From Tee to V

T-shirts are great for so many reasons - they are comfy, casual, easy to wear and easy to transform. This post doesn’t cover a dramatic transformation, but I have recently been asked to alter a basic tee neckline to a V-neck and thought I’d give you a step-by-step tutorial for this popular and simple alteration.

Here is the Tee in question:

Basic crew neck, with ribbing. Basic, but not very feminine or attractive. So the first step is to get rid of this ribbing. I do this by snipping into the center back just below the stitching on the neckline. Then follow the stitching line around to just past the shoulder seams.

Then, lining up the shoulder seams, I fold the shirt front in half. You won’t get the shirt completely flat, but just make sure the neckline ribbing matches and the fabric below it for a few inches is smooth. Since the t-shirt I’m using has a front logo, I am using this as the point at which the V will stop. (If your shirt is plain, try it on first and mark with a pin or marker the point at which you want your V to stop.) Draw up from that marking to join the shoulder where you stopped cutting.

Cut through both layers down to the V.

Your original ribbed neckline is now removed and you are ready to re-finish your new V neckline.

There are a few choices for finishing your new neckline. If you are lucky enough to find matching new ribbing, you can use that to obtain an authentic finish. I have found that bias tape is a stable and acceptable alternative. Opening one side of the bias tape flat, I start pinning it to the outside, center back of the t-shirt.

Pin all the way around and when you get back to the center back, cut the bias tape about 1″-1 1/2″ longer than necessary to meet the beginning of the tape’s raw edge. Fold the end over itself about 1/2 an inch, lift the beginning of the tape and place the folded end underneath.

Pin through all layers.

Sew all the way around, starting at center back, back stitching at start & finish.  Remove Pins.

Fold the bias tape to the inside of the shirt, bringing about 1/8″ of the shirt fabric with it, just to be safe. Pin all the way around, snipping the V to the first line of stitching before pinning & sewing.

Press neckline & there it is – you have a much better, less choking, V-neck tee!

What do you think? Is this something you’ve done or think you might try now that you’ve seen how easy it is? The same thing can be done to sleeves – cut off and finished to be a tank top. The possibilities are endless with altering t-shirts so I hope this gets you started!

Weekly Menu February 20-26

Happy Wednesday! Just dropping in to post my Dinners this week!

• Easy Lasagna
• Chicken Enchilada Leftovers from last week
• Fresh Salmon Burgers with Lemon-Scented Challah Buns and Sour Cream Dill Sauce
• Homemade Pizza
• Tuscan White Bean Soup with Prosciutto
• BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
• And trying this new Ezekiel Bread Recipe this weekend

While I have several tried & true recipes, I can’t help trying new recipes, mostly found on pinterest. Have a new sewing post ready to go out soon – thanks for reading!

Weekly Menu

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

I forgot to post my menu yesterday, but it works out because, since we’re on the topic of recipes & it’s Valentines Day, I thought I’d share with you a “recipe” we made last night to give away today!

Source: griffithsrated.blogspot.com via Jaime on Pinterest

You can find the recipe here at the original source, but just for expediency, here’s how it works:

What you’ll need:

- square pretzels
- Hershey’s Hugs or Kisses
- plain M&Ms (I was late in the game and could only find peanut butter – still YUMMY)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 200°.  (If your oven runs hot you may want to turn the temp down to 170°.)

 

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or Silpat.  Place the pretzels on and top them with the hugs.  

 

Bake for 4-5 minutes until the chocolate is shiny and soft (but NOT melting – they should still hold their shape).  

 

Carefully place an M&M in the center of each hug and press it down to spread the chocolate.  

 

Allow to cool completely (a few minutes in the fridge works perfectly) and enjoy!

My son is 4 and this was a PERFECT project for us to do together. He was able to unwrap the hugs and set them on the pretzel, and when the pans come out of the oven, they are just slightly warm so while we cautioned him on touching them, just for general practice’s sake, they were not piping hot. Not all of ours looked as perfect as these pictures depict,  but that’s the charm of it, right?!

Here’s what’s planned for the rest of the week:

• Saucy Asian Meatballs, rice & salads
• Sauteed Boneless Pork Chops with Tomato Sage Pan Sauce (not used last week)
• White Chicken Chili (Trying to use some beans in my cupboard)
• Simply Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
• Chicken (or maybe I can talk my husband into making us some Venison or Wild Boar), rice pilaf & Salads.

DIY Birthday Party

Somehow 4 years have passed since my son was born. It’s gone from this:

to this:

quicker than it feels possible! Over the years we’ve done several themed birthdays and there is always a diy element to each party, but this year we went DIY crazy!

The one consistent DIY element is the cake. My mom-in-law, Patti, made all of the birthday cakes for each of her 4 children & this was definitely a tradition I wanted to carry on. Problem was, I had never in my life decorated a cake so I was relieved when she was willing to help me. Here are the cakes we made in previous years:

1st Birthday Cake by Patti

1st Birthday Baby Cake by me!

