Ruffled Rosette Pillow Tutorial {from a t-shirt}

You poor souls.
Why on earth do you even put up with me?
On Monday, yes Monday, I said I would post this little tutorial the next day.
Well, 4 days later here I am.

I am nothing, if not completely and totally unreliable.  
What can I say, It’s spring break week here. kids. enough said.

So on with my little pillow tutorial.

If you didn’t see this post on the swirled ruffle pillow, you might want to start there. It will give you the steps to make the actual pillow and how to make your ruffles.

This post will show you how to use your ruffles to make a completely different looking pillow. Ok, maybe not completely, it still is ruffled and made from a t-shirt. Movin’ on……


Here she is.
I {heart} her.
Just lovely.

You will start off by making your pillow cover and ruffles just like in this post, but without stitching any ruffles on it. Go ahead and sew the opening shut and you are ready to make some rosettes to place on your pillow.

I made 4 big rosettes and 2 smaller ones. The larger ones take a couple strips of ruffle and the smaller ones only take one. So about 10 should do it. Keep in mind it will depend on the size of your pillow. Mine is only a 14” pillow so if yours is bigger, you might need more to make it look balanced.

For each rosette you will need a circle of felt or fleece cut into about a 3” circle. It doesn’t need to be exact {or perfect} it will be hidden and any extra will be cut off.  I used my high temp glue gun. I like the high temp because it adheres better and faster, but be careful or you might not have any finger prints left when you are done {not that I would know}.

First I took each strip of ruffle and rounded off the corners at each end so it would have a softer look.

Take your first ruffle and fold it in half lengthwise with the stitching on one side, creating a V shape with the ruffle. The stitching side is the part you will be gluing  down.

You will start with a  dot of hot glue in the middle of your felt piece.

Grab the end of your first ruffle and kind of swirl it around the end to make the center of your rosette. I like to put my finger through the middle of the ruffle {the V part} and push the stitching part onto the glue.

Once the center is adhered, make another short line of glue around the center part in the direction of your ruffle. {did that make any sense at all?}
You will just keep going around in a circle with your glue and your ruffle, pushing it into the glue to adhere it.  {this is way easier to do than to explain….promise}.

Here she is after one ruffle has been added. If this were one of the small rosettes I needed, I would take my scissors and cut around the bottom of the felt to remove any extra that wasn’t glued down and I would be finished.

BUT, this is one of my big rosettes, so I am going to add one more ruffle to make it even bigger. I just start adding it where I left off with the other one.


Here she is all finished and ready to apply to my pillow. 
If there is still any bit of felt on the back side that hasn’t been glued, now would be the time to cut any of that extra off so you won’t be able to see it on the pillow.

To adhere the rosettes to your pillow, simply lay them out in  a design to your liking and hot glue each one to the pillow. Make sure you get plenty of glue around the edges so they don’t peel up. Nothin’ worse than peeling rosettes on your pillow.

I actually thought this pillow was a lot easier to make than the other one. I love making the rosettes. You could use them in lots of different ways.

Thanks for puttin’ up with me.
I am so thankful for each of you that comes to visit and leave comments.
You really do make my day!

Have a beautiful weekend!

This post is linked to: Weekend Wrap-up Party, Dittle Dattle, Mad Skills, Sew cute Tuesday, Take a look Tuesday , The Lettered Cottage          

 

Swirled Ruffle Pillow {from a t-shirt} Tutorial

The other day I was in Target with my daughter and we were oohing and aahing over all the pretty throw pillows they have. Of course the thrifty side of me immediately thinks “I could totally make that for soooo much less”.

So that’s what I did.


This was the pillow we saw that we both really liked, but I wasn’t going to pay $20 for it. $20 isn’t a terrible price, but I knew I had a couple of pillow forms at home so I would only need to make the cover.


We wandered on over to the clothing section and I found these two long sleeve t-shirts on clearance for $5 each. I picked 2 that matched her bedding perfectly {in XXL}. $10

I am using the green one for this pillow. I’ll show you the purple one tomorrow.

