Well it’s too small for kid #6 and has a few stains here and there which makes passing it down to younger kids a no-go.
Time to trash that striped number, right?
Wait! Don’t toss that!
With a little Edward Scissorhands love, that sweater or cardigan can yield mittens and hats —even with those pesky stains.
(Good thing, too, since winter in Utah this year has been a little like living on the ice planet Hoth. Add to that six kids who keep jumping head-first into snow drifts and I’m having a hard time keeping enough dry hats and mittens around.)
*Cue the back ups.*
Chop off the sleeves and nix any trim or zippers. Open plain sweaters up along a side seam.
Use a hat for your guide and make sure you have enough material to cut twice the length of your hat + side seam allowance.
Cut the extra fabric away and fold in half with right sides together.
Cut around hat leaving room for a seam allowance.
Stitch around the top and serge or zig zag the raw edges.
And those stains? Yeah, totally covered them with some scrap t-shirt fabric. Just stitched in place.
I got one kids size hat out of this 5T sweater. Adult sizes would easily yield a hat from both the front and back pieces.
So don’t stop there!
What about those sleeves? Or any extra sweater material?
When I opened up the sleeves, I realized I had enough material for another hat.
Trim up the arm and scrap pieces to even rectangles. Measure from the border and trim pieces 1/2” longer than the height of your finished hat.
Fold each piece in half and round the raw edge at the top to match the curve of your hat piece …
… so that it looks like this.
Then just pin and stitch together. Serge or zig zag edges.
Done and done, right?
Nope.
There’s still left over material from the tops of the sleeves. What about that?
Mittens!
That same t-shirt scrap kicked out two more little hearts while the folded sleeve edge made some quick and easy seam binding for the cuffs.
It’s late. You’ve got a movie on. Or Pandora. And you’re frantically happily wrapping gifts and stashing them away for Christmas.
And then you reach the end of the roll.
And if you’re using cheapie wrapping paper like me, that means you’re face to face with not a solid cardboard tube, but a 12”-18” roll of heavy paper that doubles as a tube.
Who cares, right?
Wrap the dang present and toss the faux-tube, right?
Wait! Don’t toss that!
I’ve got SEVEN reasons to hang onto to that wrapping paper center.
And to make all of them easier, do yourself a favor and reroll that paper width-wise instead of length-wise—it’s much easier to store. While you’re at it, roll several together to keep all of it in one, neat spot.
#1 – Get Your VonTrapp On
Neighbor gifts, presents or any of your “favorite things” look snazzy with minimal effort or cost.
#2 – Paper Crafts
The natural color and subtle texture are great for cards and art projects without the premium craft store price.
#3 – Make stencils and patterns for craft projects
This paper’s heavier than regular craft paper and holds it’s shape better. Sewing patterns hold up better and stencils have less bleed through from paint or marker.
#4 – Wrap Shipping Boxes
This heavy weight holds up like a champ in the mail and post office types adore it.
#5 – Protect Your Work Spaces
Painting, coloring and gluing projects just got a whole lot neater. And unlike newspaper, there’s not risk of paint soaking through.
#6 – Protect Breakables
Skip the flimsy paper towels and cut squares to layer in between holiday plates and serving platters. This paper is both pliable and thick enough to protect dishes from scratching and moving when stacked.
How many of you grew up with Christmas advent calendars?
I did. This was mine.
My mom made this when I was little and it is such a special part of my Christmas memories. After 30+ years it’s starting to show it’s age, though, so my sister has started extensive felt renovations. 🙂 When my kids saw the pictures of her progress, my kids immediately wanted one of their own. Sewing something like this isn’t hard—in fact my dear friend Becky just made the cutest one for her kiddos here.
But I’m waist deep in other sewing projects … and I already had the Silhouette out … and I just happened to have some scrap vinyl laying around … so we compromised.
It only took a few minutes to cut out a mix of designs from the Silhouette store and tracings from my mom’s calendar.
(I love that my Silhouette can trace any shape! And no, this isn’t a sponsored post.)
And then my kids went nuts putting up “stickers” all over the frig marking out the way to Bethlehem.
All the shapes were applied straight to the frig, but I wanted Mary and Joseph to be moveable.
