My Quilt!!

OMG!  I can't believe I finished it!!  I finished my quilt for my bed!!  I am so excited.

There is a special dear friend of mine, who desires to remain anonymous in this, that was given a bunch of quilting stuff from the family of a woman she knew that passed away.  Most of this stuff was quilts that were half pieced together but were never finished.  My friend told me that she did not have time to finish these quilts and wanted to know if I would be interested in any of them.

When I saw the pieces for this quilt I fell in love at first sight!!  It was beautiful and I quickly thought of my bed and how pretty it would be on my bed so I told her I would love to take it!!  I also took a few other projects...and am thinking my sister would maybe like to do some of them herself :-)  (she hasn't even heard about this until this post - HEE HEE!!)  But once again, the friend of mine wishes to remain anonymous in this and I am honoring her decision in that!

But look at my quilt!!

I finished piecing it together.  I added the solid blue around the edges.  I found some super soft high loft batting and some pretty natural color muslin fabric for the back side.   I am quite new to quilting so instead of trying to hand quilt it or even machine quilt this massive quilt I found some pretty blue and cream 1/8" satin ribbon and tie tacked it (I don't know if that is the correct term or not...sorry if it is not).

Here is a close up of one of the squares.

Now I just need to find (or make) some pretty shams and some new curtains for my room.  (my current curtains are white but the bed is cream)

My husband told me last night that he would like to make a custom headboard for our bed!!  I think that would be GORGEOUS!!!

I'm so excited!!!  I have wanted to make bedding for my room for quite some time now.  But it seems like other projects always send this one to the back burner!  I am so happy to finally have new bedding for my bed!!!  (even if I didn't completely make it by myself!)

Another dress to skirt pattern

Here is another adorable dress that was just too small for Alyssa!

I cut off the bodice right above the waistine (so that I would not lose any of the skirt).  I folded the top cut off piece down and sewed a tube and inserted elastic to make an elastic top skirt.

I also took some of the bodice top (it was knit) and cut it into strips and serged the edges with the wooly nylon thread (stretching the fabric as I serged to create the ruffle effect) and used the strips to make a flower to sew on the skirt.

Here is the finished skirt.

And here is my precious model showing off her new skirt!!  She was all pretty and ready for church!

From Two short overalls to one super cute jumper!

Here is another project that I have completed for Alyssa!  I am really enjoying this if you couldn't tell!

Here is the before picture - a pair of overall shorts that were too short in the torso and a jumper that was too short!

I cut off the bottom of the shorts and the torso area of the jumper.  I added the bottom of the jumper to the bottom of the shorts.  I then replaced the straps from the short set to the straps from the jumper.

Here is the finished project!  A cute new jumper!

Here is Alyssa modeling her new outfit :-)

From A Onsie to a t-shirt (and the blankets I made for the kids)

The easiest refashion project yet!  It literally took me longer to thread my serger for this one than it did to complete the project from start to finish!

I had this onesie that was too snug for Alyssa at the snaps due to her long torso!  Now I have seen where you can add an extension to the snap area to keep it as a onesie...but I decided to do something a bit different.  I decided to make it into a shirt.

I cut off the bottom of the onesie right above the leg binding.

Then I just serged the bottom of the shirt.  I used wooly nylon thread and stretched the onesie as I serged to give it a ruffle effect.

That's it!  Easy as can be!

Here is my little model wearing the shirt!  :-)  She actually cooperated for the camera this time.  She even said "cheese"!!

(and she is wearing her new skirt with attached leggings)

Our New Blankets


I thought I would go ahead and add to this post the kids' new blankets!  We were at Wal-Mart the other day in the fabric section and Seth and Aaron found the novelty cotton prints and started yelling "Mommy I want this!  Make me something!"  Of course how could a Mommy say no...especially when it would allow Mommy to sew and it was something other than a toy they were begging for!

Anyways I told them to pick out their favorite print.  Seth chose a fireman print, Aaron chose a Disney Cars print (of course) and Alyssa chose Eeyore and Pooh (I held up several girlie ones for her to choose from...she pointed very plainly to that one.)

I got a yard of each of those fabrics and a yard of coordinating fleece.  I came home and washed and machine dried the fabrics so that they would get their shrinking done and then I just simply sewed the two together (right-sides in...and then flipped and then top sewed around all edges).

They loved them!  The only mistake I made was thinking Alyssa wouldn't care as much about them as the boys.  I made sure I finished both boys before giving them to them so that they got them at the same time.  I hadn't finished Alyssa's though...and boy was she mad that she wasn't getting her blanket yet!  She sure let me know she was mad about it too!  I have never made something so fast as I did her blanket :-)!!

From A Long Sleeved Dress to A Skirt with Leggings!

Here is another refashion project I have done for Alyssa!

Here is the before picture (I'm sorry...I didn't realize this was a blurry picture until I got it on the computer).  This is a long sleeved dress with bloomers that was too short for Alyssa.

Beforehand I made sure her legs would fit in the armholes - they did - perfectly!!

So I cut off the sleeves and cut off the skirt.

I sewed the sleeves to the leg holes of the bloomers.  For the skirt I folded over the top of the skirt and I sewed it to the waistband of the bloomers (stretching the bloomer elastic as I sewed).

Here is the finished product.

Here is Alyssa wearing her new skirt!

Refashioning Old Clothes To New For Alyssa!

Hey!  I know it has been forever since I have been on this blog!!  I have been spending all my time blogging on our homeschool blog and don't have much time to keep up both.  But I have found a new hobby that doesn't exactly fit on the homeschool blog.  I have already had several online friends that want me to share what I am doing and since not all my online friends are on facebook I needed somewhere where everyone can see what I am doing...which brought be back to this blog :-)

Ok - enough about that!  Now to my new hobby...taking clothes that are too small for Alyssa and refashioning them to ones that fit!!  I found this idea on several other sites and blogs and fell in love with the idea!  I decided to give it a go myself and found out real quick how easy and how fun it is to do!  It literally takes 30 minutes or less to have a whole new outfit made!

I have already made 3 new outfits.  I would like to share the first with you today :-)

Here is the before picture...a cute little summer dress that became too short for Alyssa.  (I will warn you up front...I am not a photographer so these might not be the best pictures)

I cut off the bodice...I actually cut a little higher than the waist on this dress (by looking at all the different dresses I have to do this with it is already clear to me you will be cutting off at different points just depending on the dress...just picture in your mind the skirt and you will figure out where to cut)

Now this dress had buttons in the back and where I cut there was still a button left on the back.  I took off the button and sewed the opening shut.

I forgot to include in the first picture the pair of bloomers that I had that matched the colors.  I used the waistband of the bloomers to become the waistband for my skirt...made it that much easier.

I just had to put a gathering stitch at the top of my skirt piece...gather it up to fit the bloomers, fold over the top of the fabric of the skirt and topstitch to the bloomers.

Here is a picture of the finished product.

Here is a picture showing the bloomers attached on the inside.

And here are a couple of pictures of Alyssa wearing the skirt.  She does not let me get good pictures of her right now.  I did the best I could.  She loved the skirt though and really got sassy when she was wearing it (it was her first time to wear her new (to her) boots too!)

I loved the fact that the skirt is long on her!  I thought she looked adorable!  And this seriously took less than 30 minutes from start to finish!!

I can't wait to share more of these projects with you!