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Crochet Fingerless Gloves

These were a present for Miss Marie (modeling them above) for Christmas and awesome gloves because your digits are free to do things. I realize it is pretty cold outside for some people to expose bare fingers, but I still think these gloves rule.

Materials
Yarn (2 kinds)
Crochet needle (I use the second biggest one because I use fat yarn)

Instructions
Do a single crochet stitch and measure it to your wrist, then loop the end of the yarn around making a circle. Continue to crochet until it gets above the bottom knucles of your fingers.

Then poke your thumb through the stitches and snip a piece of the yarn to make the thumb hole. (This part is tricky, you may have to do some knotting to avoid your whole glove coming undone).

Then around the hole do a single crochet stitch until it goes to the top of your thumb. Go back to the glove (switch colors if desired) and stitch until it is above your second knuckle. To see how to do the flowers check out this post I did awhile back.

Dresser Refurb

I am so into chocolate and teal these days. I found this awesome skinny dresser on the street near my house and I had to have it (I love NYC for awesome free finds). I took it home and after a couple of months of slowly working on this and planning, I refinished it. I am very happy with it and learned some very important lessons. This dresser is pretty self-explanatory but I have some tips on how to make it (and things NOT to do).

Supplies
Furniture to refinish
1 quart of interior paint (I chose semi-gloss, but more on the choice of paint later)
Scrapbook papers
1 qt of ACRYLIC polyurethane (do not get the plain kind because that has an amber tint to it and will change the color of your paint/papers)

Tools
Fine grade sand paper/block
Paint brush
Allene’s glue (or some other TACKY glue)
Circle cutter (in the scrapbooking section of stores)

Instructions
1. If you have any pulls or hardware on the furniture, remove all of them.

2. Sand the piece with a soft grain paper. I have a few hints here. First, if you are painting with a darker color, your wood does NOT have to be completely raw again (assuming you’re dealing with a pre-painted piece of furniture; if you are painting over a piece that had previously been stained you DO have to sand it totally clean). Also, do NOT use a really coarse sandpaper as it will put mini scratches into your wood.

3. Wipe the whole thing down with a wet rag (or those awesome little sawdust picker upers).

4. Paint it! This is probably obvious but in case it’s not, paint with the grain of the wood and also be sure that you smooth everything. You do NOT want bubbles of paint (check the edges of drawers, etc. because paint tends to pool there). DOUBLE coat it.

5. Here’s the fun part. Cut out lots of different shapes from your scrapbook paper. Glue them to your furniture using Allene’s glue. Be sure that you press all the edges down. It is normal that your paper might have very tiny ripples in it because of the moisture in the glue. This will go away.

6. After everything is dried solid (I would wait over night), coat everything in THREE layers of the polyurethane. Be sure to read the directions and also do it in a ventilated area.

7. After you let it dry very hard over night, screw back in the pulls.

8. An alternative fixture note: I had originally planned to paint the shapes onto my furniture after the chocolate house paint dried. However, I found that my acrylic paints didn’t stick to the chocolate paint. Because I used semi-gloss paint, it just slid off. This looked horrible and this is why I chose the paper (which ultimately I liked much better). If you would like to paint on your details then you must use a matt house paint. This is fine because you can buy the acrylic polyurethane in gloss and make that effect if you like it.

Super Mario Quilt Corners

Yay! This baby is done! It’s so warm and geeky. It was pretty hard to sew in my tiny apartment, I was doing some acrobatics to lay this all out. I have already done a tutorial on how to sew a single quilt block, here. This post shows you an alternative way to do the quilt backing. I think this way is both easier and cooler than using bias tape.

Note: these instructions are based on a 4.5 inch final border added. If you would like to change the size of the border, you can.

Supplies
Quilt top
Batting
Fabric backing material

Tools
Iron
Sewing machine
Pins
Marking chalk
Ruler
Fabric marker

Use this hand drawn instructions ALONG with the written ones. Be sure to click to view the largest version.

Instructions
1. If your quilt is an adult-sized quilt then you will need to sew two lengths of your backing fabric together to create the desired width.

2. Lay the fabric backing on the floor WRONG side facing up.

3. Use your ruler and draw a line with the chalking pencil FIVE inches in from the edge on the top and right sides of the fabric.

4. Line up the batting at that line you just drew.

5. Using a ruler, draw a line 4.5 inches in from the edge of the batting with the fabric marker on the top and right edges.

6. Next, stack the pieced quilt top on top of the batting RIGHT side facing up inside the square that you just drew in step five on the batting.

Remember: right now you’re only working with the top and right edges.

7. Pin the three layers together half an inch from the edge of the quilt top.

8. Cut the batting five inches bigger than the quilt topping on the bottom/left.

9. Cut the fabric batting five inches bigger than the batting on the bottom/left.

10. Fold the backing layer over so that the fabric’s right side is showing on the front (that’s your border!). Press that down. At this point, your backing fabric should be filled with batting in the border and should overlap the quilt top by 1/2 an inch.