I ended up cutting two different shapes: one for the journey and one for the manger.
I applied them to some white craft foam, but cardstock would work fine, too.
Add some dollar store magnetic strips and voila! …
… Mary, Joseph and the donkey to move along the path each day …
… and the holy family for the manger.
No Silhouette machine?
No problem!
You could easily make something like this using contact paper, cardstock, whatever. Just add some magnets and go to town. Rock what ya got!
So …
Give it a shot – you’re kids will love this!
And if you make one, I’d love to see it! Shoot me an email, leave a comment below, tag me on Facebook or share it on twitter.
We’re off to move our Mary & Joseph out of Nazareth and on the road to Bethlehem … good night!
Fold over and hem raw edges. You could totally cheat and just whip out the hot glue gun, too. Leave the edges plain or go nuts adding ribbon, buttons, etc.
Sew a gathering stitch along the top edge and gather in nice and tight. Stitch in place.
This little skirt had a flat front with no extra fabric so my skirt doesn’t quite meet in the back.
No big woop. Our tree is up against a wall and you can’t even tell.
See?
Fuller skirts like these would have enough fabric for a traditional skirt fit.
So go dig out those outgrown dresses and dress up that tree.
My daughter’s convinced that she needs an extensive Halloween wardrobe.
I’m convinced that it’s not gonna happen.
Luckily for her I have a closet full of these ripped, stained and worn out gems.
Toss in some thin elastic and scissors and I came up with this candy corn themed, ruffled skirt refashion in a single nap time.
Ah, compromise.
And this has got to be one of the easiest sewing projects ever. Start with a white t-shirt that easily fits around your girl’s waist.
When you flip the cut-off rectangle upside down, you see that you’ve got a handy-dandy skirt base with a pre-sewn waistband all ready to go. And since t-shirt fabric doesn’t have to be hemmed, that raw bottom edge doesn’t need any sewing at all.
You’ll need to cut and piece together strips of white, orange and yellow t-shirt scraps to make the ruffles for each layer. The width is up to you and how long you want each layer. The length of all your pieced together strips for each color needs to be double the width of your t-shirt base.
My t-shirt base was 15” wide so I made sure my strips totaled 30” long. I stitched my scrap strips together to make three long loops of fabric …
… and then ran a long basting stitch along the top edge of each one. I gently gathered each loop of fabric until they were the same width as my t-shirt base.
(Make sure that any screen printing, stains, etc. are facing the inside of your ruffled layers!)
Pinning and attaching each ruffle layer to the t-shirt base was a quick and easy.
And the best part was using that already-sewn bottom shirt edge as a casing for the elastic. Love that.
The only thing left to do was sew the elastic ends together!
Sweet! Done and done!
In less than an hour I wound up with a cute t-shirt skirt refashion in time for Halloween that’s the cat’s meow. Um, apparently.
And while I was cleaning up, I put those left-over scraps to good use.
I cut some rag ribbon for easy piggy tail love, Halloween treats, or whatever.
So there you go!
I hope you take a look at your fabric stash and have fun whipping up something awesome during nap time!
(Originally shared as a guest post on Ucreate Kids here.) Holy cow … Halloween is just around the corner. That means me and my six kiddos have been on the look out for everyday items to repurpose for Halloween. This weekend we hit the mother load … in the produce isle. Turns out with some paint and glue, you can turn an apple tray into something frightfully fun.
Frightfully fun for flat-out free! You can use this at home or in a classroom as just a calendar or filled with little treats to open each day. Want to make one with your kids, too? For this project you’ll need a cardboard apple tray from the produce section +
(Produce trays are usually free from your grocery store – just ask the produce guy to grab you one.) As always I hope you’ll rock-what-ya-got and adapt this project to whatever supplies you have on hand so that you can make this for free or dirt cheap. Prime the tray with a cheapy sponge brush and whatever white paint you have on hand: craft paint, house paint, plain ‘ol primer. Just skip the spray paint – the paper tray is crazy porous and sucks it all up.
Add a coat of orange paint …
… and then carefully paint the edges and creases black with a small paint brush.
Add stems and calendar numbers with a Sharpie and paint marker.
(I marked the numbers first and let my kids do the decorating.)
