How to Refashion Pants into a Skirt

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2017.

 There are several ways to refashion pants into a skirt, including this cute method for making a denim skirt out of a pair of old blue jeans. Even that method, though, can feel overwhelming to a newbie sewer, so here's an even easier method! 

 As you can see in the image above, all you need for this refashion are: 

  a pair of pants that fit well at the waist. They can be as ripped, stained, or ugly as they need to be in the legs, as long as they're well-fitting in the waist. This is a great way to refashion pants that are too short after your kid hits her latest growth spurt, or winter pants that you know will be too short next fall. It's also great for those carpenter/bootleg/skinny/whatever style of jeans you've got that used to be trendy but are now just laughable, the poor things. 

  an A-line skirt whose diameter at some point matches the hip measurement of your pants. The waist on this skirt doesn't matter at all, as long as at some point its flare has the same measurement as the hip measurement of your pants. That's because you're going to do this: 

1. Line up the pants and the skirt at their matching measurements. As you can see in the above image, I've drawn a chalk line exactly where I want to cut the pants--see how this allows me to keep the entire waist and pockets of the pants? You can sew a well-fitting skirt without knowing how to set pockets or sew a waistband or use a zipper foot or make a button hole! 

 Line up the skirt (or dress--in this tute, I'm using a very sketchy-looking thrifted dress whose fabric my kid loves), so that the point at which its flare matches the length of that chalk line are exactly lined up. Here is where you also make sure that the bottom hem of the skirt is exactly parallel to that chalk line--you don't want your skirt to hang weird! 

  2. Cut the two pieces of clothing along the marked line. Hold them down firmly to keep them from shifting, then cut them both at the same time. 

  3. Sew the skirt piece and pants piece together. Turn the skirt piece inside-out, then pin it, right sides together, to the pants piece so that the raw edges are lined up. Sew the two pieces together and then finish the seam. 

 My daughter and I used this skirt as part of her design for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show in our town, which is why it has Christmas lights safety pinned to it:  She paired it with a hooded shirt that I sewed from another pair of pants and a dressy blouse, and a cape that she cut out of an old fleece blanket, but I'll tell you about those another time!

Tutorial: DIY Watercolor Business Cards

This tutorial was originally posted in Crafting a Green World back in 2017.

 I have a small handmade business, and it's important to me to use handmade, eco-friendly business cards for it. 

That doesn't mean that I LIKE to make business cards--it's tedious, you have to make, like, a thousand at a time, and all you're going to do is give them away so you can't even enjoy them AND you have to go and make a thousand more, sigh... 

 So I am a huge fan of handmade business cards that take as little time as possible to make. And these watercolor business cards may be the quickest! I cheated a little with these cards, as I usually prefer to hand-cut my business cards from recycled cardboard, such as cardboard food packaging or old record album covers. But I scored a half-used stash of these Avery business card sheets (thank you, Freecycle!), and the fact that these cards are white, for a change, is what makes this tutorial work. 

 To make your own watercolor business cards, you will need: 

  white heavy cardstock or business card printer sheets. If you don't mind seeking out one store-bought supply, these printer sheets made for business cards are the poop! Get the kind that are uncoated and come away with clean edges, and your life will be so easy. Otherwise, look for a super-heavy cardstock or upcycle some thin cardboard that's been bleached white. 

  watercolors. You can use solid watercolor palettes and a paintbrush, but in these pics I'm using liquid watercolors, both in miniature spritz bottles and with eyedroppers. Yes, we ARE still using this DIY liquid watercolor spray paint that I first set up for my kids six years ago! 

  printed or stamped business card information. You could print your business card info onto the back of your sheets, but I use this customizable stamp set for all of my handmade business cards. 

 1. Watercolor your business cards. I spritzed a little paint onto my business card sheets as a background, then used an eyedropper to add more drops of color. I let some colors bleed into each other, and I inclined some of the pages so that the colors would run. Just go for randomness and let the chaos take control! My darker colors, when dropped heavily, left a very light shadow on the backside, where I'm going to put my business information. I like this effect, as it carries over the watercolor theme, but if you're using a different type of paper than I am, you might want to test it first to see how much color the backside shows. As you're working, you're going to think that what you're doing does NOT look cute. Just carry on--I promise it'll look cuter in a minute! Leave the pages to dry. 

