Sew Pretty T-Shirt Dresses is a new title from Sixth and Spring Books. It retails for $14.95 and has 25 patterns.

Here is a description from the press release I was sent: “Learn how to make a basic beautiful girl’s dress—without straining your schedule or your budget. Employing a little know-how and a lot of imagination, the designers at Sweet Seams Studio offer easy instructions for transforming a simple T-shirt into a stylish dress for a special little girl. Perfect for tomboys, fashionistas or anyone in-between—the 25 projects use playful quilting fabrics and clever embellishments to create outfits that are anything but ordinary.”

I saw this mentioned on Facebook from Craftsy.com and had to share:

“As QuiltCon’s media sponsor, Craftsy will bring you this FREE series of lectures recorded at the show, Feb. 21-24, 2013. A Craftsy production team will be on site to capture eight different lectures plus the awards ceremony recognizing the best work in QuiltCon’s juried modern quilt show. Speakers include Heather Jones, Angela Walters, David and Amy Butler,  Jacquie Gering and Mary Fons.”

You can read more about the lecture series recordings and sign up for free here.

In early September, I talked a little about a new book called How to Make Stuffed Animals: Modern, Simple Patterns and Instructions for 18 Projects, but I had not gotten a chance yet to take a complete look at the book other than the free download, which I offered then and again have for you linked here.

Now that I have the book in my hands, I can give you a little bit more info about it. As the title says, it includes 18 projects, all of which are small, adorable animals. The first part of the book before the projects section has the basics concerning what you will need to get started as far as supplies and also important information about the techniques. If you already sew, other than maybe needing to purchase some stuffing (the author prefers carded wool, but I think poly-fill would also work), you more than likely have most of what you will need. Plus since all the animals are pretty small, you don’t need tons of fabric and can probably use up scraps. In fact, one design element I really like is how she uses a mix of fabrics, even prints, for many of her project.

The techniques covered in the beginning section discuss some of the basics of sewing you need to know such as how to cut out a pattern correctly and how to do simple stitches like back stitch. At first I worried that maybe she expected you to hand stitch all of these animals, but the author explains how to use edge stitching on a machine. The hand stitching is really just for extra details and attaching parts together from what I can tell.

The projects are all freaking adorable! Each project has step by step instructions and include some pretty detailed illustrations to go with the text. (Again, download the file linked above so you can see for yourself). Though the book is about making stuffed animals, some of the projects take this a step further and show different ways for using them such as attaching them to a mobile or turning them into a tree ornament. At the end of the book, all of the patterns are included and require that you photocopy them at 200% and then cut them out.

This book retails for $24.99 US; $16.99 UK; and $27.99 CAN. At the US price, that equates to $1.39 per pattern, which is pretty economical. As with any small toy type craft items, these look like that can be “fiddly” to make. Personally, I don’t mind that myself, but I know some crafters who can get exasperated with making and attaching small pieces together (like arms and legs), so if you are anti-fiddly, then this is not a book for you. None of these patterns look overly difficult for anyone with sewing experience. If you already sew and are looking for some ultra cute gift ideas, this book would something to consider. Someone totally new to sewing might struggle a little, but that is the nature of learning a new craft. At least with small projects like this, newbies would not need to invest a ton of money or time.

I still have my fingers crossed that sewing is slowly making a come back in the crafting world, and here is one example, an adorable new book called How to Make Stuffed Animals: Modern, Simple Patterns and Instructions for 18 Projects. The book is published by Quarry, who was kind enough to let me offer you a little sneak peek into the book. You can download it here. It includes a little bit of the first part of the book plus two adorable projects, a little bunny and a narwhal. Warning: Cuteness Alert! I may be receiving a review copy of this soon, so I will give you more details about the book if I do.

As I continue to work on my Dolly Mama cross stitch kit, I continue to remember cross stitch issues and (eventually) solutions. One issue that I had forgotten about when it comes to the cloth used for cross stitching is that the edges fray like nobody’s business! The more I worked on it, the more little pieces of thread emerged around the edges. Finally, I remember that you need to cover all four sides of the cloth with masking tape. Problem solved!

