How to make a tie shirt

After having my second little boy I knew that I'd have to get creative if I wanted to make things for my little boys!  I can't remember where I first heard of or saw tie shirts, but I love them.  They are just nerdy enough to be perfectly adorable!

I searched through blogs and etsy observing how everyone else made their shirts, and finally settled on the way that I love :)  I will share with you here how I make my tie shirts, and hopefully you'll love them too.

Materials needed:

-plain t-shirt or onesie
-heat n bond or some kind of fusible web for applique
-fabric for tie (scraps)
-sewing machine

Step 1:
Trace the tie pattern onto the paper side of your heat n bond.  I separate the two pieces, the knot and the tie.  I like the pattern of the knot to be in a different direction than the pattern of the tie.  I have included my templates for you here, in sizes 3-6 months and 2T.  Using a ruler you can make these shorter/longer and wider/thinner.  My suggestion is that the tie is within 3-4 inches of the bottom of the shirt.  I find if the tie ends too high on the shirt it's just nerdy enough to be down right nerdy.  Roughly cut around the pieces and iron to the wrong side of your fabric, like so:

Step 2:

Following the directions of your heat n bond, cut exactly around the tie, peel of the paper and iron to the shirt. It's now ready for you to sew around. Sew.

Step 3:

Stand back and admire! They're that easy. I think the trickiest part is picking the right fabric stripes and plaids work amazingly and the right size and length for the ties.

Step 4:
Adorn cute cousin boys with matching tie shirts.  Perfection!



As always, we will be linking these cutie pies to some linky parties, so check them out.  Seriously you can find some amazing talent at these parties!

Two Blankets, Two Ideas

I've recently made two pieced blankets for friends, and when I finished I thought they were the perfect patterns for a variety of blankets!  I am going to give you a semi tutorial.  Meaning if you've had a little experience on the machine, you'll be able to make these too.

(They are not difficult to make in the least, however, I am not doing a step by step how-to)

This was for my sweet friend Sara's new baby boy Simon.  I had a few 1/4 yards of fabric and was thinking and thinking of how to piece it and not have it look weird or like leftovers (which they weren't!).

My favorite part is the middle strip.  It'd be cute left alone, or with a variety of applique's.  I considered argyle diamonds, spelling out "sleep" or "Simon"...and ultimately settled on stars!!

On a side note, I made this ball to go with the blanket.  I always feel like I have to have a little something extra to go with "main" present.

Here are the measurements for this blanket.  The finished size is 38" x 23".  The measurements in the diagram below are what I cut the fabric, prior to sewing.  My seam allowance is 1/4".

Here is my pieced blanket #2.  This is a car seat blanket.  Heather and I discovered these about three years ago when we were making blankets for our soon to be babies, who were born only two days apart!  It is so nice to have a small blanket to squish around your newborn, instead of a full size blanket that you have to fold 8 times to get around them.

The same story for this one as well, it would be adorable without any applique at all...however an initial, heart, crown, etc. could make it so sweet too!

They can be finished by binding the edges or just simply turning inside out with a finishing stitch around the outside.  Either works. 

And when the baby gets older, it's a great little blankie to play peek-a-boo with :)

I always have to try and sneak one of my boy's in a photo shoot.  Guess it was Ollie's lucky day!

The finished size for this blanket was 24" square.  Once again, the measurements below are what the pieces were cut to, prior to sewing. My seam allowance is 1/4".

There you have it!  Two basic patterns to make a variety of easy pieced blankets!

If you are feeling adventurous and want to give one of these a try, please link us!  We'd love to see your finished project.  If you are a little nervous but would like to try it out, contact us because I'd love to answer any questions.

Happy Mother's Day!!  As for me?  Looking forward to snuggling on the couch with my oh so busy husband and watching a movie of my choice.  Mmmm can't wait.

What did you do?

