Rag Rugs, Potholder Style

This winter my family got really into making potholders. You know, the ones you weave from cotton loops on little metal looms? We made a lot of them! Most of the extended family got a set for Christmas.

Once we ran out of cotton loops I got a little creative and cut up some holey knee socks to make more potholders. That worked surprisingly well!

At some point during this whole potholder making frenzy I began to think, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to make a ragrug this way?" I would just need a really big loom and really big loops. For the loops I went to the thrift store and picked up approximately twenty 50 cent T-shirts.

Using my rotary cutter and mat I cut the t-shirts into 4 inch wide loops.

I sorted them according to color.

Then, they all had to be stretched out, in order to fit on my yet-to-be-built loom.

My siblings were very helpful with this. After an evening of cutting and stretching loops, I was all ready to weave my rug.

So, one night I volunteered to cook supper and my dad built a loom for me. 

Weaving the rug actually took much less time then expected! In one evening I had a rug done!

This was fun! So the next week, armed with more T-shirts, I made a second one. This time with a pretty plaid design.

Excited about how this was going I decided to make a third rug, only this time with a twist. I would weave this rug diagonally.

Unfortunantly my loom wasn't built to be used like this and the top bored split. EEK! Daddy to the rescue!

My dad reinforced the loom for me! Now, if only my goats will take a break from going into labor for several hours I can get this rug done! (then ask my dad to build me another, stronger, loom) 

Now, how many other ways can I weave a rag rug? Anyone have a bunch of old T-shirts to give me? Alright, back outside now to check on all my pregnant goats and new babies. Check back later this week for a full report on kidding season thus far!

Valentines Day: Shirts and Baby Goats

So many of my projects start with me finding a fabric I just can't leave behind, then designing a garment to turn the fabric into, in order to justify the fabric I just bought. This shirt was no exception.

The fabric I had been admiring for a while, then during one trip to Joann's I saw that it had been clearanced. So I immediately got what was left on the bolt, about two yards.

A soft grey knit with metallic gold stripes on one side and gold dots on the other. I really wanted to showcase both sides of the fabric in what ever I made and I thought a circle shirt, like this, would be a great way to do that. I decided some gold lace would be just perfect to set off the stripes and dots. Not wanting to spend too much more money on the supplies for this project, I stopped by a thrift store on my way home from Joann's that day to see if there was a garment with gold lace I could use. Well, there wasn't one.

There was, however, this shirt. While not something I would typically wear, the paisley pattern of blue, green, grey, and metallic gold intrigued me. I could find a way to combine this shirt with my new fabric in place of lace!

This all took place several weeks ago. The shirt and fabric got stuck in my re-fashion bin and there they stayed. Finally, I had a few spare hours this past weekend, while waiting for my very pregnant goats to kid. Out my fabric came!

I used one of my favorite tank tops as the pattern for the body of the shirt. I cut two large half-circles for sleeves. Then, I chopped up the thrifted shirt.

I cut off the sleeves, then chopped off the top of the shirt. This would be the yoke for my circle shirt. I flipped it around so that the front of the shirt was the back yoke, and the back was the front yoke. Then I started sewing my circle shirt.

Well, it was supposed to be a circle shirt at least. I sewed the top of the thrifted shirt onto the body of my new shirt. Then I planned to sew the half-circles to the sides of the shirt body to make a large circle/oval shape, but halfway into sewing the half circles on I decided to go a slightly different direction.

I sewed the half-circles around what would be the arm hole, then, rather that sewing the rest of the sleeves into the side seams, as I'd planned to do, I decided to sew up the side seams and the under arm seams separately, giving this shirt very distinct sleeves, rather than a poncho look.

Once I had the sleeves figured out, my shirt was about done, only two little issues that needed to be solved, first, it was a little tight and short through the torso. 

I cut the bottom couple inches off the original shirt, along with wedges out of the sides of the shirt. I then seam ripped a few inches up each side seam of the shirt I had just made. I sewed the wedges I had just cut into the side seams and sewed the hem of the original shirt onto the bottom of my new shirt. That fixed the problem!

