Hair Scrunchy Tutorial

Have you ever wondered what to do with all of your fabric scraps?? Hair scrunchies!!! Here is a quick tutorial of how I make a hair scrunchy. This is my own made up method, so go ahead and use it, no copyright laws!! :)

I start by purchasing black hair bands (about 2" diameter...I get mine at Target) for the elastic part of the scrunchy. Then I cut 2' by 4" strips of fabric for the scrunchy. I make this completely on the serger, but I am sure this would work on a sewing machine as well. I then sew the fabric short sides right sides together so the fabric is in a circle. I put the hair band in between the wrong sides and fold over so wrong sides are facing and start serging the edges with a rolled hem all the way around adjusting the fabric around the hair band until the hair scrunchy is completed. You can click on the pictures to enlarge and see the edges of the hair scrunchy.

I hope you make lots!!!

Show me thar booty!

Once again I have made gymnastic suits. This time I modified the pattern a little bit to make a cap sleeve. The pattern has instructions for no sleeve, 3/4 sleeve and full sleeve. It is still too hot for longer sleeves, and the girls complain about the elastic at the armholes on the sleeveless option. Solution: cap sleeve. I just shortened the pattern for the longer sleeves. One thing that I did different on this go around was to use clear elastic as opposed to the regular elastic. I had never used clear elastic before so this was a little bit of a learning process. It was pretty easy to work with even though I had read some posts that suggested otherwise. It acts pretty much like regular elastic. I did prestretch it (I had read that and the instructions on the package said to also). I sewed it in round and put it in with pinning in quarters and stretching as sewing. The one thing that I did like was that due to its being thinner, it lays flatter and has less tendency to turn out.

Can you see the skull and crossbones in red on the stripes?? Click on the picture to make it bigger.

I made this one and one for my older dd....she is off playing today, so she hasn't seen hers yet. This is one pattern that has definitely been worth the money! This makes gymnastic suits #11 and #12! Let's see here....$12 for the pattern...makes $1 per suit plus .50 in elastic for both, about $2 total in fabric (including the 2 hair scrunchies), makes $2.25 per suit and hair scrunchy! A bargain at twice the price! Have I mentioned that the suits at the gymnastics place cost $40 - $55 per suit (with a hair scrunchy).

And....I always get people asking me where I buy mine! :)

Another reversible outfit!

Here are Ottobre 04-2009-6 and 04-2009-9. These are a reversible hooded top and a skirt. I used some of my hilco fabric for these...

Here is a closer up of the hooded section (and a cute little face inside):

Here is the topstitching of the hem on the stripe side, the reverse side shows the coverstitch portion:

Reverse side of topstitching on reverse side of the top. The striped side is just wrapped around the printed side and their are top stitched together in one step.

Here is the binding of the hood:

Here is the reverse side of the binding:

Here is a look at the skirt portion, it is super simple. There was supposed to be just one seam in the skirt, but I didn't have a long enough piece of fabric, so I made a two seams, one on each side. There is a ribbing piece for the waistband, no elastic, just one seam in the center backside.

Here is a view of the hem, I used my 5/8" downfeller on my coverstitch:

No pinning, no measuring, no trimming.....having the right tools can really save time!

All in all, it was a pretty easy project! Two outfits with the reversible top and yet another happy girl!

More kid sewing

Well, I know it isn't quite as exciting to some but I seem to be on a roll for kid sewing right now. I traced and cut out two patterns from Ottobre 4/2009. They are #6 "Bubblegum dots" skirt and #9 "Reversible top". I am using some of my Hilco purchased last month.

I am using the one on the left and the one in the middle for the reversible hooded shirt. And the skirt is out of the one on the left. That fabric has a soft backing, like a sweatshirt fleece and the one in the middle is a cotton knit with some lycra in it.

The hooded shirt in this picture below is the pattern I am using for the top.

The little skirt in the picture is the pattern I am using for the skirt.

I am using the size 92, this is for my 3 1/2 yo dd. She is still really tiny around, so on the skirt I traced the waist for the size 80 and the length for the 92. These are all cut out sitting next to my serger awaiting time to sew! Maybe tomorrow........if not hopefully this weekend! :)

Another addition to the outfit!

This is Ottobre 04-2009-22 and it is a reversible skirt for girls. This is made with the same materials as the previous shirt and leggings and is made to coordinate with those items. In this first view I have the skirt all periwinkle with a ribbon hand sewn (ugghhh..) onto the skirt to hem band seam. Here is a close-up of the black petersham ribbon that I sewed on to cover up the seam between the skirt portion and the hem band. Have I mentioned how much I hate hand sewing? It took me over an hour to hand sew this on. I didn't have a choice though, because I didn't want the stitching to show on the reverse side, being a reversible skirt and all.....

Here is the reverse side of the skirt. On this side I incorporated the stripes. I love these stripes!

Here is the hem band/skirt portion on this side. I just topstitched close to the seam.

Here is a fun picture of the skirt becoming a hat! She loved the skirt and the fact that it is reversible, so overall this was a success! Yay!

Gotta love a happy kid!

