How To: Felt PIn Wheel Wreath

Wow, that is some seriously dreary weather lately isn't it? Makes you wish spring would disappear and summer would get here doesn't it? Well, to help pull me out of the grey weather funk I made the cheeriest wreath this morning!

Pretty as a picture isn't it? And it came together so fast I just had to share the how to! It mostly consists of a pinwheel primer (in case you have never made a single one in grade school. Seriously though, how did you let that happen?)

Get together your supplies which consist of:
1 wreath form
6 squares of felt (4)4" squares and (2)5.5" squares
3 Buttons
Enough lace and/or ribbon to wrap around the wreath
Rotary knife or scissors
Glue gun & sticks (But a needle and thread can be used in its stead)

Here are the super simple steps!

1. Lay out your squares of felt and layer them two to a pile. (I love the contrasting colours of each wheel.)

2. Find the centre and using a rotary knife or scissors, cut to almost the center.

3. Add glue to the centre and fold over one piece and affix. Your back layer might reach the centre but probably won't. I folded both pieces at the same time but had to add a bit of glue to the bottom layer and the point sat just outside the centre. (Don't worry though, the button will cover it.)

4. Continue with all four corners until your pinwheel looks like this.

5. Glue button to centre.

6. Rinse and repeat for the next two pinwheels. Aren't they just adorable?!

7. Pull out your wreath for and do a lace/ribbon mock up. I scavenged some lace from my jars for this. I actually used four different pieces so I wanted to make sure they would all fit.

8. Glue ends (if you have multiple pieces)and wrap evenly.

 9. Glue your pinwheels on and you are done! Now hang that baby and brighten your mood!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Happy crafting!

Wednesday on Wednesday

My little girl is growing up before my eyes.

Wednesday on Wednesday

Some great pictures from our annual Easter egg hunt! The weather was amazing and the children were even more so!

The skirt was one of Wednesday's Easter presents. It was a long overdue requested "rainbow skirt" number. It is made from a combination of vintage sheets, new yardage, thrifted scarf and vintage trims. It was so much fun to make I am making another for sell. I hope your weekend was as beautiful and fun filled as ours! Cheers!

Wednesday on Wednesday

It is that time of year again. The time when Wednesday drives me bananas until she gets to dye some eggs. So yesterday I obliged. I had hopes of doing the Kool-Aid method but my local Wal-Mart didn't sell the individual packs.  I have done the food colouring with vinegar method and it did work but I felt you needed to leave the eggs in the bath too long or vivid colours. (Little ones need instant gratification.) So, I wandered over to the easter decorating section and found Dudley's Egg Decorating Kit. I had two criteria; bright vivid colours and our year old friendly processes. (Some kits called for smushing the egg in a bag of glitter etc.). This kit delivered. Super cheap and super bright colours and the girls loved it.

If we get the eggs eaten by Friday, I am going to do this one more time for Wednesday. Maybe by then the dye on her fingers will have washed away too! This weekend we'll be joining friends for our annual egg hunt. And I have some tricks up my sleeve for Wednesday on Sunday. What are some of your Easter traditions? Do you pay special attention to the religious reasons for the holiday? Do you have a child obsessed with dyeing eggs like me? However you celebrate I hope your Easter is magical.
<3

Wednesday on Wednesday (or Thursday)

It has been ages since I shared some photos of Wednesday. (Since pre-Christmas I believe.) Good and bad excuses aside, I have some wonderful photos to share today. Last week we had some seriously unseasonable and amazing weather here in South Eastern Ontario. It was summer weather. We were out in shorts, and flip flops for the better part of the week. Before the weather could return to the seasonal cold and wet temperatures, I managed to whisk Wednesday off to the park for some sunshine, fun and photos.

Now it is back to raincoats, boots and mittens. What a glorious week it was though. I hope your spring is coming up daffodils!

How To : Recycled Denim Coil Basket

I am slowly making my way back to crafting and posting...lately I have been mostly crafting and I am ok with that. Must be the weather?  Well, this little number was inspired by two completely separate projects. The first being the coiled basket I made from torn vintage sheets and a pair of jeans I refashioned.  I thought enough ahead to take process photos, so I have a tutorial for you today! I haven't had one since before Christmas, wow some holiday eh?

Behold the scrap denim drawer. A collection of remnants from past projects and full pieces I have yet to utilize including two pairs of untouched jeans, a jacket and a mini skirt. I took out a bag of inseams and cuffs I had separated and began the project. Within just a couple of hours I had this basket, which has a seven inch diameter at the base and a twelve inch diameter at the top. The basket is nine inches high.