The second issue was the back of the shirt, it was just a bit too open for my tastes. So I made two straps out of the fabric scraps I had, then cris-crossed them across the open back.

There, much more comfortable! This shirt took about an hour and a half to make, then it was time to check on the pregnant goats again. So I threw a coat on over my pretty new shirt and outside I went, to discover Genesis very close to having babies!

Genesis is a two year old, first time mama and she did great! First out was a little buck who looked exactly like his mama. My sister named him Exodus. He was soon followed by a doeling, named Truffle (to honor her Valentines day birth).

We quickly moved all three into a nice warm shed, and the babies didn't take long to figure out how to nurse.

Now, hopefully all my kiddings this year go just as well as Genesis's did, and all my sewing projects come together as quickly and nicely as my shirt did!

Well, ok, that second one might be pretty near impossible, but I'm still hoping for a smooth kidding season!

  

The Long, Comfy, Reversible, Traveling, Skirt

For some reason, I very rarely wear sweatpants. I'm not sure why, I just don't. As far as lounge wear goes, in my opinion, there is nothing more comfortable than a long, soft, full, elastic-waist skirt. All of my skirts that fit this description are getting kind of. . .worn. (how many tears can a skirt have before it's officially worn out?) So, I decided an ultra-comfortable maxi skirt would be just the thing to make out of my remaining pretty grey knit fabric.

I folded my fabric in half and laid my brown taffeta button-front skirt on top of it to use as a pattern. I cut out the front and back of the skirt this way. For the waistband, I cut a strip of fabric a couple inches smaller than my waist measurement and 4x wider than my desired waistband width. Then I cut out 4 pockets, not 2, but 4. Why? Because this skirt was going to be reversible. 

On the (almost) solid grey side, I sewed on striped pockets. On the striped side, I sewed (almost) solid grey pockets. I sewed up the side and center back seams with french seams, which I then stitched down to look like flat-felled seams. (As that was easier with this fabric than normal flat-felled seams would have been.) 

I hemmed the skirt toward the striped side of the skirt, so when the skirt is worn with the striped side showing it looks like there is a grey band around the bottom of the skirt. 

For the waistband, I sewed my rectangle of fabric into a circle, then folded it over, grey side showing, and sewed it to the top of the skirt. When I'm wearing it, the waistband gets folded over again so it's not so wide. After about 3 hours, cut out to hemming, I had an incredibly comfy new skirt. The next day I was off on a mini road trip with my mom and fire-fighter brother.

This skirt was perfect for a 6-hour car trip. Day one, I wore it striped side out.

We drove to Indianapolis, ate supper, then settled into our hotel room for a night of board games. Day two, we explored Indianapolis, both by car and on foot down town.

We saw the Indiana State Capitol building.

And this really cool looking Civil War monument in a circle in the middle of the city.

We ate lunch sitting on the steps of it.

I wore my skirt grey side out.

It was just as comfy the second day.

Up close, the monument was even more impressive than it was from the street. Apparently,  underneath it there was a Civil War Museum. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to see that as my brother had to be somewhere to take a test (oh, yeah, the whole reason for our trip). So, my mom and I dropped him off, then hit a couple fabric stores (why not?). We picked him up a few hours later and then headed home. Spending time with my little brother, and fabric shopping with my mom, Yeah, it was a pretty good weekend.  

Pretty Grey Fabric, Turned into a Comfy Shirt

Remember this fabric?

I made someone else a dress out of it, and decided I wanted something made out of it to. So I went back to the fabric store. They were all out of the grey fabric, so I brought home this very similar black fabric instead.

I made a shirt out of it. The shirt turned out pretty well and I've worn it, and worn it, and worn it, but I still wanted a shirt from the gray fabric, so one day I just decided to order the grey fabric. I ordered (and paid for) 2 yards. They sent me 4 (hey, that was nice of them!) Once I got the fabric, I made my shirt, just like the other shirt but with a few improvements.

