Super quick baby blanket

It has been a busy week...

I've thought about posting several times this week but just have never had the time. Today, finally, things have slowed down a bit. (And by slowed down, I mean "It's 2:30 and I'm still in my pajamas!") I had time to complete a project I've had the materials for for weeks, but just never got around to- A baby blanket for my boss at the job I'm leaving.

Apologies for the pictures in this post. It's snowing and gloomy outside, and all of them turned out a little fuzzy.

Soft and snuggly!

This was such an easy blanket to make! I used some materials I normally wouldn't, two different synthetic fabrics (gasp!), in the interest of making this a super quick project. Now I will tell you all about it!

I bought the fabric at Fabric Bliss, a fabric shop owned by one of my old friends. She usually has a great stock of unusual and adorable kid's fabrics, like the monkey print you can see up above. The reverse is pale yellow minky, a fabric I've never used before. It's a synthetic similar to fleece, which I despise, and so I hesitated before choosing it, but the kids at my school all seem to just love the stuff. It doesn't feel like fleece, which helps- I hate the way just touching fleece seems to dry out my hands.

Kai was obsessed with this fabric- I ended up promising him all of the leftovers once I cut what I needed for the blanket, which turned out to be a fair bit.

Here he is, cutting scraps off of his windfall.

The binding I ended up getting later at Jo-ann. It's the other synthetic, and another thing I'd never used before. There was a definite learning curve- my last edges look a lot nicer than the first one I did. Luckily, the errors aren't too noticeable. 

I don't use these often, but they are sure nice to have!

Anyway, I just squared off the fabric (after washing and ironing, of course) and sewed it together around the edges. Since I was going to cover the edges with the binding, I left them raw and sewed wrong sides together. The fabrics cling to each other, to the point where I decided it didn't even need to be quilted. I am going to call the decision not to quilt this blanket "Going for simplicity" and not "Lazy shortcut" because that's just how I roll.

The binding was the trickiest part. I used this tutorial to get an idea of how to do it and it worked pretty well. The mitered corners took some fiddling with but ended up looking very nice. Here's how you start pinning it on.

And that's it! This took two hours, tops. I'm going to pop it in a bag with a bottle of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap (they're going to cloth diaper) and give it to my boss tomorrow!

Napkins and Excuses

Gosh, it's hard to keep up with a blog. I think that's what many, many people who try to write blogs discover. And it's harder for me, because I have this disorder... Laziness Syndrome.

It is so a disorder. Look it up.

Okay, it isn't. But with moving and adjusting to full time hours, it feels like I am always tired.

But! I sewed something!

I was reading an article about parents who spend hundreds of dollars to put their children in etiquette classes, because they are not learning manners at home. And of course I thought "That's ridiculous!" But I also thought about manners in our house, and in some convoluted way came to the conclusion that we needed cloth napkins. So I busted out my stash of fat quarters and made some fun napkins for us.

This is such a simple project. I feel silly even posting instructions. Get a fat quarter. Square it off. Hem. Done. It's a great project for splashy fabrics that you can't find a use for and beginning sewists looking for an easy practical project.

Of course, if you were an organized person with a well set up sewing area, you would have ironed these, squared them off with a rotary cutter, and pinned the hems. I did none of these things and I think they turned out just fine.

In other thoughts- I am thinking of changing this into a more general blog, where I would post other things such as parenting comments, Montessori ideas, rants, stuff I'm reading, and so on. I will probably do that soonish. 

Skater Sleeves- Tutorial

This is a pretty simple idea, but it turned out really well. I'm continuing with my quest to conquer knit fabric- this time with something that will actually be seen when it's worn!

It's winter, and our Little Man has far more short sleeved shirts than long. He's not really lacking long sleeved shirts, but it seems like a waste to let him grow out of his cute shirts without being able to wear them. Especially his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine shirt. So I decided to make it into a Skater Shirt. (I have no idea what the official name of this style is, but I like how it looks on little people- and me.)

These are the shirts I used- the beloved Thomas Shirt, and a too small shirt too stained for the consignment store.

You will need-
-A short sleeved shirt that fits.
-A long sleeved shirt that fits or is slightly too small.
-Basic sewing supplies.

Turn your sleeve donor shirt inside out and cut the sleeves off as close to the shoulder as possible. You want to make the angle of the two sleeves match, so don't follow the shoulder seam- cut parallel to the cuff, instead.