2nd Birthday Cake (Mater by me, Lightning by Patti)

3rd Birthday Cake by Patti

So this year, like many 4 year old boys, my Tyler is into Super Heros. With the help of Pintrest, I found all the elements I needed to find inspiration for a complete DIY Super Hero Party! First, I found this invite and printables birthday package on Etsy:

From ThePartyProject on Etsy

From ThePartyProject on Etsy

Rose from ThePartyProject was wonderful to work with. I just purchased the package, gave her all the party details and uploaded a picture of Tyler in his Batman jammies and she did all the graphic magic. I just printed it all and added some props and we were good to go. With this as my inspiration, I also found this cake on Pintrest:

Inspiration Cake

We made some slight changes and came up with this:

Our Actual Cake

This year we added a brand new element for us – fondant! And actually, I was so drowned in printables (which I wouldn’t have finished without Auntie Katie’s help!) that Patti did all the fondant work the night before. We have our eye on a birthday cake for Elise that will also use fondant so I hope to learn how to work with it on the next cake. I know some friends who make their own fondant, but since it was so new to us, we simply bought the pre-made stuff at Michael’s.

Here are some more pictures of how it all turned out:

Tyler & Grandma making the cake

Pow * Zap* Ka-Boom & Straw Flags

Pow Napkin Rings

Water Bottle Labels

Goodie Bag Station, Birthday Sign

Caped Lollipops

Cape-Making Station

I found the idea for t-shirt capes here and got the printable logos here. We had the kids glue on their chosen felt super hero logo to their chosen cape as they arrived using Fabric Glue, but it had to sit and dry the duration of the party. If I had to do it over again, I would have pre-made the capes or used an iron-on fusible so the kids could wear them for the party, but I think it was fun anyway and a great party favor to take on the road.

As always, we had a super blessed time with family, friends and laughter. I hope my son will come to appreciate all the love that goes into these handmade birthdays, but in the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun!

Meal Plan February 6-11, 2012

Meal planning. We all say we’re gonna do it. We know we should. We know it will make our life easier in the long run, but dread that time spent thinking and planning it all out.

I personally have gone about this several different ways and they were all good for each season I used them (in other words, there’s no wrong way to go about it). When we were first married, we were on a strict Hamburger Helper meal plan (and the store brand, not the name brand) since we were both still in school and living in L.A. When we moved to a more affordable locale, I started to look into lower fat, more nutritious meals to make and somehow found Cooking Light Magazine. I subscribed started to pull out the recipes that sounded good and organized them by meat/course into a binder. Then I would go pick from those meals, plan the week (or two), make my lists, etc.,  etc. Well that became such a long process, especially after having kids. While visiting Dave Ramsey’s site, I saw an ad for eMeals and felt like $5 a month was WELL worth my sanity. They plan meals for you and make your grocery list in a way that is easy for you to cross off a meal you won’t need or don’t like. They have lots of meal options for large and small families so if that appeals to you, do check it out!

Upon looking to stay home, we were looking for as many ways to cut expenses as possible, so I went on the search again for meal planning help (FREE meal planning help). I stumbled upon SayMmm.com. Now, I have not done all the digging around this site to make me an expert but I will share with you what I’ve learned so far. Here is how it looks to plan for the week:

It takes a little work in the beginning and by that I mean, you have to enter in the recipes you want to use (or the ones you find online). You do that by copy/pasting the recipe, link & title, but then after you do that 1) It’s saved in your recipes and 2) it automatically makes a grocery list for that recipe. After you assign the recipes to days of the week on the Plan tab (you can plan breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks if you want!), just click on the shop tab and tell it which days on your plan you want to include on your list. Voila – a grocery list!

Divided by store location with a list of common kitchen items to check – you may already have them in your cupboard. You can also add any other items you need (like bread, eggs, milk, etc.) and it will remember your added items by keeping them in a section on future lists. You can click on those items to add them from then on out.

OH! Almost forgot to mention – once your list is made, you also have the option to log in from your smart phone and get a list like this:

which allows you to check things off as you grab them! SO GREAT!

So anyway – I did not mean this to be so long. If anyone’s interested, I’ll post my meal plans as I make them … with links to the recipes … in a far shorter post … promise.