The remaining pumpkins on the sides can be dressed up with jack-o-lantern faces or left plain.
Have a grown up punch two small holes on each side of the stems with a bamboo skewer …
… and thread twisty ties from behind …
… so that your calendar looks a little something like this:
Tame those unruly twisty ties with a bamboo skewer or paint brush.
Time to add the treats! Flip the tray over and add some small treats, toys or stickers to each pumpkin back. Then carefully add school glue along the ridges (orange dots below) and sides of the tray …
… lay the backing poster board or cardstock over top and gently weight the whole thing down for an hour. When dry, gently turn tray back over and cut away any extra paper or poster board from the back.
Punch two holes in the top with scissors and thread through some snazzy ribbon.
Yup, snazzy.
Your calendar is ready to be displayed! Starting on October 1st, you can “carve” each day’s pumpkin and enjoy a little treat one of two ways: 1) turn the calendar over and carefully remove the candy from behind — OR — 2) gently untie the twisty tie, carefully cut around the pumpkin and stem …
… open each pumpkin like a little clam shell and enjoy your yummy treats.
Retwist to close the pumpkin and you’re ready for the next day. (Of course you could cut all 31 pumpkin shapes ahead of time and just retie the little twisty ties, but I chose not to. I don’t trust my little ones to stay out of the treats. 🙂 So there you go – two ways to “carve” a Halloween Advent! And if you’re looking for more fun projects like the ones below, check out Thrive’s holiday tutorial page.
For the first time in eleven long years, all six of my kiddos are in school—five in elementary and one in preschool!
That means that I now have dedicated time to get back to spending some quality time over here at Thrive while my kids have a blast with their friends at school.
It also means that I had to shell out for six kids to go back to school. Thankfully, though, a little planning and creativity paid off big for us. Here’s what we did.
#1 – DIY It: The more you create, the less you spend
Shoes
My girls are still on the glitter kick which means expensive, blinged out shoes for school.
Or does it?
Baby Girl headed straight for some $30 graffiti-glitter-rhinestone-rainbow numbers while I wondered toward something more in our budget … like plain $5 black canvas numbers from the boys’ section at Walmart.
Baby Girl wasn’t excited … like at all … until we wondered over to the sewing section and I let her pick out her own bling to make her custom shoes. And to my surprise, we walked out with some fuchsia $0.57/yd. sequined trim that went on in two seconds flat with a little super glue.
Holy cow. LOVE.
Trendy. Funky. Sparkly. Blessedly less over-the-top than those $30 numbers.
Baby Girl loves them.
I love them.
Mr. Thrive loves the extra $24 we didn’t spend.
And she totally rocked that first day of preschool.
$2-3 School Spirit Shirts
I’ve already seen the PTA fliers for the school spirit shirts in the kids’ backpacks …and they’re cute …and they support school programs … but at $10-$20 each x 5 kids in school, it’s just not happening.
*Sigh*
Thankfully our dollar store has surprisingly nice, basic t-shirts in solid colors right now. So a plain shirt + $1 worth of vinyl = custom school spirit shirt for $3 or less. And while we were at it, we grabbed a few old, stained shirts from the kids’ closets and bleached them, too. Completely original, yet very school-spirit-ish shirts for a bucks worth of vinyl?
Score!
We went the bleach route and simply added a vinyl design, lightly bleached around the design with a spray bottle and then peeled off the vinyl. A quick rinse with cold water and a run through the wash and the kids were set. I used my Silhouette to cut my designs, but rock what ya got! This works great with contact paper or freezer paper + scissors and/or a craft knife. Heck, you could even make designs with painters or duct tape. Go crazy!
And since there are roughly a billion bleach shirt blog posts out there, I’ll skip the tutorial and just pass along a few tips I found in making our shirts:
Use a garbage bag
Slip a large garbage bag over a hanger and then place the shirt over top. This keeps the bleach from bleeding through to the back side and keeps everything neat.
(Shirt with vinyl design applied and ready for bleaching)
Experiment with spray bottle settings
Using a full-sized spray bottle on the SPRAY setting produced a fun, blotchy finish.
Love this one.
Go Tigers!
