This shirt can be worn plain. And sometimes plain is fine.
But sometimes plain gets the boot with a funky 3/4 ruffle or striped, full-length sleeve.
Just slip socks or leg warmers on all the way up to the shoulder and you’re set.
You can attach your new sleeves with a zig zag stitch/serger to make them permanent or just wear them opera glove style depending on your fashion fancy. Go for a more polished look by wearing the faux sleeves with the finished edge showing or keep it super casual with the raw edge exposed.
Here’s another example:
most days this is just a plain black shirt.
But add some faux sleeves and you’ve got a holiday wardrobe in seconds.
See?
So …
Go hack up some socks or drag out those old leg warmers
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.
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.
As I mentioned in my last post, me and my kiddos are excited to share what we’re going to BAKE, MAKE, DECORATE and also SHOP this holiday season. This week we’re in DECORATE Land and, true to my word, I’m letting the kids call the shots.
And I gotta admit … it’s tough.
Why?
Is it because I’ve got some awesome ideas on my Pinterest boards?
Sure.
And because I’m pretty crafty and I’ve been planning for months to make stuff?
Yup.
But when I’m really honest I’ll tell you that I want my house to look awesome-wonderful-color coordinated-festive-wow-she’s-amazing-even-though-they’re poor when my friends come over because it helps my self esteem. Letting go of that part of my vanity in favor of letting my kids find their own magic was harder than I thought.
But this ‘kids in charge’ thing has been awesome.
I drug out the Christmas bins over Thanksgiving weekend and sat the kids down to make a plan.
Plan? What’s a plan, mom?
They just wanted to go nuts and start throwing things up. And I almost ruined the whole dang thing by insisting on them planning their spontaneous holiday decorating. When I finally got out of the way and let them welcome Christmas on their own terms, I had the funnest night in a long time.
And so the kids claimed my for-the-entry-way-only mini trees and hauled them down to their rooms. And decorated the heck out of them. And added gobbs and gobbs of extra colored lights. And they were so stinkin’ proud of how they turned out.
See?
And they insisted on using every ornament – every.single.one —on the tree in the living room. I think some potted poinsettias, candy cane pens, a glitter tree headband and wooden power lines from my son’s model railroad also made it on there, too.
Even the old-metal-hanger-tinsel-star that Mr. Thrive and I made after we got back from our honeymoon wound up on the tree, too.
Haven’t seen that thing in forever. Does seem oddly appropriate, though.
And after a solid hour of Christmas music, the kids were in the mood for something a little more upbeat from mom’s playlist. Done. And man did these kids have a blast rocking out and decorating away to 2012’s newest holiday anthem: Gangnam Style.
When they were all done, our Christmas tree looked like this:
A department store “Holiday Dream Tree” this is not.
And my kids’ lovely décor will never, ever make the rounds on Pinterest. As a blogger, that should be a big no-no.
But six kiddos giggled and laughed and rode air horses late into the night while this happy momma snapped pics and finally let go again of that reoccurring feeling of sadness for what I can’t give them. What we can create together as a family is more than enough and I’ve got the pictures and video to remind me when I forget again.
There’s been lots of glue gun action and sewing over the weekend as my kids had fun bossing mom around.
We’ve even got a new holiday playlist on iTunes that we’ve been rocking out to … more Gangnam Style, The Piano Guys, Justin Bieber, the Gummy Bear song and even some Jingle Bell Rock. The rest of this week I’ll be posting the fun projects that we made together to decorate our entryway, faux mantel, tree and walls. Bring on the cardboard, hangers, and repurposed old t-shirt goodness … Gangnam style, of course.
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!
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!
I was digging through my stash looking for inspiration when I pulled out this torn, king size fitted sheet. We had this on our bed for years before it finally wore a hole in the center. This sheet was huge (and because it was fitted), never really fit well on my shelf. Since I was drawing a blank on the Thanksgiving outfits, I decided I’d at least clean up the stash a bit and cut the sheet into smaller pieces so that it would store better. I grabbed my scissors, cut the sheet into quarters, and then went to cut off the elastic that ran around the entire thing.
And I stopped dead in my tracks … and just started at the elastic … and wondered if it was a mistake to cut it all off … what if I needed that elastic later ….?
While I was thinking, my daughter the genius picked up one of the ragged pieces and said, “Look Mom! It’s just like a skirt!”
Light bulb.
And from that happy little (divine) accident, I wound up with skirts for my girls in less than ten minutes.
Want to know how?
Seriously … it was that simple.
And if you use bias tape or some type of binding on the bottom, you can skip the hemming part all together – score!
So since I didn’t spend all that time prewashing, trimming, measuring, sewing, adding elastic, etc., I had lots of time to work on the details.