 2 Seal the card fronts (optional). If you're going to use these cards at craft fairs or otherwise out and about, give them a quick coat of your clear sealant of choice, and let them dry. Watercolor is water-soluble (duh!), so you wouldn't want a customer to pick up your business card, walk out into the rain, and then get paint all over their hands. 

3. Separate the business cards. Don't they look a LOT cuter now? The chaos of the random watercoloring translates very well to a small canvas. I especially like how the color carries over to the edge of the cards, so that they look pretty even from the side. 

 4. Add your business information. If you didn't print your business information onto the printer sheet, then add it on now to the backside of the cards. This leaves the front side as its own miniature work of abstract art!

I Made a Sewing Machine Cover from an Old Blanket and a Vintage Quilt Top

 

As we all knew it would, last year's sewing machine saga ended with me buying another sewing machine.

I do NOT understand why sewing machines are impossible to repair!

I mean... obviously I DO know why sewing machines are impossible to repair. If the sewing machine company (*cough, cough, all of them, cough*) makes its sewing machine using plastic parts, then your sewing machine will inevitably break before too long, because plastic isn't a good material for a hard-wearing, hard-working sewing machine part. And when that two-dollar piece of plastic that makes up some crucial part of your machine's operation cracks and renders your sewing machine inoperable, you can't buy a new two-dollar piece of plastic to replace it, because the company doesn't sell its parts separately.

It is SUCH a racket. Even my old metal sewing machine is just about impossible to repair these days, as its replacement parts are now vintage and therefore also hard to find. 

I just really need somebody with a 3D printer and an entrepreneurial spirit to start a business copying and selling sewing machine parts. I'll buy the snot out of your products before you get shot down for patent infringement!

Speaking of stealing another entity's intellectual work... I 100% created my sewing machine cover by cutting the cheap-looking cover that my machine came with apart at the seams and tracing it.

Where did I get that cotton blanket that I found at the very bottom of my stash fabric bin? No clue, but I love it as the base fabric of my sewing machine cover.

Where did I get that vintage quilt top, also found at the bottom of my stash fabric bin? No clue, but it's perfect for embellishing that cotton blanket!

I used my wood star template to make a couple of stars to embellish the cover, and I love how they look patchwork without me putting in the effort!

I zig-zag stitched them to the cover, although I should have put some interfacing under them first:

Just don't look at how the applique is a little wavy. Instead, look at how nicely my sewing machine is protected from dust!

Let's hope this sewing machine lasts longer than the last four!

How to Make a Scroll Party Invitation

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

 A great theme party starts with a great themed invitation! 

We always do fun, themed invitations for my kiddos' birthday parties--check out the message in a bottle invitation to the pirate-themed birthday party and the giant Minecraft block invitation to the Minecraft-themed party. 

 This year, my soon-to-be eleven-year-old is having a fairy tale-themed birthday party, so we made each invitee a party invitation in the shape of a royal scroll. It was easy to do, used mostly stash, and was a great way to introduce the party's theme to all the little guests. 

Here's how we did it! 

  1. Obtain a couple of thin dowels. Because this was a royal decree, the kid wants the scroll handles to look nice and finished, so she vetoes my suggestion that we use twigs found in the yard. I maintain that twigs would look adorable, however--perhaps for a woodland fairy party? Dowels are sold in several widths--we chose the narrowest, for these small scrolls, but you could just as easily obtain one wide enough for the largest scroll that you could handle. 

  2. Paint the dowels. The kid claims that a royal scroll would obviously have gold handles, so I leave her to it. Unfinished wood takes paint easily, so she is able to make the dowels beautifully gold with two coats of paint. 

  3. Compose and design the text of the scrolls. Because I am a mad genius, I compose an invitation in poem form, with an ABCB rhyme scheme. My shining moment is when I am able to rhyme a request for an RSVP with my email address. You'd think this would encourage people to actually RSVP, but be assured--it doesn't. 

 My husband lays the poem out in fancy font, with two invitations to a page. My kiddo reminds him that the invitation should be long, so that you have to unscroll it to read it, and so he indulges her by leaving a little more space between stanzas. If she ever gets married, she's going to spend a LOT of time planning her wedding. 

 An optional next step would be to coffee stain these scrolls to make them look aged. 