• Spicy Tilapia with Pineapple-Pepper Relish
• Cheeseburger Salad
• Healthy Yogurt Breakfast Parfait with Blueberries & Granola
• Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef
• Poppy Seed Chicken Salad
• Crusted Honey Mustard Chicken
• Sautéed Boneless Pork Chops with Tomato-Sage Pan Sauce

Pick Your Plum

I love to shop online – especially when the alternative is trying to shop with kids in tow – it makes life so much easier! (For a good laugh about shopping with kids, click here). I also love a good deal and somewhere along the way in my online shopping, bargain-seeking adventures, I signed up for the daily Pick Your Plum email and I’m so glad I did. If you haven’t heard about Pick Your Plum, it’s a site that posts daily deals of crafty goodness – quality notions, jewelry-making supplies & more! Here’s an excerpt from their site:

• We have limited supplies on some of the most swank supplies. We have agents out in the field who find killer deals on high quality products.
• We delicately slap prim-o crafting supplies on our site at a stellar price!
• We sell it ’til it’s gone or ’til time is up.
• You leave feeling like you just won Martha in a crafting contest.
• The supplies arrive in 7-8 shipping days and you’ve just picked your ‘plum’! Doesn’t it feel good?

So far, I’ve gotten some really cool stuff like this giant rick-rack variety pack

Picture from Pick Your Plum

And this fun necklace with a “gun metal” finish

Picture from Pick Your Plum

And there are many awesome things I’ve passed up…variety packs of fold over elastic, adorable cup cake baking cups, ruffled leg warmers for girls…as they say on their website, “Don’t blame us if you overdose. We only sell products we would use ourselves.” So once again, just something cool I’ve come across and thought I should share. Be sure to sign up for the daily alerts so you can get in on the deals as they’re posted!

Free Quilting Class

Well, yesterday was my last full day at my outside-the-home job. I’ll be finishing up a project for them in the weeks to come, but I won’t be there full time anymore. It was a wonderful day of kind words, hugs, pretty cards, staff lunch & a tear or two. I will miss it there, but I’m so thrilled to be able to be home.

I find myself dreaming about “all the time” I’ll have now, but before you laugh too loud at me, you should know I have at least one foot in reality & I’m sure I’ll meet some more along the way.

One thing I do hope I can find time for again is my sewing. Upon opening my email this morning, I saw this!

Yes – A FREE Block of the month class from Craftsy. Here’s an excerpt from the class description (Click the picture above to read the whole thing):

Learn fun quilting techniques, make new friends and create a one-of-a-kind quilt with the FREE Craftsy Block of the Month! Each month, Amy Gibson will guide you through a specific quilting technique – half- and quarter-square triangles, appliqué, string quilting, paper piecing and more. Then she’ll teach you two nifty 12-inch blocks using what you’ve learned. Some are brand-new designs, others fresh twists on traditional favorites. Along the way, you’ll make 20 blocks from fat quarters, then assemble them into a throw-sized quilt.

So while this goes against my destash plans, I may sign up just to have it for future reference. I’ve not taken an online Craftsy class before, but from what I’ve seen, the topics are relevant & pertain to all types of sewing/knitting/crocheting/paper crafting so if this one doesn’t float your boat, be sure to check out their other classes (no affiliate credit or any payment to me, just passing on a good thing when I see it!).

I would love to hear from you if you’ve taken a Craftsy class, considered it or never heard of them!

Have a great Super Bowl Weekend!

My DIY Planner

If you are one of my Facebook friends, you may have seen me mention that I recently made my own planner. I have tried many types of organization techniques (true confessions: I tend to get caught in organization when I should actually be DOING something. I am aware of it & I’m working on it! lol). I have tried the home management binder and while I like the idea of it, I never did have a good place for it. I have so little kitchen counter space that if I tried to use it for meal planning, I had no room to actually work in my kitchen. In my current space, it became impractical for day to day use, though I do keep it updated to use as a general family all-in-one-place info-station.

I was one of those types that spent the first days of a new college semester transferring all the assignments from each class syllabus, color coded by class subject, into my daily planner. I felt better if I could see all of the work in one place – I could see at a glance and plan ahead if I had a particularly busy week. Is that a control thing…? (don’t answer that)

Well, as I thought about staying home, focusing more on managing my household better while incorporating an at-home job, I started to dream about an all inclusive planner. Sure, the planners at the stores are pretty, but they rarely have all the features I want. As I googled “DIY Planner” I found all kinds of goodies. There are free templates of all kinds, some good forms & tools to make your own planner available on Etsy & so I made some purchases and got to work in Microsoft Publisher. Here’s what I used:

• A grocery list, weekly student planner page, expense tracker, & horizontal filler page from Crown Bindery on Etsy. I purchased some other pages from her, but those are the ones I used. If you visit her store, she also has some accessories to make the outside of your planner and tabs.
• I found the type of monthly calendar I wanted at donnayoung.com. It spreads across 2 pages.
• The 2012 Motivated Moms Half-Size Chore Planner with Scheduled Bible Reading from the Motivated Moms Website.

