Wet Bag - A Tutorial!

Because the hubs and I are cloth diapering the new baby, we will need to have a couple wet bags on hand at all times, especially during traveling.  I had all of the necessary supplies hanging around so I got to work... hope you enjoy!

To start with, you'll need the following things :

Materials

• Waterproof fabric (PUL, vinyl, shower curtain, waterproof vinyl tablecloth, whatever you have on hand!)
• Cotton fabric
• Zipper
• Sewing Machine
• Scissors
• Seam ripper (optional)

To start with, cut your waterproof fabric to the size bag you'll want.  I wanted to use a cheap waterproof tablecloth I had gotten during the spring for $1.  I thought about my bag dimensions and  ended up settling on a 12" x 12" bag, which means I cut a 12.5 inch wide by 24.5 inch long piece from my tablecloth.  The backing of this one is flannel, so I was able to just lay the whole thing over my chosen cotton fabric without pinning - it sticks!  So to be final, you'll need two rectangles of fabric, one 12.5 inch wide by 24.5 inch long piece of your waterproof material and one 12.5 inch wide by 24.5 inch long piece of your cotton fabric.  You'll also need to make sure your zipper will fit in the opening.  For this project, you'll want a zipper length of approximately 11.5 inches.  If your zipper is a little long, zip it up to the point you want it to end.  Put it in your sewing machine unzipped with the spot marked that it should end.  Now use the zig-zag stitch on the widest setting but the closest length together to sew the two halves together firmly.  Your new ending should be pretty short, but functional.  I sacrificed an old zip-up sweater to my heathen craft gods for this craft project, so I had to use this method.  (Sorry, forgot to take progress shots for the zipper bit...)

Once your fabric is all cut, you will probably want to do your 1/4 inch fold over on each shorter end, it makes for pretty seams... c:  Your stitches should be fairly close together and in a straight line, no more zig-zag-ing for you.

Next, close your zipper up and pin to the short end of your fabric rectangle.  You'll want to have the vinyl side facing out on the bottom side, the right side of the cotton facing up for the outside.  Sew on your zipper now, and be sure to back-tack your beginning and ending!  The next bit is to open your zipper up and sew the other side - this part is key.  If you try to do this with the zipper closed, you will have troubles...  Once your zipper is on, you'll need to flip the bag inside out so that the vinyl is on the outside on both sides of your tube of fabric.

Pin up your sides and sew your 1/4 seam down each side, making sure to back-tack again.  To ensure nice clean corners, snip the corners off at the bottom of your bag, but only up to your seam.  Once this is done, open up your zipper and flip your bag right-side (cotton) out.  Use something like a pen (with the cap on) or a crochet hook to push out your corners.

Ta-da!  Sit back and enjoy your new wet bag!  Throw your bathing suit in there after the pool, or use it for soiled diapers and whatnot like we are.  When cleaning this bag, I recommend just wiping out the inside with a Clorox wipe or equivalent.  If you need to wash it because the outside got dirty, I would machine or hand wash it only - don't dry it in your dryer.  Don't worry, it should air dry fairly quickly.  The best part of this project is that it didn't cost me a penny!  I already had the fabric and tablecloth in my craft zone for other projects.  The zipper was from an old (and not particularly awesome) sweater.

 

Belly Sash - A Tutorial!

Isn't that adorable?  Seriously, so much squee-ing over here.  I made this sash for my upcoming maternity photos with CNicholl Photography (here is her Facebook fan page).  I wanted to do something to show off the belly, since it still looks pretty decent, besides all of my new-found belly hair...

To make your own cute belly sash like this one, you'll need the following:

Materials

• Fabric scraps [I used purple knit from a failed dress and some cottony muslin]
• Lacey trim/ribbon or equivilant [Seriously, use anything you want!]
• 2 inch ribbon for the actual sash
• Yarn
• Hot glue gun and a couple hot glue sticks
• Scissors
• Beads
• Felt Sheet
• Button(s)
• Lighter

To get started, decide the basic shapes of your flowers and how many you'd like.  I chose to do one large focal flower, one lacey flower, two pom flowers, and two crochet rose flowers.  This project is infinitely personalizable, so have fun deciding what you'd like to do and the colors you are using!  For my sash, I used a printed ribbon that wasn't overly girly, since we aren't finding out the gender.  You could absolutely use a soft satin ribbon for this and it would look a little less busy, plus you could incorporate patterned fabric/ribbon into your flowers without clashing.