Ottobre 4/2009-35

Here are my final photos on the model. Read my previous post for the musings of the makings of this shirt! The shirt is Ottobre 4/2009 - 35. The pants are blogged about below too. I am pleased with how the outfit looks and have more outfits planned. The shirt was supposed to be long sleeve, but it is still too hot here for that!

Back side.....

Fashion model pose...

Side ways pose:

Not meant to sew....

Have you ever had one of those days, or projects, where everything that could possibly go wrong does?? This little t-shirt did that to me. It is not a hard pattern. There aren't too many pieces. It started out wrong from the get-go, though. I had the pattern traced out - sans seam allowances. I usually just cut my seam allowance in by cutting a 1cm border around the pattern piece pinned to the fabric. Well.....I had a few minutes to cut out the fabric while dd's were playing and dinner didn't need started for a few minutes. I was proud of how quickly I got the 7 pieces cut out. A couple days goes by and I haven't had a chance to start sewing said project, but I have been thinking about it and decide to read over the pattern instructions (this is a project from Ottobre kids 4/2009 - 35). I immediately realize that I forgot all of my seam allowances! The only pieces unaffected were the binding strips. AARRGGHHH!!! Well, I thought to myself, this was a tad on the large side for my dd, so maybe I will go ahead and proceed and hope that it will work out. So, first things first, I put the yoke on the gathered front. I topstitch like it says to and it gets all stretched out and wonky. I try the back and get a little better results and decide dd's hair will cover the areas that aren't perfect. I pull the topstitching out of the front and decide I really don't need it. So, I proceed to bind the front yoke using my binders and coverstitch. Well, it was f*** up! It looked absolutely awful, everything stretched out and was unfixable at this point. Frustrated, I tossed that piece aside and started on the back piece. The binding went on much better for that piece, except for some reason, there wasn't enough to finish the binding!!!! I thought it would be hidden and I would just piece another bit of binding on. So I did it, it looked crappy but it would be hidden. Exept.....re-examining the instructions shows the back laps over the top so, nothing is hidden. AARRGGHH!! Next step was to wait a day to cool off!@! Coming back to the project somewhat calmer, I decided the front was trash and recut those pieces (still with no seam allowance so as not to screw up things further). I got the front gathered and the front yoke pinned to it and managed to get it all sewn together great. Except I sewed the yoke on upside down. Rip out all of the serging and put it in right. Recut my binding strips, got the back binding ripped off and sewed the new binding on with nice results! I go to sew on my front binding and realize I actually put the yoke onto the front with the wrong side facing.......I consulted my dh to see if he could tell and he couldn't so I just left it. I got the binding on great. I basted the top shoulder area together....not sure how the instructions were trying to tell to do it....but I got it to work.....I think there was a typo in the instructions. It said wrong sides together, when I believe it should have been wrong side of back to right side of front, since the back overlaps the front. I got the sleeves put in with no issues. I started to pin up the sides and realize that my stripes aren't lining up quite right on one side with the under arm area. I fudged it in. When I went to hem the bottom, I realized that I had mismatched a whole stripe at the bottom and that is why under arm area didn't line up right.....had I worked from the sleeve down I wouldn't have had this problem.....oh well. So, my bottom hem isn't straight with the stripes as it should be.....but unless you sew, you would probably never even see this.....no one I showed it to did! I don't think I was meant to sew this shirt!I hope to add some pictures of my dd wearing her new ensemble and I hope she appreciates the trials and tribulations that I endured making this for her!! :)

Ottobre 4/2009 - 23 Girl's Pants

Here is my latest sewing! I made up a pair of stretch pants for my dd. These are from Ottobre 4/2009 - 23. I especially like the pintucking on the legs! There are 11 rows of pin tucking on each leg.

Here is a close-up of the pin tucking. I used the pin tuck foot on my sewing machine with a twin needle to do this. I followed the grooves in my pin tuck foot instead of the lines on the pattern for the spacing. This made getting the rows spaced evenly very easy. This is a bamboo/lycra material that I got from Fabrics & Notions coop group. The color is a periwinkle. My dd tried them on and loved them. Of course I didn't have a picture of them on her!! I need to make a top to go with them. There are some more patterns from Ottobre 4/2009 that I want to make for the girls and there are some t-shirt patterns that would go with these. I was thinking of using a black and white stripe cotton/lycra and incorporating some this material to have something that coordinates.

I also included a little loop on the back out of some stetch cording so she knows which side is front and which side is back! Don't look too closely, I had some issues with the chain stitching on my coverstitch skipping stitches and ended up throwing it on the sewing machine to stitch down the waistband in a few areas! (Normally, my waistbands look much cleaner!)

Here is the rest of my latest fabric acquisitions from fabric & notions coop:

The farthest left is a navy corduroy with a little stretch in it, then there is a black, burgundy, yellow and white high tech outdoor materials (think ski jackets/pants), and last is a rayon batik which is an olive base color with purples and greens in the flowers. The corduroy will be pants/skirts for the girls, the high tech stuff is for jackets/pants, and the batik will most likely be for me (I have no idea for what though!).

I am off to trace some patterns!