Hooded towel tutorial

I love hooded towels for babies and little kids. One of my friends made me a super cute one for my boy and I have made a couple for friends. They are so easy and they make great gifts!

First you will need:
-1 cute little kid ;-)
-1 bath towel
-1 hand towel
-Coordinating ribbon or a scrap of fabric (at least 4"x24" size piece of fabric)
-Coordinating thread
-Extra wide double fold bias tape that matches the color of your towels. (This is optional but I think it makes it easier to finish the raw edge instead of trying to fold it up and sew through a bunch of thick layers of towels with your sewing machine)

Here is my little fella all wrapped up in his new hooded towel

First, take your hand towel and cut it so it is 24" long

If you are using fabric, cut it to 4" wide by 24" long.

Press the edges of your fabric up 1/2" along the long raw edge

Fold your hand towel in half lengthwise (hot dog style!) and place your strip of fabric or ribbon about 1 1/2" away from the fold and pin it.

Un fold your towel and sew along the long edge of your fabric.

I cut off the bulky hem on my hand towel to make it easier to sew through.

Fold your towel in half hamburger style (Right sides together) and sew along the edge of you short sides (the ones with the arrows in the picture). I apologize for the graphics in this pictures but I'm not fancy and I don't have photoshop so this is what I came up with in Paint haha :-)

Flip it right side out and it should look like this. With all the sides sewed except the bottom edge. Take Corner "B" and tuck it into corner "A".

Here is a picture of me tucking corner "B" into corner "A"

So it should look like this.

This is your hood! You can cut the bottom edge of your hood so it all lines up evenly or if you have a bulky edge you can trim it too.

I like to sew a 1/2" hem along the folded side (the side that will wrap around your child's face) just so that it lays flat. This is not necessary I just think it makes it nice.

Now for the bias tape. This is the trickiest part! I know it's kinda hard to tell from the picture but one of the edges sticks out 1/8" more. You want to have the side that sticks out 1/8" on the bottom and the shorter side will be the one you sew on top. You want the wider side on bottom so that you make sure it catches underneath when you are sewing.

I like to sew my bottom raw edge together before I put the bias tape on it so I don't have to worry about it shifting apart while I sew the bias tape on. Wrap your bias tape around the bottom raw edge of your hood and pin it.

Here is my hood with the bias tape pinned on it

Start sewing along the top edge of the bias tape. I would recommend taking out the pins as you go so you make sure that the bias tape isn't twisting or starting to slip off of the edge. Sometimes you have to pull it tight and pull it up as you go. Then trim any excess bias tape off of the ends.

This is what it looked like after I was done sewing it on.

Find the middle of the long ledge of your a bath towel and center the hood and pint it.

Sew your hood onto the bath towel along the bottom edge of your bias tape.

Then I like to flip it over and sew along the top edge of the bath towel to make sure its all secure.

Voila! This is how my hooded towel turned out. This is a picture of the inside of the hood where it is sewn onto the bath towel.

Glass Cabinet Makeover

We've been doing some spring cleaning and moving stuff around in our home and we ended up putting my craft bookcase in the hallway. I instantly decided I didn't want to look at all of my craft stuff piled high inside and cut some fabric taped on the back of the door and voila no more clutter! Here is the fabric I used.

Before

After

Close up

Fox Hoodie

I saw this on Pinterest and since I freaking love foxes I decided to recreate it.

1. I free-handed a fox template pattern for the hoodie. I got the hoodie from Target (my son wears 12 M)
2. I bought some reddish orange corduroy fabric, white felt, black felt, and buttons.
3. I cut out the coordinating pieces of corduroy and felt from the template.
4. I sewed around the edges of each piece.
5. Then I used fray-check around the edges so the fabric won't fray.
6. Then I sewed some little black buttons on for eyes.
7. And Voila! Super cute and stylin hoodie for my little fox ;-)

Turkey Onesie

I made this little turkey onesie for my boy using some of my Amy Butler dot fabric scraps. I got the idea from Pinterest here. I got out the shape of the turkey using my silhouette and the shape called "little turkey" from the Silhouette store. I made the eyes, beak, and the wattle a little bigger. I used some Heat N' Bond (be sure to use the sew through kind!) to attach the fabric to the onesie then I sewed around all of the edges and put 2 buttons on for eyes! I also sealed the edges with some anti-fray liquid.