To start, make your big focal flower. I used a great tutorial over at The House of Smiths to make my focal flower.  I didn't follow her tutorial exactly, but pretty darn close.  You can find it here.  I used my purple knit on six 5 inch circles to make the base and five 3 inch circles in the cotton muslin to make the top petals.  I ended up hot gluing a star button in there, but you could use just about anything with a flat-ish bottom.

Next, I did my little pom flowers in the same purple knit.  I used another tutorial for these, found at Sew Chatty.  These were craaaaazy easy and I want to put them on everything!  I used ten 3 inch circles of the knit per flower and a 2 inch circle of the felt.  Once I was done, I went to town fluffing them up, they are friggin' precious!

Next I did the "crochet" roses.  I use the term crochet loosely because you are actually braiding them!  If I had the time, I probably would have whipped out my crochet hooks and just done a chain stitch instead.  For these, I took 3 pieces of yarn in chartreuse that were roughly 18 inches long.  I did an overhand knot at one end and stuck that under my clipboard.  Then you just braid braid braid.  Get it however long you want and overhand knot the opposite end.  Clip off the extra yarn on either side and set your felt circle ready.  Mine was about 2 inches in diameter, you want it as big as your rose.  Put a nice dab of hot glue in the center and put your knot on it.  Then just wind it around in a spiral - I twisted mine from time to time.  Hot glue regularly so it doesn't come undone.  At the end, you should have the knot and a little bit of braid left, this is the time to trim your felt circle if it was too big.  You'll want to tuck the knot on the underside of the felt circle and hot glue in place.  Repeat this process if you are doing more than one of these flowers!

Finally, I made my lacey 5 petal flower.  This was by far the easiest one.  I took some buy-the-spool lace trim and cut out a petal shape that I liked.  Then I just did 4 more.  Cut a small circle out of your felt, like 1/2 inch or so, and hot glue your petals on.  I decided that they needed something so I hot glued 3 vintage glass pearls into the center.  

At this point, decide how long your sash ribbon should be.  If you are making this for yourself, wrap the ribbon at the point you want it on your belly and add 10 - 12 inches.  If you are making this for a friend, I would say a 40 inch length of ribbon would be fine.  Once your ribbon is cut, don't forget to singe the edges with a lighter so you don't get fraying strings.

I then laid my ribbon on the floor and put out all of my flowers.  I took a few tries to find a design that I liked best but once you do, simply hot glue each piece directly on the ribbon.  Let it dry for 5 - 10 minutes and you have an adorable belly sash for maternity pictures!  This could also be used as a hairband, just cut your base ribbon shorter.  OR you could do this as a bridal sash, I'd love to see ivory and white flowers with pearls and little blue accents!

Sorry about the lack of progress shots but I hope you have fun with this tutorial!  Now go forth and make cute things, you deserve it!

Will you look at the time...

Yeah... I flaked on my blog for a while.  Sorry about that.

Baby thought it would be super awesome to go into false (?) labor about a week and a half ago, so I've been chillin' and not doing much crafty stuff, IE getting re-addicted to The Sims 3.  Bed rest is on, at least for the next week.  Kind of sucks, but it gives me a good excuse for Bean to pick up the household slack, just a little.

So this false labor thing did not feel very false.  I woke up at about 1 am that night with some mild cramping and an achy back, no big deal.  I got up, got a glass of water, pee'd for the 3rd time, and went back to bed.  Fast forward to about 2:30 am and you'll see me doubled over in pain and crying from the stress of the situation.  I was having contractions, oh god.  They were coming around 20 minutes apart and were lasting for about a minute each.  Thinking that this was probably Braxton Hicks, though mine had not been painful up until this point, I went into the living room and snuggled up in Bean's new leather recliner and put on Tremors 4 (why??).  Seriously, that movie is just the worst.  I love the first one simply because I have so many great memories of my grandfather tied to it.  Why I decided to watch the 4th in the series was beyond me, but I blame my pain-hazed brain for any bad decision making that day.

