A tale of 3 t-shirts

Gotta love DIY parties! They are a great place to get some new shirts!
                                                ... but not a great place to take pictures for amazing tutorials, sadly.

But you potential DIY-er's are in luck! I can only take creative credit for one of these DIY's, and that one is pretty simple, I may do a proper tutorial for it some day, but we'll see. 

 This is the shirt in question:

Like I said, sorry for the lack of before pictures. Close your eyes and think really hard of two t-shirts of blue, both a few sizes to large. Like I said, this is a really simple DIY, and I don't think I did it great, I may do it again. Anyway all you have to do: 

Put on the "base" t-shirt (the baby blue one), and put a pen mark where you want the "belt" to go. With a ruler draw a straight line from your pen mark all around the shirt. 

Cut (eek!) along the line 

From about the same place on a second t-shirt measure out and mark lines for the width of the belt you want, with a little bit of extra for the seams. 

Cut along those lines. 

Sew the belt onto the other shirt (make sure you use a serger, if you don't the seams won't stretch with the shirt and will pop) 

I also brought this shirt in at the side seams, by a few inches, if you don't know how small to make it, centre one of your own shirts over it, trace it out and add a seam allowance. 

Pretty simple :) 

The other two shirts I did with internet tutorials that I will attach the links of, hopefully they offer clearer instructions than I do... 

This one I do think it pretty cute: 

The DIY element to this was the braided neckline, shown here: 

So this tutorial is from this link here: http://www.hernewleaf.com/2011/07/21/diy-banana-republic-braided-neck-tee-shirt/ 

For this one I sincerely suggest practicing on a shirt or scrap material you don't really care about, it's pretty easy but it does take getting used to, I think mine is a little junkier than I would like on something I would wear all the time. Still a fun and easy no sew tutorial! Once the neckline was braided I actually liked that the shirt was too big, has a kind of Boho feel (Megan!) 

And last but not least, my favourite of the three diys and one I actually took pictures of: 

The mens shirt to Dolman top! TA DA! This one I didn't actually do at the DIY night, but a day later. I'll admit that I bought this shirt just to do a diy on it, but it's wonderful! It says "make time for spontaneous wilderness adventures" on it! How can you not! 

So here's the before: 

It's a mens large... always make sure you have room! So this is the tutorial that I followed for this shirt: http://www.trashtocouture.com/2011/11/old-mens-t-shirt-sewn-into-womens.html, but I didn't freestyle cut like she did, I traced the sleeves and neckline of other shirts that I have, just in case. 

If you look closely you can see the pen marks, the inside ones were the ones that I followed, and for the sleeves, make sure you sew over the current shoulder seam, or there will be little bulges at the shoulder of your dolman top. 

So there they are, three shirt DIY's! Had lots of fun making them :). Hope ya'll are feeling inspired to go crazy on some ill-fitting, drawer stuffing t-shirts (or some men's large tee's that you happen to find).

The Mom Dress

My favourite projects are always the ones that offer challenges unique to a particular person (and involve sewing knits).

(or a dress I made for my Mother, my number 1 fan) 

My mom was having difficulty finding a dress for an upcoming trip, finding it very hard to fulfill some very particular criteria: she wanted it to have wide straps, but no sleeves, a band under the bust, but not one that had a "girly" bow or ribbon, and one that falls right under the knee. She's also in love with stretchy fabrics (called ITY stretch knits) and the colour blue. 

Great success!! 

We're both pretty happy with the result. I think if I were making it again I would have a white neckline and make the waistband white as well, just to separate the blue a little bit. But other than that it's just what she wanted for easy wear/travel. The material doesn't really wrinkle, and can be compacted easily, so it's really nice for packing, and if you have sharp eyes you may notice that this dress is so stretchy it doesn't require a zipper or other closure, it just pops right over your head and you're ready to go! 

Making dresses like this one is pretty simple... especially if you "borrow" the pattern from some dresses you already have in your wardrobe. Mom had a few dresses that we "borrowed" elements from to make this one. 

We liked the overall shape of the brown one for inspiration, but thought that the V was to deep and didn't like the arm holes, the blue one had the right arms, but has a ribbon (not shown) and wasn't the right length.