I of course left the cuff out of this picture. I hope it's still clear.

Compare the long sleeves with the sleeves of the second shirt. You want them to be about the same size where they meet, thought the long sleeves can be a little smaller. I found that I needed to shrink the cuff of the Thomas shirt a little so they would match.

It's hard to see- there's a diagonal seam at the bottom of the sleeve.

If you need to shrink the cuff, mark where the new seam should be and baste from there to the armpit. (Mmm, lovely word.) Trim to about 1/4 inch, and zig-zag over the seam to finish it. (or you could use a serger if you have one. I do, but it isn't threaded...)

Zig-zagged.

Okay, now for the tricky part. It really makes more sense to sew this from the outside, to keep the visible seams as neat as possible. So, turn both parts right-side out, and position the new sleeve inside of the old. Pin it in place, making sure they overlap by at least a 1/2 inch.

Okay, if you have a sewing machine that works like mine, you'd remove the flat surface and have a thin arm to sew on. I slid the arm through the collar and into the sleeve, making sure that the bottom layer didn't get crumpled in the process. If you have a machine that doesn't do this, I'm not sure how you would go about this part. You might have to hand sew it (sacrilege!)

Use an appropriate stitch for knit fabric- I used the stretch stitch. On my machine, it looks like three dashed lines next to a zigzag. I followed the original seam of the Thomas shirt's sleeve so it would look nice. Try to keep the fabric from stretching as you sew. I ended up letting it stretch a little and it didn't ruin my nice shirt, so don't panic over it.

Repeat everything for the second sleeve and you're done!

Viola!

The Little Man came out from his nap and wanted to put his shirt on right away- I call that a success.

Skirt Alteration Tutorial

Hey, back to posting! I could make lots of excuses, but how about a tutorial instead?

My pictures for this post are terrible. I could retake the last one, but who am I kidding? I'm doing well just posting.

I love this skirt. It's so hart for me to find skirts I like- they can't be too short, or too long, or too poofy, or too form fitting, or polyester, or... Well, I could go on and on. The point is, this skirt is perfect, and I wore it for five years.

Then I had a baby.

I'm not self conscious. I'm actually really happy with my post baby body. The only thing that I regret is the large portion of my wardrobe I can't wear anymore. Well, this skirt has sat on the shelf for long enough!

This repair will work on a skirt that is too tight in the waist but still fits well otherwise.

What you'll need-
-A slightly too small skirt with a waistband
-A stitch ripper
-Fabric for a new waistband (I used a wide ribbon)

I started by ripping off the original waistband (and incidentally rediscovering the original color of the skirt.) Since it was slightly gathered under the waistband, it fit perfectly once that was removed. I believe that removing the waistband on most skirts will give you a little more breathing room- if it isn't enough, you might need to look up another tutorial.

So I was left with a perfectly fitting skirt with a very ragged waist. I was originally considering a knit waistband, but I've still not gotten the hang of sewing with knits. So I looked around for something which wouldn't stretch, didn't require ironing (I can't find the iron) and went fairly well with my other clothes. I settled on a wide white ribbon.

It was easy to follow the placement of the original waistband. I just lined the ribbon up with where the fabric changed color. I hemmed the end of the ribbon, sewed it to the inside of the skirt, then folded it over and sewed it down to the front of the skirt. Hemming the ends of the ribbon before sewing it to the skirt made it a lot easier, as ribbon is pretty slippery and unravels easily.

And that's it. Easy, free, and preserves a skirt I love! And, I wore it to Thanksgiving dinner and received multiple compliments, which was a nice bonus.

Drawstring Bag from an Outgrown T-shirt (tutorial)

This was literally a ten minute project. I'm sure that there are tons of little things you could do to fancy it up, but I didn't want fancy this time.

The Little Man has tons of toys. Tons. One of them is this great peg board, which has provided him with hours of entertainment.

I'm sure those of you with small children spot the problem already. I'm missing nearly half of the pegs that come with it, and they are constantly underfoot. A little bag seemed like just the thing to keep the pegs together and organized.

You will need-

A child's shirt

1 yard of ribbon or string.

Standard sewing supplies

This is the shirt I used. It's a 12m, and a little too scruffy to sell back to the baby stuff store. I started by cutting out my shape-

Even out the edges, then sew the sides and bottom of the shirt together so the only opening is the neckline.