Let’s get started and I’ll show you how I made this cute swirled ruffle pillow.


First off, I used my rotary cutter and cut the bottom hem off the t-shirt.


I measured my pillow insert and figured it was 14” square so I cut my fabric exactly the same. Normally, you would want to add fabric for your seam allowance, but since the fabric is knit and I wanted it to be tight, I cut it to the same dimensions as the pillow.  I also cut it so I left one of the  side seams intact. Less to sew later. 


I then cut off one of the sleeves.


I cut off the sleeve hem and the seam that runs under the arm so I could open it up and cut some strips for my ruffles.

I cut as many strips as I could {I got 6 from one sleeve}. I cut each one 2” wide and as long as the sleeve would allow.

I made my ruffles like I made them here.  High tension, long stitch length.

All ruffly. cuteness.

I took my ruffles and laid them out how I wanted them on the pillow. I only used 5 of the ruffles.

When I pinned them down I simply overlapped the ends of the ruffles. I laid the one on the bottom flat and tucked under the end of the top one. Hopefully you can see that in the picture.

Looks pretty good from the top. Ruffles hide lots of imperfections.

I started with the bottom ruffle since the end of it goes under the long middle swirl.

Make sure you adjust the tension and stitch length back to normal before you stitch the ruffles down.  I used lots of pins to hold the ruffles in place while I stitched them down to the front of the pillow cover.

All stitched down and lookin’ sweet.

I then flipped the case with right sides together and stitched the 2 sides together and the third side leaving a 6” opening for the pillow insert.

Trim your corners at a diagonal.

Turn right side out and push corners out with something that isn’t too sharp. I like to use a chopstick. Insert your pillow carefully, trying not to pull to hard on the opening {knit fabric with rip easily where it’s been stitched}

Pin your opening together and use a slip stitch to close your opening.  Here is a good tutorial on how to do a slip stitch.

All done. I made the pillow cover so that my slip stitch was at the bottom of the pillow.  It makes me feel better since it never looks completely perfect.

My daughter loves it and I think it turned out pretty cute. I’ll show you the purple one tomorrow. It’s a little different, but still ruffled.
*****UPDATE********


If you would like to see the tutorial for the Ruffled Rosette Pillow, it can be found here.

this post is linked to: Tutorial Tuesday, Tutorials and Tips Tuesday, Dittle Dattle, Creation Corner, Today’s Creative Blog, Spring Fling, Somewhat Simple, Frugalicious Friday, Crazy Domestic                                     


 
    

TP {toilet paper} pumpkin tutorial

These are the easiest fall decor you'll ever make....promise. I shared  these over at Posh Pieces the other day, but I thought I would go ahead and share it here too.

I first made these pumpkins years ago when I was in charge of crafts for our MOPS group at church. They were so popular, we did them more than once. There are several variations of these floating around, but I thought I would share what I have found to work the best.

 

This is what you will need for each pumpkin:

1 roll of toilet paper

1 fat quarter of fabric {approx 22"x18"}

1 sheet of newspaper or tissue paper 1 stick about 4-5" long

1 12" piece of ribbon

Find a hard surface to work on. Lay out your fabric, wrong side up and then lay your sheet of paper on top of that. Place your tp roll in the middle.

Next you will use the palm of your hand and push straight down to squish your tp roll. {This way it won't look like a roll of tp you wrapped in fabric when your done.}

Grab the corners of the paper and bring them to the middle and tuck into the center of the tp roll. Make sure to tuck the shorter sides in under the longer corners so it is all secure, but please don't worry about it being perfect. 

Next you will do the same thing with the fabric. Bring the shorter sides up first and work them into the middle and then bring up the corners to tuck in, gathering all the way around so that all ends get tucked in. It won't be perfect, but that is ok. Each one will look different in shape and fluff.   You can even use a half empty roll to make a smaller one like my orange one in the first picture.

See? not so perfect, but pretty cute. 