(Tiger image from 123rf.com; Collegiate Black FLF front can be downloaded free HERE)
In this CTR shirt that I made for my niece, I used that same full-size spray bottle set to STREAM and the bleach beaded up on the shirt and ran down the front. I love the look of the run-off and the slightly blurry finish from the bleach stream soaking in behind the vinyl design.
(CTR design was created using Dymaxion Script which free to download HERE)
For this last shirt, I used a small travel size spray bottle for a fine mist and ended up with this even, faded look.
This time I bleached the front and back of the shirt. The garbage bag kept the bleach from bleeding through.
(Eagle design from 123rf.com; Certificate font can be downloaded for free HERE)
Find cute designs
I made shirts using designs from three places: my kids’ school, the Silhouette store and online images.
School: I asked the secretary at my kids’ school for a digital copy of the school logo/mascot and she happily emailed me a black and white copy. I imported it into my Silhouette and started cutting. My kids were super excited to be able to cut their mascot. Plus I can use this design to make teacher gifts for the holidays and teacher appreciation. (For internet safety, I’m not posting that one, but it turned out great.)
Silhouette Store: For $1 each, their shapes are a cheap and fun way to find thousands of designs. It’s like the iTunes store for crafters. And they just added Batman shapes. Kid #4 is going to be ecstatic. 🙂
Online Graphic Websites: I purchased designs like the tiger and eagle for $1 each from 123rf.com. I wanted to do something a little more grown up for my older kids and decided to design my own logos with their school mascots. While the Silhouette can trace and cut any digital image, I’m a stickler for honoring the copyrights of online images and only use royalty-free or paid designs that I have permission to use. There’s so many websites with free or cheap images that there’s no reason to play dirty.
Create Your Own: For all you crafty/artistic types, make your own designs! You can draw or create your image on the computer and cut it free hand from freezer paper or contact paper.
#2 – Buy Year Round
Rather than buy clothes in big, expensive spurts, I’m on the watch for clothing deals year ‘round. I grab staples like jeans and coats at garage sales, thrift stores and clearance sales as I see them. That way back to school shopping is about a few new items to update, not completely overhaul a wardrobe. Mr. Thrive laughed when I bought the kids’ new school backpacks the week after school got out for the summer, but our local store had the popular $20-$25 backpacks slashed to $9 each. Done and done. And when Kid #2 who is brutal on shoes found his favorite pair for 50% off, I bought one pair in his size and another identical one in a half size bigger. For the price of one pair, I got two and was prepared for that day a mere three months later when Kid #2 was ready for new shoes yet again.
#3 – Budgeting for clothes when you don’t have a clothing budget
Back to school shopping used to stress me out because the reality is that we didn’t have a clothing budget for our family at all. Whenever someone needed new shoes or pants, we’d eek it out of our monthly gas or food budgets. But Mr. Thrive came up with a great idea at the beginning of this year that has allowed us to budget for ongoing clothing, birthday and school expenses on our limited income. He set up a savings account for each of our kids separate from their personal savings accounts. When we did our taxes, we put $50 in each kid’s account. Then every two weeks $5 goes into each one. For us that’s $30 a paycheck and is what we can afford—your family may do more or less. It may not seem like a lot of money, but it adds up.
Now, whenever one of our kids needs clothes or field trip money, I just take it out of their account. No worrying. No stretching gas. No panic when they grow through three shoes sizes in one year and we’re already tight on grocery money. The money is there and my kids are taken care of. So the $6 for Baby Girl’s glitter shoes came straight out of her account and not the gas tank. And $2 came out of each of my older kids’ accounts to cover their spirit shirts. And since the money is constantly being replenished, I don’t have to worry about choosing between new jeans or groceries next month because I know we’ll need both.
So what creative, free and/or cheap things do you do to help your kids get ready for back-to-school?
Well, despite my hours of dedicated research on Pinterest, my kids still arrived at ‘bored’ last weekend. *Sigh* It’s only been a couple of weeks and apparently all the park trips, splash pads and kid crafts just aren’t cutting it anymore. And movies, coloring and playing outside were also nixed. Bummer.
But those stacks and stacks of pictures got me thinking … and I looked over my ginormous ugly-stained-ripped-worn-out t-shirt stash and started thinking.
