New Skirts

Back in January I bought a lot of fabric to make some clothes with. This last month I've finally been able to spend some time making some skirts. I'd found 2 tutorials on some of my sewing blogs and was excited to make them. They both offered me a chance to try something new in sewing.

One of my goals this year is to make more clothes. I spent last year making curtains, pillow covers, quilts and purses so I really want to learn more about making clothes. Skirts are definitely the easiest thing to make and with summers being so hot and my desire to have comfy clothes they are my first choice.

So the first one I made is called a Shirred Pocket Skirt. It's roomy, comfy and looked cute and simple enough to make. I've never made anything with pockets and never done shirring before but they were pretty easy. She explains how to sew the elastic thread but my sewing machine (Brother) seems to be very different when it comes to using it. I had to do some YouTube searches and google searches before I finally found something that explained how to use elastic thread on a Brother machine. If anyone is interested let me know in the comments and I'll track the info down again.

So, I've made 3 so far. Although the first one I made I measured myself wrong and ended up making it way too big and due to the design I couldn't alter it without starting completely over, so I sent it to Goodwill. But the other 2 I can wear!

On this purple one, I wanted to try bias tape for the first time and grey just seemed the natural choice for me. I love how it turned out! Here's a close up of the shirring and pocket detail.

Here's the other. My favorite!

I fell in love with this fabric and when I figured out how to make this skirt, I knew I had to make one using this fabric. I used a grey/blue thread, that I thought looks great with the green, it gives it a bit of contrast. And I while cutting pocket pieces I didn't cut enough and ended up not having enough fabric so I had to improvise. I found some white fabric scraps and it's on the inside of the pockets. It actually turned out looking pretty good, thank goodness!
 Here's a close up of the shirring and pocket detail.

The other skirt is a short maxi skirt. In the original tutorial she made the skirt long, but I want these for summer and when it's 100 degrees outside I want a short, cool skirt. Although I think I'd like to make a couple long ones eventually to wear in the fall or spring.

This skirt used knit fabric and while I've started a knit dress I hadn't finished it yet, so I've never finished anything using knit fabric. I was excited to sew with knit because it's super comfy and I like how it drapes. Her tutorial was so easy, and once I figured out my own pattern I could make one in less than an hour.

I made 4 but the first one (which always seems the case) was too small and I didn't cut the fabric correctly. My tip with knit fabric is to look at which way it stretches. For these skirts I wanted the stretch to be horizontal not vertical.

This one is made with a good weight grey.

This pink knit has sparkles in it! It's the same weight as the grey but not quite as soft as the grey. While I do love the comfort of the skirt and having a color, I'm kind of stumped about what color shirt to wear with it, which explains the white. So if any one has any suggestions please share!

Here's an idea of what the waistband looks like. It's like a yoga pant waistband.

This is a tencel blue knit and it feels like butter! It's the softest of the bunch and super light, which is also why it's see-through! This one will either be an at home only skirt or I'll have to add another layer to it. And this grey tank needs to be hemmed, I have a short torso.

Please excuse the paleness of my skin, I'm hoping to get some sun soon....
I made both skirts using my serger and sewing machine, but they can be made using just a sewing machine. The serger just gives a more professional finish and helps with stretch. I really liked using the serger on the skirts it was really easy.

These are the most comfortable skirts I've ever worn and I LOVE them! I can't wait for more warm weather to wear these skirts more! I can't wait to make more, but I need some more fabric!

All the knit fabric I bought from Fabric.com
The purple flower cotton fabric I bought at Wal-mart
The green cotton fabric I bought at FabricWorm.com

I don't remember the brands or names of the fabric, sorry!

So what do you think? And any ideas on what color top to wear with the pink one?
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Clothes Deals at Goodwill

If you've been reading long you know that I love Goodwill. I've bought so many great things at great prices there over the years. And clothes have been no exception.

A few weeks ago David and I were in the mood to go looking around Goodwill. We weren't after anything in particular but just like to look around. I like the housewares, furniture and clothes. David likes the books, electronics and clothes. Trey likes the toys!

So, we head in and I'm drawn to the clothes. I really love the way my local Goodwill's organize the clothes, it works with the way I think. They put all the women's sleeveless shirts together and then by color. Then the women's short-sleeve tops together by color and so on. So I can easily just look for the kind of top/bottom I want and then look at the colors I'm interested in. I love it.

Well after a while of looking at jeans and other random stuff, I walked the skirt rack and 2 caught my eye. They had great colors and patterns. One was marked my size the other a little bigger. We were getting ready to check out when I noticed them so I didn't try them on. I figured if they were too small or didn't look right I'd just use the fabric for something else. So we bought them.