**And quick picture disclaimer — my girls kept bugging me to wear their new skirts so I let them play around while I finished up projects. Consequently, these don’t look freshly pressed anymore. Sorry for the wrinkles. **
You could so do ANYTHING with this basic skirt, but I figured the best thing to add to a happy little accident was a happy little tree … or at least the happy little leaves from the happy little trees.
{Sorry – I can’t stop thinking of these as “The Bob Ross Skirts” and smile every time I see them.}
I grabbed the fat quarter bundle I won a few months ago …
… and cut a bunch of 3.5” x 3.5” blocks with leafs cut out of the centers. I cut my blocks and shapes using my Silhouette, but this is easy-peasy to trace and cut using sewing shears or a craft knife. The blocks were sewn together with a 1/4” seam allowance …
… and the top and bottom edges were pressed under for a clean finish. The whole strip was sewn to the bottom edge of the skirt.
I hand-cranked my sewing machine around each leaf cutout, but you could sew this by hand, too.
I love the creamy flannel poking through the cut-outs. Yummy.
And don’t think the leaf shapes and scraps went to waste. I just made another skirt.
I stitched the scraps together to make a long, 1” wide strip. Then I ironed the strip in half and then in half again to make my own faux bias tape to finish the bottom edge. The leaves were stitched in place with a lot of hand-cranking as well.
Not bad for a fitted sheet and some fabric scraps, huh?
It’s all in the details:
peek-a-boo cut-outs
or sweet appliqué with a simple border.
And how fun would it be to dress up this skirt for Christmas?
Mitten appliqués? Little trees with button ornaments? Ric Rak candy canes? Reindeer?
Or for Valentine’s Day? Or any day?
How much fun could you have with an old fitted sheet?
Another holiday, another chance to blow $5 on Halloween t-shirts at Old Navy or Target or Walmart or whatever.
But you know me—that’s $30 bucks I’d rather not shell out. Plus, I love the idea of making my own designs and using up my never-ending fabric stash.
Besides, how could you not want to make your own when you have ridiculously cute crocheted flowers like these to work with?
I scored these beauties a few weeks ago at a bloggers meet-up from the awesome ladies at Riley Blake Designs. As soon as I saw them I knew they’d be perfect for Halloween sewing.
You’ll love how easy it is to make your own tees inspired by favorite prints, fabrics or clothes already in the closet—a perfectly coordinated outfit that comes together in 15 minutes flat.
Want to make your own?
To make this project you’ll need:
As for the actual shirt designs, I looked no further than the RBD catalog and fell in love with this fun Halloween print.
I loved the ghost and skeleton and made up a pattern to match. (Although I can’t wait to make the owl, spider and bat next!) And if I wasn’t in the middle of my THRIVE challenge, I would so be making matching skirts out of this fabric for both my girls.
*Swoon*
I used plain ‘ol shirts as the base, cut my Halloween shapes out of scrap t-shirt material and just straight stitched around the edge.
And the best part is that you can use shirts that have existing designs. I just pinned right over top of this bird and stitched away—no interfacing, no fusible webbing, no ripping out a bunch of embroidery.
I wanted the little faces to match the fabric as much as possible so I cut out the eyes and mouth with an craft knife, traced the design with my nicest glue BIC pen …
… and then carefully painted over the pen marks using the only black paint I had on hand: interior latex satin paint.
(Yeah, wasn’t actually kidding about using house paint peeps. Rock What Ya Got., huh? 🙂
Flowers were hand switched in place after the paint was dry.
L*O*V*E*
Kid #3 loves hers and is already plotting which homemade tights to wear with her new Halloween digs tomorrow.
My seven year old daughter is crushed: her Tangled lunch-box-purse-thing is toast.
Frankly I’m surprised it lasted this long.
My daughter loves–LOVES–this little box, but is terrible at putting it away. So in the last few months it has been stepped on, knocked down the stairs, left outside and dumped in the toys box dozens of times. This week she finally admitted through tears that there was no way to uncrinkle the metal or replace the busted off latch. The bottom of the box had a steel logo so I marched it straight to our recycling bins.
Time to toss the box, right?
Wait! Don’t Toss That!
Since I was going to have to cut the handle off her most favoritest toy ever before I could recycle the box, I let her come up with something new to make with the left-over materials.
And the result?
Clear, stretchy plastic cording + the left-over handle beads
=
a quick princess bracelet.
My daughter was thrilled to both save her princess jewels and have something princess-y to wear just for her.
And because we were so focused on the bracelet save, I didn’t even think to save the metal from the box sides.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
What I should have done was *carefully* cut the side panels from each side of the box, crimp the edges together and make a little cup for pencils or stickers for my daughter’s desk.
Oh well.
At least it’s been recycled and the beads live on as a bracelet on the arm of one very happy seven year old.
Now please remember to put your new bracelet away kiddo.