Recovering a Lamp Shade

I decided I would make my own lampshade because I couldn't find one that I liked and the one I currently had on my console table actually belonged in our office/baby boy's room. I used the directions from here to recover my lampshade.

Finished product

Got this lampshade from good ol' Wal-mart

ripped all of the fabric off

Used the lampshade to trace a pattern onto butcher paper. Pinned it to wrong side of fabric then cut leaving a 1/4 inch border along the top and bottom edge and about a 1 inch edge on one side to fold under at the end to have a finished edge. I attached the fabric to the shade using some spray adhesive and clear tacky craft glue.

Used some bias tape to finish the top and bottom edges. I attached it with a hot glue gun.

Love that green/blue combo. The only problem I had was that since my fabric was so geometric and the shade wasn't completely up and down I had to cut the fabric on a curve so the pattern isn't completely straight all the way around. It doesn't bug me too much though.

Shower Curtain Makeover

I don't know if you are like me but I get sick of my interior design stuff and need to change it up every once in a while. So I was sick of looking at my bathroom and decided it needed a little change-up. I went to Target the other day and got this super cute table cloth and than I thought "I wonder if I could turn this into a shower curtain?" and voila I did it! It was super easy because I am ultra lazy and I decided that I didn't want to sew or cut anything. So I just bought some clip-on rings and clipped them to the top of the shower curtain. Since the tablecloth/shower curtain was too long to go on our regular curtain rod I just put up one of those tension rods so I could put it up way high. I kinda like how high it is though so it works! Yes, I was that lazy that I didn't even want to do a simple hem to fix it. I know all those years of hard work in sewing classes at BYU and a degree in Family & Consumer Science really paid off for me huh ;-p!? I already had some bath mats and towels that matched so it worked perfect!

Before: It's not that I don't like it it's just kind of boring to have a white shower curtain with off-white walls. I would love this shower curtain if I could paint my walls a fun color. So I will just hang on to it until one day when I will finally have my own walls I can paint whatever color I want.

The clip-on rings I got from Wal-mart. Mine are actually pewter or nickel (some silvery color).

Ta-da!

Close up of the tablecloth/shower curtain. It was $20 from Target. It's the Dwell studio Mandala tablecloth. Dwell studio had a couple of other really cute tablecloths too. Check them out here!

Christmasy Crafts

Here are some Christmasy crafts I have done this holiday season. This might be my last blog post for about 2 weeks because we are spending Garrett's break down in Utah Wahoooooo!!

My mom and I made these cute little felt trees and penguin when I was home in Ohio. I didn't make the gnome but I want to try and duplicate him sometime.

I made a Christmasy pipe cleaner flower ring.

I made some Christmas reindeer root beer.

These aren't crafts but they are some cute decorations I got. Brings me back to the good ol' days.

I'm so mad because I never got around to making these. I had everything I needed but I just ran out of time. Maybe next year.

Felt Fox Onesie

Here is a picture of the latest onesie I made for my baby boy. It was kind of labor intensive but I think it turned out cute:

Maternity ghost shirt & onesies

Here are some pictures of some crafts that I have been working on recently ... mostly just sewing on peices of fabric/felt that I cut out onto onesies and a maternity shirt. Nothing too fancy.

Ghost belly maternity shirt (23 weeks along)

"Stay Classy" Mustache onesie ... inspired by Ron Burgundy

Tie onesie for church

Sasquatch onesie ... don't ask why I just love Sasquatch

Corkboard, napkin holder, quilt

I have issues ... whenever I come across something online I think to myself "I could make that" and I end up spending a lot of time and sometimes money recreating these projects. Most of the time I find these project ideas on Etsy because most of their stuff is handmade by sellers anyway. Sometimes I find ideas on blogs and sometimes I just recreate projects from the mastermind known as Amy Butler. Here are some of my latest ...

Corkboard Project

Table Organizer

Amy Butler Quilt from (don't mind the wrinkles; its not finished yet i still need to put it together with back and batting then quilt it)