Upcycling: help, I'm drowning in old t-shirts!

T-shirts have been a staple style in my closet so, naturally, over the years I have accumulated a lot, a lot, a lot, A LOT of t-shirts (and maybe even an alot of t-shirts). Some I love and I've worn to holes, some I got on sale, some as hand-me-downs, etc. Did I mention that I have a lot of t-shirts yet?

But what to do with a closet full of t-shirts where the majority of them you don't even wear anymore? Of course you can donate them or hand them down to someone else but what about the older ones with holes or the ones where you love the colour or the pattern or that oh so soft fabric that you can't bear to part with? How about getting a little creative and upcycle those lonely t-shirts sitting in your closet? 

Combing through the interwebs for some inspiration, I came across so many wonderful ideas. I've included below some of the more creative or practical designs:

FRINGE SCARF

Super easy, no sew project. You'd need a good pair of scissors to cut the fabric into small strips. Full tutorial can be found here.

HALTER TOP

This is a super cute halter top! Can be a no sewing project if you just tie the ends. Full tutorial can be found at WobiSobi.

THE HYBRID

Okay, I'm just making up names now. Two shirts are required for this project, ideally a larger sized shirt for the bottom (e.g. guy t-shirt). However, seeing as girl t-shirts are often made with a much thinner fabric, it may match better to use a large sized girl t-shirt either from the thrift shop or on sale from the clearance rack. If you use a much larger t-shirt for the bottom (a.k.a. when you cut it the diameter for the bottom shirt is larger than the top one), you can make it into a ruffle skirt too! Picture from Pinterest.

FISHTAIL SUNDRESS

Another beautiful creation from WobiSobi. This dress requires two t-shirts, cutting, and some sewing. You can choose the same colours or maybe mix it up with some contrast or even stripes! 

COLORBLOCK MAXI DRESS

Your husband/father/brother/boyfriend/friend/guy-next-door has a lot of shirts too? TAKE THEM ALL!!!!!! *ahem*. Be sure to ask first tho =). This project requires 2~4 shirts, depending on the number of colour blocks and length you would like yourself. Cutting and sewing required. This project can be found on Clothed Much and it also shows how you can connect larger shirts to smaller ones (fold and sew) as well as how to tailor the t-shirt to accentuate your natural waist. 

CROCHET SHIRT

Oh god, how I've been coveting crochet and lacy designs recently. This project does require cutting and sewing and well as a t-shirt and some sort of a lace/doily to cover the hole. Image from Pinterest.

T-SHIRT WEAVING

Wow. this is just downright impressive and very creative. I'm a knitter myself but it would've never occurred to me to do something like this. The instructions for this can be found on bunte freunde. Although the instructions are not in English, there are a lot of photos to guide you along (you could always try to google translate the page too). From what I gather, all you need is a shirt (it might have to be a little looser depending on how many weaves you want since you're pulling it in at the back), some scissors, and maybe a little bit of sewing to anchor the last row. 

I'm so excited to try these upcycling ideas now~ I'll have to look through my closet and see what shirts will fall victim to my experimentation >=) *mu hua hua*

Which ones would you like to try?

Patching jeans: part 1

I got jeans. Lots and lots of jeans. Well okay, not that many but jeans are definitely my staple bottoms. However, misfortune has befallen my jeans and they are plagued with... *gasp*... HOLES.

Unlike other pants where holes often mean the death of a beloved pair of pants, many jeans often come with holes to begin with and so those "unintentional holes" can be more easily forgiven... sometimes. What to do when the holes start to look more obvious? Or if you simply just... don't want holes in your pants?

The pair of jeans that first got me thinking about patching actually came with a hole as part of the design but after months of wear and tear, the blue threads that originally partially covered the hole were pretty much all gone. So, after some searching on the interwebs for inspiration, I found this idea that was closest to what I originally wanted to do:

Using a contrast fabric to patch the hole from Junie and Jack

Or even something dainty and feminine like a lace insert!

Tutorial on the forge

Or perhaps something that is more subtle?

PDF tutorial at Kerried Away

Which you could probably jazz up with some contrasting coloured threads like yellows or oranges (even though it's just a darker blue in the following examples)

Photo from Pink Suede Shoe

Some more searching brought up even more creative options:

Patching on the outside? Little hearts? =O

Tutorial by Amy Smart

 Or monsters!!!!

