Living Room Pillows

As I've said before, I teach sewing classes at JoAnn's. I've been trying to post pictures of the projects we've done in class. Tonight I'm posting two styles of pillows we've created. The first one (felt flower) is for the March/April classes, and the second (swirled print, double layered) was for the January/February classes.

The students only get to make one in the class but I decided to make two of each for my own sake, to go in my living room. The colors match a beautiful landscape painting I have on the wall.

The pillow from the Jan/Feb class is a double layered design with the pillow form basically sandwiched between, with a stitching encasing it. I used a black/tan swirled print fabric on the outside and a plain cotton fabric on the inside, matching one of the outside color.

This picture shows one of the corners folded down so you can see the inner fabric.

This pillow is from Simplicity Pattern 9873 View A, Sewing for Dummies :)

The felt flower pillow for this month and next is one that I really love. Such an easy way to add some flair to your pillow (I'm thinking of adding a button or something to the center of each). 

A close up view of the felt flower, it has 7 circular layers, one on top of the other (kind of a pain to sew as the layers get thicker)

This pillow is from Simplicity Pattern 1933 View A

I love the other pillows in this package as well. Although I've been told I have enough pillows as it is :/

~JV

Vintage Blouse

I'm going to start off by saying my Grandma's basement is one of the best places to find awesome vintage clothing. That being said, when I visited her last Friday, I came home with a bag of clothes. Love it!! One of the pieces she gave me was a beautiful kimono style turquoise, blue, and brown print blouse.  My favorite colors.

Front

Back with keyhole button closure at neck

I was going out on Saturday for a friend's birthday and decided why not add just a little bit of a new design to the shirt. I needed to do something fast so I added elastic shirring to the waist. I had looked at a shirt I liked that had a shirring around the waistline so I used that as my inspiration for the quick redesign.

 The elastic shirring is a quick stitch with thread in the top of the machine and elastic thread in the bottom. It automatically gathers up the fabric. I did 10 lines of this stitching under the bust and across the waist.

Front

Back

Close up of shirring

I love it and love that it was so easy to remake. Now I have to figure out what to do with the other clothes.

~JV

Scarf Night!

First lets start off by referencing my previous post about the t-shirt scarf I made: http://sewingpassion.blogspot.com/2012/02/t-shirt-scarf.html

I had some friends and family comment on my facebook about it so I decided to have people over for a scarf night/Pinterest party (since that's where the idea came from).

So on Sunday night I had a few ladies over and basically "taught a class" so they could make their own scarves. I bought about 15 L-XL t-shirts (good thing they were on sale) in a variety of colors and we went to town making scarves.

Here's a picture of the girls hard at work

These are pictures of most of the scarves that were made

Heather

Heather

Erin

Erin also have a light purple one I didn't get a picture of. It was like Heather's tan scarf.

Katie

Katie

Lauren

Lauren

Julia

Julia

We had a lot of fun making these. Pizza, snacks, and wine were involved which added to the fun (especially the last part). There was some sewing involved so it helped to have it at my place. And that's also the reason why I had to finish my one scarf once everyone left since I had a lot of sewing to do for the ladies. But I didn't mind because they had a great time and their scarves turned out beautiful!!!

Now it's time to check out Pinterest to figure out our next craft night!

~JV

My older sister also came but was making some really cute felt flowers for St. Patrick's Day. I'll have to make some too and post about it.

I also have about 15 tops of shirts that I have to figure out what to do with. My younger sister suggested making braided headbands so we'll see what happens.

Fun Pot Holders

I'm going to be making some pot holders for a friend and of course I needed to do some examples to make sure I knew what I was doing. The instructions I followed are from the blog Skip to My Lou 

Check out the link here: http://www.skiptomylou.org/2011/09/07/special-message-pot-holder/

I used scrap fabric I had hanging around the house, bleached muslin, and created the lettering using black embroidery floss. 

The best part of the project is the "lined paper" look of them. It's created by stitching blue lines across horizontally and a red line on the left vertically. Put any message you like :)

Front Views of both pot holders

Back Views of pot holders

Don't mind the binding, they are "prototypes" :)

The blog I followed had a cute saying so I wanted to add funny little phrases for each pot holder.

I think they are super cute and pretty simple to put together. They could be made from so many different fun, crazy, unique prints and the sky is the limit when it comes to what you want written on them!!

Hope you like them as much as I do :)

~JV

Braided T-shirt Scarf

I was in a pretty crafty mood last night so in addition to making the felt puppets (see previous post) I decided to make a scarf I found on pinterest.

Here's the website I looked to for instructions

http://www.putapuredukes.com/2011/09/braided-scarf-tutorial.html

It looks a little different than the tutorial- not quite as long- but I think that may be because I used thick t-shirts to make it and it doesn't stretch out as much.

It's a poor quality picture (used my phone again) but the colors are white and tan. I figured it would go with a lot of different outfits.

I may try to create another one that is longer and might even try the double braid (look on the website to check it out). I'm obsessed with scarves so a new blog may appear in the near future :)

Hope you like it!

~JV

P.S. Check out my Pinterest page at http://pinterest.com/jvictoria/

Felt Puppets

I've been a busy girl as of late and have been teaching a lot of classes. I'm trying my best to get pictures of the projects we work on in class. Taking pictures with my phone is the easiest way to do that, so I apologize in advance for the quality of the picture.

This project is a kids class that is coming up in March and April. They are hand stitched puppets made out of felt and embroidery floss. And they are super cute :)

I'll have to take a picture of the stuffed robots that was the project for January and February because those were super cute too (especially when the little girl in the class was acting like they were falling off of a cliff)

Enjoy!

~JV

Floral Apron

Just a quick post for the night. This is one of the things I made as a Christmas gift. This is an apron I made for my older sister. She the one I had made the mixer cover for.

  Check it out here 

I had a bit of the floral fabric left over so I decided to make a cute pleated apron to match. Instead of using just a plain pink fabric with it, I used a striped fabric to mix up the prints a little. 

The floral is pleated all the way across the front. It also mixes with the stripe around the waist and the strings are long so you'd be able to tie it around and have a cute bow at the front.

It was really fun to pick out different gifts for each of my sisters and I knew this one would be perfect for her. I just hope she's been using it :)

~JV