Re-purposed Jacket to Card Holder (My First Tutorial!)

When my Mother's Father passed away last year, we had the opportunity to go through his old clothes. I am not kidding when I say opportunity, this dude was hipster before hipster was hipster. We used a lot of his old plaid flannels to create pillows, bracelets, scarves and I am sure other things I am unaware of.

So when my Father's Mother Passed away this year, my Mother saw the opportunity to create something for each of the women in the family to have of Hers. Actually, my Mother saw the opportunity for me to create something.

So here is what I came up with. This is my first attempt at documenting a project. As you may know, or as you will soon find out, I make stuff up as I go. I am not a professional anything (yet) and I am not always as classy as this blazer. In fact, I have been known to be downright ignorant and offensive. Take this information, go forth and hopefully learn a new project. Hopefully you can have some fun with it too.
Let me know what you think!

Re-Purposed Jacket to Gift Card Holder

Materials

A old peice of clothing or a scrap of wool/flannel/fleece cut to 4.5" x 6" 

Button or snap

Optional - fabric for an applique on the back

*I used a serger to connect the seams, a sewing machine to make the button hole and embroidery thread to attach applique and button. This can all be done by hand sewing techniques or with a sewing machine. 

Description 

My Grandmother was classy. I have no doubt that she is in Heaven with a blazer and pearls, sitting by a large pool, sipping a martini. 

This was one of her favorite staple blazers...

Every year for Valentines Day, the women of the family go to Florida and they usually exchange a small gift during their trip.  My Mother decided she wanted to try to re-purpose the blazer into eight gift card holders like the one from Starbucks. So, naturally, hand it over to her daughter who is always willing to drop everything to craft for her. Here is what I did.




The trim of the blazer is nice and thick and the buttons are awesome vintagey (look it up haters) gold, perfect.

         

I cut out a template from a scrap piece of fabric. Because the material of the blazer is flexible and has a bit of give to it, I wanted it to be almost the same size as a gift card. So I made it 4.5" x 6"

Allow me to interject something, like you really have a choice. I was talking to my Husband about how to describe the texture of this fabric. We were throwing out options and 'supple' was thrown in.  I now realize that word is not okay. I can not stop thinking of the word 'nipple' now. Making this project a bit more classy.

After finishing, I had plenty of room for several cards. I lined up the template so one of the short ends goes along the nice thick, trim.

  

I added a felt heart to the back of mine, you can add anything. It would be super hipster if you added a bird.

Do yourself a favor and follow that link. You will never be the same.

After applying the applique, lined up the button and the buttonhole. I did not take pictures of this process.

For this one, I was able to use one of the button holes that was on the blazer, so I just added the button. Pretty simple. For the seven others, I had to actually add the buttonhole and place the button. As I said earlier, this can all be done with a buttonhole embroidery stitch (this stitch can be used for both the buttonhole and the seam). Wondering how many more times I can say buttonhole? 

Then I serged the top seam, and serged the sides together (spellcheck does not recognize serged. Nor does it recognize spellcheck. Thought you should know). 

I did not set my tension correctly, looks sloppy.

As you can see, the tails that are left over from the serger are obnoxious. But, you do not want to just cut them, they will unravel over time. Like two minutes. The following pictures show what to do with those...

 I usually add some Frey Check on the place I cut, just to make sure it doesn't poke through.

TaDa! 

  

Let me know if you have any questions. Pretty simple project. Enjoy!

Ice Skating Pictures

A and R's first time on skates! My first time in over a decade. I put on figure skates after only wearing hockey skates for years. There are no pictures for several reasons.

This was on the pond behind my parents' house. 

 

 I love Winter.

Back to school

this is what 2 weeks of no school and husband home from work looks like. Be warned.

My big girls are in preschool for 2.5 hours, 5 days a week. After 2 weeks off, I am ready for them to return. It may not seem like a lot, but it is surprising how 2 hours can wear 4 year olds out. By the time they get home, nap time isn't a quite as much of a war. Still a war, but not as bad. Now the living room is picked up, I'm watching General Hospital and potentially finishing a project, 2 weeks late.

Saturday Inspiration

flicker.com via erica on Pinterest

Crack. Instead of just blindly looking at things on this genius site, I am going to post some of the gems I find.

