"Sisters" Frame

The frame hanging in Sarah's dorm room

 

 

For my sister, Sarah's, 21st birthday (back in December), I wanted to do something special for her. I made her this frame with a collage of pictures of just the two of us. I worked the majority of the summer on this project because hunting down all the pictures took quite a while. I ended up with somewhere between 50 and 60 pictures that I found sifting through the boxes of pictures we have in our house. I scanned them all into the computer and had them printed at Walgreens. I, then, cropped most of them down and set them up on a poster board before using double stick tape to tape them down before putting it in the frame.

In the lower corner, I put the word "sisters."  I printed it on a piece of velum and used black ribbon to make a boarder. This cleaned up the look of the edge of the pictures and frame the word nicely.

Sarah really loves it and hung it up in her dorm room at school. I made it so that she could do that and also take it with her to hang in her future apartments and houses!

Here is an up close of the frame with all the pictures.

Balsa Wood Boxes

This summer was the summer of "A's" as far as my craft projects went. I painted and stenciled three balsa wood boxes, all as gifts for people with names starting with "A." All the painting was done with acrylic or tempra paints.

For a 10-year-old girl, I made a box for her to keep all her friendship bracelet making materials in. She had been asking me to teach her how to make friendship bracelets and so I put together a box with all she would need to learn and create all in one place. The "A" is a WordArt font I printed out, laid on top of the box and traced with a pencil, pressing moderately so the imprint of the letter would appear on the box. The sides were stenciled with a pencil outline and then painted.

 I cut up a flat piece of wood and fit it in the bottom of the box as dividers to separate the floss, ruler and scissors. I copied and laminated instructions for how to tie the knots and for a few simple patterns, putting them on a binder ring to keep them organized and together. The box can be used as a work space, with the bracelet clipped in the side of the closed box.


Another box I painted was the same shape and size of the one pictured above. I am working on getting a picture of it.  This one I did for my friend that was going off to University of Pittsburgh in the fall. I painted stenciled and painted the box in school colors, navy and gold, with a retro-looking pattern. For the letter on this box, I used a chip board "A," painted the top gold and the sides navy. It made a nice contrast and made the letter "pop." I lined the inside of the box with white, self-stick felt.

The third box, which was really the first one I did, I made for my friend that graduated 8th grade and made her confirmation. I am also working on getting a picture of this project. This box is a little larger, rectengular box. I painted it with black and white acrylic paint in a quatrefoil pattern. I knew her room had a black, white and teal theme to it, so I did the box in black and white and painted the chip board "A" in teal. In this box, I also lined the inside with felt to give it a jewelry box feel.

Super Hero T-Shirt Quilt

For my brother, John's, 18th birthday, I asked him what he wanted because he can be the hardest to shop for! He asked me if I would make him a quilt out of all his hold super hero t-shrits that he refused to get rid of.

For this quilt, I used the front and back of 10 shirts and the same steps as my high school t-shirt quilt. Once again, I used a twin sized bed sheet for the backing. In total, this quilt took me less than a week (about 5 days) to make.

T-Shirt Quilt

This summer, I finally took to cutting up some of my t-shirts from high school and making a blanket out of them. I love t-shirts and instead of throwing them away, this is a much better way of parting with them. Like many of my other crafts, I found a great tutorial for this quilt on Pinterest. The woman that wrote THIS tutorial made it really clear and easy!

This was my first real sewing endeavor and I am really happy with how it came out. I used 22 of my "favorite" t-shirts from high school, featherweight, fusable interfacing, a twin sheet for the backing and low-loft, twin sized batting for the filling.

When completed, my quilt measured about 70.5 by 56.5 inches. This is smaller than a standard twin size quilt or blanket, but it is still a good size and it is really warm!

A big tip when it comes to the sewing is to use the walking foot on your sewing machine. It moves the fabric from the top and bottom so it doesn't stretch out as you sew!


Here are the steps I took to make my blanket:

1. Pick out 20 (or in my case 22) t-shrits that you want to make into your blanket.

2. Wash and dry them without fabric softener.

3. Iron the shirts, using a dishtowel over the design so they don't melt.


4. Mark and cut your t-shirts into 15x15 inch squares, centering the design on the shirt as best as possible. Many t-shirts have designs that are placed higher up on the shirt. I placed the top of my ruler at the collar of the shirt and centered the design width wise as best as possible.

5. Cut your featherweight, fusable interfacing to 15x15 inch squares also.

6. Using a steam iron, iron the interfacing to the back of each of the t-shirts. This will help to keep them stable in your quilt.

7. On the interfacing, mark 1/4 inch line on the top and side edges and 1/2 inch line along the bottom edge. Cut along these lines.

8. Mark another 1/4 inch line on all four edges of the square. This will be your 1/4 inch seam allowance.

9. Lay out the squares as you want them arranged and label them. I used sticky notes and labeled them with columns A-D and numbers 1-5.

