Zippered pouch tutorial!

As promised, I worked up a little tutorial, filling y'all in on how I make my little zippered pouches (I knew you were just dying to know!)  Check out the full tutorial after the jump!  As always, I would love to see any projects you come up with, so I hope to hear from you soon!

Adventures in Dip-Dyeing

Hello, there!  I've spent the last few days trying my hand at some dip-dyeing, and I'm so excited to share what I came up with!  This recent dyeing experiment came out of a valiant, if vastly unsuccessful attempt to right a pair of my sister's pants that had been quite wronged by some hand sanitizer.  By that, of course, I mean that she tried to remove some tree sap from her pants with hand sanitizer.  While it took out the sap brilliantly, it also seeped through to the front of the pants and caused some massive bleach stains (oopsies!)  Of course, my first response was "don't even worry about it, we can dye them" only to realize that bleach stains don't really want to be any color than white (or really, some gross yellowish variation of actual white.)  After employing many creative (read: ridiculous and very messy, even for an outside project) dyeing techniques, I threw in the towel (or pants: I literally threw the whole pair of pants in my dyeing bucket in an effort to unify the color, to no avail) and moved on to Plan B, which was dying some lace to match the pants, cutting the stains out of the pants, and adding the lace behind the holes.  We'll just have to see what happens with hair-brained scheme #2.

However, the real up-side to this dyeing disaster was that the pants in question are a great coral color, which I matched by mixing two boxes of Rit dye: magenta and orange.  It seemed such a shame to make a whole batch of dye for just a little bitty stain, so I planned a few projects, picked up come unbleached cotton, and had a blast experimenting with dip-dyeing.  For the most part, I just dipped parts of the pieces into the dye, leaving the other portions white.  For a few pieces (once I had some confidence in my dipping skills, really) I folded the fabric to make stripes, which I'm pretty proud to say actually look like stripes.  I've been making my way through the dyed pieces, cutting lining pieces to match and sewing them into little pouches, wallets, and bags, and I have just a few to share with you today.  

These four pouches were the simplest of my planned dip-dyed projects, so I started with them.  I interfaced all of the dyed pieces, cut linings from some great metallic prints I found at JoAnn Fabrics, and just added a 9-inch zipper to each to make some simple pouches.  I have been meaning to try a half-circle pouch for a while, and I love how they came out!  The only thing missing from these little pouches is a great zipper pull.  I'm thinking…tassels?  Maybe a little pull made out of lace?  So many possibilities!

In other news, I'm working up a simple photo tutorial on how to make your very own zippered pouches.  They've really become one of my go-to projects…they're simple, quite quick to whip up, and leave lots of room for customization (the world is your oyster with this kind of simple project template.)  I hope to have that up tomorrow, so stay tuned!

I spent the rest of the weekend doing lots of running, practicing, spending time with my sister, and of course, with this guy.

  I hope your weekends were as lovely and relaxing as mine was.  

Back in the saddle

It's been a wild week!  In the midst of finding a new place to live, getting a job, having some lovely out-of-town visitors, running our first-ever 5k, and a little trip to the puppy ER (those darn fire ants!) I got back in the sewing saddle this week.  I put together a few little projects, including the completion of a project using this fabric that I dyed back in good-ole' Pennsylvania.  I used the fabric to make another "Flirting the Issue" skirt, and here's the finished product:

Because of all of the elastic at the top (and also because the results of my first venture into DIY ombre dying were slightly more subtle than I had hoped) I lost some of the ombre effect once the skirt was put together.  But I love my little skirt anyway!  I used a sunny yellow cotton lining, and I just love that the little white dots didn't take the teal dye on the outer pieces.  This is the perfect addition to my Florida wardrobe...it can get pretty warm at this time of the year!

I have a few more projects to share this week so stay tuned!  I hope you had a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by!

Hola [h]ombre!

Hi, friends!  I diverged from my crafty norm today and tried something completely new.  I've been wanting to try fabric dye for some time now, and today I finally plucked up the courage and went for it.  Inspired by the ombre trend that's hit the nation, I picked up some teal Rit dye at my local craft store and tried some DIY ombre patterns.  I started with a plain canvas tote (store-bought and sitting in my craft box for a couple of years) a plain white T-shirt (with the same history as the tote) and some pieces of white polka-dotted fabric that I picked up along with the dye.  I do have a plan for this fabric, but I won't share it with you just yet!  (I can't give everything away, can I?)  Unfortunately, the T-shirt needs a little more tweaking before its internet debut.  In fact, it looked a little less like ombre and a little more like a plain, yet unevenly blue T-shirt.  But here's what I came up with:

While I think my technique needs a little work, I'd call this tote a success!  It was pretty simple, but I did hit a few snags while working outside (mostly having to do with extreme heat and giant predatory insects.)  I can't wait to try this again and see what I can come up with!

While I won't share my plans for these pieces of fabric, I can't help but share a little sneak peek, because I love love love the way the ombre pattern came out on these pieces.  This fabric started as white polka dots on white fabric, and (much to my delight) the dots magically stayed white through the dyeing process.  I'm so excited to use these pieces!

I'm loving this ombre trend and I'm all too happy to jump on this bandwagon.  I can't wait to make more!  At $2 a box, I'm itching to try some more dye colors on more fabrics...the possibilities are endless!  I hope you all had wonderful Mondays, thanks for stopping by!

Happy Easter!

Hello, friends!  I hope you all are having wonderful and relaxing Easter weekends.  I saw this marbleized egg-dying technique on the Martha Stewart website, and have been wanting to try it ever since.  My mom and I had decided not to really dye eggs this year, but when I mentioned I wanted to do these, she ran out and bought some white eggs and a color kit.  They were so fun to do (albeit rather messy!) and they actually came out sort of like the pictures on Martha's website (which is a miracle, considering my track record with Martha's projects.)  Here are my perfectly imperfect marbleized eggs:

  

Aren't those little bunny candle-holders adorable?  These eggs were the perfect festive project for me today, and I love them so much I don't want to crack them and eat them!  Now if only I could get enough of the dye off of my hands so that they resembled human hands again, I'd be one happy girl.  I'm sure that will happen eventually.  Anyway, happy Easter weekend!

Nifty Gifties - Part One

Hello friends!  I know I've been MIA for a few days, but it's only because I've been working on something big.  It's really big.  It's so big, in fact, that it's not actually finished yet.  But I had a more time-sensitive project that I had to squeeze in this afternoon.  Not to worry!  I will finish it soon, and you will hear all about it.

But for now, I wanted to share a little project I did this afternoon in preparation for a trip I'll be making this weekend.  I'll be doing a little audition tour, and I am staying with a few different friends in a few different cities.  Not wanting to show up empty-handed (but also not wanting to give up a ton of time to complicated, overly-ambitious projects) I've been working on a few little gift items to take with me.  So here is Nifty Gifty #1 (out of 3) and it is: a set of 4 place mats!

When I went to the fabric store earlier today, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do.  But once I found this beautiful batik cotton I decided to go with a simple design.  I just love the swirls of color...I couldn't stand to cover those up!  I used a plain grey cotton on the flip side, and just added a little gold and blue trim (you know, to make it fancy.) 

I'll be back tomorrow with Nifty Gifties #2 and #3, and then I'll be all ready for my trip!  Hope everyone had a happy Monday!