For example...

blessthisstuff.com via Loodyhoo on Pinterest

If I had this, I would bike everywhere. For about a week, until I got bored and saw something else I wanted to obsess about.

My Make Me is totally out of control. The good thing about it is it makes me want to spend hours and hours in my sewing room. Bad thing, I do not have hours to spend in my sewing room.

Here are a few I want to try...

etsy.com via Adrian Burton on Pinterest

Spotlight.com via Keenan Rankin onPinterest

One Girl Design Wrks via Lindsey Fulton Frey on Pinterest

Alisa Burke via The Red Bananas on Pinterest 

Ok, go make shit.

12.31.11

From "1.1.11"

Happy New Year!
I have always made resolutions and I, like most, dismissed them after a few days. This year, I am taking a different approach. Instead of trying to find all the things in my life I want to be different, I am going to attempt to focus on the things I do well and continue to do them.  I would like a more self loving year.
Let's see how I feel on 1.11.11!

Besides the obvious (to me) typo, I like this approach. While I spent an exorbitant amount of time kicking the shit out of myself emotionally, I am not looking back on this year as a failure, which is my m.o.
The dishes are rarely done, laundry is at a constant state of overflow, my business has a ebb and flow of nothing to everything in my life, the family finances are slightly out of control and I currently have a massive case of end-of-winter-vacation exaustion. That being said, I truly believe this year has been an enormous success.
Case in point, the reason I am so exhausted today is because my kids and my husband have been home for a couple of weeks. The house is filled with bodies, mess and a constant hum of laughter. I like my alone time. The hour of quiet I get in the afternoon before dinner is necessary for me to feel prepared. I have been thrown off my game this week. My normal hyper-control-freak state of being has been replaced with a home filled with laughter, screams of joy, play mess and massive amounts of candy/snack wrappers. This is not a failure. This is a success.
At the end of the day, I love my family, my ever evolving sense of success, the chaos of play and the space my life allows me to reflect.
I will not be listing the things I want to change again this year. I, again, will be focusing my energy on appreciating what I have and following my heart toward my joys.
Peace.

The Oatmeal Breakfast (aka why I love saturday morning breakfast)

We love oatmeal. It may be a problem.
In of itself, loving oatmeal is not a bad thing. However, as a mother of three who reluctantly does whatever they want from time to time despite my bad ass nature, making and serving said oatmeal is an ordeal.
Here are the instructions so someone can give me when I lose my mind and can no longer function as a member of my family...

• Start a medium pot of water boiling
• Add a random amount of oatmeal. If you are a stick-up-you-ass type, go ahead and measure it out according to directions. You are now a Follower.
• Cook for about a minute. This results in a nice, thick, sticky oatmeal. Just the way I like it. 
• Spread about half of it on a large plate, put in freezer to cool. 
• While cooling, toss 4 slices of bread into toaster. 
• While toast is...um...toasting, start a pot of coffee for yourself. Make it a whole pot, because it typically needs to last about 3 days
• Once toast is done, butter two for yourself, cut one in 4ths and spread now cooled oatmeal on them for one kid and butter and cut in half for the other. The third kid may yell at you if you give her toast, don't bother
• Divide remaining cooled oatmeal into 2 bowls. The other third man out may yell at you if you give her just a bowl of oatmeal, don't bother.
• Pour an ungodly amount of brown sugar over all the exposed sticky, tan oatmeal in an effort to hide the fact you are attempting to give your children something good (despite the fact that you are making it decidedly un-good by adding sugar)
• Place all 456 plates, bowls and cups on the table, return to kitchen, pour a cup of coffee, eat scraps off the counter, return to family eating area, pretend you are at a hipster breakfast place with background noise instead of your own children yelling, eat a entire bowl of oatmeal, two overly buttered pieces of toast in about 3 minutes.
• If Weekday: run to bedrooms, but out clothes for kids...start the getting ready for school war.
• If Saturday: Remove youngest from highchair, dust off the sugar from her face and clothes, grab cup of coffee, find couch and stay there for about an hour. 
• In both scenarios, be sure not to clean up the table. If you do, you will be depriving yourself of the ability for massive amounts of blood to rush to your face every time you step on sticky oatmeal and it gets stuck to your foot, or every time you attempt to scrape dried, hardened brown sugar encrusted oats off the table.

Feel free to use this method, just give me credit. It has taken a lot of sweat and tears to perfect.

Enjoy!

B