Getting the MOST from Kids Clothes

I have a confession: I don’t spend any time pre-treating stained clothing. Everything gets sorted, washed, and dried, if it ends up stained oh well! I know that a lot of you are probably appalled, but the reason I am like this is because I almost NEVER buy new clothes for the kids, almost everything is used or home made. Once in a while I will buy a “character” shirt or they will receive new clothing as gifts. The majority of their (and my) clothing comes from the Goodwill ($.99 sale) or yard sales.Just because I don’t worry about stains doesn’t mean that I want them looking like they are wearing second hand clothes, so thank goodness I can sew.
Now that spring is here it’s time to dig out all of the holey jeans, (second hand pants do wear through the knees a little quicker) and make some shorts. While one or two pairs of actual cut offs are okay, I will not just hack the legs off of all of their pants and let them fray. Today I re-did two pairs of jeans in two separate ways with almost the same results. The finished shorts look like they have always been shorts and will last through the summer (and may even be resold when they’re outgrown).
I have three pairs from Little Miss to fix, today I’m going to do a simple hem.  Her pants were easy, cut off the legs and cut the hem off of the bottom of the legs. Sew the old hem to the newly cut shorts edge and topstitch over old stitching.
On the right you can see the finished pants compared to just cut on the left. Sewing that hem back on really makes all the difference.Little Sir’s pants were in the same shape. I like to make his shorts longer, it’s just a better look for him. I cut the pants off right at the holes and cut the hems off of the pants, but OH NO, these pants are tapered at the bottom and there isn’t enough to just match and sew!!! (This happens a lot) First I turned under the raw edge and hemmed the pants, then I cut the hem apart and sewed it on like trim. Once it is sewn on I trimmed the raw edge close to the stitching, there will be a little fraying, but it should just look like wear.I know that it looks odd when I point it out, but if you don’t look closely (and most people don’t) it looks fine. See? Hard to notice, right?
So this is how I really get my money’s worth out of pants. The top pair I got for a dollar AND she wore them all winter before I made them into shorts. Little Sir’s pair I got at a bag sale, a whole bag full of clothes for $2.00 (pretty sure there were at least 8 items in the bag), so $.25 for all winter wear and now all summer too!
I have a stack of pants to finish up today, Little Miss will be getting some stenciled (to hide some stains) shorts and Little Sir will have some patch-y (to cover some holes) shorts. Look for finished pictures on the Facebook page. Now I just need to come up with some shirts!
How do you get the most value out of your kids clothes?

The Lego Play Mat

We have a ton of Legos around here and that means that I end up stepping on one at least a couple times a week. Little Sir’s favorite place to play with Legos is in his bed. It is not unusual for him to wake up in the morning with a Lego print on his skin somewhere from the tiny Legos that have hidden in his blankets.
To solve (or probably just help it happen a little less) this problem I decided to make a Lego Play Mat using this tutorial from Make it Perfect. Not to be left out Little Miss asked for one too and I also made a few (four) for a friend. I used some specialty fabric for Little Miss and Little Sir and for my friend I used thrifted sheets.This is a simple project that most beginner sewers should be able to do, the instructions are very clear, and there plenty of pictures for reference. I would suggest that after cutting your first circle to place it’s right side facing the right side of the lining fabric. Then fold it up and set it aside until you’re ready to sew. It didn’t occur to me to do this until after I had cut out my 12 circles, which weren’t exactly perfect, and matching them up proved to be a bit tricky and some of the circles had to be trimmed. I am very excited to have the projects finished, I’ll be giving them to the kids after school I hope they’ll really like them and Yay, this is another Pinterest project!

My Little Pony Jumpsuit Lounger

Or what I’ll call a custom Forever Lazy. I used McCalls 6475 and My Little Pony licensed fleece. Booties that Velcro on are included on this pattern, but I opted not to make those.
Everything went together smoothly in an evening. The instructions were very clear and the order of sewing things made everything easy. This would be a good beginner pattern because it is mostly straight sewing and fleece is so easy to work with, the most challenging part is installing the zipper and there are very clear instructions that include hand basting to make sure it’s in the right place and doesn’t slide around when you do sew it on with the machine.
The fabric yardage recommendations are pretty good with plenty of room to arrange and cut out the pieces. The yardage includes fabric for the jumpsuit and booties, since I didn’t make the booties I had enough fabric left over to make a drawstring bag.
I definitely recommend this pattern, I will be using it again. I think it would be great made out of cotton terry cloth. The pattern is available in children’s and adult sizes.

