Made it Monday: Summer DIY Dress

Hey guys! I have a fun tutorial and project to share with you today. I made myself a dress! Never thought I'd say that. Even after I made it I was wondering if I'd actually wear it. I don't have that much faith in my sewing skills! But, I wore it all day yesterday and it didn't fall apart!

I'm not going to lie, I did have to do some seam ripping on this bad boy, but I really like how it turned out and I plan on making another one similar to this. I love wearing dresses and this is a cheap way to do it. I found this idea on pinterest and went between a couple of tutorials to make mine. All you need is a tank top (mine was one I had that was too short), a little over a yard of fabric, wide elastic, coordinating thread and a sewing machine. Here is what I did:

First I cut my tank top a little below the bust, leaving a little extra fabric to allow for the seam:

Then I cut the wide elastic. I measured it on myself just below the bust, and cut it a little longer. Overlapping the edges a bit, sew them together to make a circle. This was my first mistake while making this dress that caused a lot of seam ripping. I cut my elastic to fit snug. This is not a good thing when you have to get that same chunk of elastic over your shoulders to take the dress off. What I had to do later was cut a longer piece of elastic. My tip would be, when measuring out your elastic, do not stretch it and add a couple extra inches to the length.

Next, I made a nice seam on my skirt fabric, made a gathering stitch, then gathered it.

Then, I measured the skirt fabric around the same "below the bust" spot, to make sure I didn't gather it too much and made sure it fit around me. Then I sewed the sides of the fabric together to make a skirt.

Next I sewed my gathered edge onto the elastic band. Then I sewed the tank onto the top of the elastic band. My tank did pucker in a couple of places since the tank is stretchy material.

Once I had everything sewed on, I tried on the dress to see where I wanted to cut the skirt off. I found a good spot, cut off the extra fabric, and gave it a nice seam. To finish it off, I used the extra fabric from the tank to make some flowers for the top. I used velcro to attach them to the tank, because I wasn't sure how they would wash up. I just take the flowers off before I wash the dress.

This is just a brief explanation of how I made this. Feel free to comment with any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Lexi

Made it Monday: Memo Board Revamp

One of my recent projects I did was revamp my memo board. I used it initially to hold Christmas cards, then to hold mail and notes. I didn’t take a before picture of it and it is not a project I had featured on my blog in the past-oops!
I had originally taken the idea from a Pottery Barn catalog. It was a goodwill frame with some jute strung across to hang Christmas cards from. I continued using it well after Christmas, but I was running out of space to hang mailings and such from. Then I saw this post over at one of my favorite blogs, Shanty 2 Chic.
I knew that I just had to add a few more jute strips to mine. I also spray painted it and updated the rosettes. Here is the new and improved version:

It is much easier to hang things from this one!

On a side note, I finally finished decorating my framed peg board!! It only took me, well, a really long time!

I wanted to have easy access to all my ribbon. My ribbon drawer was getting cramped and it was getting hard to find the ribbon I wanted. This is a great solution. I think I use my ribbon more now that I can see it!

I also love the easy access to my cutting utensils. I am really bad about loosing scissors (currently, my sewing/fabric scissors is missing), so it helps to have a spot where there is usually always one hanging.

Since these pictures, I’ve added a clipboard that helps me keep track of any orders I have to fill and the projects I want to work on next.

Hope you had a fab weekend!
Lexi

Made It Monday: Land of the Free

Wow! Can you believe it is June already? Where has the year gone? It is beginning to feel more and more like summer each day around here. I have a lot going on this month, so bear with me as my posts may be sporadic! I have a lot of fun projects I want to post, but a few need some finishing touches, and I’m not sure if they are going to get done anytime soon:( I will try my best though!

Today’s Made it Monday feature is a button flag picture I made for my Memorial Day/Independence Day seasonal table.

I had the idea to do this and it turned out to be fast, cheap, and simple. I started out by grabbing a few packs of buttons from JoAnn Fabrics, since my button jar did not contain that many red, white and blue buttons. My St. Patrick’s Day rainbow art depleted my button collection (which apparently, I never revealed that canvas on the blog, because I was going to link to it and can’t find it!). I think I spent a total of $3 on buttons, and that is all I spent on this entire project, everything else I had on hand. Not too shabby!

The first step was laying out all the buttons to make sure the final product would resemble a flag. This took the most time, since I had to redo it a couple of times because it was off center (my frame already had the fabric in it—it would have been easier had I done it on a new piece of fabric that I could just center in the frame after I had glued the buttons on). Once I was happy with the look, I hot glued those bad boys on.

I’m not going to lie—the picture stayed this way for a while. I ran out of time to finish it that day, but I wanted to add a saying. At first was going to put on “God Bless America,” until I realized that right below the picture I have something that says the same thing. Then I thought about how the flag symbolizes freedom and rather than just putting “free” or “freedom,” I decided on “land of the free.” I cut out “land of the free” on vinyl with my cricut to create a stencil.

I used transfer tape (contact paper actually) to put the vinyl on the picture. The transfer tape helps keep all the middles of the letters in the right spot.

Then I painted it with a red craft paint that I had on hand.

I removed the vinyl and had myself a lovely $3 new piece of art!

Lexi