Recycling Old Shirts into Baby Clothes

My friend Tina just sent me these pics of clothes she made from recycled clothes for her new baby Tycho (I just saw him last night, and he is cute, cute, cute!). Here's what she wrote: "I'd like to make some stuffed toys for Tycho out of old clothes. I've been making him pants out of old shirts--I've sent along a picture of the latest pair and the onesie I raw-edge appliqued a matching patch onto. Despite my poor seamstressing skills, I persevere because I know soon he'll just want to wear jeans and spiderman t-shirts." Tycho's Dad calls them his 'clown clothes'. I think these are great, and her seamstressing skills are much better than she thinks! She suggests this post from another blog for advice on how to make kid's pants from your own pattern.

Recycled Monsters - Great Idea, Great Gift

I just read this post on Whip-up, about Cotton Monsters, great, one-of-a-kind stuffed monsters made from recycled clothes and linens. Go to the Whip-up post and you find links to her blog and to her site. These would make great, sustainable gifts for children. (Kids get all the good stuff!) I wonder where she gets all her materials - thrift stores, I hope?

You Can't Have Too Many Bulletin Boards!

A couple of years got back, I too got caught up in the clever idea of magnetic bulletin boards, that is, using a metal surface and magnets to post notes, messages, etc., rather than a more traditional push pin type of bulletin board. And I found an old enamel top table at at a yard sale for $10, so I took the top and secured it to a wall in my last apartment, which I thought was really extra clever of me: This takes a bunch of magnets, so that gave me the excuse to make more button magnets (simple to make: hot glue round magnets to the back of old buttons):But then, when I moved into my new house (I've lived here for more than a year now, so I wonder when it will stop feeling 'new'...), I decided that I was over the whole idea of metal bulletin boards. The button magnets, or even more traditional smaller magnets take up a lot more room than do push pins, and how many enamel tables does anyone really want to take apart? (I recently found one in the trash, took it apart, and stuck it in my garage, but I'll leave that for another post.) So, I've returned to regular old bulletin boards, and I actually have four, all over the house, because I find them so useful! (Meanwhile, I put that green enamel top table back together and use it in my craft room.) Here's the cool vintage one I found years ago at the Salvation Army in Cleveland, that I keep in my craft room, with various inspiring images on it: Then there's a little green one, from the same Sal Army in Cleveland, with fish swimming across the top. I use it as a small rotating gallery. It currently has old pictures of my house, kindly given to me by a previous owner. But if I manage to collect a few old chipmunk postcards (such is the kind of ambition to which I'm susceptible) then they will go there next: And, after I had painted the kitchen and the back study, I made two more bulletin boards out of homosote. (This is very easy: go to a lumber yard, and have homosote, a soft cardboard like material which comes in 4' x 8' sheets cut to whatever size you like. Then stretch over it any fabric that can withstand the pushpins and staple it to the back. Finally, attach it to the wall with screws and washers. I learned this from my sister Julie, who teaches me many cool things.) I made a relatively small one just for displaying my modest collection of 'display-worthy' vintage kitchen towels (the collection of usable vintage kitchen towels is far from modest): And I made a larger one for next to my desk, for the usual desk-like things: calendar, movie listings, etc. So, that's four in all, which so far seems to be enough, so I don't even have to put things on my fridge, which I'm glad about. So, all I've got on the fridge is all those left over button magnets!

A New Use for Old Graters

I was just browsing through all the iPhoto albums on my Mac, when I came across these pictures: The pictures were taken the day of my nephew Eli's wedding. The reception was at my sister Julie's house, and I made these lights as one of my contributions towards the festivities and decorations. I made them out of the old fashioned graters that come with big old industrial style food graters. I used a string of Christmas lights, cutting them apart, running the wires through holes in the tops of the graters and then rewiring the lights. I think that there must be a better way to do this, but it did the trick at the time. The picture don't show this very well, but they cast a very nice, mildly funky light at night. My sister kept the lights up for quite a while, but eventually returned them to me. I've got to see if I can find them, and put them to use this summer when I hope to host some gathering s in my back yard.

Men's Shirts as Cocktail Napkins

So, I've long liked the men's shirts at the various thrift stores I'm known to frequent. I love the stripey patterns and smooth fabric, and I usually stop to rifle through them admiringly. But I've never had any idea of what to do with them, other than buy them for my non-existent boyfriend. But recently, somewhere or other on the web, I saw that someone had refashioned a men's shirt into a pillow cover, by very cleverly taking advantage of the buttoned front placket, which does away with the need to bother sewing in a zipper. (I am perfectly incapable of sewing in zippers. I used to cajole my sister into doing it for me through flattery: "But you do zippers so well!". But she caught on pretty quickly, so that gig is up.) So that got me to thinking. Then, a week or so ago, I had a couple of friends over for cocktails. (I finally caught up with the trend, and have been very into having a bar and making cocktails lately. And, oh yeah, drinking more. Want a great cocktail book? Try this one - it's great.) I've been wanting for a while to have more nice cocktail-sized napkins - just big enough to rest a martini glass on. I've got tons and tons of dinner sized cloth napkins, so many that it usually takes a year or so to work through the stash and then spend a long evening ironing. But I didn't have enough little ones. So, I decided to make a little project out of making cocktail napkins from men's shirts. First, I bought a couple of men's shirts with the following criteria in mind: 100% cotton, pleasing pattern, really big for more fabric, and, crucially, half-price. With that in mind, I found these two shirts, for $2 each:So, I cut them up into 12 inch squares, based on some small napkins I already had. (I was somewhat surprised by how few napkins I got out of each. I have to look for even bigger shirts in the future.) Then I ironed a narrow hem all around and pinned these in place. After sewing them all around, I folded and ironed them again, and I was done. Eight new napkins to put on the bar, and an idea for easy hostess or housewarming gifts in the future.And I did this while watching "Ocean's Eleven" on tv, admiring George Clooney's shirts all the while! Now, if only I could get him to take his shirts off for me...

