Late last year we were lucky enough to be invited to an “S” themed fancy dress party.
Hmm, what to wear? I needed something that would work across all family members, including a newborn, and would allow me to baby wear and breastfeed. A hard task!
Sunflowers? Spiders? Scooby Doo? Star Wars? Sesame Street?
And then I had a revelation. Space! Satellite, Saturn, Sun, Stars. The entire Solar System really…
For now though, I thought I’d share some photos from the party.
These photos were all taken by Megan Webb, who was shooting on the go, in poor light conditions, at the same time as co-hosting the event. What a multi-tasker! Megan’s just launched her own Megan Webb Photography blog, and one of her first posts is about this very party.
Intergalactic Love
Me and my girls
Chocolate Spoons ticked off my To-Do List!
Thanks Ness from One Perfect Day for the idea, they were great!
There is a special little almost-four-year-old boy in my life.
His favourite day is Monday, because that’s garbage collection day. Every Monday, he runs outside four times to wave to the garbage men, point to the garbage bins (in case they don’t know where they are) and lust over the garbage being tipped into the garbage truck / recycling truck / green waste truck, or whatever the case may be.
His favourite possession of all time is a wee little garbage bin. But it’s not for rubbish. He puts all his most important treasures inside (including his Trashies collection of course).
And so, when it came time to make him a present, I knew just what this little lad would love….
Here’s how I did them.
First – I started off with three basic store-bought T’s.
Then I searched for suitable images. And by suitable, obviously they first had to fit the theme. But also, I was looking for cartoon style images with block colours, and as little shading as possible. I knew I wouldn’t be able to replicate shading in my appliqués. I used these ones here, here and here.
Next, I pasted the images into a word document and printed them off. Then I traced each of the parts onto sewable iron-on adhesive.
For the Recycling symbol, I made sure to flip it horizontally in Word to get the reverse of the image, so that it would appear the correct way round on the shirt.
Then I searched though the scrap fabric pile for fabrics in the right colours and textures. And on finding suitable pieces, I ironed on the adhesive, cut them out and ironed them onto the TShirts, and lastly sewed on using coordinating thread for the cartoons and contrasting orange thread for the recycling symbol.
Apparently word had gotten out that I was making some Kindle & Tablet Covers. (See my first attempt, Mr Banya’s Adam cover, and Miss TMME’s Kindle Cover). So one of our friends, The Cranky Fisherman, put in an order for a Kindle Cover for his then girlfriend, now fiancé, the lovely Miss Demeanour.
And so I whipped up this little number.
Front
Inside. The Kindle fits snugly inside the jeans pocket.
Back
Mostly upcycled, of course. The idea came about when I realised how snugly the Kindle fitted inside the jeans pocket. Snug as a bug in a rug. Meant to be…The jeans were an old pair of Mr Banya’s with an unfortunate hole, and the blue, white and pale yellow stripy fabric was from my Reverse Garbage $5 green bag stash from ages ago.
The inside padding is from an old polyester blanket. The front “button” is a broken handbag table hook. And the blue ribbon was originally wrapped around a present I’d once received. The white ribbon, velcro and thread were the only things that were new.
And here is Miss Demeanour modeling her “not very new” new Kindle cover!
Well, when I mentioned that I’d made them to a friend of mine, (whom I’ve blognamed Miss Tequila-Makes-Me-Easy – a story for another time…), and she put in an order for one of her own, pretty please.
So I guess you could consider this part three in the Danya Makes An Electronic Cover series….
Now I know that Miss TMME likes blues, greens, skulls and butterflies. But since I was intending to upcycle from my scraps and worn out clothes stash, my options were limited. I found a few likely contenders though. Some old holey jeans. Three different pretty blue scraps, some coordinating ribbons…
After too-ing and fro-ing about the different fabric combos, I decided to go with the jeans + blue floral fabric. I used the money pocket and the button as embellishments. Here’s how she turned out…
Front
Inside with velcro on the strap
Other side (you can see the other part of the velcro on the right)
Here’s a close up of the back, with the jeans money pocket zigzagged on, to make a pocket within a pocket.
Miss TMME loves it! Well, I think she does. I hope she does. She certainly looks chuffed.
That’s where the kindle goes, lovey!
And that’s for a little something something on the side.
Want to make one for yourself? Here’s how.
First up, grab some fabric. I used these jeans that Mr Banya was no longer wearing due to an unfortunate hole…
And this blue floral fabric which bought as part of my $5-green-bag-full fabric haul from Reverse Garbage.
Now, because the fabric is thin and stretchy, I actually sewed this to some of the denim first. That way, it was a lot easier to deal with.
Next, I used the same basic pattern from my first Kindle cover, except I removed the extra two pockets and the elastic tabs from the inside, which I found tricky to sew and superfluous.
And instead I zigzagged on a totally superfluous mini pocket to the back side, effectively creating two pockets. But I love this little detail, it looks super cute!