So taking inspiration from both dresses, I simply traced out the elements of both that Mom liked, tracing the skirt, waistband and most of the bodice of the brown, and then the armhole of the blue,. I made the V higher, and adding a seam allowances on the paper I had traced it all out on. After that it was smooth sailing for serging away! After the muslin we decided to make the belt narrower, more like the blue dress that's shown, but that was really the only change we had to make to the traced pattern. 

I also made sure the top of the dress had a lining, not only is it the best way to finish the neckline and armholes, but it also adds a little bit of support, just making it a nicer piece in general. As you can see in the picture I just surged the lining into the waistband along with the blue fabric. Pretty simple. 

And that's it! A simple project, making a hybrid dress out of a few that were in the closet already. Taking inspiration from what my Mom knows looks good on her, and from what she needs for a vacation dress. So there you go, designing your own clothing isn't hard, it's not really a sacred art form, and it's not taboo to be inspired by, or borrow elements from, what's already in your closet.  I had lots of fun doing this quite simple project and I hope that Mom enjoys this dress for many years to come! 

The why-isn't-this-a-thing-yet? Pocket bookmark, aka Book Buddies!!

Seriously, why isn't this a thing? I made my Mom one of these little guys many years ago and she loved it so much she wanted me to make her a new one now that I know my way around a sewing machine a little better.
So, what is a Book Buddy, you may ask? Good question!

This is a Book Buddy, it's literally as simple as a bookmark that marks the page with an elastic and sits on the outside of a book, holding pens (and rulers if you REALLY like straight lines). It's great for text books, bibles and bible study books. If you don't want to ruin the spine of your book by jamming it full of highlighters, pens, or pencils, but you love to highlight and take notes this is a nifty little device to have! Pretty cool right? (umm... maybe?) 

So why am I telling you all this? Glad you asked! Since you can't pick these up at the check-out counter at your local bookstore (seriously, why isn't this a thing!) it's necessary for those of you with some basic sewing skills, and a love of highlighted/underlined pages to make these bad boys yourself! Ready for a tutorial? I know I am!! 

Book buddies: What you need 

Scrap material for base, I used thicker materials like cotton twills, cut into rectangles of desirable sizes, mine are about 2" by 6" + 1cm seam allowance. Cut 2

Scrap material for the pocket, this can be thinner material such as extra quilting cotton, slightly smaller than your base material, I only had my pocket about 1/8" smaller around the side and bottom and about 1 1/2 inches shorter, Cut 2

Elastic (black looks more professional than white, but that's preference), for the length of the elastic it's best to judge based on the size of the book, wrap your elastic around just the front cover of your book, leaving the 6 or so inches for the book buddy to know how long it should be, make sure your elastic is stretchy enough to also go around the whole book. 

Very stiff fusing, used for making purses, cut to the size of the base, no seam allowance for the fusing. 

Sewing supplies, such as a machine, pins, ect. A point turner is very useful for this project, but not necessary. 

How to make: 

I started with the pocket. For this project I decided to make lined pockets, just to keep them cleaner and more durable. 

Right sides together, sew your two pocket pieces together, leaving enough of a gap to flip the pocket inside out. 

 Clip the corners.

Invert the pocket so that the right sides are facing out, 

Iron the fusing onto one of the two base material pieces, making sure you're centred properly for the seam allowances. 

Sew the pocket onto the base piece that has the fusing, which will close the opening left for the lined pocket. Pro tip: When your sewing pockets or other stitches that people will see it's nice to increase stitch length to 3mm instead of 2.2, just adds a nice touch :). 

Once the pocket is sewn on, make sure it's square to the edges of the fusing (flip the piece over and look at your stitching from the fusing side, where you can see it more clearly. It's the worst thing ever to finish the project just to have the pocket crooked. 

With your perfectly straight pocket sewn onto your base piece you're ready to put the whole thing together. Centre and pin the elastic to the top and bottom of the top base piece, the one with a pocket. 

(sorry that the picture's blurry... oops :/) 

Making sure that the elastic is tucked inside, place the second base piece on top of the first one, right sides together (make an elastic sandwich) and sew along the edge of your fusing, not on the fusing though, the seam will be pretty bulky if you do. Leave a gap like you did for the lined pocket. Clip the corners and invert the base pieces so the right sides and the elastic are out and the fusing is now on the inside. Press. 

Stitch along the edges of the outside of the book buddy, closing the gap left open and creating a cleaner edge.

 That's it! You're done! Highlight and underline to your heart's content without ever ruining your book spines again! Yay! Make some more for all your friends and family :) 

with love.