So here’s where it gets a little “techy.” I took the .pdfs into Photoshop and cropped the two page spreads into single pages and saved them as high resolution .jpgs. I then opened a booklet template in Microsoft Publisher and placed each.individual.page in the document exactly.in.the.order.I.wanted.it. (does this classify as an illness?) I made two sections – a calendar section you are used to seeing in store-bought planners (the month overview with the weeks following for greater detail) and a home management section with an expense tracker and horizontal filler page to start each month, followed by each week’s Motivated Moms Cleaning Schedule facing a grocery list page (because you know how you are going about cleaning each room and you say to yourself, “AH! I need to pick this up next time I go to the store!” and then you never remember what this is when the time comes…?)

When everything was in it’s place, I wrote it all to a .pdf again and uploaded the very large document to www.officedepot.com. From the website I was able to choose black & white, double sided printing, request they cut it in half and coil bind it after adding a black plastic back and clear front. I was pretty impressed with their speed and the quality of the paper (but then again I’m used to interacting with the least expensive, basic copy paper). I uploaded it late in the evening and it was ready the next morning! I grabbed some tabs and color coded the calendar-y part with pink and the home management part in green. I thought about merging both sections, but I worried that it would make using the calendar part a bit of a pain. In the end, everything’s in one place in a practical size that I can take with me anywhere!

So there you have it! Would you ever consider making your own planner? What would you include? What tools do you use to organize your family? I can’t wait to hear!

New Job, New Blog

Hi All – as some of you have heard on Facebook, a week from today I will be starting my new job as Work At Home Mom (Yay! I’m a WAHM!). In light of this fantastic (and simultaneously frightening) news, I thought it would be a great time to revamp ye ol’ blog into something I might use a tad more frequently. So I’ve ditched the front page, added a more generalized banner and rearranged some widgets to fit my new blog idea, which will cover all of my domestic endeavors – not just sewing. Of course, I can never not sew (blasphemy!) so I’m sure many posts will still relate to that, but I have some posts in mind to start us off on a few other topics I look forward to composing this weekend. As this new blog format develops (yes, it’s a very fluid idea at the moment) I’d love to hear from you too, so be prepared to join in on the conversation. I look forward to exchanging ideas with you and hope you’ll stick around!

Sincerely,

Jaime

New Year Destash Pledge

Oh yes, it’s here…2012 and a time for making goals and resolutions. And what’s the sewist’s number one pledge – DESTASH! No more buying, or as is more appropriate in my case, get to sewing/knitting! Life has been extraordinarily busy this last half of the year, beginning with the birth of Elise, our second baby.

As you know, I had restarted faithfully blogging until she was born and then, well, life became all about taking care of that new bundle of joy and readjusting to life as a family of 4. Especially now that my sewing space is 1/4 of what it used to be, I really would like to it be contained and tidy and I’d really like to get out from under some of these projects and be free to work on what I’m inspired by at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, going through my list of projects, there are a lot of really great ones that excite me. But lets get them finished and start to enjoy them instead of allowing them to collect dust in the corner of our room! I’m sure there are more, and definitely fabrics that have no intended project, but as far as a good starting list on my project collection, here goes:

UFO’s – Projects Started But Unfinished

• Red Pendrell Blouse
• Lady Grey Jacket
• Knitted Owl for a friend
• Triple Irish Chain Quilt
• Summer Wind Quilt

Projects Gathered But Not Started

• French Press Felted Slippers
• Boys Cargo-Jeans for my son
• Boys Charlie Brown Shirt
• Monkey Pillow/Quilt from Quilts, Baby! book
• Purple Stripe knit cropped cardi (Simplicity 2560)
• Skinny Anita Jeans
• Lounge Shorts (McCalls 5819)
• Madeline Mini-Bloomers
• First Sight Baby Gifts (Funny Story…Back when I first started blogging and reading all the fun sewing blogs, I won a Michael Miller’s First Sight Baby Kit giveaway with several patterns and the fabric and ribbon to sew them all up! These would make great baby shower gifts!)
• Knit Baby girl outfit (Butterick 5896)
• Maison de Noel Quilt (Fell in love with this years ago, bought the kit at a quilt show, NEED to make it up – so cute!)
• Retro Wedding Dress Quilt (Adorable 50′s wedding dress print as the main fabric)
• A Plus A-Line Skirt from a blue Italian wool I have in the stash.
• X-Block Quilt
• Friendship Star Quilt (Have all these gorgeous batiks for this!!!)
• Blue/White Running Tank (same as this pattern)
• Flared Heather Brown skirt

Slightly ridiculous and overwhelming, isn’t it? And like I said, I’m sure there are more tucked away I couldn’t see on a superficial survey of my stash, but there’s a project for every purpose & I definitely won’t get bored! I’ll transfer this list to my sidebar so we can keep track of what gets done.

I hope whatever you create in 2012 brings you lots of joy and satisfaction! May this year be blessed!!

- Jaime