Hello and greetings, serendipitous readers of Shealynn's equally lovely blog! I'm Marlene E. from over www.thetouchofwhimsy.blogspot.com way, and I'm absolutely delighted to meet one and all!


I've officially hijacked this blog for a day, so now you must bear with me as I share my little tutorial on how to make a positively geeky and utterly fashionable shirt inspired by everyone's favorite-book-soon-to-be-an-amazing-film, The Hobbit. My inspiration was simple. You know those coolio maps the good ol' Professor drew at the beginning of the book...? Not sure? Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a convincer:

Here's what you're going to need...

ONE Cream T-Shirt, blank and ready to be turned into awesome sauce
ONE skein of DMC floss in red... if you can't find this particular color, that's okay. Any burgundy will do just as nicely.
ONE needle
ONE sheet of transfer paper*
ONE ballpoint pen*
*If you have another method of transferring designs onto fabric, by all means, feel free to substitute!

With these trusty tools, you're good to go. Now, the more astute of you may be shocked, but I didn't use a hoop. I thought it would stretch the shirt in an unsightly and irreparable manner.

I also couldn't find my hoop. Hem

Take the following design...

...and transfer it onto your shirt. About 3 1/2” below where the pit of your neck should be when wearing the shirt.

Now, my dears, take your NEEDLE and FLOSS, and go at it with a simple split stitch! Nothin' fancy, nothin' big... just make simple, plain old split-stitches all along the outlines of the design. You can substitute any other stitch you think would look better, I just chose this one because I wanted to. So there.

And... really, that's that. Really. Oh, I did forget a step... go rock your new Smaug shirt in a place where all can see your awesome geekiness.

Oyez.

Thanks a bunch, Shealynn, for having on your lovely blob. It's been a most pleasurable experience!

My friend Elizabeth (aka Elenatintil), has baby-size quilts for sale! (They also work as lap quilts.)

I would love it if you would check them out! At $35 for a handmade quilt, they are hard to beat... and I can assure you that they are all made with lots of love! Plus, you get to help an amazing young woman fund her college education. :)

Don't forget to check out her blog at: Confessions of a Seamstress

Blue Stripes

I made these quite awhile ago for some friends. I took an old pair of jeans, cut out the pockets, ironed on some iron-ons, and hand-sewed a string onto it. Voila!

So you thought that all I could make was some neat drawings and fun crafts? Looks can be misleading. For every good drawing showcased on my blog, I have ten pages (however unrelated, aside from technique)of terrible, horrible, nasty drawings. For every five crafts I make, one makes it to the dumpster. And of those that survive, not all make it to the blog.

But sometimes a fail has to make it to a blog. This is a particularly big fail. And... I'm posting it on my blog.

I had a pair of too small jeans with holes that I wanted to turn into a skit. I didn't want to turn it into a long skirt with two fabric triangles in front and back, like some friends of mine make. I wanted to make a knee-length skirt. And I don't know how to sew well.

The problem, as I later found out, was that the pants were too small. Nevermind that they fit around the waist-- a skirt tight in the hips does not work very well. Maybe this would have worked if I had a pair of fitting jeans. My other problem was that I tried to make it below knee length, and did not have enough fabric from the bottom of the legs to fill in the skirt.