Kids Unisex, Inexpensive, Lounge Pants

When you have a boy and a girl there are very few hand me downs, maybe a coat or Halloween costume, but the regular daily clothing is so different and color specific that there is virtually no cross over.  These pants aren’t like that (unless you make them in pink or something) and they are so easy, I whipped these four pairs up in an hour and a half, including pressing, cutting, and sewing!!!  The key is using bandanas, the edges are finished which cuts out a lot of work and bandana prints look cute on everyone.There are tons of tutorials on making these pants and they pretty much are all the same, stack your bandanas up, fold them in half, cut a “J” shaped crotch and sew up (more detailed instructions here).  It is easy and inexpensive to buy bandanas, I bought the red/black and the yellow at Hobby Lobby (on sale) and the other two at Wmart, all were less than a dollar each.  The Hobby Lobby ones feel stiff and might be scratchy, I think they are starched.  I am hoping that after the first wash they will feel a lot nicer.  The printing is really irregular on all of them, which makes it impossible to match things up, but I don’t really think that is going to be too big of a problem, they’re lounge pants, not formal wear :)  I also think that when they are being worn by children who rarely stand still no one will notice.
They are sooooo cute, I’m thinking there are only two problems, deciding who gets what color and not going overboard making a ton of these.

Kids Pajama Pants for a Dollar

A few weeks ago I noticed that Little Miss and Little Sir were outgrowing most of their pajamas, I also found some pictures of them wearing the same pj’s from about two years ago (I buy big and they wear them until they’re too small).  New pj’s are pricey, covered in annoying characters, and usually polyester – uncomfortable!  I needed to make them so new ones and this is a great opportunity to simplify my laundry routine too: a random selection of pants paired with undershirts, no more matching up sets.

When my local Goodwill has $.99 day I  am always on the lookout for adult lounge pants, there is usually a good selection at my neighborhood store in size small and medium, I have been stocking up for a while.  (I wash everything I thrift the minute I get home, I want to make sure everything is nice and clean.)  Once that is done, I’m ready to get started.  I cut the inside leg seam completely open and spread out one side.  I use a one piece pattern (this one is Simplicity 9853), super quick and easy.  I have traced the size I need onto interfacing, so that I can use the pattern for all sizes.  I position my pattern on the fabric, I like to have the outside leg seam slightly closer to the front of the pants, not centered on the pattern piece.  I am also going keep the hemmed edge from the original pants, so I don’t cut the hem allowance from the pattern piece.  When you get ready to cut the second leg remember to flip your pattern piece over or you will have two right legs.

I stitched up the legs and then the crotch seam and all I had to do was make the casting for the elastic and I was finished. I finished the waist differently than the pattern suggests, by making the casting down 1/2” from the top and a lot wider for wider elastic, I like a ruffled waist and I think that the wider elastic works better and is more comfortable.  I didn’t count the cost of elastic in the cost of the pants because I have a bag full in my stash, but even if you need to purchase elastic your pants will still be really inexpensive.

These go together really quick, especially once you get the hang of the pattern.  I need to get the other pairs cut and sewn, I wonder which pair they’ll like the best.  Have a super crafty weekend!!!

All I Can Do Is Crochet

Wednesday morning at 10:30, while trying to decide what I was going to write about for my blog, I decided that I needed to make Little Miss a cute summer top, something with knitting or crochet.  I popped over to ravelry and 10 minutes later was printing the pattern and picking the yarn.  By lunchtime the crocheting was done (we had lunch a little late) and it was time to start the sewing.  The sewing was going well, but I had to stop to go pick up Little Sir from school, and that’s when things started going wrong. 

Apparently I had left the lights on in the car all day and the battery was dead, did I mention that I am a week from my due date and walking is not something I want to do?  Oh well, so we walked to pick him up, luckily it’s not to far to his school and we got there right on time.  Back at home snacks were eaten and kids were playing and I was Googling to find a repair shop that would come and jump start the car when something went horribly wrong with the computer, a virus attack, oh nooooooo, but I just renewed my anti-virus!  Yeah, so now the computer is pretty much useless (I have managed to fix it, but it took me a couple of days and a lot of cussing).

I won’t bore you with more about all this, but there has been a lot of walking and a lot of whining (from me).  Anyway back to the crochet, the top is finished and cute, yay, something went right.  Wow, crocheting is a lot faster than knitting, maybe I should make something else, like that cupcake purse that has been on my list for a while (that was yesterday).  By yesterday evening the purse was almost finished (must weave in ends) and another idea had hit me, what if I made this with crochet thread and a tiny hook and made it into a bottle cap pin cushion? I can’t find my brown thread, but oh well, white will work, and before bedtime I had this, almost finished, but it still needs something…like a cherry…hmmmm, use a bead or crochet one… Oh and now that I’ve made it once I want to make it again, only different and better, with felt and beads and I really need to get started on it now so I can finish up before dinner.  And a giant one would be cool too, with sprinkles and glitter, I could use a vinegar bottle for a hard base and paint it brown, and speaking of glitter I want to glitter some shoes, and that reminds me, I need a shoe rack, and, and, and…

Yeah, and this is exactly how my mind works, is this how everyone’s brain works or am I “special”?  And before I forget, I used the top half of this crochet halter top pattern (PDF) as my base and added the fabric and I used this cupcake cradle purse as a starting point for my cupcake purse without cradle.

