One Pretty Thing

We are excited to be featured on One Pretty Thing again! The Princess Scarf is included on today's Knitting Roundup!

If you're here from OPT, stick around a second and register your vote ... not for the Elections on Tuesday, but for Sara & Sarah's Challenge No. 6: Knitting for Little Girls! Do you like the Princess Scarf or the Winter Garden Stocking Cap better? Who are Sara & Sarah? We are two friends dueling it out every other week over different crafts. We are having a lot of fun & thanks for visiting our little blog!

And ... if you've never visited One Pretty Thing, it's an amazing website with lots of pictures and links every day to tutorials for all sorts of crafts: sewing, cooking, crafting with kids, knitting, etc! Click over there and be prepared to get lost in crafting ideas!

Winter Garden Stocking Cap Tutorials

Since the Winter Garden Stocking Cap is taking a beating in the polls, I thought I might try campaigning for votes by posting a tutorial!  Actually, two tutorials! You can find both of them after the jump.

First, is my Basic Stocking Cap pattern.  This great pattern can be adapted to any head size and contains instructions for doing this. Second is instructions for making the Felted Wool Flowers.  These little buds are fast and easy to make, and would brighten up any outfit.

Now, how's about some votes so we can get that little girl her Thomas train!

Challenge No. 6: Knitting for Little Girls - The Submissions

Read more about the Winter Garden Stocking Cap here.

Read more about the Princess Scarf here.

Princess Scarf - About It & Tutorial

My submission for Challenge No. 6: Knitting for Little Girls ... a Princess Scarf. I am calling this a "Princess Scarf" because it's Cinderella's trademark colors, it has beads knit throughout for some pizzazz, and there are knitted pom poms on the ends! (And, the recipient may be a little princess herself.).

Now if you like it too, then vote for it! :-)

This is my first knitted project in a while (there are a couple of UFOs sitting around here begging to be finished) and it was cool to knit again.

About It. The finished measurements are 31" (excluding the pom poms) x 2.5". The yarn is supersoft: Tajmahal Superfine Merino  (70% merino superfine, 22% silk & 8% cashmere ... nice!). For the knitters out there ... made with size 7 Addi turbo needles and I strung the beads onto the yarn. The pom poms were a fun addition and easy to do because you can just tie them onto both ends of the scarf at the very end (as opposed to knitting them on at the beginning and ends). Pom poms are knit flat, edge seamed and stuffed with polyfil. Oh and there are about 400 beads in here. Whew.

A Garden for Her Head

Imagine it's February in International Falls, Minnesota.  You're in the 5th month of winter.  The crisp white snow has been trampled and driven into a filthy, slushy mess.  The sun hasn't shown in a month. The weather guy just predicted sleet and falling temperatures.  It's a grey world and you wonder if you can get to May without shooting yourself.

What you need to cure your winter greys is an adorable blonde with a spring garden on her head!  How could this sight not make you smile?  And it's warm, to boot.

Inspiration!  The Winter Garden Stocking Cap was born.

A Friend With Benefits

"Sara" Here. So ... we told you here how we met and that we've been friends for lots of years now but one of the other things you've probably realized about "the other Sarah" is her God - given talent for thrifting! I mean seriously, she can find things ...VALUABLE things in any thrift store. Goodwill should have a poster with her picture - and they should be afraid when she enters, because that thing marked $2.99 will find her and it'll really be worth $50 or something crazy!

Yesterday, I went to Sarah's house to plan for our upcoming First Annual Crafty Spooky Halloween Cocktail Party (I just gave that a lot of adjectives, huh?). Good time as usual! I walked in and right away, Sarah said, I've collected another "Sara pile"...music to my ears!

This little collection contained a couple of real gems - and one of them was so awesome that I wanted to do a little jig. Can you guess which one? It's the middle picture - pink and green pom poms!!! On a string ... heavy weight - probably upholstery weight! What? Someone didn't want this and took it to Goodwill? The horror; my gain. I LOVE this. You may have noticed that I have a thing for "pom poms" ... here and here for example. And of course, I have another work in process that includes pom poms too; I really like them (it's for the Halloween Cocktail Party, so it'll be up soon).

Another upcoming project, for which I already have the fabric and just don't have the time (ugh), is curtains for one of the girl's rooms. It's the pink and green room, matching these letters. I think these pom poms will be making their way into those curtains...someday. 

As for the other two presents from Sarah ... my house is still way into THOMAS the TRAIN, so maybe a pillow from this big piece of Thomas fabric, and the dress pattern - too cute. We'll see some halters in the making next summer for sure!

Thanks Sarah! 

Warhol "Dress" Top No. 3

So I mentioned a while back that I really like the pattern for making MADE's Warhol Dresses so much that I made, hmmm.... 5 of them! Well here is the 3rd one (the first 2 are here). This green & white knit fabric is the remnant of a tube top I bought a Target a while back. Me & the tube top ran our course, so it transferred to my ever growing "refashion" pile (in other words, the mound of clothes I'll never ever wear again, but seem to think I can make something else out of!?!? so I cannot possibly bear to throw them out). When I pilfer through my refashion pile, I always land back on this white & green, so finally I decided to do something with it. I love the contrasting red band at the top .... kind of Christmasy! Oh and I didn't even take the sides in, so this was extra easy- I just left it fall blousy on A and eliminated a whole step in making this little top!

