Sewing with Scraps

I love Etsy.

I recently purchased a bag of fabric scraps for $9.99 and this is what I came in the package:

All of those fabrics on the right were at least a 1/4 of a yard, some of them even a 1/2! 

I made a top for my oldest daughter and still had some of the daisy chain print to spare. 

I was digging around in my sewing room and found some fabric I purchased a while back from Quilt Taffy. ( I think it's from the Seaside Rose collection). 

I made a skirt for my youngest daughter with the charm squares.

And this coordinating top with the yardage. Such pretty fabric. 

I've been wanting to try a simple pillowcase type dress pattern for a while (google pillowcase dress tutorial and you'll find a bunch).  This one was for my youngest (2 years old) so I scaled it down quite a bit. I used a 1/2 yard of  2 dollar fabric from WalMart and lavender fabric from my scrap drawer for the trim.  So this dress ended up costing a dollar.  

It was super easy and I love the way it fits.

Now if it would just warm up so my little ladies could wear their new summery garb.

While I'm on the subject of bargain fabrics, I've added some new vintage sheets to my collection.

  

I found the two on the left (pink and yellow) brand new in original packages at the thrift store. 

Oh, happy day!

Vintage Inspired Bedroom Make-Over

My daughter just celebrated her 8th birthday. This year I wanted to do something extra special for her, so I came up with the idea of a surprise bedroom make-over. She has been wanting us to paint it a light blue for a while, and this seemed like the perfect way to get motivated.


On her birthday she went to school with her bedroom looking like this...


And came home to this...


I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get it all done in the 7 1/2 hour time frame, but I had help. My mother in law watched my 2 youngest while I painted, and my mom picked up my daughter and oldest son after school and took them out for ice cream to give me a little more time.


Everything in the room is vintage, from the up-cycled furniture that I painted a while back, to the linens.


I based the decorating scheme around the vintage sheet quilt I first started last summer (my daughter fell in love with it at the time). I finally finished quilting and binding it the weekend before her birthday. The bed skirt was made from a green gingham vintage sheet.


We brought in the desk that we had used as a changing table in my youngest daughter's room. I found an old chair at the thrift store for $5 and painted it Green Apple and then reupholstered with a vintage sheet.


For wall art, thrifted embroidery hoops with the vintage sheet fabric used in the quilt.


Can you tell that this particular sheet is my favorite? last year, I found a pillowcase of this pattern at a thrift store and used it in the quilt. When recently I found a brand new (still in original package from the 60's or 70's) twin flat sheet on eBay, I was so excited!



I haven't yet made a sham, so for now her bed is adorned with never used before vintage pillow cases.


My talented mother-in-law crocheted this super sweet pillow for her after I fell in love with these on the Sew Mama Sew blog.



I still need to make curtain panels out of this sheet, just didn't quite get it all done it time.


The BIG REVEAL...


She LOVED it!

Vintage Sheet Quilt - Blues

I didn't mean to be away from my blog for so long, I just haven't had a lot to post about. No pretty pictures to share, and I wouldn't know how to post without something visual to distract from my crazy ramblings. But, I did finally manage to snap out of my lazy funk (for a bit) and pieced a new vintage sheet quilt using only my blue, green and purple inventory. So in honor of the winter blues, a blues quilt.


For the first time ever, I've decided to do something fancy with the back of one of my quilts. I think I'm liking it better than the front. Here's a wrinkly little peek...

Hope to have it quilted soon, but don't hold your breath. My kids are off track for 3 weeks (year round school). Ay Carumba!
*Also been doing more reading. Read Hunger Games & Catching Fire. Couldn't stop thinking about them, so I read a few others to get them off my brain, including one on the Readers Choice table at the library called Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I wanted to like it, but in the end it was disappointing at best. Such a wimpy heroine - but then again, if I'm comparing characters to Katniss and Peeta, they all will seem like whiners. Next up... The Book Thief. If you have any suggestions, send them my way.

Vintage Sheet Quilt Top

Holy Flower Power!
It's done...REALLY done this time. I added the 2 extra rows to make it a twin. Now, just as soon as school starts and things settle down a bit around here, I'll start quilting it. At least that's the plan.


This pattern, called Scrappy Sixties (Simply Sixties set) from Anka's treasures, was a lot fun. My favorite part is the zig zag edge. I think it will look pretty groovy hanging over the side of the bed.

