they belonged on this $5 Target tshirt I had. Here's what I did:

First, layout the doily arrangement on the shirt. I ended up trying the shirt on to do this, which was really helpful in showing me that my original 3 doily plan would have looked like way too much on me. 

Take shirt back off and loosely pin everything in place. 

Now turn the shirt inside out and put a scrap of fusible interfacing over the doily area. Make sure the fusible side is down, and draw the general shape of where the doilies are, maybe even a little bit larger than where they are. 

Cut it out. Then take off the doilies so you can iron down the interfacing. (If you don't have interfacing, you could try this project without it, but it really helps to stabilize the stretchy tshirt material so you don't end up with something heinous that makes you curse your machine and never try sewing ever again.)

Turn right side out and pin the doilies back in place. Make sure you pin any parts that fold down under the collar well. Stitch in place. I went down the edge of the collar, back around the outsides of both doilies, and then stitched a circle closer to the center of each one. I tried to stay on the chunkier parts of the crochet so that you don't see as much thread on the shirt. 

Trim loose threads and that's it. Go have a cookie. 

Now here's a picture-of-myself-in-the-mirror-with-the-camera-blocking-my-face-shot for you:

I like it with a cardigan. Now all I need is spring. 

Four Things

1. I found a very cool website at work last week called Block Posters. You upload any image, choose how big you want it to be, and they create a pdf file of your image on multiple pages that you can print out. This may not sound that exciting immediately, but think about the creative possibilities!

For my job, I write children's church curriculum. There is a series coming up in April about generosity, and this is the original image I created for the logo:

This is how it looked printed out from Block Posters: 

I plan on putting it on the wall in the classrooms during the series. Of course, I just haphazardly laid it out on the floor here, but you could cut all those margins off and make it look even better. And the colors aren't really as faded as they look here, it's just the weird institutional lighting at my church.

You could do some really cool stuff with this for home decor. Look around their gallery for more ideas.



2. UO online has a lot of their apartment stuff on sale. I got a pretty new shower curtain for $9.99, and a few other cheap things for upcoming projects.



3. Free printable Marie Antoinette paper doll. Enough said.

4. Hello from Hendrix. He is really into exploring the musical intricacies of the xylophone right now... also hitting everything in sight with the mallet. 

OBSESSED WITH: Yellow Chairs

You heard me. Yellow chairs. I would like one in every room of my home.

1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Actually, the reason I am obsessed with these as of late is because I need a couple of dining room chairs, pub-height. We do have all four that came with our black dinette set. But I have commandeered one as my sewing chair upstairs. The other has a booster seat strapped onto it, and a nice layer of dried-on food that I will probably need an industrial sander for. Of course, I can't afford any of the above, but I have been thinking about buying a couple of mismatching ones on Craigslist, then painting those along with the 2 remaining dining chairs a nice shade of mustard. 

I haven't consulted Nick about this, he may hate yellow... Just one more thing we really should have talked about before we got married. I gotta go rethink some stuff...

Yup.

"Oh, good morning Mommy! (Big smile.) At some point in the night I puked all over myself and everything in my bed- so have fun with that!"

Baby Gift: Onesies

I made some more appliqued onesies for new baby boys this week. (You can see some others here.)

These came out nicely:

This one turned out like a piece of poo:

My tension decided to rebel and mocked my attempts at adjustment. Then the machine ate the onesie material which made those big puckers. I cursed profusely. Then I gave up on this one. It was my favorite new design too...like a little baby tribute to Colonel Sanders. Because, you know, babies do come right out craving KFC. 

Blast. 

Tablecloth Makeover/ Dining in the Aviary

I gave my old plain grease-stained black tablecloth a facelift this week with just a long piece of fabric. 

1. Cut your fabric to the size you need, making sure it is at least 2-3 inches longer than the tablecloth or whatever you are covering.
2. Fold both long sides of the fabric under half an inch, press and pin. 
3. Lay tablecloth flat on floor, lay fabric over it. Center the width by measuring the distance from the edge of the fabric to the edge of the tablecloth and making sure they are equal on both sides. Do this on the top, middle, and bottom so it is lined up all the way down. 
4. Once you are satisfied it is centered, go back to the pins that are already in the fabric and pin them again threw both layers, still keeping your pressed edge folded under.
5. Sew down both sides, leaving a quarter inch, like this:
6. Now you should have about an inch and a half of the un-hemmed fabric hanging off both ends. Fold under half and inch and press, fold over again so that it is all the way under the tablecloth fabric and pin. 
7. Sew down both of those sides. This is the underside of that seam:

Give it another good ironing and you're done. It's really simple, but for some reason that explanation doesn't seem that simple. I promise it is. 

And now I have yet another bird thing in my dining room. I really didn't mean to get all theme-y in here, it just kind of happened over time. 

This little bird is from a vintage shop in Charleston, and the ducky candle holder is from a local thrift store.

This set of owl playing cards is from an antique store in Old Milford.

This and the other 2 framed prints in the first photo are also thrifted.

So that's how the birds took over this room. 

Today's crafting soundtrack: The Welcome Wagon. If you are going through Sufjan withdrawals like I am since he got all existential and decided not to make music anymore, you might like them.