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Shabby Hearts and Ruffles Dish Towel

30
Jan 2012

I don’t do a ton of decorating for Valentine’s Day – but I do like to have a few things here and there for a little fun.

My kitchen has been looking a little lonely now that the Christmas decorations are gone so I decided to make a fun little dish towel to brighten the room up!

Here it is!

It has some sweet ruffled circles on the bottom and shabby stitched hearts for decoration.

Cute huh? It’s pretty quick and easy too!

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

1 Dish towel (bought this one at Target)
(This towel is 16″ x 27″. If yours is a different size, you’ll need to adjust amounts and measurements)
4 different fabrics (you’ll need 10 – 3″ circles from each plus fabric for hearts)
Rick Rack (of course. Cause we don’t make dish towels around here without rick rack)
Ribbon

Start by cutting your circles for your ruffles. I used my Accuquilt – it was super fast with their Circle Die -
But you could definitely cut them by hand too. You’ll need 10 – 3″ circles of 2 of the colors, 9 – 3″ circles of the other two colors.

Decide what is going to be the first row. Fold your circles for this row into quarters. Pin ten circles evenly across the bottom of the dish towel.
This is kind of the same method the awesome Simple Simon & Co. girls use for their crazy cute Bustle Skirt.

Sew the little circles down close to the top. Since I was using white thread that blended with the towel, I sewed a straight line across the top of all the circle points, about 1/4″ below the point.

Start the next row of circles (this row will have 9), laying these between the circles below. Overlap them just a bit.

Continue layering your circles until you have four rows sewn on.

Cut a length of small rick rack approx. 20″ long.
Tie a small bow on each end, so that a small 2 1/2″ tail of rick rack is on each side. Burn the ends slightly so they won’t fray.

Center the rick rack on the dish towel, so the bows are about 9″ up from the bottom edge and 4″ in from each side. This should make a little curve in the rick rack between the bows.
Sew the rick rack onto the dish towel.

Cut out 4 hearts – 3 of one fabric and one of a contrasting fabric. Lay the hearts so the tops just overlap the rick rack curve.

Sew down the hearts – you can use a single stitch, a satin stitch – or for a sketchy-er look – sew around them three times with the stitching lines not in exactly the same place.

I used a dark gray thread so the stitching would outline the hearts a bit.

To finish off the dish towel add a row (or two) of ribbon along the top row of the ruffles. Sew down the ribbon so it overlaps the circles and covers the top row of stitching.
Burn the ends of the ribbon to prevent fraying and wrap the ribbon around the edges of the dish towel.

Add a contrasting ribbon on top for a little more color.

And that’s it!!

A fun, cute way to dress up a store-bought dish towel!

It would make a cute Teacher or Neighbor Valentine’s gift, along with some treats!

I’d love to hear what you think!

I’m linking to Sunday Scoop, Today’s Creative Blog, Met Monday, Skip to my Lou, Tutorials & Tips Tuesday, Funky Junk Interiors, Quilt Story and the other fabulous parties on the sidebar – make sure you check them out!

Category: Holiday, Sewing  Tags: , ,  38 Comments

“Love” Knockoff Pillowcases

10
Jan 2012

Ready for a little Valentine’s fun? Me too!!

I have been super fortunate with a new friend that has moved close to me, Aimee from byAimee.com and Fancy Little Things! We have been crafting up a storm together. It’s been so fun to have someone close that loves to make things, and blog, and eat yummy food. :)

We got together last week and made some fun pillowcases for Valentine’s Day!

Here are mine!

 

These are a knockoff (kind of) of these cute pillowcases from Lush Designs.

Mine have some fun, shabby ruffles on the ends – just to dress them up a bit.

Ready for a quick tutorial?

You’ll need:

Freezer Paper
Silhouette (or exacto knife)
Paint
Fabric Medium (to add to the paint to make it washable)
2 Pillowcases
Ruffles for fabric – about 24″ x 45″ of one color and 12″ x 45″ of another color

We started out by choosing some decorative fonts, a different one for each letter. (If you’d like the Silhouette files, throw me an email and I’ll send them to you)
We enlarged each letter to fill the page and cut them out of freezer paper with the Silhouette. If you have the Cameo you’ll be able to make them even wider, closer to the original pillowcases.

The letter is reversed because I found the Silhouette cuts out the freezer paper better with the shiny side up.

(Please excuse my fuzzy little mat – I use the protective plastic but this thing attracts dust and stuff like crazy.)

Iron the freezer paper letters onto the pillowcase – 2 on each case. Make sure that you face them the right way.

Cover the open section of the stencils with paint mixed with fabric medium.
It works best to brush the paint from the outside of the stencil, in – so you are cutting down on the amount of paint that could get pushed under the stencil.

Once the paint is completely dry, remove the stencil.

It’s pretty fun to pull off that freezer paper and see cute painted letters underneath. :)

I had a few little places that the paint had seeped under the freezer paper. The white pillowcases came in handy here – I just painted over them with white fabric paint. You have to look pretty close to see them.