I managed to get more done this week on it too, yeah me. Though now, gulp, I’m to the point where I have to start stitching the face.

I managed to get one hand done and will do the sign that it is suppose to be holding next probably. I  may even wait to the her head until the very end!

One of the many things I had forgotten about cross stitch is that when you are done you are supposed to stitch around the finished sections in order to outline them. This helps define the various sections of the stitching and sort of makes them pop out. Normally, you do this at the very end I believe, but I wanted to see some progress so went ahead and stitched around the sides of the skirt as well as the bow on either side of the skirt. Before doing this, especially since some of the thread is white (yes white thread on white cloth), I had a hard time seeing what I had actually done so far. This helped define the areas I had completed and gave me the push to move on stitching the design. Now, I’m moving up to start stitching her shirt.

Out of nowhere, the cross stitch bug recently bit me. I used to cross stitch many years ago, and I was pretty into it. I made all kinds of wall hangings for the house, stuff for Christmas, and lots of gifts. Then I just kind of lost interest. Some of it was due to the fact that you can only stitch so many wall hangings and have no space for them all. At least with making jewelry or crochet or knitting you end up with something you can wear it afterwards.

But it is summer and I figured what the heck. Let the bug bite. I looked through Etsy.com and Ebay and other places on-line for a cross stitch kit that would sooth my itch to stitch and finally found one at 1-2-3 Stitch.com. I ended up discovering a line of kits called Dolly Mamas that are all hilarious. It was hard to just pick one, but of course, if I’m successful with this one, I can move on to some of the others. I ended up getting one called “Important Utensil.”

Her sign says “The most important utensil is a corkscrew!” I picked this one because it didn’t look to difficult, and I could either keep it for myself or give it as a gift. I received the kit pretty quickly, and so far so good. Though, I did have to watch a few Youtube cross stitch videos to help me get started again. I had forgotten things like you need to find the center and start there. The instructions aren’t that bad that come with the kit, but they do assume a little knowledge about the basics already.

Here you can see my first few stitches, which start with her apron. As I work the stitches, I started to highlight the ones finished in blue on the pattern. Of course, if I were to reuse the pattern I would have wanted to make a copy of it, but I don’t see me making this over and over again.

In hindsight, since my cross stitch skills are pretty rusty, I might have selected a kit that is not necessarily a beginner level. There are French knots required in a number of spots (eek!), but there is no reason for me to rush. I have done this sort of thing before. I just have to allow time for my fingers to remember. I really do hope this turns out well because there are a lot of other kits in this series that I’d love to do. It took me forever to decide on just this one!

Recently, I blogged about how my craft club is making no-sew fleece blankets for a local shelter. Now I have step by step photographs for you of the process we used, and let me note that there are many ways to make these. I am in no way claiming this is the only way.

First, you will need 2 yards of fleece (which is normally about 60 inches wide), scissors, a ruler, pen, and 1 inch wide painters tape. You also need a surface to work on. I have one of those folded up cardboard things used for sewing, and the only cat and dog free zone I could find to work on was my bed room. So I put that on top of my bed. If you have a good table to work on, you don’t need the card board thing you see in the photos.

Spread the fleece on top of your cutting surface so that you have at least one edge of the fleece flat and facing you.

Using the ruler, measure in 5 inches, and start rolling the tape onto the fleece. (Note: Some people use masking tape, but I have found that it sticks too much to the fleece whereas the painting tape comes off really easily without damaging the fleece.)

Flip the fleece so that you have another edge facing you, and repeat the previous steps, measuring and taping across. You need to do this on all four sides of the fleece, and yes, the tape will cross over each other, but you will see soon why that is a good thing.

Again, making sure that you have one edge facing you, use scissors to cut the corners, which are marked off with tape and form a square.

With a ruler and pen, mark 1 inch increments down the length of the tape. (Some people can eye ball this, but I’m not great at that, so I mark.)

