Yo-Yo Quilt Remnants Christmas Ornament Thingy

A while back, my cousin found part of this old yo yo quilt that was made by our great-grandmother Eugenia.  She wanted to share it among relatives so she mailed out pieces of the quilt to other relatives, including me.  I've never met my great grandmother, so I think its pretty cool that I now I have something of hers that she not only touched, but made herself. It's only a couple of yo-yos, and I don't make yo-yo quilts, and I have no intention to start making a yo-yo quilt because of it.  But I also didn't want to just hoard random yo-yo pieces sitting in a ziploc bag without doing anything crafty with it.  The color palette is pretty random and totally outdated.  I figured it was just made out of random fabric scraps that she had.  Whatever the case, I wanted to work with it.

So with the help of Pinterest (searched: yo-yo quilt ideas) I figured making an ornament out of it, is a way of utilizing the yo yo pieces instead of keeping it in a plastic bag forever.  I wouldn't have enough pieces to make a project bigger than this, anyways.

At first I thought of using a styrofoam ball to use as a base, since you can just pin the yo yo pieces on it, but styrofoam balls are kind of expensive. Or at least cost more than I had thought.  I had no idea, I thought they were cheap for some reason.  Instead, I decided to go with the "use what you have"* route, and stitch the yo-yo's together in an overlapping pattern, and stuff it with polyfill.  I also decided to set a color scheme and just use the red/pink/black floral pieces (these pieces I had the most of, so it worked out that way), just to make it look cohesive.

Things I wish I had done now that I think of it in hindsight: iron out the pieces so that they are less puffy and easier to stitch.  I am still contemplating adding some sort of glitter or sequin to it and making it over the top, but for now it's hanging in my room.



It's 2016 and my new year's craft resolutions are to finish my damn vasarely blanket and to improve my sewing machine skills.  Here's hoping I update this blog in the near future with those resolutions being fulfilled.  Cheers.






*this must be my craft motto, use what you have at all costs.
(Creativity is fun when it challenges you)

Halloween Mary Poppins Costume

I was Mary Poppins this year for Halloween.  Pretty much because I wanted to use stuff that I already had in my closet.  The crazy ruffle puffy shirt was given to me years ago from my auntie.  It's a pretty ridiculous shirt. I question her style choices.  I knew I would never wear it unless it was part of a Halloween costume.  I think I'm just going to call it The Halloween Shirt.  Captain Hook?  Prince? Seinfeld? The possibilities are endless, I'm sure.

The only things I had to DIY for this costume, was the bowtie (I just used an old gift ribbon and attached it to a pin backing) and a ridiculously small hat that I attached to a headband. I guess that is considered a fascinator.  I used stiff black felt to make the hat, which was constructed out of three pieces: a big oval piece of felt (bottom brim), a smaller oval piece of felt (top), and a long rectangle piece of felt (to form a cylinder), in which the length is equal to the circumference of the smaller oval.  Then I stitched the top part to the cylinder part of the hat , and then hot glued that part to the base of the hat. I had the felt in my craft supply already, so the only thing I bought were the fake flowers/holly.  Mary Poppins' hat has daisies on it, but I just decided to use whatever white flowers that came with the fake holly I bought.  It's holly, right?  For some reason I kept thinking they were cranberries.

Anyways, with a Michael's coupon used on the fake flowers, my Halloween costume cost a total of $0.70.  Good job, me!


BTW, the Giants won the World Series and I didn't work on my vasarely blanket while watching the game like I imagined I'd do.  But they still won.  So awesome.  

"Cheer' (Flag) Bows - Senior Night

Here are bows I made for my flag kids' Senior Night.  The team is made up of all seniors, so I decided personalized bows would be a good idea. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, so embroidering names onto grosgrain ribbon was a no.  I considered puff paint, but decided that it would be too messy and time consuming.  Then I had this idea of using alphabet stickers (something that I've already had), sticking them onto glitter ribbon and then using sparkle Mod Podge to seal it on there so it wouldn't peel off.  The kids have a lot of L's and E's in their names, so I had to buy another sticker sheet.  But, here's an awesome tip: Upside-down 7's make good L's. :-D

These are what I ended up with:

Also, I have a massive obsession with sparkle Mod Podge.  I would slather it on everything if I could. 

Shout out to sparkle mod podge.  You're awesome.

"Cheer" (Flag) Bows

As a coach for a high school flag team, one of the things I've tried to incorporate my craftiness in would be making hair bows for the kids.  It is a quick and easy craft that gets them loads of compliments.  There are youtube tutorials everywhere.  And if you have the right Michael's coupon, you can make bows for an entire nation.  Okay, that's not true.  But a spool of fancy ribbon with a 50% off coupon can be about $6 and make about 8-9 bows.  8-9 bows!!  I don't even have that many kids on the team!  Plus, the bows will be special because no other team will have it and you can say they are custom made and be all private school sorts of fancy.  So yeah, $6 for a single bow that you  buy from your uniform vendor or $6 worth of ribbon, enough for one of a kind bows to tress a small nation?  The latter, for sure!

The kids go to Nationals every spring to compete, and so I wanted to make something super duper sparkly to go with their performance wear.  Obviously, it needed to be gold and even more obviously it needed to have glitter.  The first year, I chose this gold glitter ribbon, with bigger, hexagonal holographic glitter embedded in so it'll looks super sparkly in the right light at the right angle.  The width of the ribbon was about 1.5, which wasn't as big as I wanted it to be, so I layered it with a white satin ribbon, to get that contrast in there and make it look bigger.  They turned out awesome.

The second year, I was contemplating making the same kind of bows.  But, during the Christmas season I saw this ridiculous gold sequin ribbon that I couldn't pass down. And, it was about 2 inches wide so it didn't need another layer of white ribbon.  These turned out awesome as well.

We had one boy on the team, so he didn't need to have a bow.  At the end of the season I made him a bowtie just for fun.

Both ribbons I used were wired since they are originally made for gift wrapping, but because its a flag team, I don't think its a big deal.  Cheer might be a different story, since there's a safety issue with all the tumbling and the stunting happening, but I don't know what the rules are for that.

Materials used:  ribbon (about 30 inches per bow), mini cable ties, ponytail holders that match hair
Tools: scissors, glue gun, cardboard about 7inches wide to use as a template