My original intentions were for this quilt to used in my toddler's room when she converts from a crib to a bed, but somewhere along the line, my 7 year old fell in love. She even helped decide which sheets to use (sadly, the orange floral got the boot). Now I am trying to decide if I really feel like giving her whole room a makeover to go with it.

Oh probably. She can be very persuasive...and I kind of have a thing for makeovers.

Vintage-y Beach Skirts

I finally made something with some of those vintage sheets I've been hoarding. We were headed to our favorite lake this weekend and I had an epiphany- we needed swishy beach skirts! Two of my favorite things...walking barefoot on soft warm sand, and soft flowing skirts swishing around my ankles. I stayed up way too late, but I was able to make one for each of the girls.



I didn't have time to make a skirt for me but I couldn't let them have ALL the ankle swishing, barefoot fun.

Such a perfect day. Crowd-less beaches, beautiful weather and all my little people self entertained and not bugging each other.

Perfection but for one thing...
We found a friend lurking in a puddle of water.
The same puddle my baby had been playing in all afternoon.
Lurking & waiting for the perfect moment to completely FREAK us out.
With a voice full of horror, my seven year cried out, "What is it.... A TICK?!"Good question.
Although we were pretty sure it wasn't a tick (a tick on steroids perhaps), it was like nothing we had seen before.
Maybe a gigantic, mutant, bug eyed, water dwelling cock roach with pinchers?
My horrified daughter said, "I don't think we should play with it....I think it BITES."
My oldest responded with "Can we keep it?"
Hmmmmm, let me think about that.... Umm NO.
NOT going to be my squishy, NOT going to be mine!
He found a sand bucket for it and named it Sea-ca.


Needless to say, Sea-ca did NOT come home with us.

Groovy Goods

If you have been reading my blog, you probably know that I have had vintage linen on my brain. I know, kind of a hokie thing to be collecting. I am sure that just one year ago, I would have been the one getting rid of all the wacky old sheets rather than be in acquisition mode. But for now, I kind of think they're cool, and my stash of old sheets has been steadily growing. Yesterday I received a lovely package in the mail from my blogging friend Des. We swapped 10 fat quarters from her sheet stash for 10 of mine. So much fun! Now I really need to figure out what kind of quilt I want to make. Google "Vintage Sheet Quilt" and check out some of the search results. There are some mega-talented quilters out there who really know how to repurpose linen. Fabulous quilts!

And the bright and beautiful crocheted flowers above are hair clips my mother-in-law made for my youngest to find in the big annual Easter egg hunt. Aren't they SO cute!?! I really need to learn how to crochet. Truthfully there are many, many things I really need to learn how to do. The list of skills I am in need of would be fearsomely long, if I ever was brave enough to make it.

Also in the package with the sheets came a sweet little vintage dress. Such a nice surprise! Reminded me so much of the dress this little one wore for her blessing last spring. Same hand made detail and fragility. Now, trying to get a picture of the squirmy little munchkin in said dress, was not so sweet. I LOVE it.

And now for a completely random & STRANGE little bit:

I took my daughter and one of her friends to see the new Hannah Montana movie on Friday night & ..... (drumroll please)...... I didn't exactly hate it. Much of the movie takes place in a small town in the country. It was full of pretty scenery, and a beautiful house with a big front porch (one of my favorite things you know). Although it wasn't without a few silly & predictable moments, I was kind of diggin' it. And here's the real shocker - I actually liked a few of the songs. Towards the end of the movie my daughter kept saying she had to go to the bathroom, but I made her wait because I didn't want to miss any of it. How WEIRD is that?

A Rosy Day

I have vintage linen on my brain. I’ve seen a few gorgeous quilts of late made from vintage sheets and I just want to make one. It’s like an itch that just won’t go away. So today I started cutting squares…
This one will be a vintage ROSE quilt. I have been hoarding a pair of pink rose pillowcases that I inherited from my paternal grandmother. And this week my mom gave me a yellow rose pillowcase that belonged to her mom (my maternal grandmother). The others (blue & multi) are a couple of rose sheets I found at the thrift store recently.
I still want to do another vintage sheet quilt that is brighter and more random. Here are a few sheets I have found this week for that one . . .
Found the above two in my mom's linen closet. My mother in-law is going to see what she can find.
This one I found at a thrift store yesterday. I LOVE the orange!

Another thrifted beauty - so bright & colorful.

I also found a whole slew of nearly new goods from the Simply Shabby line by Rachel Ashwell. Maybe after I get the vintage sheets out of my system, I'll make a Simply Shabby quilt.