Linking up to a few parties today: The Girl Creative, Between Naps on the Porch, It's So Very Cheri, Making the World Cuter, Skip to My Lou, Sew Can Do, Soft Place to Land, Today's Creative Blog, Sew and Tell w/AmyLouWho and Sumo's Sweet Stuff.

The Bad Sister

See, I'm the bad sister.  We take turns posting, and it's my turn to do a few...well see the last post??  Over a week ago!  Heather and I are always talking about our blog, what we can post, what we can giveaway, how to get more followers...but execution on all these ideas is just so hard sometimes :)

I guess I can blame some of it on Easter, right?  Do you want to hear a tragic story?  Well I guess "tragic" in the context of crafting.  I have a new sewing machine that has been giving me problems since I began using it in January...it has brought me to tears and cuss words too many times.  Well Saturday night, the night before my boy's will make their grand appearance in their Easter outfits, it stops working.

IT WILL NOT SEW, AT ALL.

I was just making hats for them, and I had one loop around to finish my baby boy's hat, I had already finished my older boy's:

Cute hat huh?  Wouldn't it have been doubly cute on baby Oliver too?  Oh well, I get my machine fixed on Friday.  

(by the way, the hat pattern is by Izzy and Ivy designs: Jack n Jill Hat)

On to my next project...so a friend and I are lucky enough to host a project night once a month.  We are part of a club for spouses of the school my husband attends...and we have LOTS of fun.  It's awesome because we get to decide what projects we do, so we poke all over blogland and Etsy and get to pick from all the adorable projects.  I especially like this month since we made fabric flowers.  Since I don't have a daughter, yet, I love doing girly things. We found this flower tutorial on Maize in Montana.  I love how they turned out, and who doesn't love a fabric covered button:

And the second flower we made I ADORE! They are my new faves.  (You can kinda see I'm wearing a GINORMOUS one in my Easter photo). They are cute 5 petal flowers and the tutorial was on Pink Paper Peppermints .  I like these so much because they are different than so many of the flowers that I've seen lately.  And they are equally cute using different fabrics as they are using the same:

There you go, that's what I've been slaving over.  Now I am the formerly bad sister :)

We've linked up with We Are THAT Family. and amylouwho.

Mini Makeover REVEALED!

Emphasis on the mini.

You see, we're moving in a couple of months...and my baby has been sleeping in an office with a crib. I finally decided I wanted to make a few little things to make it his own room. When I was debating whether to do it in my head, I realized I decorate for Christmas, Valentines, and all these things that are just weeks, so I could definitely do this!

I started with the idea for artwork, three cars/trucks:

I decided to get canvas from Walmart...it was about $7 for all three, I painted around the border since my walls are already white, and mod podged the cars on. I used inspirations from Pottery Barn to create the cars and traced it onto scrapbook paper.

The one below was intended as a police car, and I used the yellow just for color. But once I put the siren on I realized it kinda looks like a cab! Either one works though.

So here is the bedding and pillows which I did make all of them, but not recently. If you've been following our blog for a while, I showed off my older son Sawyer's room a bit ago here...see I am one of "those" moms. Before I had kids I vowed I would never be walking around with two babies (that weren't twins). Well guess what? I did it. My boys are 18 months apart and so Sawyer moved into the toddler bed and Oliver moved right into the crib!

And this old clock, I had a post about this here.

And this corner is just in case he forgets his name. Wow! That's what happens when you make crafts at different times with no plan of where they'll go. I also mod podged over that shelf, we had it sitting around with no use and it was too old to return, it worked perfect!

Here is where told how I made the memory tin that reads "Oliver" and here you can learn to make the name blocks too!

Consider it revealed! It looks so much nicer than before. Promise. And no, you don't see the other wall because it's a desk :) I think when we move I'm going to hang the artwork with ribbon on some bright orange knobs, would that be cute?

Thanks for stopping by!

Partying with Between Naps on the Porch, The Girl Creative, Skip to my Lou and It's So Very Cheri.