Cut on the other side of the long piece of tape to make your first piece of fringe.

Now following the marks you made on the tape, continue to cut 1 inch wide piece of fringe down the length of the fleece.

Cut the corner squares and fringe all around the four sides of the piece of fleece.

Pull off the tape. If you plan to make more blankets, you can actually reuse the tape and already have the 1 inch marks handy for you.

Now it is time to knot the fringe, and this is where I have seen the most variations on these types of blankets. The first one I made (pictured way up at the top) I was told to cut the fringe thinner, tie to pieces of fringe together into a square knot, and then cut each piece again down the middle. The look is okay, but it took a lot of time. For these blanket, I just made the fringe thicker (to equate to the thickness of the tape), and I made one overhand knot at the top of each fringe. It still takes time, but not nearly as much, and I am happy with the way it looks.

Once you have knotted all the fringe all around the four sides of the fleece, your blanket is finished.

These are great gifts as well as charity donations, and very often, you can find the fleece on sale (usually 50% off), but you can also use coupons from craft stores to get a percentage off of one cut of fabric. So these can be pretty economical to make if you catch a sale or have a coupon.

The craft club is going to make some no-sew fleece blankets for a local shelter, so I thought…hmmmm…maybe I should actually make one before I attempt to teach a bunch of college students how to make one! Now there are all kinds of instructions all over the Internet, but that has been kind of the problem. There are tons of instructions and many are very inconsistent in explaining how to make these. In comes, Mom to the rescue!

This past weekend I went for a visit, and she showed me the basics on now to make no-sew fleece blankets. Pictured is one of nine more I need to have made for the shelter. I think it turned out pretty well, but I was really surprised at how long the process took. I have scheduled about 3 hours for the club to make these, and I realize now that is not enough time.

So I prepared a few blankets so that only some fringe knotting needs to be done, and hopefully, we can get at least one made during the first meeting. Worse case scenario, I will have to suck it up and make whatever is left, which I am okay with (when I don’t think about about 300 other things I have to do this semester!)

Hopefully, I wrong, wrong, wrong, and my team of crafters will whip through these lickety-split. I will report back one way or the other.

As I was pulling out of my driveway a few weeks ago, I got a good look at the curtains, or should I say rags that once were curtains, hanging in the front window of my office, eeek! They were so faded and just down right embarrassing! I did have plans to purchase some new curtains and had even done a little shopping but hadn’t found anything that was much better than what I had already on my windows at the time, and then time went on and I sort of spaced on the whole window thing.

I still had to measure the windows (something I needed help form my DH to do accurately) , and I needed curtain rods as well because the push rods I had been using kept fall down because of a certain little cat (Coco) who thought it was fun to stand up and pull on them!

But I had to do something about these things while I waited to have all the info and time to buy new curtains and rods. Thus, I whipped up these “No Sew Curtains,” and they didn’t turn out too bad, at least a lot better looking than the rags. In fact, if this wasn’t a front window that gets tons of light, I might have kept them.

To make this, I used a flat sheet that is at least the same width as the window. I keep a few inches of my curtains from the bottom of the window because my cats love to sit and look out the window. I have a little bench under the window, so they need a few inches of “viewing space.” I used a queen size sheet, so I ended up cutting off a good amount from the bottom once I got the top finished.

To make this “no sew,” I used pinking shears. I also used a cutting sheet like quilters use, but a ruler would have been okay as well. Below are photos of the basic process.

I trimmed off each side of the sheet so that the top part turned into a casing.

Then I measured over 3 inches and cut up to the casing seam.

Then I measured two inches more, cut another line up to the seam, and then cut off this piece so that there was a two inch space between the first section cut and the next section. I kept doing this all the way down until the end of the casing.

Then, as I said before, I cut across the bottom until I had the desired length of curtain. Finally, I just slipped these on a push rod, and voila, curtains!

My husband totally hated these, but they looked way better than the horrible things up there before, and this urged him a little to finally help me measure the window! In a pinch, these did what I needed them to do;