  4. Cut the dowels to size. The scroll handles should be longer than the scroll, so the kid measures them out at a couple of inches past the scroll on each side, and makes sure that they are even:  

My older kid has just finished earning her Woodworker badge in Girl Scouts, and so she delights in "offering assistance to a younger Scout," as she puts it, by cutting the dowels to size: 

 5. Attach the scroll to the handles. There are several ways that one could do this--pretty washi tape, double-sided tape, hot glue--but I'm stoked that the children have taken over the project, and so I hand them the simplest solution, Scotch tape, and move on with my life: 

 Super cute, right? Also in the planning stages are games of Pin the Kiss on the Frog Prince and Toilet Paper Princess (I'm banking that most of the young guests have never been to a bridal shower before; they are going to flip OUT over this game!), sandwiches cut into the shapes of crowns and ponies, and the ubiquitous castle cake. 

 That castle cake, by the way, is going to need all of your positive intentions sent my way!

The Backyard Chickens Glow Up

 

It's been a long time since I made chick portraits with the kids.

How long has it been exactly?

THIS long!!!

It was so long ago that Syd, who now fears and loathes the backyard chickens in equal capacities, happily posed with a chick on her wrist. 

Syd won't go near even the bitty babies anymore, alas, but Will still has an infinite adoration for chickens both big and small. Early this spring she started to work on me and Matt about adding more chicks to our small flock. I kept a pretty hard line for a change, so obviously it was Matt's turn to be a sucker and spoil our child.

I mean, one of us HAS to, right?!? That's surely a rule somewhere...

So off Will and Matt went to buy four chicks, then a couple of days later they turned right around, for reasons that surely made sense to them, and they bought two more. And now we have six, on top of the four hens and two roosters we've already got. It's not exactly the farm that Will dreamed of having when she was four, but it's certainly closer to it!

This is Whistleblower:

And this is Whistleblower one month later!

This is Smol Bean:

And this is Smol Bean one month later!

Smol Bean is living proof of my kid's loving heart, as she lets me name one of the chicks each time she gets new ones, and she absolutely HATES this name. HATES. IT. And yet we still have a Smol Bean, because a Smol Bean was what I wanted:

This is Poppy:

And this is Poppy one month later:

This is Quetzalcoatlus: 

And this is Queztlcoatlus one month later, looking not entirely unlike her namesake!

This is Blitz:

And this is our baby Blitz one month later:

This is Hadrian:

And this is lanky Hadrian one month later:

The chicks just moved from their indoor palace into their outdoor nursery coop this week. I'm happy that their dust and smell and noise are out of the house, but I miss being able to pop into the playroom and visit with them, too. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, something about how fast young creatures grow and how wonderful and hard it is to have them when they're small, and how wonderful and hard it is when they leave the safety of your home. How their lives become so much more interesting in the wider world of the backyard, but you stop knowing them as well as you did when they were contained. How they become so different. How they stay so very much the same. 

Every day I think about how this incredible, funny, generous, bright, witty, thoughtful, and kind kid of mine is going to leave for the wide world so soon now, herself. Sometimes I feel excited about that--I'll find every brownie right where I left it! Sometimes I feel worried--How on EARTH can I monitor her from far away? What if there's an emergency, and nobody knows that my child must be evacuated before all the other children because she is the most special? Sometimes I make anxious to-do lists in my head of all the things I still have to teach her--physics, how to drive, the mandatory nature of daily showers, when to stop arguing one's point. 

Mostly, though, I think about how much I'm going to miss her every single second, and how much magic and newness and adventure and possibility she's brought into my life so far, and how I hope she keeps that and shares that as she makes her own way in the world. I hope she finds others who will participate with interest every single time she's reading a book and pops her head up wanting to discuss an important piece of information from it. I hope she finds others who love travel and adventure, who also want to go kayaking and skiing and hiking and climbing and target shooting and every other cool thing, but I hope she also isn't afraid to find new adventures and go on them all by herself, either. 

I hope she keeps this heart that loves animals of all kinds more than she loves most people, who treasures wolverines as much as she does puppies. I hope that her place in the world is filled with dogs of indeterminant breeding, ever-replenishing flocks of chickens, and fields of content horses. And I hope that every time she has a new batch of chicks, I'm close enough by that I can make their portraits for her.

Two Free Pairs of Bike Shorts Were Living in My Fabric Stash

Syd mentioned that she needed a new pair of comfy, stretchy exercise shorts for dance class, so into my fabric bin I dove!