Mini Makeover Part 2 & a tutorial

Part two of mini makeover: I've seen these cute little blockies around and just had to make some for my Oliver.

Wanna make some to?

Here's how to make adorable lettered fabric blocks for your baby.

You'll need:

• Six 3.5" squares of fabric per letter (36 for me)
• Heat n Bond
• Scrap fabric for letters
• Letters traced or printed from your computer
• Batting
  

1- Trace your letter onto Heat n Bond and cut out roughly around the letter (remember to do the letter in reverse).

2- Cut out six 3.5" squares for each block you want to make.

3-Following the directions on the Heat n Bond packaging, iron each letter onto one square.

4- Sew around each letter.

5- Sew 4 squares sides to sides together.

6- Pinning the top and bottom squares to the ends of the "coming together" block, make sure to match the corners and then sew around. This can be tricky, it kind of takes trial and error to learn how far to go to on the corners.

7- Leave a small opening to turn your block right side out with, and then stuff it with batting. Hand sew the hole closed.

If you wanted a crisper more square look to your blocks, I bet if you added some interfacing to each square it would give you that effect. I wanted a softer more playable look for these.

There you go! Now you have some cutie-patootie soft blocks for your baby.

How lucky am I that OLIVER is six letters? As always, let us know if you have any questions!

Partying with AmyLouWho and My Romantic Home.

Mini Makeover Part 1 & . . .

We are moving in a few months, but I can't stand that my baby's room is an office with a crib in it. So I am doing a mini-makeover, complete with a little wall art, a mod podge shelf and re-doing an old clock.

I think I got this clock from my mom. Sorry momma, hope it wasn't a treasure of some sort.

It's oak around the outside with a gold rim. I know, it screams baby.

PS I know babies can't tell time, but I actually use this a lot, it's the perfect line of sight in my hallway.

And... I actually kinda love it. I took it all apart and painted the outside and the rim. Then I mod podged a simple car in the middle, which is going to match my artwork.

Part two coming in a few days!

ALSO THERE'S A GIVEAWAY!!!

There's a great site that is hosting a giveaway of our patterns. All you have to do it go the the Quilt Qua site and leave a comment on which TWO of our patterns you'd like to win!

If you're a beginner, I'd suggest Sweet Tweet and Crazy Daisy.

If you've had a little more practice check out Serenity Now, Tutu Pretty and Snakes, Snail & Wiener Dog Tails.

So please go sign up to win some of our patterns! We'd love to get lots of comments, and who knows maybe we'll have another pattern giveaway soon *wink, wink*

I'm linking with Miss Mustard Seed, Finding Fabulous, The Girl Creative , Between Naps on the Porch

It's so Very Cheri, Reinvented, A Soft Place to Land and The Inspired Room!

It's a win-win.

I am LUCKY enough to have in-laws that live in Florida, hurray! So over the holidays we went to visit, with my then 11 month old. I saw this fabric highchair on Homemade by Jill and made it quickly before our trip.

Can I say I'm a genius? (For deciding to make it.)

It worked out so amazingly, so easy to keep clean and small to pack, it is so super handy!

Really, if I we didn't have this we would have been having to hold him and try to feed him and get messy ourselves...plus he likes to be messy and eat on his own so it was a win-win.

A view from the back, as long as there are some kind of holes or slats in the chair, it will work.

We even put our two year old in it now and push him up to the table so he's "stuck" and has to eat his dinner :)

Mmmm...delicious!
I also made him about 6 bibs before we left, I was in desperate need of them. So late one night I went to Walmart (my only craft option...I know) and they ONLY have iron-on Velcro...WHAT? So I tried it, left the heat on longer than recommended, and it still didn't stick all the way. Ugh all that work and I ended up tying the ends of the bibs together. Boo.


We're partying so go check out some other creations! Twice Remembered, The Girl Creative , Skip to my Lou, A Soft Place , Today's Creative Blog, Reinvented, Cottage Instincts AND AmyLouWho.