Then the next weekend we had the itch to go back to Goodwill, only this time a different one. I went straight for the clothes and started pulling tops in colors I liked/looked good on me. Of course I grabbed more than I thought I'd get because after trying stuff on you usually weed through the pile. I took 7 tops in and all of them I liked/fit! And they were all very comfy.  I was surprised that they all worked. This isn't always the case but you embrace it when it happens. So we bought them.

So, I had 2 skirts, 4 tank/sleeveless and 3 t-shirt tops. After trying everything on, I needed to alter both skirts, the pink tank, teal tank and teal shirt. I felt pretty confident in taking on these alterations since they were pretty basic. Skirt #1 was too long. Skirt #2 was too wide. Both the teal tank & teal shirt were too long and the pink tank was too wide.

With the help of my new serger I altered all my new clothes to my liking. I was SO excited that I was able to do all of this all by myself. And with a little help from the manual! I'd tried shortening some tops last year just using my sewing machine but I wasn't happy with the results. They were mostly knits with some stretch and when I hemmed them they puckered or the stitch would break. I know you can use a zig-zag stitch to help with stretch but I didn't like the look. This is one reason I asked for a serger for Christmas. I love that I was able to take at least 2 items that were sized too big for me and make them my size.

This thing worked beautifully! I'm VERY happy with my results and I'm now working on making some skirts and dresses using my serger. I'm enjoying learning how to make clothes.

Oh, and in case you are wondering most of these items are name brand pieces.
Pink tank- Jones New York
Green tank- Mossimo (Target)
Turq. tank- Old Navy
Teal tank- Ann Taylor
Pink tee- Gap
Teal tee- Apt 9 (Kohls)
Purple tee- Eddie Bauer
Skirts were brands I've never heard of.

Oh, and I got all of this for about $35. I LOVE GOODWILL!

In case you aren't familiar with Goodwill here's some tips.
Don't expect to find great deals every time. Some times you score big sometimes there's nothing good. Items are donated so the supply is constantly changing and that's what makes it so fun! Although I've seen many items with their original price tags on them, often from the original store that just needed to get rid of the items. So they are in great shape for fractions of the price.

Be open to finding diamonds in the rough. You have to search and look and try things on. I don't only buy clothes, I find decorative items for my home and sometimes furniture too. Be willing to look. Clothes can be altered, items can be painted or cleaned up, furniture can be refinished, fixed, altered and painted.

Give yourself time to look. If you are in a hurry you won't find as much.

The Oklahoma Goodwill's offer a discount card for each calendar year. It's about $5 for card and every time you use it they take 10% off your order. And around here that's more than sales tax. If you shop there often it's worth it to get the discount card.

So there's my story of my latest score from Goodwill.

If you shop Goodwill or thrift stores tell me what you get. Any awesome deals?  Please share!

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Craft: Baby Leggins

I've seen these a few places and thought that they were so cute and functional. And I've wanted to make them for a while but I don't have a baby to put them on. So, I'm making them for my friend's baby for Christmas.

Here's how I made these:

I bought 4 pair of knee socks at Target 2/$5 but one pair was on clearance for $1.75.

Then I kept both socks together and cut the heel off the leg part.

Then I cut the heel off the foot part.

Then I cut the toes off the foot part. Giving me 2 pieces: the leg and the foot

Then you take the small piece, the cuff, and fold half inside itself. Sorry kind of hard to explain here's the pic. Make sure the part you want to show is on the inside.

Then feed the leg part through the hole of the cuff and line up the raw edges.

After all the pieces are lined up and you are happy with it start sewing. You can pin this if you want, I just sewed slowly so I could keep everything lined up the way I wanted it. I also used a zig-zag stitch.

Turn the cuff up and your done! The cuff part goes on the baby's upper thigh.

I think they are so adorable! Now go find a cute baby to put these on!

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My To Do "List"

Hey, I hope everyone had a great weekend! We did some honey-do's around here: cleaning the garage, weeding the garden and lawn work. And we still had time to relax and rest! I wanted to share my to do "list"

I spent about an hour and a half cutting fabric. And grouping it into piles. So this is my pile of projects to be sewn. It includes: pillow covers, scarves and baby leggings. I'll be posting more on those later.

I work best assembly line style, I get so much more done that way. So I grouped like items together used a quilting safety pin and a post-it to keep the items together and remind myself what the project is.

Now I can just sit at my sewing machine and grab a pile and sew, grab a pile and sew. I'm hoping that I can get a ton done this way. I'm making some items for a craft fair next weekend and most of these scarves are going to be in the sale.

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A little bit of Pinterest

So  I thought I'd do a little post about some of my pins on Pinterest.
I've been pinning away like most of you and while I haven't completed very many things from my creative board, I have started several and I wanted to share them. Some are too small a project to post a whole post on. And some are in the process.

One thing that I have completed was to make a tie for Trey, for my sister's upcoming wedding. He's not in the wedding so I had some freedom with the fabric. I wanted it to complement her blue colors and David and my's clothes (purple/plum). So I found a green polka dot fabric that I knew would look great on him. It's so cute and it was super easy! Here's the pin on Pinterest.

