Painted Flour Sack Towel Skirt

Did anyone guess which project was mine on SYTYC?  It was the Painted Flour Sack Towel Skirt, and I got second place in that round!  This weeks theme is Upcycle, so go check out the great projects and vote for your favorite.  I really wanted to title this project "Girl's Ombre Chevron Painted Flour Sack Tea Towel Skirt", but I was pretty sure that would be a little too long.  That pretty much sums it up though.  This skirt is made out of a flour sack tea towel (think the ones that grandma used to embroider on).  Using a tea towel keeps sewing to a minimum since you don't have to hem it!  Sweet!  I found the idea to use a flour sack towel on this post here at Filth Wizardry.

Now that you know which project is mine, I can share a tutorial with you!  All you need is a flour sack towel, blue and white fabric paints, 1" wide painter's or masking tape, and 1/2" elastic.  First wash, dry and iron your towel.  I got mine in the embroidery section of the fabric store.  It was 28" square.

Cut your towel in half down the middle.  The long hemmed sides will be the bottom of your skirt.

Now you need to tape off your chevron pattern.  Place your ruler at a 45° angle from the bottom right corner and draw a line with a disappearing ink marker.

From that line, measure two inches away and draw another line.  Repeat until you have gone across the entire width of the fabric.

Turn the ruler around and make 45° angle lines in the opposite direction.

Continue making lines two inches away from that line across the whole width of the fabric.

Tape along the lines, cutting the tape with scissors at the corners to make sure you get nice clean edges.  I taped mine directly to some freezer paper that I used to protect my surface.  Do the same with the other half of your towel.  Try your best to make it so that the chevron will line up when you sew the sides together.

Time to paint!  I always like to know exactly what product people use, so this is it.  Tulip's Soft Matte fabric paint in Turquoise and Glacier White.

I started with my paint full strength for the bottom section, mixed half white and half blue for the next section up, and then just eyeballed it for the other two.  Just make sure to mix enough for both halves so you don't have to go back and try to figure out what color to make it again.  Start on the tape and paint in towards the towel so you are not shoving paint under the tape.

Once the paint is dry, follow the instructions on the bottle to set it.  Usually this involves ironing or tossing it in the dryer. 

After that, you can assemble your skirt.  Pin and sew the two side seams, right sides together, to form a large tube.

Zig-zag or serge the raw edge on the top of the skirt.  Fold and iron the top down 1 inch and sew it around leaving and opening for the elastic.  Thread the elastic through the opening, sew the ends together, and then sew the opening shut.

That's it!

Comfortable, cheap, easy, and cute!  A lady even asked me where I got the adorable chevron fabric.  She was shocked when I told her how I made it.  Best compliment I could get!



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Oz Inspired Felt Hot Air Balloons

This is a sponsored post written by me for Disney and The Blueprint Social.  All opinions are my own.  To read my full disclosure policy, click here.

Growing up I was a huge fan of all things Oz.  Naturally I was very excited to see that the Oz the Great and Powerful was coming out.  When you have young children, you don't get many chances to go out to the movies, so I have been waiting and waiting for it to be released on Blu-ray/DVD.  My wait is finally over!  I was sent the Blu-ray Combo Pack to preview and watched it right away.  I really enjoyed it!  The costumes and scenery were amazing.  Definitely a must see for any Oz fan! The movie tells the story of how the wizard came to Oz in a hot air balloon, so I was inspired to create these adorable felt hot air balloons.  Every time I look at them I want to take my own adventure to the land of Oz!

Oz the Great and Powerful is now available to purchase!  To find out more about where to get the Blu-ray Combo Pack click here.

I've seen several examples of hot air balloons made like this using paper, but I'm not much of a paper crafter.  I'm a thrower awayer, so when I see something made of paper laying around, my first instinct is to toss it.  I know... it's a problem. ;)  Anyway, you can use these for your Oz the Great and Powerful party and then hang them up in the kid's room for a decoration after! 

To make these hanging hot air balloons, you will need the following supplies:

• free hot air balloon template that I created just for you! (personal use only)
• stiffened felt - you can buy sheets of it already stiffened at the craft store or follow my tutorial for stiffening your own here.
• embroidery floss and embroidery needle
• hot glue gun 
• scissors

Cut out your felt using the hot air balloon template.  You will need to cut out five for each balloon you want to make.  I recommend using tape to hold down your template.  Pins will create holes that will not go away.

Stack your shapes and line them up to match.

Fold your template in half and use it to draw a line down the middle of the top and bottom pieces of the stack.
 

Thread an embroidery needle with all 6 strands of embroidery floss (don't separate the floss, just use the whole strand).  I used 45 inches for each balloon.  You can change the length when you go to hang them up.  Tie a knot at the end and push your needle through the top of the stack.  Make sure you start at the bottom of the balloon.

Following your lines, do a running stitch through the middle of the entire stack of felt.  Don't worry that there is "sewing" involved.  If you can do a lacing card, you can do this.  It doesn't even matter how nice your stitches look because they won't show!

Once you get to the top, push the needle through to the middle of your stack and pull it though.  We only have five pieces of felt, so just go though two or three of them.  Take your needle off, and just let that string hang out for a while.

Fold the top and bottom pieces of your stack in half.  This should hide the stitches that you just did.

Trim any parts off that are not matching up, and hot glue the edges to close them.

Fold the next two pieces in half to get them going in the right direction.  Do NOT fold the center piece.  Yours should look something like this now.

The felt will not want to stay folded, so you need to tack it down with some more stitches.  Thread your needle with the embroidery floss that's hanging out the top of your balloon. Stitch through the top of the pieces that you just folded and the part that you glued.  Kind of hard to explain.  Hopefully the photo helps.