To make your own you will need:
Inseams and hems from several pairs of jeans
Waistband from one pair of jeans for handles (optional)
Back pocket from one pair of jeans (also optional)
Hot glue gun and a couple sticks of glue
Sewing machine
Denim needles (or size 14) more than two and denim has a tendency to warp needles.
One large spool of thread + two or three matching wound bobbins

Begin at the beginning...

Begin by taking a bottom hem piece and coiling it around itself. Adding hot glue along the seam as you roll. Don'y mind if the glue seeps out a bit as the arrows are showing it is hardly noticeable.

Continue adding pieces to your coil until it is a size you like (or you run out of hem pieces like I did.) As you can see I chose to keep the lumpier pieces where the hem and the seams met. You can leave them out for a smoother coil but I found by staggering them around the circle it all evened out in the end.

When you have finished coiling your base, add a piece of denim that is taller than the coils. Here I used a hem from a pair of men's shorts I had. But you can use a piece of denim cut to size. It is just to give your basket wall coils something to attach to.

Tip up your base so that the taller piece you added to the outside meets up with inseam piece under your presser foot exactly in the middle. Close up pictured below.

See how the base is under the presser foot as well as the first inseam piece? You need them to meet in the middle because you are going to use your widest zig zag stitch to join them together. Back stitch a couple stitches and big stitching.

When you have sewn your first coil around the base you will need to CONTINUOUSLY stitch up to the second row. Simply move your coil so that it crosses the bottom and begins a second row on its own.

When it is time to add another piece of inseam you just slide it under your foot and continue stitching. You might have to fiddle with it a little bit. And sometimes it might not line up perfectly, but for me it added to the charm. YOu might just need to go slower than I did. (I got more and more excited the closer I got to the end of the project.)

See? Holes. But I was okay with them. What I wasn't okay with was big holes between coil rows. So when I was done the basket I went back and sewed up any places that my zig zag stitched missed. (Glue would also work as there was one row that broke two needles on me before I just accepted it and moved on.)

For the handles I just snipped a couple pieces from a waistband and straight stitched them on. (The machine did not enjoy trying to zig zag stitch throw two+ layers of denim)

Because I wasn't going to sew this pocket on, I wanted to give it some stitch detail first. I like the royal blue stitching against the bright black denim.

Choose a side for your pocket (I chose the one that had one too many iffy spots) and affix with hot glue.

You are done. Now fill it with stuff and enjoy!

If you have questions please feel free to leave it in the comment section an I will answer it ASAP.
Thanks for stooping by!

My Creative Space...In Tatters

You can always tell where I am creatively by my bookmarks, pins, tumblr posts and flickr favourites. I am sure this stands for most people. Lately I have been on a big "using fabric scraps" kick. A few months ago I tore up many a vintage sheet and unused yardage thinking I would make a rainbow rag rug for Wednesday's play space. As soon as I tore it up I regretted the entire thing. The process of sewing all of those strips together and winding them in neat balls and then braiding them without tangling seemed impossible. So I packed up all the strips hoping I would find some simple projects to use them in. Only two obstacles lay in my way. The first was that most of the sheets and yardage were unwanted for a reason. The colours and patterns were either too drab or not inspiring enough to be used.  The other was the sheer volume of fabric, there was just so much of it. So the bags (and bags) of torn fabric strips just sat there taking up a lot of space.

So I googled and pinned and flickr'ed. Finally I have enough inspirational galleries that I will be done with my scraps quite soon. I have already used up about a quarter of them. Here are some photos to give an idea of what I have up to.

 This is what I am all about this week. The more poms the better!

 This basket took about three days. But it is huge. I made it to be a laundry basket or Wednesday's room. It is smaller than a big plastic laundry basket but big enough for a little girl's weekly laundry loads.

 The basket and pom poms are all made from vintage sheets.

 I spent a week wrapping plastic hangers from Wednesday's closet. Since we hang most o her clothing (PJs and tights excepted) She has a lot of hangers. I am only about half done, but I needed a break.

Some of the hangers I have even managed to embellish a little bit.

I want to share with you some of my favourite inspiration photos so that maybe you will be inspired as well.

Most recently, I have created a Flickr gallery called Big Love For Small Scraps. Here is a sample of the photos.






1. Para a semana..., 2. weaved fabric basket - detailed, 3. curtains 006, 4. Scrappy Fabric Coasters, 5. Rag Rug Completed, 6. Pretty Little Pouch Full View - Option 3, 7. Scrap Fabric Curtain 4, 8. vintage feel, 9. scrap coil

Over at Pinterest, I have a board called Scrap Not, Lest Ye Be Scrapped. It looks something like this.

There is approx 50 or 60 great links to check out. I made sure that every pin links back to the original post. So you shouldn't have to do any creative searching to find the tutorials (if there is one) to go with them.

So what have you been up to? What is inspiring you to create and search these days? Why don't you link up your creative space?