Anyway, I didn't sleep a wink that night and spend most of the morning hours googling pre-term labor, which was an awful idea.  Not only was I already freaked out, but now I was giving myself more symptoms... I woke up Bean at 5am and told him that he was not going to work that day, I was possibly going into pre-term and we might have a baby later.  Obviously, he freaked out which freaked me out even more.  In a hurry, we packed both hospital bags and made a list of things we still needed to get.  We hadn't packed that yet because neither of us had felt the need, I was only 32 weeks after all.  We not-so-patiently waited until 8, which is when my midwife's office opened and left a message for the charge nurse to call me back right away.  At some point during the interim, the baby started to move down into my pelvis zone, which made the peeing situation like 10 times worse.  UGH.

Because she didn't call us back right at 8:05, we decided that we'd go to Walmart and get some cinnamon rolls.  And the stuff off of our lists, but mostly breakfast.  We are not Walmart people... I do whatever I can to avoid it 90% of the time.  I, again, blame my pain-brain for this lapse in judgement, though I will say that it was much more enjoyable at 8:30 am on a Monday morning, we were one of the few people in there.  The midwife did call me back at about 8:35 and told me to time the contractions and I should just come to my appointment at 1:15 that afternoon that was already scheduled.  Funny thing... around 12:15 my contractions slowed down to about 30 minutes apart, then 40, and by 1:15 they were gone altogether.  Figures.  They did the contraction monitoring thing on us for a while, which was cool because the baby was kicking the paddles and having hiccups the whole time.  While we were trapped in this little room, Bean and I watched a shoe thing on QVC, which was hilarious and really lightened the mood.  All in all, baby was fine, I was fine.  The midwife told us that a) I was officially on bed rest until week 35 and b) that we were not to be intimate in that time frame.  Bean audibly groaned at that last bit, which made me laugh and the midwife feel uncomfortable, which was great.

So that is my excuse for not blogging for the past week, take it or leave it.  I am going to try and pump out another tutorial in the next few days, but I can't promise anything concrete.

Later gators.

Gold and Pearls - A dangle earring tutorial!

Some new earrings have shown up in my Etsy shop and I am in love!  If these do well, I may start doing a lot more pieces like them.

Because I love them SO much, I'm going to tell you how I made them!

Materials

•  5 - 6 inches of 20 gauge gold wire
• 2 Glass pearls, I got some vintage ones for a steal at a thrift store
• Gold earring findings (Or you could make your own with wire)
• Clear Crystal beads, side drilled hole

First thing, I took my pearl and put it on a looped finding.  Then, because I like the look of wrapped loops, I used my round nosed pliers and made a loop a bit above my pearl.  I then wrapped the rest of the wire down until I got to the pearl and I clipped off the excess.

 

Next, I did a briolette wrap on the crystal bead.  I had a side drilled crystal but this process would work beautifully on a front to back drilled one as well.  For a tutorial on how to do a briolette wrap, check out this super informative website!  How to Make Beaded Jewelry

Lastly, the easy part!  I opened the non-wrapped loop on the pearl bead, this should be on the bottom side, and put the loop from the top of my crystal on it.  Close the loop.  Then I opened the loop on the earring post and put the wrapped loop on the top of the pearl bead on that.  Close the loop.

TA-DA!  You just made some super pretty, super simple earrings!  These are sooo cute for formal occasions, but you could wear these just about any 'ol time.  These would also be really pretty with different colored beads and crystals, or silver wire!  Experiment, have fun!

If you are interested in buying some of these lovelies for yourself (or a friend!) please check out my etsy shop by clicking the link in the sidebar.  

**THIS TUTORIAL IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY, DO NOT MAKE THESE AND ATTEMPT TO SELL THEM.**

Have fun and make something pretty today!

 

Many things...

So I have this whole week off because my semester is over with college, WHOO!  I have so many things that I want to do with my off time, which is mostly dedicated to crafting, surprise surprise.  I will be working on at least one new tutorial this week, and maybe some other stuff, who knows.  Just wanted to give you guys a heads up that this will be a week of many things for my little blog!

The medicine profiles the line.