Once all the letters were painted on, I added some ruffles to the hem of each pillow case. I wanted these to be a little shabby and frayed looking – so I left them unhemmed.
I cut the fabric into strips that were 3″ x 45″. I cut 4 strips of the cream for each case and 2 strips of white.

Normally I would sew 2 of each of the strips together – to make 3 long ruffles. This time I wanted a little more of a frayed edge showing, so I ruffled each piece separately, then overlapped them in each row on the pillowcase.

I hope that makes sense.

Starting with two of the cream ruffles, pin them to the top edge of the pillowcase. Overlap the ruffles just a bit where they meet on the pillowcase.

Sew the top row on.

Repeat for the other two ruffles, overlapping them at different points on the pillowcase. Mine are about 1 1/2″ apart down the hem.

Repeat for the other pillowcase – and you’re all done! Now you have a sweet, stylish way to dress up your room for Valentine’s Day!
Or anytime really – how cute would these make as a wedding or shower gift??

Aimee hasn’t posted hers yet but I’ll let you know when she does. She used a gorgeous gray color for the letters – it is so pretty!

What do you think?

I almost asked you if you LOVE them. But I refrained.

I’m linking to Sunday Scoop, Today’s Creative Blog, Met Monday, Skip to my Lou, Tutorials & Tips Tuesday, Funky Junk Interiors, and the other fabulous parties on the sidebar – make sure you check them out!

UPDATE – Several of you have asked for the fonts I used on the letters so I thought I’d add it here too. They are:
L – Cast Iron
O – Ornatique
V – Tropicana
E – Circus

Thanks!

Category: Holiday, Sewing  Tags: , ,  71 Comments

Handmade Gifts for 2011!

02
Jan 2012

Ok – so for the sake of keeping it real around here I have to confess. I had grand plans for handmade gifts for Christmas.

Apparently – a little too grand for my (family’s) sanity and the amount of time I gave myself. When it came down to the choice between actually buying gifts and enjoying the holiday or running around like a crazy crafty person up until the last-minute and sucking the life out Christmas – I chose Door Number 1. And I don’t regret it one bit.

Well – ok. Maybe a little bit. :)
This year I am going to do better. I am going to make gifts ahead of time. I am going to plan ahead and create and not forget where I put them after I make them.
Which if you know anything about me – you will know that is not my forte.
But this year I have some grand schemes (along with some other bloggers you know and love) and so I am going to try to have all the gifts I am going to make done ahead of time.
So I can actually bake a Christmas cookie or two. Not just mooch off dear friends. (Though they were mighty yummy cookies Aimee., thank you.) :)

Enough with all that – would you like to see what I did make this year?? Hopefully I haven’t bored you to tears already.

First up is a Camera Strap I made for my sister. She got a new camera for her birthday and the strap definitely needed a little dressing up.
I didn’t follow any tutorials – though there are a bunch out there. I just made a casing the size of the strap, then added two layers of ruffles to the top piece before I sewed the front and back together.

I am so in love with these Amy Butler fabrics! They are bright and fun and cheery I think.

I have a sweet little niece who is in love with Giraffes. I went in search of a giraffe pattern and found Vogue Pattern 8349. Cute Giraffe – but it was a little too “serious” -being made out of actual giraffe print. I decided to do something a little more fun.

I’m all in love with her orange and pink color combo – and the pink pompoms down her neck. She also has a rick rack tail – which is hard to see in this picture. And it looked just a little too awkward when I tried to take a picture of her backside. Trust me though, it’s pretty cute.

I was not in love with how they did the eyes on the pattern – and I didn’t realize until I had already cut them out what they wanted. (Note to self: Read patterns through before going all Edward Scissorhands on the fabric). Instead of the ginormous buttons they wanted, I opted for safety eyes – and lots of eyelashes to cover up the random way they had me cut out the eyes.

I like her fluffy eyelashes though so it worked out. And her smirky smile.
Oh – I should also mention – she’s pretty big. Like 20ish inches tall.

My other niece is a little older – so when I came across the adorableness that is the ENTIRE Gingermelon Etsy shop – I knew I’d found the perfect pattern for her gift. After much debate I decided on her Woodland Stufflings patterns and made all three. I had a really hard time giving these away and I think I might make a set to keep. I have no idea what I’ll do with them but they are just too cute.

They are far from perfect – as you’ll see in the closeups below. My hand stitching still needs some work to get it all pretty and straight. But the wool felt is pretty forgiving and covered some of my wonkiness.

These guys are pretty tiny – the little owl measures about 4″ tall. She has a little lace scarf and a flower on her head.
Sigh.

The deer might be my favorite – though it’s a close call. I just love this pink felt and her little antlers.

So – even though I wasn’t able to make everything I had planned – I really enjoyed what I did make. And they seemed to be received well so that’s the important thing right? :)
What do you think? Did you make everything you’d planned to?

Category: Sewing  Tags: ,  34 Comments
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