And suddenly I decided that it might just be time to turn the kids loose and let them design their own silly pillows any way they’d like. It’s stash-busting, sewing-teaching and time-killing all in one.
The end result was pure delicious awesomeness. See?
Crazy robot monster? Sure.
Superhero shield? Bring it.
Random ‘spider head’ pillow? Okay.
I {HEART} Cherries? Yes ma’am.
And these were so ridiculously fun to make.
Me and my dirty half dozen blew off two solid days working on these and they were giggly and excited the whole time. I loved that they were bending over backwards to help with dishes and laundry to give mom time to finish sewing their pillows.
So this isn’t a tutorial so much as it is a list of tips and ideas to get the wheels turning and hopefully save you a few headaches.
1. There are no rules! I’ve been terrified to sew with knits because I don’t have a zig zag on my vintage Featherweight, nor do I own a serger. Who cares—you’re not making clothes! Pillows don’t have to hold up to the wear and tear of being pulled on and off of little bodies. If you’ve got a zig zag or serger, by all means, use it. But if you don’t (or are scared to try), don’t sweat it. Just use lots of pins to keep the fabric from pulling and stretching, GO SLOW, and lengthen your stitches. Our pillows have been beat to death and drug around everywhere in the last two weeks and they’re holding up great. (They came through the wash like champs, too).
2. Give your kids total control over their designs – no mom ‘fixing’ or ‘helping.’ Period. When their design was finished, I just drew a seam allowance for the pillows by simply pinning the pattern to the fabric and tracing a .5”ish line around the edge.
3. Let your kids help with the cutting, pinning, sewing and stuffing as much as possible. It’s going to be messy, imperfect and slow, but totally awesome. You know your kids’ ability levels – help when needed and then get out of the way.
My older kids (including my 6 yr. old) cut out there designs by themselves. It was sloppy and jagged.
I mean really sloppy and jagged.
Who cares?! The rough edges will be covered up by the seam and my kids were so proud of themselves.
4. Keep the pillow shapes simple. If your kid’s design is really small or oddly shaped, apply it to a square, rectangle or circle pillow. The basic shape of the superhero shield and spider head where fine as-is, but the small cherries and alien robot monster would have been impossible to make without attaching them first to an easy-to-sew rectangle base.
5. Sewing applique pieces: I attached large shapes like the cherries and alien body by simply pinning the shape to the pillow top and straight stitching around the edges. Contrasting thread helped little details really pop.
The smaller pieces were ironed on using lite-weight heat’ n ’bond and then top-stitched for extra durability.
But … rock-what-ya-got!
If you want to skip sewing on details, do it! Just use a heavy weight iron-on product. If you only have fusible webbing, that’ll work, too! If you don’t have anything but a sewing machine handy, just sew the whole thing together. See? No rules!
6. Fun extras like handles for shields or pockets for treasures can be attached for extra awesome powers.
7. Scraps make the sweetest dress up gear ever. See?
Best project outfit ever, kid. Well done.
8. Get creative for stuffing ideas. I had a little bit of store-bought stuffing on hand, but not nearly enough for four pillows. The solution? I had the kids pick out stuffed animals from the toys bins that were ready to be tossed and remove the stuffing. The old, dirty fabric from those stuffed animals got a rinse in the washer and then joined my fabric stash. 🙂
Both types of stuffing work great and it saved me a trip to the store. Love that.
So give Silly Pillows a try.
We’re sure liking them at our house. 🙂
A lot.
And if you liked this project, please share it on Pinterest, FB or twitter using the tabs below. Thank you!
Anyone else have one of these in their linen closet?
A special pillow case made by a grandma/aunt/mother/friend/neighbor that you can’t bear to part with even years after it’s stopped being used? Or what about regular ‘ol pillow cases with fun designs that are rarely used?
My girl is way too tall for one of those popular pillow case halter dresses for toddlers that are all over Pinterest, so it must be time to put that pink and purple number in the donate bin after all, right?
Wait! Don’t Toss That!
Ten minutes of superdee quick refashioning will yield an easy skirt project, perfect for older girls.
I just measured from my daughter’s waist to knee and added 1.5” to make a casing for a simple elastic waist. Then I sewed the casing and added some reclaimed elastic from an old pair of underwear just like I did here in the Captain Underpants elastic waist twirl skirt.
