What I Have Been Up To

I honestly had planned to be blogging here more often, but what I mostly have been up to since semi-retiring is taking care of a sick family. No fun. All six of us had the swine flu and it took over four weeks to run all the way through the family. But we are all now on the mend and hopefully this means the rest of the cold and flu season illnesses will skip over our home (I can always hope, right?).

Besides taking care of my sick family, I have also been having a good time crafting. My daytimes have been so busy, but I have needed something to keep my hands busy with at night when I am watching TV with my husband. I have never been much of a crafter, but I am now addicted. My brain is overflowing with fun little ideas!

All of my projects have been free to really inexpensive  crafts that I made from old scraps I already had, things in my Goodwill pile or things I bought at a thrift store. I though you might want to see some of my inexpensive projects.

I started out working with felt (the cheap acrylic kind you get at the craft store for about $.30 a square). I love this simple little headband, and I made it in several colors.

I also made these cute little felt clips for my little ladies. I just found some scrapbooking templates on line and traced them for the flower shapes. Then I just did a little hand embroidery.

I had a whole stack of shirts that someone had given us for my daughter and they just never fit right. They are really wide and short. So I chopped them up to make other projects. I made this cute ruffley headband with one of the shirts.

I also had a pair of pants that we had been given that were never going to fit anyone. I chopped them up and made several little projects like this flower headband. Love it! I used this tutorial to help me make the flower.

I also made this headband from some old flowers that I had left over from making flower clips for the girls.

And I made this little rolled rosette clip from some old scraps. This is the best tutorial on making these.

I made these little clips for my little girls from a darling little dress of my daughters that was torn.

This little hand-me-down shirt of my daughters had a large stain right on the front. I was going to throw it out, but then I made a few fabric yo-yos and attached them to the front and cover up the stains. So sweet!

Then I came across this fabulous site, My Mama Made It and she has all of these fantastic ideas on how to refashion t-shirts. We had quite a few plain t-shirts so I fancied some of them up.

While searching for all of the tutorials above, I kept coming across pillowcase dress tutorials. They are so easy and fun to make. My youngest daughter’s dress was made from a $.50 pillowcase from a thrift store and $.84 of ribbon for a total cost of $1.34! My oldest daughter is too tall to use a pillowcase, so I bought a brand new king size sheet at a thrift store  for $3.00 and I will be able to get 4 dresses out of it! I made her straps out of fabric, so I didn’t even have to buy ribbon. So her dress cost just $.75 to make.

Thanks for checking out my projects! I have been having so much fun making them and since we have been on a quarantine, I haven’t been able to show them off yet and I just had to share them!