Glass Paperweights as a Photo Collage

Okay, so you are probably familiar with these old glass paperweights. You can find them in a range of sizes and shapes at thrift stores, antique shops, yard sales, and so on. Sometimes you find them empty, and sometimes they have an old image, or sea shells, or dried flowers in them. Several years ago, I took an old one, I don't remember where I had found it or what was in it, and put my own photograph in it. It's one of my very favorite photographs of the seven children in my family, back when we were still children (I'm the little girl on the bottom right). For a long time, that was the only one I had. Then, slowly, I gathered more of the old paperweights, and scrounged around my mother's house for more old photographs, like this one of my father with his brothers, his father standing in the background (his father died a year or so after this photo was taken, so it's a rare image of my grandfather). And so the collection grew. I haven't done any in a while, for reasons of space, and also because I've now represented just about everyone in my family. So, lately I've been thinking of doing these as gifts, but I have yet to follow through on that! I do worry a little about keeping them in front of a window that at some times of year does get direct sunlight, so I am planning on making some sort of simple fabric cover for them so that they don't fade.

From Dirty Old Box to Collection Display

Okay, so I found this dirty, dusty old wooden box in the basement soon after buying my house. (The fork is there just to give you some sense of its size.) It was holding old tools and hardware, oil cans and door knobs. But I thought I could give it a better life than that. So, first, I cleaned it up by scrubbing it with a dry, stiff brush. (I decided not to wash it in water because I didn't want the wood to warp.) Then, I painted the backs of the compartments with BIN: an alcohol-based primer. I used BIN because 1) it will stick to just about anything and makes a good, clean painting surface and 2) the box had some rust-stained areas, and since BIN is alcohol based, rust stains don't bleed through, as they do with latex primer or paint. Then I rummaged around my paint shelves and settled on the paint left over from the inside of my open kitchen cabinets: Castleton Mist from Benjamin Moore. (I LOVE this color - I used it on all my downstairs ceilings, as well as my bedroom.) Then I rubbed boiled linseed oil over all the wood that was unpainted and would show. The linseed oil brings out the grain, seals the wood, and adds a little sheen. (It is much easier to apply than polyurethane and doesn't need to dry. You just apply it with a rag and then use a clean rag to wipe off the excess.) The next step was to add these hangers: Then it went up on a wall in my kitchen and I promptly filled it with just a taste of my way too large collection of green handled kitchen utensils:

Triple Letter Score - Scrabble Redux

I recently found this old scrabble game at one of my local thrift shops: the Kirkland Art Center Thrift Shop in Clinton, NY. I paid $1.50 for it. And it's a good thing I found it, because my scrabble tile cache was getting dangerously low, after I used up 482 tiles doing this:The inside of the door to this original-to-my-house medicine cabinet had an indented space that was just perfectly sized for these tiles. So, just a few months into home ownership, I took a break from spackling and sanding and spackling and sanding, and spent a few hours doing this. It was great fun. I worked in a few big, nice words quite intentionally, but then ended up with more words by these two means: the completely fortuitous words, and the almost fortuitous words. These last ones I had to nudge into wordiness by a letter or two. I was surprised that the whole thing took 482 tiles - almost 5 games worth! This dashed my hopes of ever covering even a small wall in tiles! At least not until I've collected a hundred games or so....

Who Says Christmas Is Over?

So, why is it that I never have enough time to do Christmassy crafts during, oh, I don't know, Christmas season?!? Oh well, at least I'll have this to use next year. I finally, finally got around to making this Christmas card wreath , the idea of which I got from a magazine god only knows how long ago. I honestly don't remember which magazine, but it certainly has the feel of an MSL idea to me.It was very easy. I bought a wooden embroidery hoop for a couple of dollars at Joann's, and glued the two pieces together. Then I tried different sizes of clothespins, but found that the ones I had were either too big (normal sized) or way too small (minis, at 1"). So, I found some on Ebay which were just right (okay, so now some nursery rhyme has found its way into my head), at 1 3/4 ". I glued them on with wood glue (which swells the wood a bit for a really good attachment), spaced about 2" apart. I put every third one facing into the circle, with the idea that the middle of the circle has less space than outside of it.

Later (and by 'later' I probably mean next year, in a not-enough-time sleep deprived pre-Christmas frenzy) I'll do something ribbony around the top to hide all that wood. And I'll try to get a more reasonably sized bolt, before this one puts my eye out.
Yeah, Christmas never ends!

Double Letter Score

So, I was working on amassing my little pile of Christmas and belated birthday gifts for my best friend from college, when I hit upon the pretty simple idea of hot gluing some magnets to the backsides of scrabble tiles. I have built up an impressive cache of extra scrabble tiles, usually acquired for a dollar or two per hundred at thrift stores and yard sales, and I've done other fun things with them, which I'll save for future posts. My friend is a competitive scrabble player (meaning that, among other things, she studies the scrabble dictionary for two and three letter words, which can come in very handy), so I thought this would make an especially appropriate gift. (Although it later occurred to me that, living in the UK, she doesn't have an American sized fridge, so she will have to find some other place to use them.) I spelled out a pair of words, and then added a few more letters to the mix. No, these magnets are not an especially original idea, I know. But the importance of originality is overestimated, if you ask me.