See?
Start to finish was less than ten minutes since the side and bottom hems were already finished – love that.
Now my crazy-tall girl has a breezy summer skirt that’s actually long enough to wear, yet lightweight for hot days.
Perfect for grand adventures or lazy walks.
So glad I pulled that sweet pillow case out of the donate pile.
Plus, I think her grandma will appreciate seeing her handiwork being loved again.
Win, win.
Old pillow case?
It’s What Not To Toss This Weekend!
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For the record, let me say this: painting your stairs is fairly easy, but very, very time consuming.
This is not a quick weekend project.
I highly recommend painting your stairs if you’re looking for a cheap facelift and/or to buy you some time until you can do a major stair remodel.
That being said … holy cow. This project was a chore. Awesome, but a chore.
If we could have tackled this on it’s own, it would have been fairly straight forward. But since we were now launching into painting the stairs in the middle of painting the entryway floor and door …
… and trying to finish the kitchen pantry …
… and the dishwasher breaking and needing to be hauled up and down those entry stairs and across the disastrous painted floor on not-so-much dry paint …
… and the stairs off the back deck deciding to rot and fall off at the same time leaving no other way to get in and out of the house …
… and not having a working entry light which meant that all painting had to be done during the day with kids around whose bedrooms and playroom are downstairs just made everything more complicated.
But we were committed, so I busted it to get going to try and fix everything in the two weeks left before company rolled into town.
The first thing I did was use a hammer to pull up the carpet tack strips that were nailed to the top of the treads and front of the risers. I had to use a chisel a couple of times to get the tack strips to lift up enough for the hammer to pull them loose.
I hadn’t ripped the carpet off the sides of the stair case or along the railing that first night …
… but the remnant carpet looked lame so off it came, too.
And then hundreds of staples had to get pulled out with pliers.
The super, tiny ones needed a small screw driver hammered underneath them to lift them up enough where I could grab them with pliers.
After four solid hours of ripping out staples and tack strips, I had some wicked awesome blisters. So here’s tip ladies: wear gloves for this part.
At this point I didn’t know how to proceed since as you can see in the picture above, the treads weren’t plywood or hardwood, but rather particle board that is notorious for leaching paint like a sponge. Plus it’s a lot coarser than plywood or hardwood steps. For 30 seconds, I really considered ripping up those cheapy particle board steps and putting down something that could be stained. But at $11 a tread, I was looking at a lot of money I still didn’t have.
So painting it was.
The nice thing about having particle board steps is that you don’t have to sand them down at all—in fact it’s a nightmare to even try. So the stained areas on the steps got a quick spot coat of KILZ …
… and then the whole thing got two heavy coats of oil-based primer.
And I was pleasantly surprised — the particle board took the paint very well. The first coat of primer sucked up a lot of paint and dried very light, but the second coat covered beautifully.
I had hoped two heavy coats of primer would hide all the staple holes everywhere.
Um, no.
After the first coat of primer it was pretty clear that no amount of paint was going to cover those bad boys.
So, tip #2: fill all the holes with wood putty and then sand smooth before priming and painting. It’s a total pain to have to go back to do that step after the painting has started.
Between my super-cautiousness-on-the-drying-times-after-the-floor-mess thing and the afore-mentioned issues with the rotting-back-stairs-and-dishwasher-and-painting-only-during-daylight thing, the prep work took a full week to complete before we were ready to start painting the finish colors.
Phew.
So for anyone wanting to paint their stairs – especially stairs with particle board treads, let’s recap how to do this the smart way.
Painting Your Stairs: Prep Work
1. Remove carpet and pad using pliers and the claw on the back of the hammer.
2. Remove the carpet tack strips with a hammer and chisel.
3. Remove staples using pliers.
4. Patch staple/nail holes with wood putty, allow to dry thoroughly, sand smooth.
5. Sand non-particle board areas like the risers/kick boards and sides of stairs lightly.
6. Sweep stairs and wipe clean.
7. Spot treat any stained areas with KILZ and allow to dry at least 30 minutes.
8. Coat stairs with two coats of oil-based primer, allowing each coat dry thoroughly.
************************
Back on Friday with the fun part – painting the finish colors!