PS ... she had a fabulous time in the pumpkin patch. She wanted to take about 10 of them home because they were all "her favorite."

What's Up Next!

A little challenge using one of Sara & Sarah's other crafting favorites ...knitting! Projects due next Wednesday when voting starts again!

The Winner of the Halloween Challenge is.......

SARA!

The final vote was Sara 56 vs. Sarah 46.  It was a close race all along, but Sara was victorious with her adorable Candy Corn Skirt!

This fun and easy skirt made from Sara's original pattern is worthy of the crown.  Having such a cute little model certainly didn't hurt! 

Tune in tomorrow to find out what we will be up to next.

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Recap of Challenge No. 5

Projects:

Candy Corn Skirt

Makit & Bakit Halloween Inspired Luminaries

Look What I Found!

I haven't talked much about thrifting lately.  Well, I haven't talked much about anything lately.  I started a new job and it's been eating up my time and energy.  However, I did hit 7 Goodwills and 1 Savers on Sunday with my friends Jan and Gail.  This was by far my favorite purchase of the day:

How cool is this coat?  It's a vintage Astrakin by Lepshire faux lamb's wool swing coat with a mink collar.  It was made in France so la-di-da!  I'm going to be one fancy mademoiselle!

The coat is in excellent  condition; it looks brand new.  There are gaiters in the sleeves to keep the wind out.  It's a 3/4 sleeve so I can show off my full length gloves when I go to the opera (which I've only done once in my life and that was in July, but I like to be prepared for these things).

The detail is incredible.  It's the kind of thing where you look at it and say, "They don't make 'em like this any more."  Even the buttons are incredible.

I paid a lot for this coat.  A whopping $45!  It was worth every penny. 

Makit & Bakit-Inspired Halloween Luminaries with Tutorial!

Remember Makit & Bakit suncatchers?  If you don't, I'll remind you.  They were suncatcher kits that had a metal frame that you filled in with plastic crystals, then melted the plastic in the oven.  When you were done, you had a suncatcher that looked a lot like stained glass and which would inevitably end up in your grandma's kitchen window. Well, I decided to apply that idea to my submission.

 

The Candy Corn Skirt



A month ago or so, I was walking through Joann's -as I all too often do - and I came across this: Candy Corn Pom Pom Fringe...instantly I knew I had to make something with it. I left the fringe at the store but kept thinking about it, so I knew that I "needed" to go back and get it! At some point, the idea of a Candy Corn skirt came to me.  So, I went back to Joann's and stocked up on the pom pom fringe along with orange fabric (that I think looks an awful lot like pumpkins) and some yellow gingham.   I have made more than a couple "even" tiered skirts so I wanted to do something a little different this time -- enter the angled tiers.  I love them! Originally, I thought I'd put another layer of fringe along the bottom but after getting the other two tiers in there, I thought it might be overkill to have even more fringe, so I left it off. I like it, but what do you think? More pom poms? Just enough?

Challenge No. 5 (Halloween!) Submissions

Our fifth challenge is to create a craft with a Halloween theme. This was a fun one because there are so many fun Halloween-y things to choose from! The submissions this time are:

Sara & Sarah will each post individual descriptions about their submissions--so if you like more pictures and details about our projects check back for those. Voting is open now! So vote for your fav and stay tuned to see if your favorite wins!

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If you're looking for another fun idea, check out our cool Halloween Candy Apple Boxes here! There is a full tutorial with templates too.

Farewell, Old Friend

I made a couple changes in my sewing room this weekend.  One change was because of an awesome Goodwill find.  The other was a needed change, but a bittersweet one.

First, the awesome find.  This is my old cutting table.

I got this drafting table at Goodwill for $15 a few years back.  It makes a great cutting table because the height is adjustable.  You can raise it up so you aren't hunched over the table while you cut.  It was perfectly functional, but as you can see, there is some wasted space beneath it.  I wasn't even  considering a new cutting table when I ran across this at Goodwill:

Our Next Challenge

Is appropriately holiday related ... we'll be crafting it out over a Halloween-themed project in round 5! 

And the Winner of Challenge 4 is....

Sarah!!!  

The final vote was 46 to 39.  It was a close one, but Sarah squeaked by with a win with the hockey net she made for her nephews!  Sarah gets to wear the tiara for the next two weeks.

Thank you everyone for your continued support of our blogging venture and for voting!  Come back tomorrow to find out what we'll be doing for Challenge No. 5.

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Recap of Challenge No. 4

Projects:

$20 Hockey Net

Go Fish!

Halloween Candy Apple Treat Boxes

These adorable Halloween treat boxes are sturdy and large enough to hold a caramel apple. They can be used for other party favors as well.

You can download the tutorial, complete with templates, below.

Well, dang!

I made Sara's daughter Izzie a dress so I could enter it in a vintage sewing contest.  Well, I didn't make the finalists.  Frown.  But, a very cute girl now has a very cute dress, so it wasn't a total loss.