10. Sew the squares into strips (I did columns first).

11. Press the seams flat.

12. Sew columns A and B together and columns C and D together.

13. Press seams flat.

14. Sew the two big blocks up the middle, connecting columns B and C together. This makes your quilt top.

15. Iron your backing. I used a twin sized sheet for my backing so I would not have to piece fabric together. I laid the backing on the floor, placed the quilt top ontop of it and traced around it, leaving two inches on each side. This will be folded over and used as the binding for the sides.

16. Lay backing out on the floor, right side down. Place the batting ontop of it (which I also cut down to fit the size of my quilt top) and then place the quilt top ontop of the batting.

17. Pin all three layers together.

18. I then did a cross-stitch on the places where four squares came together. You can quilt as desired instead.

19. Fold the excess backing in half (about an inch) and then over the edge of the quilt to make your binding. Pin all the way around.

20. Sew binding all the way around, leaving about 1/4 inch seam allowance. I put my stitches about 1/4 inch from the middle of the quilt (3/4 inch from the outer edge of the quilt).



I love my t-shirt quilt. It is really warm and puts a good use to all the shirts I got in high school. I had an abudance of t-shirts so I picked the ones that had the most meaning or memories behind them. I picked shirts from each year of volleyball, I played for four years. I picked shirts that were special honors I recieved, like Matter of Pride and being a Senior Mentor. I also picked shirts from clubs I was a part of, like National Honors Society, Target Success, Science Olympiad and choir.

A few of the shirts had narrow designs on them, so I used two to make one square. I cut each t-shirt and interfacing to 7 1/2 by 15 inch rectangles origionally. Then, instead of cutting the half inch off the bottom for the first markings, I did 1/4 inch off the top and the bottom.

Enjoy!

Fraternity Flags

As I mentioned, I am a member of Alpha Phi Omega, the national service fraternity. Earlier this semester, one of my "brothers" was looking for people that knew how to sew to help make flags for each "family" within the fraternity. After the sewing I did this summer, I decided I probably was experienced enough to help out.

These flags were SUPER easy to make. Each "family" has two colors, a primary, which became the flag body, and a secondary, which is the color of the letter. There are 24 families, each one with a corresponding greek letter. My fraternity "brother" had purchaced all the materials and had the sewing machine at school, and I was able to use it at my leisure to work on these flags. When I started, eight flag bodies had been made.

Making each flag is a lot like making a pillow case. These are the steps I took:

1. Iron fabric flat, then fold, matching short sides together (hamburger style!).
2. Sew along the three "open" sides of the fabric, leaving a quarter inch seam allowance. On the side opposite of the fold, leave a 1 1/2 - 2inch gap. This gap will help you to turn the flag inside out and also serve as the opening to the sleeve for a flag pole.

Sewing along the dotted lines.

3. Turn the fabric inside out. Iron seams flat.
4. Sew around all four edges, leaving a half inch seam allowance, and not sewing your opening shut.

Sew along the dotted lines.

Flag "right side" out.

 

5. Sew up the flag to create the sleeve for the flag pole.

The body of your flag is now done!

For the letters, one of my fellow brothers drafted the greek letters onto iron-on transfer paper. I ironed the transfer paper onto the appropriate colored fabric and cut out the letters. The transfer paper peeled off, leaving adhesive on the fabric of the letter. I centered it on corresponding flag body, ironed it on and then sewed a zig-zag border around the letter.

Iota, my family flag in blue and silver.

 

They turned out looking great and serve their purpose well!

 

Theta family flag in black and gold.

Masquerade Masks

As I mentioned, I am a member of Alpha Phi Omega (APO), the national service fraternity.  Each semester we have two dances, one for only the active members, and one celebrating the activation of our pledges into the fraternity. The activation dance is typically just a semi-formal dance, but this year they added a masquerade theme.  I called upon Pinterest for some mask inspiration and found an awesome tutorial HERE for the masks pictured above and below.  These masks were very simple to make and I made masks for myself and five of my friends.

All you need is tulle or other sheer fabric, fabric paint, plastic wrap, the mask template (you can make your own) and ribbon. On the blog I found the tutorial on, the template for the masks is available for download.  After printing out the template, you simply tape it down to a table, tape a piece of plastic wrap on top of it and then tape the tulle on top of that. Then, you trace the template with the fabric paint and let it dry overnight.  When it is dry, it will peel off the plastic wrap and you can cut out around the peremeter of the mask and use the fabric glue to attach the ribbon to the sides.

I made two different styles, the original template that was shown on the other blog and a "melting" mask. I used plain black fabric paint and black glitter fabric paint. The black glitter paint dried to give a silver sparkled look.

Hello Hello!

Hello!

I thought as my first post, I would give a little background about myself and why I've started blogging. I am college student at Saint Louis University, studying occupational therapy! Here, I am a member of Alpha Phi Omega, Delta Delta chapter of the national service fraternity. I was a member of the Girl Scouts of America for 11 years, completing my Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards.

I love to do crafts, and I always have. When I am not doing my school work or service work, I make time to do various craft projects. What I have made is mostly displayed around my apartment or given as gifts. I hope to keep my friends and family in tune to what I am doing down here at school and keeping my creative juices flowing!

I am going to start posting projects I have completed in the past year or so along with the projects I work on as I finish them!

Enjoy!