11. Fold under the backing 1/4 an inch and pin down to the quilt top. There should be no raw edges anywhere showing. Leave about three inches from each corner unpinned.

12. Using a zig zag stitch (I chose a contrasting thread color, you could make it blend in tho if you’d like), sew the fabric backing thru all layers (at this point there are four because you are sewing thru the backing twice).

13. When you’ve sewn all four sides, it’s time for the corners. Just fold it and make a pretty tight corner so that it’s a 45 degree angle. Zig zag stitch again.

14. And you’re done!

Wine Corkboard

Over the summer (thanks to my good friend 2 buck Chuck…well more like 3 buck Chuck in NYC) I drank a lot of wine. And, for some reason I always saved the corks. At first it was just a few stacked on my microwave, but pretty soon they had to be moved to a coffee mug, then a bigger coffee mug and finally, a zip lock. I needed something to do with all these corks I had and so I was inspired to make this wine cork board. It is super easy to make and only requires that you drink a lot of wine, who can say no to that?

Materials
Wine corks
glue
Old picture frame with the glass and picture parts taken out (this is for the shell of the corkboard.)

Directions
Arrange corks however you want so that they fit inside your frame. Then glue down and your finished you have your very own awesome wine cork board. A little tip, it is cool if you glue the corks so the label shows because it then can serve a pratical function of a cork board while at the same time showing off your awesome wine taste.

Vegetarian Cookbook

My friends and I made this vegetarian cookbook together with all our favorite recipes. You can make your own by downloading this word template, here.

You can also download my cookbook and try some of my favorite foods. Right click and download to save it HERE.

Show N’ Tell: Pinwheel Quilt

I made this quilt the summer before I started college. The backing is the same floral of the border — a fabric I adored in my mom’s stash and she sweetly gave me for this quilt. I didn’t quilt it but instead tied it. I wanted to be done already, tehehe.

Crochet Head Band/Ear Warmer

Since it is finally starting to get cold in New York I decided it was time to start wearing winter gloves, scarves and hats. Except that if I wear one of the awesome beanies I learned how to make (in non-crochet speak) then my hair is all messed up for my professional job. So, I invented this headband/ear warmer. It has buttons underneath so you don’t have to slide it on your head but instead can just button it on over your ears. Plus, it has a flower cause thats just pretty.

Materials needed:

Yarn
Crochet needle
Thread
Buttons
Sewing needle

Directions

Step 1:

Crochet (single stich) a rectangle long enough to touch behind your head and wide enough to cover your ears.

Step 2:

After you are done crocheting that you need to sew two buttons to one end. Loosen the yarn across from the buttons so that it loops around the buttons.

Step 3:

For the finishing touch I crocheted a little flower. Do this by doing a crochet chain and then link together to make a loop. Then keep on building off of that loop (same method) until you have a flower. Attach with a different color of thread by hooking to headband to make flower middle.

Done, no more cold ears or hat hair 🙂

Reese’s Girl Stencil T-Shirt

I love Reese’s. Like really love them. I have eaten as many as four King Sized packages at once before. But I hate how expensive all the Reese’s gear is online or in the Hershey’s store. So I made my own! (PS: My mirror is really dirty in these pictures, that’s not paint on the shirt).

Supplies
Acrylic paints
Fabric medium (purchase in your paint section)
T-shirt
Packaging tape

Tools
Stencil brush
Fine point brush
Xacto knife
Cutting pad

Directions
1. Resize the design in Photoshop to get it the size you want for your shirt. It is okay if the design gets fuzzy because you’ve made it bigger. Print out the design.

2. Cover the entire design with strips of packaging tape. You could also use contact paper but I find that makes my blade sticky.

3. Cut out the solid BLACK parts with your Xacto.

4. There is an important trick, however. Some parts like the black part of her eyes would fall out if you cut the whole thing out. Thus, you need to keep “bridges” still intact. For example, in the following illustration you would NOT cut where the pink dots are.

Cut the black circle part of the eye out just until you reach the pink dots. This ensures that the large circle doesn’t fall out of the stencil.

5. If you make a mistake, just use scotch tape to tape the piece back in. If you find that you should have made a bridge somewhere and you didn’t (you will know you messed up if the stencil is really flimsy and something won’t stay in place) then use tape to make a bridge.

6. You should print a SECOND copy of this design and cut out the Reeses words in that separate stencil. Cut out the entire package to make the Reeses on your first design but don’t worry about the words. Do the words as a completely separate stencil.

7. When you’re done, tape the stencil to your shirt.

8. Mix 1 part acrylic paint with 1 part fabric medium. This makes the fabric softer so it will fit to your body instead of being stiff.

9. The trick to stenciling is to make sure you barely have any paint on your brush. Yes this takes longer but the brush must be very dry of paint or else it will bubble under the stencil.

10. Once you’ve stenciled everything, peel off the stencil. It will originally look strange because paint didn’t go in all of those bridges spots. Using a small brush fill in those holes.

11. This is also where you add color if you’d like it. I painted her hair yellow, her teeth white, and added a white eyeball center.