Repurposed Curtians.

I found these handmade curtians at the salvation army.

I saw them and thought O my! I could totally make these into the cutest apron ever!

They are already just about the right size and only really need some ties to hold them back, perhaps a cute little pocket and then you have an adorable apron to use while cooking.

Don't you just love these little puff ball fringes? I do!

The vintage fabric is adorable.

I took some fabric I already had on hand that matched the green in the fabric pretty closely to make the ties.

Check out the ruler, its metal on one side and then backed with cork to make it non skid. I love it for placing on my fabric. It wont slide and stays where I place it for perfectly clean cut lines.

It turns out that there is enough of this fabric to make an apron for all the girls in my house. My youngest has been asking me for an apron for over a year now and being that my life was complex and breaking out a sewing machine wasn't so easy not that long ago. I decided to let her have the first one. It is cute and small because so is she.

Here is the finished product:

Here is my adorable girl modeling for me.

Crocheted kitchen scrubber

Another great recycle project born out of need.

I used Plarn to make kitchen scrubbers.

If you have never used Plarn its super simple. You can use a variety of items for plarn. One of my favorites is to just cut up plastic grocery bags. I have also used broken VCR tapes or Cassette tapes. These work well if you have something that you want to make that is larger then a small item like a kitchen scrubber.

So for this item I cut up plastic bags and then tied the ends together to make one long piece that i could crochet together. I left ends on so that I could stuff them inside of the scrubber for extra scrunch.

Making strips out of plastic bags:

Crocheting with cotton yarn and plastic held together.

Directions are simple:
Chain 3 Double crochet into first chain 3 space like this:

double crochet into that same space 10 times, Slip stitch into top of first chain.
looks like this:

Single crochet 2 times in the back loop of each double crochet around (20 stitches) Slip stitch into first SC.
like this:

Single crochet into next two single crochets, then 2 single crochets into next single, around.

3rd round is single crochets all the way around, finish off one of these rounds, you need two.

Finished off one:

The inside:

Second one not finished off:

with the wrong sides together (and all the plastic tails tucked inside) single crochet the two together like so:

Crocheting them together:

You now have a finished scrubber:

*sorry for some of the blurry pictures I had little ones sitting next to me and they can not sit still! *

Recycled Skirt

Today I got to sew. I spent hours sewing in fact. Its the first time since we moved that I have had the sewing machine out, So of course I over did it.

I started this project a while back (probably 8 months ago, before my life turned upside down) So I do not have any pictures of how these jeans started out, or the dress that I used either. But the new skirt and its many stages have pictures.

I started with an old beloved pair of jeans that had worn to thin in the thigh area to be suitable to wear any longer. I cut cut off the legs just at the fold for the crotch. (sorry there is no nice way to say that when you are talking about sewing old clothes) I left the top part of the jeans in tact. I then disassembled a less then flattering very out dated, someone donated it to me dress. The print is a cute little floral number that I love but the cut and style were very dated and just not so flattering. We wont mention the buttons... yes they were that bad.

Once I got the dress into pieces I started to assemble the layers. I needed to take two strips and sew them together then I ran stay stitching around the top.

It looked like this:

Once that was finished I started the long process of pinning the piece to the top half of the skirt while I pulled the thread to add small gathers to the floral part.

Like This:

Once I had a million pins in the thing I began to sew it together. First I sewed it inside out, then I flipped it and sewed it with a top stitch (in the ditch) as shown below.

First row completed it looked like this:

Then I moved onto the second tier, which is another layer of the same floral fabric.

Second Tier added

 I turned and top stitched (in the ditch) each layer for added strength.

closer look of stitching in the ditch

Then I decided to finish off the edge with some eyelet lace. It gave it a nice finished look and its a perfectly comfortable skirt.

Eyelet going on one way

Eyelet flipped and being top stitched in place

I got a cute skirt that cost me nothing more then a little time and energy. Its all completely recycled right down to the eyelet lace that once belonged to my grandmother.

Ignore the backdrop, just look at the cute skirt!
Please?