Have a super crafty weekend!

An Update: Not Nearly as Exciting as it Sounds

So, I’ve had a minor setback on the curtains, I sewed one of the panels together wrong.  It is not the end of the world and it can (and will) get fixed, however the curtains did not get finished today!  I lost a bit of my momentum when I screwed that panel up.

I did get the paint touched up and the mounting boards bought and cut to size.

Before with the patches from having our home insulated:

After, I sanded (lightly, they had already done that when they patched the holes), primed and painted the spots and I think the spots are now invisible:

I also cleaned up and organized her toys and returned all her brothers toys to his room, she takes them and hides them away while he’s at school.

I will be finishing up her new curtains this weekend, as you can see the paper shades that we currently have are a little worse for wear and one window is completely bare since an incident earlier this week.

Have a super crafty weekend! 

Rock And Roll Baby

Maybe it’s just me, but shopping for baby clothes can be a bit overwhelming on the pastel cuteness.  Don’t get me wrong, I like a cutely dressed baby as much as anyone else, but I do get sick of all the pastel blues and greens and I really get sick of all those cute-sy teddy bears!

I was really exited to find this tutorial for making newborn gowns from old t-shirts on This Mama Makes Stuff.  I have to say that the pattern and tutorial are surprisingly simple, but I have been working with a lot of knit fabric lately.  I spent a few hours making two gowns and I love the results!

I had a similar gown like this for Little Miss and I loved the ease of diaper changing.  Hers was Winnie the Pooh, Transformers is much more us.I think I might have to add a stencil to this one to make it a bit more special, but it’s still way better than pastels and bears!

I have a bit of knit left over and I think I will be making some matching hats and maybe a few fancy rags.  Now I just need to get a few more t-shirts, I would love some classic concert tees to work with.  If anyone has any cool shirts to trade, let me know.

Crafty Kids

I like to do art projects with my kids at least once a week, but having an abundance of finger paintings and crayon drawings causes a lot of storage problems. I love all the things that my children make, but we can't save everything.
I've been trying to come up with ideas for different things to try and when I found unfinished boxes in the Dollar Tree I just had to get them. We have worked on our treasure boxes a few times and they are almost finished.I love how kids use color, they don't worry about matching or just using one color, why else would all those colors be in one box if they weren't meant to all be used at once.We spent about 30 - 40 minutes painting the outsides and about 10 minutes on the insides. My two year old had a little trouble getting the inside covered, but she had a great time working on the outside.
To finish them I will seal them with modge podge to make them shinny and more durable and they we will glue craft foam on the bottom, so they won't scratch the furniture. I looked for more of these little boxes, but they were all gone :( I'm thinking that we should do more stuff like this, maybe we can make signs for their rooms next, I might even try stamping on shirt, we'll see how adventurous I'm feeling.

Project: Recycled Crayons

I have seen a lot of people making recycled crayons lately and since I live in a household with two small children we have broken crayons everywhere. I had read this tutorial about it here a few months ago and bought a package of star cake tins and so late tonight I randomly decided that it would be a fun quick project.

Here they are waiting to go into the oven. Did I mention that my husband was on the computer and I couldn't go and check the directions, oh well, I can remember something I read briefly a couple of months ago, right? So I preheat the oven to 250 (note that the tutorial says 150, I was only 100 degrees off) and pop them in. After waiting a few minutes to make sure they weren't going to burst into flames or something I wandered off to watch TV. About 10 minutes later I went to check on them and I had crayon soup, not the variegated crayons I had expected. A little defeated I take a shower while I wait for them to cool. The backs are a solid color and not looking very exciting. After they cooled I pulled them out of the tins, the front side looks cool and the good thing is the only way you can really screw this up is if they do burst into flames in you oven.

I know that they will be enjoyed by my kids, they are big and easy to handle, and have no idea what they were supposed to look like. I will definitely make these again (I do have a coffee tin full of broken crayons and my mother still has a container full from when I was a kid) and bake them at a lower temperature and see if they look more like I expected. I think they would be a popular item at a craft show and they would make great gifts or favors.