Clothing Refashion & Somewhat Tutorial

This is a project I have been working on for a little while now. I got most of it done on a Saturday, and when the day was over it was put away in my "works in progress" bin. I brought it out again today & discovered a dastardly mistake, which I will reveal later.

Here is the before picture of the size 24 stretch slacks that I started with. I helped a friend out with her wedding, and as a payment her mom gave me her old fat clothes, knowing that I love to repurpose clothing. The bigger your starting pieces the better, I say.

See the fancy zipper, double button closure? I actually didn't use it lol but I think it will make a nice embellishment to some future project.

Here you can see that I cut off the entire leg of the pants with my trusty rotary cutter & ruler.

And the other leg, matched back up.

I took the pant legs and opened up one side seam on each, getting two large panels to work with.

Making sure to keep the already hemmed edges together, I sewed the two panels together to make one large piece.

This part was odd. The hems were done in such a way that I couldn't machine stitch them up like the rest, so I plan on hand stitching this part with whipstitch.

After fitting it around my body I determined that four panels was too much. So I removed one panel (one half of a pant leg) to get these three left.

I don't have a picture of this next part, sorry! But next I fitted it around my body again and decided that the bust was good, but it was a bit tight everywhere else (I'm still working off my pudge and I have somewhat wide hips) So from the part that I removed earlier I cut out a triangle and attached it in the back.

After finishing everything but the bottom hemming I took a look at my work and found this mistake! These pieces are supposed to be even, and this is at the top of the dress. Woops! Short of tearing apart the 3 seams involved & redoing it, what do you readers suggest I do to fix it?

Duct Tape Roses for Valentine's Day

My 17-year old brother decided, at 10 pm on Sunday, that he wanted me to make him 20 duct tape roses to give out on Valentine's Day. I chuckled and said "I'll see what I can do." I got one done before I went to bed.
So yesterday he tells me its okay if he hands them out on Tuesday, so could I keep making them? "Of course" I said. I managed to get 6 more finished between making lunch & dinner,  and feeding & changing my son. They turned out quite well, but unfortunately he snatched them up before I had a chance to take pictures. They were black and red and a few of them reminded me of the card knights from Alice in Wonderland.

Pictures of my Busy Day

As promised, I have found the time to take pictures of all that I did yesterday.

These green squares are roughly 3 1/2" x 3 1/2". As yet I'm not really sure what to do with them. I'm thinking of surrounding each one with denim squares (repurposed from old jeans of course) and making a quilt. Another idea is to take 4 of them and make a larger square and turn them into coasters or trivets with denim on the back. (I really like repurposing denim)

The finished squares all started out like the one at the bottom. You take two like that one and sew them rigt sides together on all four sides. Then you cut them apart from corner to opposite corner (diagonally) both ways and when you unfold them you have 4 squares made up of triangles. It's much faster than piecing the triangles to begin with.

You may remember when I posted about finding some old quilt blocks that I had hand stitched. I found more of the purple and polka dot fabric, already cut into squares, and I machine sewed them together to make more blocks. Also in that find were blocks of horses. I took the ones that had their heads and put them into the blocks. Right now it is only a long strip but I hope to find more of these fabrics in my mother's stash (which is where I originally got them from several years ago) and convince her to part with them so that I can at least make another row of 2 above the horses. I'll have to find other purple and black & white fabrics for the rest of the quilt.

This is my favorite project right now. It is going to be a ticker tape quilt for my son. I only have one row done and with only one row it does look pretty silly. The fabrics laid over it randomly are the other fabrics I am going to use on this quilt. They are all scraps from either myself or my mother. Mostly from my mother as she does much more quilting than I do.

Quilting Day

I had quite a long day of piecing quilt blocks. One is a purple, black and white quilt for myself. The other is a blue ticker tape quilt for my son. I did not have time to take pictures today but I will be sure to take some tomorrow and post them.

Item Swapping

I found this site yesterday via Obsessively Stitching. You list your handmade items and get Whoops. You redeem these Whoops for items that other people have listed. I already have 6 listings under the username MommyOfOne. Check it out!

And while you're at it, check out Obsessively Stitching for some great sewing projects.

Rice Cereal

We tried rice cereal for the first time today. It was super close to bedtime, so he was pretty sleepy and not very interested. I was probably more excited than he was. After a few spoons of it we waited about 5 minutes and tried again. This time he got very excited, banging his fist on the highchair tray and opening his eyes wide. But I couldn't get him to open his mouth! He would grab my hand with the spoon and bring it to his mouth, but then he kept his lips closed tight. Finally I caught him in a grin and dashed in with the spoon. He sucked on it for a few seconds and gave me another huge smile. After a few spoonfuls he got drowsy again, so I put him to bed with a bit of rice cereal in his bedtime bottle. I put another scoop in before putting it in the fridge to finish in the morning.
Here's to hoping it helps him sleep better. He gets 6 hours at once now, but I'm shooting for 8+

Busy Busy Busy

I have some pictures to share of the progress on my corset, but today is a cleaning/organizing day. My crafting stuff needs it desperately. I should have some pictures up tomorrow though.