Category Archives: Crafts

My sister-in-law, Paige (and her mom) is fabulous at sewing. Paige came across a dress pattern online that I saw a long time ago, but was too nervous to try on my own. Well, she made one and inspired me to make one for myself. Well, not for me…but for Maddie.

The website where I got the instructions and the pattern is HERE. You can see more pictures and get all the instructions and a pattern from there.

Paige got a tool to add snaps to the dresses. So I went and bought one of those. It worked great. Now this may be the cutest little dress, but let me tell you, I almost gave up when I was making it. I was so frustrated because I used quarter flats and didn’t think my cutting through well enough and messed up the first two that I cut. I need to go back to the fabric store and make up for my mistakes. But I finally managed to get this one to turn out and lo and behold….it’s adorable! I just love the funny little cats on the material!

Have you tackled any projects lately that started out poorly and ended up working out in the end?

I came across a picture of a project I did in the Fall that I never shared. I came across this adorable idea and knew I had to give it a try. So I went looking for some fabric and paper sacks…oh, and toilet paper….and put some little pumpkins together!

So you just lay down the piece of fabric and fold it into the hole of the toilet paper. I cut out some leaf shapes that had a long tails to stick in the hole. Then I cut some strips of the paper sack and made them into accordion fans and stuck them in the hole, too. They were so cute and so simple to make. I had them placed all over the house.

At the end of the season, I just put the fabric and paper stems in with my other Fall decorations to use next year!

I am sure I could have made these for other seasons. Maybe make them look like apples, or ornaments or something. I might have to give it a try!

I have needed something to keep me busy these days. I went shopping with Chuck’s mom the other day to a craft store and decided I wanted to learn to knit. So I picked up a cheap starter book, needles and some yarn. I haven’t been able to do a whole lot in one sitting because my hands are so swollen. But here’s a little progress I had after the first day I played with it!

Not too shabby for my first attempt if I do say so myself!

Then the other morning, I woke up and decided I NEEDED to have some flower clips for my hair. So I went nuts and attached a bunch of flowers I had to hair clips. Then I found a tutorial online for making some flowers out of fabric and made a couple of those. I am definitely going to make more of the fabric flowers. I need to see if I have some more elastic sitting around to attach them to. Or I need to get some more clips.

Not too shabby for my first attempts at these. I was quite proud. The knitting project I started is supposed to be a headband, so I may have to attach a fabric bow to that and see how it turns out! I am seeing Christmas gifts in the making already!

Have you tackled any projects lately? Any wearable projects? Please share!

I have been working on this necklace and earrings for MONTHS! Seriously! It’s not that it was hard to make or anything, I would just work on it a little, put it away, forget about it and then the cycle would start all over. So I finally remembered I wanted to finish it and I love it!

And here’s a picture slightly closer up.

So there you have it. Yet another set of jewelry. I have a few more to show you. I am trying to remember to post them on CraftsOnAWhim.com, too.

Anyone made any jewelry or other craft they are pleased with lately?

I made a pair of earrings for a friend at work. I show her all the stuff I make myself and since it was her birthday, I decided to make her a pair. She wanted blues, blacks, and silver. She also wears a lot of pearls, so I was pretty excited with the way these turned out!

This is the card I gave her with the earrings:

I even hung the earrings from the black string that was wrapped around the inside of the card. She thought that was really cute.

And she LOVED the earrings. She put them on right away! I think the best part about giving people something you made is seeing how much they like it when you make them something just for them!

I recently made a couple of necklaces and matching earrings. These were things I was lacking in my necklace collection.

Here is a brown necklace I made.

I started the necklace on day on the bus. Let me tell you…I got some strange looks!

A friend of mine at work has a necklace that I really like. It has a long strand of pearls (which I do not have) and two other silver chains with small pearls on one and larger pearls on the other. I decided that was something I could do. So I found some chain and some pearl-looking beads in various sizes (I actually found a multi-size pack) and went to work.

Here are the white necklaces.

I worked on these when we were in Lutsen last weekend. I wore the one with small beads to work on Monday and I think I want to do a little modifying to it. The small pearl one is REALLY long. I wore it wrapped twice around my neck and it was plenty long. I tried on the one with larger beads and I wrapped it around my neck twice and didn’t like the look of it. So I think I might leave the small bead one the way it is since it is more versatile and make the larger bead one a little shorter. The whole idea was to be able to wear them together and right now that doesn’t look very good.

But that is the fun in making your own stuff. You can modify them to be the way you want.

Here are the earrings I made to go with them.

Enjoy!

A friend from college made some wallets and I decided I needed to give them a try. I had to invite my mother-in-law over to help me out because she is a sewing diva…unlike me. So after lots of reading directions and lots of help from her, we made this lovely wallet.

This was a very tedious project, but I was really proud when I was done. It’s not perfect by any means, but it didn’t turn out too badly for my first try. I do know that there is no way I would have been able to get it done with out some help, though. Overall, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon with my mother-in-law!