This is another one I've finished. It's a sisal rope wrapped bowl. As soon as I saw this I knew I wanted to make my own version of it. I had an old white ceramic bowl that I never used and thought it would be a good candidate. Here's my version, and I need to get something to put in it....

When I saw this idea of spray painting glass, I wanted to give it a try. Since I love spray painting and I love glass I thought it'd be a fun thing to try. I had this glass bottle that I'd found at a Goodwill and I'd never really found a home for it because it just blended in where ever I put it. I had some green spray paint on hand so this is how it turned out. I have another glass vase I'd like to paint another color but I need to get the paint so I'll have to share that another time.

I also completed (I actually finished more things than I thought!) a cash envelope system for my wallet. We use cash for most things like Dave Ramsey teaches and my old envelopes were looking really bad. So when I found this tutorial I was able to make a new one using scrapbook papers I already had. I also reused the change pouch.

I also helped my mom make a roman shade that hasn't been installed yet and I don't have pics. Here's the pin for the tutorial.

I'm in the process of trying to recover a lampshade for Trey's room courtesy of this pin. So far I'm not ready to share pics but I will when I'm done.

I've also made a gift for a wedding present but I can't show the pic of that yet since I haven't given it but the idea came from Pinterst.

I've found a few ideas for hosting my sister's wedding shower. I used this pin to recreate the invites. And we are using this pin for decorations and this pin for a cute idea to have at the shower.

I love Pinterest and being able to have all my ideas in one spot and being inspired by others. So that's just a few things that I've been able to accomplish and work on lately. And as I make my way through more ideas I'll be sure to share. I think I'm going to start working on some Christmas ideas next!

Do you use Pinterest? Have you actually created or used it for something in real life? Please share!

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St. Louis

So I know I'm late in posting anything this week. I've been trying to recover from last week. Laundry, cleaning and being creative and getting back into our routine.
Last week David had a business meeting in St. Louis and Trey and I were able to go with him. We drove up and stayed in a hotel right across the street from the Arch. It was a very nice hotel but our room was tiny (because it was business we didn't get to choose the hotel). But we're the kind of people that bring as much food with us as possible so we can still eat good stuff and not only meals out. So 3 of us and a big ice chest makes for cramped quarters for 5 days.

 Sorry these aren't great pics, I took these on the day we left, so I had to make do.

Anyway I wanted to share some pics we took while there, and since the arch was thisclose to the hotel we have more of those. If you don't know, the Arch has a kind of walking park on each side of it and so it was a good place to take Trey (ok and me) to go burn some energy.

This isn't a great pic but I had to show it. This is at one of the bases of the Arch.

This is on one of the walking paths next to the Arch.

This is one of the bridges that is over the Mississippi River connecting Missouri to Illinois.

This is the view from our room and one morning it was super foggy and I just had to take a pic. Here's a better pic.

Me and Trey, isn't he cute!
So, while David was in meetings, Trey and I went out around town. We went to Target and Famous Footwear and picked up a few things. I also found a Homegoods, which is not in OK and I love this store! I picked up a large basket for $15 that I put in the living room to hold our quilts/blankets.

And we also went to 2 local Goodwill stores. I know that sounds a bit weird but we love to look around a Goodwill. The first one I found was in a super nice part of town and I thought that I'd find some great stuff. I found lots of (in different sizes) long sleeved tee's from Target with the tags still on. And they happened to be in a pretty purple color that I really like. I found one in my size and then found a sweater, but that was it.

So I told David and he wanted to go too, which I was happy about because I was kicking myself for not picking up another shirt to use to upcycle the one I'd already bought. So we checked it out and I did pick up the other shirt. Oh, by the way, shirts are $3ea (they're $2.50 in OK, but they don't pay sales tax in MO for Goodwill). We also found 4 Dr. Seuss books that we didn't have for $.50ea in great condition.

On another day David wanted to go check out another Goodwill. This one was in a not as nice area but was super big and I found: a cardigan from Banana Republic, a cardigan from Talbots and a long sleeve tee from JCrew, $3ea. I also found a beautiful dresser that I fell in love with but it wasn't meant to be. Anyway, I'll do a post soon on the clothes I picked up on the trip.

We found a great little shop/pizzeria while out exploring. A great little mom & pop place with great tasting fresh food. The shop had some unusual gift type items and wines. The lady at the counter asked what kinds of wines we liked and neither of us has ever found any we like. So she recommended one to try and we liked it. I was really surprised.

This is the bottle we bought.

Well, we had a nice trip but as always we love coming back home. I think our feelings on St. Louis is that we didn't love it but we didn't dislike it either. It had some good qualities and some not so good.

So have you ever been to St. Louis? If so did you like it? Have you ever been to a Goodwill/thrift store in another state? Or on vacation?

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