Brand your hangers: A tutorial

Do you have any of those full-body plastic hangers??? Like this:

As ugly as they are, they do help clothes, especially little dresses, hold their shape for a display~
But who wants to have this ugly hanger as a part of their craft show, artisan festival display or open house??? I don't... so I came up with this little fix. Cover up the ugly and brand your hangers all at the same time! If you are interested, here's how I did it.

Materials:
Plastic hangers to cover
Jute or hemp string
(you could also use strips of fabric, ribbon etc.)
Hot glue gun (the low heat variety works best so you don't fry your fingers!)
Disposable plate
square of felt
fabric paint
stamp
fabric to stamp on
scissors

Step 1:

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Now its time for stamping

Squirt a small amount of fabric paint on to a disposable plate. Place the square of felt on top of the paint. This is your stamp pad. Using your stamp, press down on the felt square over and over until the paint begins to come through to the other side. Wipe your stamp clean of the paint build up, and you are ready to stamp. Press the clean stamp onto your 'stamp pad' and make sure it is well covered. Then stamp onto your fabric. It may take a few tries to get it exactly right. See below:
Once your stamps have dried, follow instructions on paint bottle, some require heat setting with an iron. Then cut out your stamped fabric and hot glue on top of your jute covered hangers.

Ta Daa! Much more beautiful.

Ruffles in all the right places: Bathing Suit Refashion Tutorial

Drastic times call for drastic measures! I am leaving for Miami in a few days with my husband and sadly, all my bathing suit tops are now too big!!!! Breastfeeding 2 babies in 3 years has either a) made me forget how small I really was.... or b) really shrunk all the wrong places...if you know what I mean. :) So, I need all the help I can get.

I found a bathing suit at Target that ruffles in all the right places... and, seriously, it added at least a cup size, and honey, we all know I need it. So, I succumbed to the illusion of a bigger tatas and paid well over $30 for the darn bathing suit. Not to mention that it was the color of a freaking hard hat. Not good. But, hey I was willing to make a few sacrifices.

Then it came to me: I can do this myself! So here's what I did:

Old bathing suit top; not bad...but accentuated my boyish figure. Sad, sniff sniff.

Above: TA-DAAAA.... Oh, sorry, I mean, TA-TAAAAS!

Tutorial:

Materials: I used an old bathing suit top and a pair of old workout pants with holes and paint all over them. (made of spandex or lycra or something... I am not sure what they are made of, but it looked and felt like the same material the suit was made out of...)

Step 1: Cut the pant legs into strips, mine were about 3/4inch wide. I used about 12-14 ruffled strips. The fabric won't fray, so don't worry about that.

Step 2: Set your machine to the longest stitch length and highest tension, and ruffle each strip right up.
Step 3: Pin one ruffled strip at a time to the suit, and sew it on. Start at the bottom of the suit and work your way up.
That's it. Keep ruffling and sewing until the suit is covered. There ya go... instant boobs! Thank you very much! Turned out cute, huh???

*disclaimer: Haven't tried this in the water yet, so all those ruffles may very well water log me... but hey, sometimes you just have to put on your big girl panties and deal with it, ya know?

Spring Fling Garland Tutorial

This is my first tutorial, so hang with me here!!! I love this garland and I love the fact that you can use scraps and things you already have around the house in order to make it!!! I am open for feedback, so either leave a comment or email me at jamie.burton@comcast.net. I have a couple more tutorials in the works, and am going to make it a goal to do one every couple months throughout the year! So check back!

*Materials:*
-scrap fabric (can be old clothes, scraps left over from projects, really anything)
-rope, ribbon, hemp string ( I used 6/32" cord filler because it's what I had on hand)
-needle and thread
-good fabric scissors

*Here are the easy steps!!*

Flower Style #1

1. Cut fabric into circles. I cut 2 inch circles (by hand, no template) but any size will work. The bigger the circle you start with, the bigger your flower sphere will be! You can either combine different fabrics when you stack them, use all one pattern or solid color, it all will look cute! I used 20-30 circles to make one flower.



4. Thread 3 or 4 more triangles onto your string as pictured above. At this point, I stopped adding the triangles in a row. Instead, I pushed the needle through the thickness of all the fabric so that I might add triangles to the other sides of the flower. Keep adding petals in various places until you have a spherical shape. *this step is kind of hard to explain, so email me if you are confused! It will probably make more sense as you do it.

Here is a picture of the 'flower number 1' coming together.

Flower Style #2

5. I used THIS tutorial to create the pom pom flowers except I substituted strips of torn fabric (1/4 inch wide). You can also cut the strips, but tearing will always ensure a straight line and will give you a more 'fuzzy' look, which I like. But if you want less 'fuzz' you can surely cut the strips.
Snip the fabric with scissors about every 1/4 inch, and then then tear into strips. The more strips you use, the bigger your flower pom will be. (for the one pictured above I used about 11 strips that were about 12-18 inches in length)


6. Continue making flowers of both kinds with lots of wonderful fabrics until you have enough for the length of garland you wish to make.

7. Time to sew them onto your rope! ( I used what I had on hand, which turned out to be 6/32" filler cord, but you can use a thicker rope, ribbon, hemp, or whatever tickles your fancy)
I threaded the flower onto the needle close to the center, this way it won't flop around once it's sewn onto the rope.
Simply stitch your flowers in place and fluff the petals! Mine are spaced about 5-6 inches apart.

8. Continue stitching on the flowers until you are satisfied with the length of your garland!
9. DONE... Isn't it wonderful and beautiful, and doesn't it make you long for spring????