I knew I had some spandex fabric leftover from our DIY leggings kick of three years ago, but just between us, I suspected that there wouldn't be enough spandex left to sew anything, because we hit that leggings kick pretty thoroughly!

I'd forgotten, though, that noses had been snubbed at the camouflage spandex that I'd bought, foolishly thinking that the kids would find it cute. They did NOT find it cute back in 2018, but it turns out that in 2021... well, it's still not their favorite print, but it's certainly good enough for a couple of pairs of bike shorts. I'm a little disappointed that there is just no way to match thread to the camouflage fabric, but it doesn't bother me so much that I'd put forth any effort to find a solution, either (edit: apparently, this is the solution. Now I know, at least!)

Syd's grown enough that now I can use my favorite Patterns for Pirates leggings pattern for her as well as Will. I love the fit of these leggings, the range of sizes in the pattern, and the customization options. Home-sewn leggings are still more expensive than store-bought, fast fashion leggings (and honestly, at the moment our local Goodwills are also absolutely stuffed with LulaRoe leggings, too, so you don't even have to go the fast fashion route to find cheap leggings), but the leggings that you sew yourself using a free pattern from the fabric that's just been sitting in the bottom of your fabric bin for the past three years?

Well, those are basically free leggings, and well-sewn, free bike shorts exactly when you need them, no trip to the store required, is way better than sweat shop clothes!

When You Don't Want to Spend Thirty Bucks: How to DIY a Dance Skirt

 This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

My kid's ballet program generally isn't too outrageous when it comes to recital costumes. I know of other programs in our town that require two or more elaborate, brand-new costumes per recital, generally along the lines of rainbow-colored flapper outfits, or leotards with butt ruffles, that you're never going to get your kid to wear again, because no kid *really* wants to be a flapper for Halloween. I will tell you another time about my thoughts on the privilege of wealth that lets someone assume that just because you're sending your kid to dance class, you can blow a bunch of money on an elaborate dance recital costume that your kid will wear once. 

 Anyway, my kid's program usually doesn't pull that kind of crap, but this year they required that for the recital, every child wear a white leotard and white dance skirt. Why the children can't simply wear the uniform leotards and dance skirts that they already own, I don't know, other than the assumption that none of us would mind shelling out another fifty bucks just so we can have an even harder time picking our kid out of the group on stage. 

 A white leotard that meets ballet program specifications is twenty-plus bucks. That's a fair price for the fabric and pattern and technique that goes into sewing such a leotard, especially if you pretend that the person who sewed it was paid a fair price for their work. 

A white dance skirt that meets the ballet program specifications is thirty-plus bucks. That's... ridiculous. The thing is a half-yard of chiffon, a yard of 1/4" bias tape, and a rolled hem.

 Fortunately, something that simple is also simple to make! 

 You will need: 

  half-yard of chiffon. That's enough to make a dance skirt for a long-legged ten-year-old. Size up to get more length. 

  1/4" double-fold bias tape. If you have cotton fabric that matches the color of your chiffon, you can also make your own bias tape to save even more money. 

 1. Make the pattern for your dance skirt. If you already own or can borrow a dance skirt, all you have to do is trace it, adding an extra inch to the bottom and sides for the rolled hem. If you don't have a skirt to copy, though, your job is barely harder--as you can see in the image above, the dance skirt is nothing more than a u-shaped half-circle of fabric, longer in the middle and gradually tapering to a little shorter at both sides, bilaterally symmetrical. The longest part of the skirt should be the length that you want, plus an inch for hemming; the width of the skirt should be 1.5 to 2 times your waist measurement. The bias tape should be long enough to wrap around you and tie comfortably in the back.  

  2. Copy your pattern onto the fabric and cut it out. 

 3. Sew the sides and bottom with a rolled hem. Here's how to sew a rolled hem without a rolled hem foot for your sewing machine. Considering the learning curve that a rolled hem foot requires, it's not any quicker to use one if you don't plan to use it often. 

  4. Center the bias tape with the center of the top raw edge of the skirt; encase the raw edge in bias tape. Here's how to sew double-fold bias tape--it's even easier than sewing the rolled hem! When you're finished, your kid's ballet skirt will look just like all the other kids' ballet skirts-- 

 --so be sure and sit close to the stage, so you can pick her out from all the other kids in white!