Idea from Inside NanaBread's Head

So many ideas and not enough jeans with holes (first world problems)! Look forward to part 2 where of patching jeans when I actually get around to trying some of these ideas ^^

Which one do you like?

Blast from the past: Orisinal

Wow nostalgia. A friend reminded me of this site, Orisinal, today and it really brings me back to my high school days of not paying attention in computer class =P 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were still new games being added to the collection. The main theme of all of these games seem to be a fusion of adorable animals, pretty backgrounds, and soothing music. Most of the games are very straight forward and, while I'm not really good at these type of timed/reaction games, I liked to play them for the cuteness, graphics, and sound effects. 

Below are two screen caps of a game that is new to me that I'd like to recommend. The objective of the game, Casanova, is that you're a giraffe that is trying to kiss other giraffes. Adorable right? You control the length of your neck by clicking your mouse (more clicks = longer extension, stop clicking = shortens) to adjust to the height of the oncoming giraffes. The graphics and adorable kissing sound effects (plus little hearts that show up) make this game a must play!

KISSING GIRAFFES <3 

What more of a reason do we need? 

Turtle quilt: underestimating the diagonal

After planning out my turtle quilt, I broke down the pattern and assigned each turtle as one, 9 inch unit:

As you can see from the diagram, each turtle is made up of 4 smaller, 4.5" squares. Accounting for a 1/4" seam allowance around each square, I cut 4" squares for the smaller green triangles and 5" squares to make the larger green triangles. WHICH COMES TO MY FIRST MISTAKE!

You see this square? 

So it makes perfectly good sense to leave a 1/4" seam allowance on either side (meaning you cut a 5" square) if you want to piece a square with a final dimension of 4.5". BUT (and yes, unfortunately this took me a while to realize and figure out) this doesn't work with triangles. As per the diagram above, I needed to piece two triangles together to give me a square with a final dimension of 4.5". So, I cut myself a 5" square and then cut it across the diagonal. It look me a lot of staring before I realized...

*GASP*... oh the horror (and mostly just ashamed that I didn't realize it sooner) that I forgot to account for the seam allowance on the diagonal. But okay, okay, I'll just fix it my adding another 1/4" and cut a 5.25" square, right? HERE COMES MY SECOND MISTAKE

Having forgotten about basic triangle geometry, I forgot to account for the fact that a 1/4" seam allowance on the edge does not equal to a 1/4" seam allowance in the diagonal direction (as indicated by the orange line). Oh dear, oh dear, why did I not start with simple squares for my first quilt! So, after doing some calculations (and rounding), I figured out that I needed to add an additional 1/8" to account for the seam allowance on the diagonal.

*Whew* that was a lot of figuring out and recalling old geometry. To conclude for today's post, if you want to piece a square out of two triangles with an edge of 4.5", you have to add 1/4"+1/4" (the regular seam allowance) +1/4"+1/8" (for the diagonal) and cut a square of 5 3/8".

Yoga day!

Recently I've decided to try picking up yoga. I looked around for local yoga studios to check out the prices and I was surprised to see how quickly the cost would build up, whether it be drop-in sessions or monthly memberships. As I had little faith that I would actually attend classes regularly if I did get a monthly membership, I decided to try doing some at home yoga first with our lovely friend, YouTube! I looked around for videos targeted at beginner yogis and came across this channel, Yoga With Adriene.

Both the video and audio are of good quality and she does a very good job explaining the poses and how to position your body. The poses are also quite simple (great for beginners) and mainly focuses on more "stretching" and "warming-up" type of poses as well as a few basic yoga poses in the second half.

Let the yoga journey begin~!

Turtle quilt: template

As I mentioned in my last post, my current project that I'm working on is a queen sized quilt with a turtle pattern! I first got my inspiration for this pattern when I was google-ing "turtle quilt" and came across this image from A Quilter Awakens:

Because this will be my first quilting project (and I anticipate having to make lots and lots of turtles), I decided to steer clear of having to do curves and changed the pattern from circular turtles to rectangular ones instead. 

Now that the pattern is drafted, it's time to get supplies!