I also cut the waist strap (including the button) to use as the strap. I glued on some magnets to both the inside of the strap and corresponding part of the cover, but alas they didn’t work. I guess there was too much fabric between them? So I fixed this by handsewing on some dodgy velcro over the same spots. It isn’t the prettiest, but it serves the purpose, and is hidden from view most of the time.
A bit of dodgy zigzagging here and there to add a bit of “flavour”, and there you have it, a one-of-a-kind Kindle cover for a one-of-a-kind friend!
I started with this infant bodysuit (aka onesie) which had been handed down from JJ to Bee, and as you can see, had been loved just about to death.
Holey crotch, Batman!
Initially I was considering cutting out the little baby giraffe design to appliqué onto a plain top, but then I thought – BABY CARDIGAN! So obvious, and so easy…
(OK, I’ll admit that I first tried to do the hem with my new double needle, but failed dismally in getting the tension right. So I cut off that dodgy hem and instead re-hemmed twice using my normal needle. Not quite as straight as it would have been with the double needle, but certainly good enough. And Bee doesn’t mind…)
Well, when I mentioned that I’d made them to a friend of mine, (whom I’ve blognamed Miss Tequila-Makes-Me-Easy – a story for another time…), and she put in an order for one of her own, pretty please.
So I guess you could consider this part three in the Danya Makes An Electronic Cover series….
Now I know that Miss TMME likes blues, greens, skulls and butterflies. But since I was intending to upcycle from my scraps and worn out clothes stash, my options were limited. I found a few likely contenders though. Some old holey jeans. Three different pretty blue scraps, some coordinating ribbons…
After too-ing and fro-ing about the different fabric combos, I decided to go with the jeans + blue floral fabric. I used the money pocket and the button as embellishments. Here’s how she turned out…
Front
Inside with velcro on the strap
Other side (you can see the other part of the velcro on the right)
Here’s a close up of the back, with the jeans money pocket zigzagged on, to make a pocket within a pocket.
Miss TMME loves it! Well, I think she does. I hope she does. She certainly looks chuffed.
That’s where the kindle goes, lovey!
And that’s for a little something something on the side.
Want to make one for yourself? Here’s how.
First up, grab some fabric. I used these jeans that Mr Banya was no longer wearing due to an unfortunate hole…
And this blue floral fabric which bought as part of my $5-green-bag-full fabric haul from Reverse Garbage.
Now, because the fabric is thin and stretchy, I actually sewed this to some of the denim first. That way, it was a lot easier to deal with.
Next, I used the same basic pattern from my first Kindle cover, except I removed the extra two pockets and the elastic tabs from the inside, which I found tricky to sew and superfluous.
And instead I zigzagged on a totally superfluous mini pocket to the back side, effectively creating two pockets. But I love this little detail, it looks super cute!
I also cut the waist strap (including the button) to use as the strap. I glued on some magnets to both the inside of the strap and corresponding part of the cover, but alas they didn’t work. I guess there was too much fabric between them? So I fixed this by handsewing on some dodgy velcro over the same spots. It isn’t the prettiest, but it serves the purpose, and is hidden from view most of the time.
A bit of dodgy zigzagging here and there to add a bit of “flavour”, and there you have it, a one-of-a-kind Kindle cover for one of my drinking buddies!
Hope you like it Miss TMME!
xx
Danya
(This post is not sponsored. All opinions are my own.)
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Given that we’ve blognamed* our second child “Bee”, I thought I should make a little baby bumble bee outfit for her.
I used a store-bought size 000 infant bodysuit (or you might call it a onesie) on sale for $4.80.
I found some black knit fabric in my upcycling fabric stash. A few snips with the scissors, a tad of pinning, and we have the word “bee” ready to be sewn on.
Using black cotton, I sewed around each letter using a long wide zigzag stitch.
Next came some stripes around the bottom half of the suit, wrapping around both front & back. I left the edge of the legs and the bottom clasp areas free.
Flip it over, and sew some wings on he back. The ribbon is the same pale yellow as the suit, with metallic silver edging. I narrowed the zigzag stitch width so that it would fit within the ribbon’s width.
I tried pinning this first but I couldn’t get it to look right. So instead I removed all the pins and just winged it. (Teehee.)
And there you have it! I should probably now make a headband with baubly bee antenna on it… 🙂
As you can see, this suit has lots of lovely character-adding flaws. The black lines didn’t end up perfectly straight. The edges are all zigzaggy. The wings are just sewed on ribbon, rather than some sort of spectacular wing stuff. But I think these all work together. This screams home-made. I mean after all, if you want a perfect bee costume, you could just jump on the Internet and order some nylon made-in-a-sweatshop thingy for $20. But where’s the fun in that???
Image Source
xxx
Danya
*I just totally made the word blognamed up to mean the nickname you give your child on your blog. If it catches on, remember that you heard it here first! 🙂