First, I made this shirt a few inches longer, the black one is a little short in the back. Then I slightly changed the cross-over back so that it would lay a bit better. 

And, one more thing, I decided to make this shirt a v-neck.

My first attempt at making the v-neck didn't turn out so great. The point was off-center and didn't lay quite right. So, I cut it off, and re-bound the neckline, this time the point was where it was supposed to be, but (due to me just chopping off the messed up neck binding rather than using a seam ripper) the neck wound up way to wide. Yeah, it falls off my shoulders now. Good thing I've got a large collection of colorful tank tops.

(Please excuse the hay on my shirt, I got my brother to take these during feeding time)

So, this shirt. Well, it's comfortable, really, really, extremely, comfortable. It just doesn't fit like I wanted it to. I figured I could fix a couple of minor issues with the black shirt in this one and have an amazing shirt, not one that just kinda hangs on me. So I may, at a later date, with different fabric, mess with my pattern some more and see if I can get it perfect. Meanwhile, I'm just gonna be extremely comfy wearing this shirt while watching my goats and waiting for kidding to start.

Everybody is fat and pregnant with some very promising udders appearing.

Kidding starts in a little over a week! I can't wait to have adorable little baby goats running around! I keep seeing pictures come across Facebook of other people's little goats, so I'm really, really wanting my own to hurry up and get here. (Well, don't hurry too much, no preemies please!) 

Well, to kill some time this week I still have a couple yards of my gray fabric left, and another very comfy garment in mind to turn it into. Hopefully this one comes out looking like the idea in my head! Well, I won't know until I get it done, so back to my sewing table I go...

The Spontaneous Black Daisy Dress

Last Friday I was struck by the urge to make myself a dress. To just pull out some fabric and a pattern and make a dress, no long planning and designing process, just sewing. I've been working on a lot of pre-planned projects lately, and I guess I just wanted a break from that, I wanted something spontaneous. I had some new patterns from a recent pattern sale, so I picked Simplicity 0169 from my new stash, just because it was different than anything else I had in my closet and that appealed to me. Last week I went thrift store shopping with a friend and picked up several different lengths of fabric. I decided this thin, drapey, black cotton with pretty white daisies on it would work great for this project.

Now the pattern envelope said that I needed 5 1/2 yards of fabric for the short version of this dress and I only had 5 yards of the daisy print fabric, but I figured it would work. And it did! I still had about 1/2 a yard of fabric left after everything was cut out (even the bodice lining, which was supposed to be cut from another fabric.)
Once the dress was cut out I hid away in my sewing room for the rest of the evening, listening to the Pride and Prejudice audio book (I recently discovered audio books are amazing to listen to while sewing!) and getting this dress sewn together. About 6 hours later (a bit longer than a modern dress typically takes me, I guess because this one was a bit different than the dresses I usually make?) I had a new dress.

I kind of love the long puffy sleeves on this dress, they are so much fun to wear! Most of my dresses don't have sleeves, those that do mostly have elbow-length sleeves. I have two with long straight sleeves, that don't get much wear. So these puffy long sleeves are very different than anything else I have, and I'm very glad I made them this way and didn't alter the sleeve shape at all!

One of my favorite features of this pattern is the cross-over bodice. Unfortunately, due to the printed fabric, that feature doesn't show up all that well, so maybe next time I make this pattern I ought to use a sold color fabric to showcase the wrap look.

The skirt feels a little long to me, so I might shorten it a couple inches to knee-length, rather than below the knee, but I haven't  decided yet. I actually kind of like how this skirt length looks with my boots, opinions?

Over all, I'm pretty darned happy with my spur of the moment dress! I absolutely love how full the skirt is and how puffy the sleeves are, it's great fun to wear and a real eye-catcher. I only wish the cross-over bodice showed up a bit better, but hey, I can't really complain. I got this dress done in one evening, didn't have to make any alterations to the pattern to make it fit me, and wound up with a dress I really like wearing!