Last thing is to shove your stick right down in the middle and tie a bow around it. The stick should fit pretty snuggly, but you can hot glue it if you want.

I'm too lazy to heat up my glue gun if it isn't absolutely necessary so mine is not glued. {Plus, if I glue it then I can't unwrap it and use that roll of tp in an emergency....you can really never be too prepared}

These are super inexpensive so you can make lots and use them all over the house. One of my favorite ways to display them is to line them up the edge of my stairs on every other step. It won't even matter when your kids knock them over because they can't really be broken.  I don't know about you, but that's important around my house. 

Happy crafting and let fall begin!!

{yes, I know it doesn’t actually start for like 3 weeks, but in my mind it’s already here} 

 this post is linked to: DIY fall festival, Fall frenzy, Remodelaholic, A little knick knack, Simply designing, Chic on a shoestring, Frugal Friday,Pumpkin seed party, Weekend round-up, Tutorial Tuesday, Pumpkin Party, Fall Festival

Cute TP Pumpkins

I‘m over at Posh Pieces today sharing how to make these cute little pumpkins from toilet paper……yes I said TP!

Those who know me in real life have probably already made these, but I thought I would share them with the rest of the world. 

Please stop by over at Post Pieces to see how it’s done and then stay a while and take a look around. Shannon has tons of neat ideas!

Simple reversible car seat strap covers {a tutorial}

My sweet little niece told me “I need more comfort when I fall asleep in my car seat” {because clearly, all those rolls aren’t quite enough padding}. Ok, well really her mama told me, but I certainly couldn’t turn down such a request so I made her some of these.

These car seat strap covers are completely reversible and they have a bit of padding to make them extra comfy. I made sure to prewash the fabrics so they can be machine washed and air dried with no worries because we all know babies are messy little bundles of sunshine.
 
Most strap covers I’ve seen use bias tape as a binding, but since I can never seem to make that stuff look right, I came up with this simple yet equally cute version. It took me longer to pick out the fabric and cut it than to sew them so this is a great beginner project.

For each strap cover you will need 2 pieces of fabric cut to 6” x 6” and one piece of batting  cut to 6” x 6” {I used a warm and natural batting, but any would work}. So for a set of strap covers you will have 2 batting squares and 4 fabric squares.

You will also need about 3” of sew on velcro for each cover. 

I rounded the corners of my squares by tracing a cup and cut all 3 pieces at one time so they were identical.  You don’t have to make the corners rounded, it’s your choice.

You will lay down your batting first, the first piece of fabric right side up and the second one right side down.

Pin together and sew all the way around using a 1/4” seam allowance leaving a 3 inch opening on one side so you can turn it right side out.   My double pins denote my starting and stopping points.

Clip each corner if using rounded corners or trim the tip off each corner if using a square corner, but make sure not to cut into your stitching.

Turn right side out, putting the batting to the middle. Push each corner out nicely and iron the entire piece. Iron each opening to the inside as shown above.

Using a 1/4” seam allowance top stitch all the way around each piece.

Now cut 2 pieces of velcro each about 1.5” long.  Place them as shown above and stitch in place using a 1/4” seam allowance. The fuzzy side of the velcro pieces will go on one side of the cover and the loop side of the velcro will go on the opposite side and end of the cover.

Now make one more and you have a set of reversible car seat strap covers to keep your baby’s noggin all comfy cozy in his/her car seat.

These measurements are approximate. Please measure the length of strap between the top of the strap and where the chest clip sits on the child’s chest {at arm pit height}. It is very important that these strap covers not push the chest clip to an unsafe level. Please adjust the length of the strap covers accordingly.

Now go make some babies a little more comfy.

this post is linked up to: Everything Etsy, Show off your stuff , Somewhat Simple, Sew much Ado, Fabric Fun Thursday, Get your craft on Thursday, Hodgepodge Friday, Fingerprints on the fridge, Fun to craft, Frugalicious Friday, Show and share day, weekend wrap-up, Saturday Soiree