If you look carefully, you'll see that I also sewed across the corners. I wasn't happy with how this step came out, so I'm skipping it for the tute.

Turn the bag right side out, and snip a notch in the neckline.

Use a safety pin to thread your ribbon through the neckline. Tie the ends of the ribbon together to prevent little people from pulling the drawstring out. Fill it with toys and you're done!

Off with my head! (With felt applique)

It figures- I set myself a schedule and fall off of it the next week. I may need to rethink the whole Mondays and Fridays thing. But I'm only a day late with my Off With Their Heads playing card shirt.

I had this idea last week when I wore my cool playing card socks, and I was planning to make it last Friday before I got distracted by baby bibs. I have several plain tee-shirts which could use a little personality, and I've got a few other ideas kicking around in my little skull that I might go to later when I'm feeling like a quick and easy project.

The neatest thing about this one was that it was free! I already had the shirt, and the felt came from a box of craft supplies my friend Troy gave me during spring cleaning. I cut out my shapes from the black and red felt, making templates for the spade and club because they're surprisingly difficult to do freehand.

The cut-outs are cut out- see the nice recycled paper template!

I played around with the layout until I liked how it looked, then stitched the shapes in place with matching color thread.

I am still getting the hang of sewing with knits. And by "getting the hang of" I mean "get really frustrated by."

Finally I switched to contrasting color thread and zig-zagged around the outside for an accent. Guy said that if he were to change one thing, he would have done that stitch in matching colors, and I think I agree with him. You can't see it very well in the picture, but it looks messy to me. Never mind, scrappy and scruffy is always in.

The finished project!

No one was home to take a picture...

There are plenty of felt applique tutorials on the internets. I didn't use any of them, but if you wanted to try it at home, this one looks good. I didn't use any fusibile interfacing like she suggests, but I wish I had.

And that's all for today!

Bibbity Bobbity

I've made a lot of stuff for Kai recently, and I was planning on making something geeky for myself this week. Turns out, though, I didn't make anything for either of us. Instead, I made an emergency baby shower gift. Wednesday morning, Guy told me that we had a baby shower to go to Saturday afternoon. Mostly, we'll be getting the family practical gifts such as clothes and diapers, but I wanted to give something cute and personalized. No time to make a quilt, and truth to tell I'm pretty terrible about actually finishing them anyway, so I did some searching and found this tutorial from Lia's Space for some simple and cute baby bibs. I dug into my stash of fun kid fabrics and whipped them out in a day.

These would totally be a one nap project if you were just making one, or if you skipped the appliqué. I thought they were a little drab, so I decided to give them a little more oomph. I like how the appliqué shapes turned out, although the happy face seems slightly disturbing to me. I think because the zigzag stitch looks a little like teeth.

Welcome! And a teeshirt to tank tutorial!

Welcome to Sew Long, Wear Well. There's no deep meaning to the title- I just thought it sounded cute. I'm Maia, your friendly blogger; I'm a geek and a sticher, or a sticher and a geek, whatever your preference. I like making cute things for my one-year-old son to wear, and I love reusing nasty old stuff to make cute new stuff.

I'll start off with a one nap project- my favorite kind! This one is for me rather than the Little Man, but I'll be posting projects for him later, never fear. I've been inspired by Marisa at http://newdressaday.com to look through my closets and alter some things I'm not wearing.

This shirt is adorable, but was so tight under the armpits that I never wore it. Now that summer is on the way, I thought I'd try making it into a tank top and maybe getting a little more wear out of it.

I started by cutting off the sleeves. Then I used a tank top that fits me well and cut out the shape of the top, making sure to preserve the picture.



I found some brown ribbon from my stash and sewed it around the raw edges at the top of the shirt. I'm not happy with how this step came out- anyone trying this at home would do better to choose something stretchy for their version. Ribbon was hard to sew and came out looking... wobbly. That's the best word I can come up with.


I was hoping to have enough ribbon left over for straps, but alas, it was not to be. Instead, I used the hem of a teeshirt that I cut apart for another project (that I'll be posting later!) I pinned it in place using a mirror and sewed it down.

Still not entirely happy, I took the last of the brown ribbon and tied it around the straps. That added some cuteness and took care of the pesky ribbon wobble that had been bothering me.

Tadah! The finished project.


I had my husband take a pic for me, but he caught me with one of those facial expressions that you could use for blackmail, so I redid it. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out!