It will just make a little stitch like this.

  Repeat on the other folded end and on the other side of the balloon to get all of those folds to stay down.

Take your string back to the middle of the balloon to hang.  Now you can trim the embroidery floss to the length that you want and tie a knot in the end to keep it from unraveling.

That's it!  They are ready to hang!  My favorite part is how they twirl around when the AC in on.  So fun!

Click here and like the the film on Facebook for a chance to win an awesome prize pack!!!

Find the latest on Oz the Great and Powerful on these sites:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OzTheGreatAndPowerful 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DisneyOzMovie 
• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/disneystudios/oz-the-great-and-powerful/

For more Oz inspired projects, check out these other awesome blogs:





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Announcements!

"Announcements, announcements, announcements!  A terrible death to die, terrible death to die, A terrible death to be talked to death, A terrible death to die!"  Am I the only one who sang that at camp?  ANYWAY...

I've got a few things to tell you about.  First, round one of So You Think You're Crafty is up.  The theme this week was "paint".  Go check it out.  Bet you can't tell which project is mine!


Also, my Etsy shop is back up and running!  I took a little sanity break, (it can get really boring making the same thing over and over again) but I'm back in business now.  If you're in the market for a birthday crown, go check mine out.


And finally, are you following along?  I'm on all of these social media sites, and I'd LOVE to see you there!





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How to Stiffen Felt

I'm currently working on a project that requires the use of stiffened felt.  You can buy it already stiffened at the craft store, but then you are limited to the colors and sizes that they carry.  Also, if you know me, you know I am particular about what kind of felt I use.  It was surprisingly easy and cheap to stiffen the felt myself.  There are lots of different methods out there, but for my purposes, I found using regular old white school glue worked great!

Mix approximately one part school glue to one part warm water.  I am too lazy to measure when it comes to this sort of thing, so really I just dumped some glue into my bowl and added some warm water.  Pretty sure I ended up with more water than glue, but it still worked perfectly... and saved me on glue.  Make sure to mix it until it's mostly smooth.  You don't want the chunks of glue sticking to your felt.

Cut your pieces of felt slightly larger than you need them to be.  The felt will shrink up a bit and warp as it dries.  For this reason I also recommend cutting out any shapes AFTER stiffening.  Submerge your felt in the mixture and make sure the whole piece gets nice and soaked.  If you are doing multiple colors, start with the lightest, as the dyes may bleed.

Remove your felt and gently wring it out over your bowl.  Don't twist or pull it.  A light squeeze to get out the extra moisture is all you need.  You still want it to be wet, just no sopping wet.  Sorry, no photo.  Hard to do when your hands are covered in glue water!

Lay your felt on wax paper and smooth it out flat.  Don't worry that it's wrinkled from wringing it out, we will fix that later.  Let it dry completely.  We have lovely 100 degree weather right now, so I took mine outside to dry faster.  At least the heat is good for something!

Once your felt has dried completely, it should be nice and stiff.  Now is that part where we take care of the wrinkles.  Just sandwich it between two cloths and iron.  It will come out perfect and ready for your craft project!  (If you are using acrylic or polyester felt, just try not to leave the iron on there too long.  That stuff is made out of plastic.)

Just a little FYI, stiffened felt will show every hole that you put in it with a pin.  I recommend taping any patterns that you use instead of pinning.  Check back next week to see what I make with all of this beautiful stiffened felt!



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DIY Library Bags

It's officially Summer break at our house, so it's time to think of things to keep the kids busy.  We will probably be taking a few trips to the library so, of course, we need some library bags for all of our books.

We like to make up stories that are frequented by knights, dragons, princesses, and unicorns, so these are perfect!

I picked up the canvas tote bags at the craft store and used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the design in some smooth heat transfer vinyl.  And, you guessed it, time for another Silhouette promotion!  From now until June 15th you can get any of the following amazing deals:

Did you catch that?  ALL heat transfer products are buy 1 get 1 free!  I think I might even be taking advantage of this sale!  I really want to try the printable heat transfer material.  To get the special pricing, you must click the link HERE and enter promotion code CUTESY at checkout.

Now for the tutorial.  I used shapes dragon, knight silhouette, magical unicorn, princess silhouette, and apple book.  I used Gothic Leaf font for the "O" and Parchment or Old English fonts for the rest (those are both on my computer already and are pretty much the same).  Erase the parts of the images that you don't need and arrange them on the image of the book.  For the princess, delete the small details on her face.  They are too small to cut correctly.

Select your entire image and flip in horizontally to create a mirror image. 

The heat transfer vinyl is loaded without a cutting mat, so be sure to select "load media" instead of cutting mat.

Load it with the shiny side down!!!  Don't ask me how I know this, but if you load it with the shiny side up on accident, you can still turn in back over and cut on the correct side.  Better if you do it right the first time though. :)

Peel away the negative space from the clear backing.  You should be left with your reversed image.

Turn the image over so the words read the correct way, and place them on your tote bag.

Put a cloth over your image and press FIRMLY for 45-60 seconds.  With an image this large, I found it best to focus on half of the image at a time.  Really press hard and don't skimp on the time.  Peel off the clear backing.  If any of the image starts to peel up, try ironing again.   Click here to see a great video tutorial from Silhouette.

Aren't they cute?!

We are going to be stylin' at the library!

Cutesy Crafts is an affiliate of Silhouette America and will receive a commission if my promo code is used. As part of Silhouette's promotion, I was given a free product to use. All opinions are my own. To read my full disclosures click here. 



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