Adventures in sewing: Shirt, birds, machine cover, scarf

Here are some projects that occurred during the parental invasion...

I turned a dress into a shirt. It was a t-shirt dress that used to go down to my knees. I wore it to the Kentucky Derby with a big hat that had a big purple flower and big purple feather on it (homemade of course). And it was cold and poured down rain, so I was also wearing spandex leggings and polka dot rain boots. What. A. Sight. But I'll get much more use out of this shirt now.

I started my bird creations. I only finished one and I have about nine more to go (or less if I decide I don't need that many). I have an idea of what I'm going to do with them when I'm done, but that could change at any moment. I only had one accident while figuring out how to sew these things...I sewed the head shut, but I knew I did it as soon as it happened! Sewing things you're going to stuff is slightly different from sewing flat pieces of material. I think I have the hang of it now, at least a little bit.

The sewing machine cover turned out better than I expected. My mom and I went shopping and bought half a yard of upholstery fabric. I knew there was going to be trouble when I started taking measurements and estimating the fabric. Mother dearest kept saying, "Just cut it! Don't worry about it! Just cut it!". Uh, no, sorry, that's not how I operate. I'm my father's daughter when it comes to that. Measure, measure, measure and measure again, then cut. If I would have "just cut" like she insisted we would have had to buy more fabric and the world may have come to an end. I wanted to line up the print, but I knew we wouldn't have enough fabric if we cut it that way. Thus, the print is not straight and does not match, but I think it turned out just fine and we didn't have to go back to the store.

And see the "chair" in the picture above? It's a storage ottoman that I bought at Meijer and pops and I put some casters on it to make it like my mom's sewing chair. My little sewing station is coming together!!!!!

Here's my collection of sewing books. I did lots of research and narrowed it down to these three.

I also made a no-sew scarf from an old tank top. I found the tutorial on Shwin & Shwin. It's super simple, super cute and super quick. (Pardon my t-shirt, I was in a hurry to take the picture before I forgot.) I'm not too keen on the pink, but it's the only thing I could find since I was in a hurry to make it because I was so excited.

I think Lizzy looks even better in the scarf!