DIY Doll Bed

I hope you've had a lovely Easter!

We've been enjoying the good weather, but the long weekend also allowed me to finish a couple of projects that had been pending for a while. One of them was a bed (another one) for my kid's gazillion dolls and stuffed animals. 

Sorry, no tutorial this time, I just winged it as I went along, but basically I transformed this (a small wooden crate that came with strawberries - hence the red stains): 

Into this: 

I lined the interior with batting and then a quilted fabric (leftover from another project) and covered the bottom and sides of the crate with dark blue felt.Here are a couple of pictures from the work in progress: 

Part of it was glued, the rest was sewn in place. Then I just added a comforter (I originally bought this fabric to make a pillow cover but never got round to it):

And a pillow too. Here's the complete set:

 

As per the request of my kids, I made it so that the bed can be used either horizontally or vertically:

That way they can use it for Barbie dolls but also for the smaller stuffed animals:

Overall, this was a fun project to tackle, especially since the kids were involved choosing the fabrics and deciding on the size of the pillow and the comforter. And since the crate was free and all materials came from my stash, it was pretty inexpensive too. Here is the new bed side by side with another one I've made in a very similar way:

Other doll beds I've made in the past:

Happy Monday!

How to dress-up a basket for spring

Sometimes simple materials and a bit of imagination go a long way to create wonderful projects. Such is the case of the basket makeover I'm going to show you today.

I've had this basket stored below our guest room bed for a long time. It was a hand-me down from a friend who had no use for it (together with another square basket which hopefully will also deserve its own post here in the next few days).

I love the color, but was just a plain round basket otherwise, and it came with an also plain (and a little worse for wear) matching lining.

This spring I decided it was time to finally put the basket to good use.

So I went through my stash, picked up a spring-ish piece of ribbon, and sewed it all around the edge of the lining, hiding the less than perfect areas:

Then I added a thin elastic all around (the original lining already came with a casing, otherwise I would have created one before sewing the ribbon), to get the lining to remain in place more easily (besides, it adds a ruffle effect which I think also looks cute),

And finally, because I thought there was still some detail missing, I used the rest of the ribbon to add a bow on each side, both secured with a flower button.

Overall, this was a pretty quick project, not to mention inexpensive, since everything came out of my stash.

The dressed-up basket perfectly matches our guest room decor. Since the guest room also doubles as my craft room, I'm still not sure if I'm going to use the basket to store works in progress or if I'll be turning it into an Easter gift basket. 

In any case, I'm loving the new look. 

Happy Monday,

Recovered Lampshade

Hello, and welcome. I'm back here today to share a little project I tackled last Sunday afternoon: recovering the lampshade from my son's room. 

After my son was born, he slept in our room for almost two years, so he never really had a nursery. When we finally moved him to his own room, we bought a cute little lampshade with a little blue train on it, because the boy just loved anything on wheels (or tracks, for that matter). 

Fast forward almost nine years (he'll be ten in July) and the lampshade wasn't in pristine condition anymore. You can't see it very clearly in the pictures below, but the train was more gray than blue by now, and the white trim was full of yellowish spots too. 

 

So I dug around for the leftover fabric from his bedroom curtains (which yes, were homemade too, though not by me - thank you mother!) and decided to use it to recover the lampshade. 

Recovering a lampshade isn't really very difficult, and you can see below the other one I recovered in the past: 

Because this was a project I really wanted to finish on Sunday, I didn't take time to document a full tutorial, but basically I removed the train (which was a vinyl applique over the main body of the lampshade, and removed the stained trim, keeping everything else intact (it's easier to recover a lampshade if you keep the structure intact). 

I covered the lampshade with white fabric, sewn top and bottom over the existing structure. No need to keep very straight stitches as long as you're planning to add trim. Glue works well to if you don't want to sew.

Then I removed the excess fabric and glued the trims. A white bias-tape-style trim at the top (using the same white fabric) and a strip of brow-beige fabric to match the curtains at the bottom. Here's the end result: 

It was almost nightfall when I finally managed to hang the lampshade back in place, so the pictures are not very clear, but overall I'm happy with the result - it perfectly matches the rest of the decor, it was quick and easy, and also inexpensive.

Happy Tuesday,

More upcycled summer shorts

Remember the upcycled summer shorts I posted about a while ago? Well, just before our summer vacation I made another pair, from some pants that would just be too short for my daughter this coming fall.

This is a wonderful way to get kids' clothes to last a bit longer. As long as the pants still fit in the waist, all you need to do is cut the pants' legs and hem them to create shorts. 

In this case, the pants had embroidered butterflies on one of the pockets, so I decided to add a ribbon with butterflies too. Given the choice, I would have probably picked another color for the ribbon, but I like to keep these upcycles as inexpensive as possible, so I had to use what was already in my stash. 

Because the original pants were stretchy, I pulled the fabric a bit when I was sewing the ribbon, so it ended with a slightly ruffled effect. 

It seriously doesn't take more than ten minutes to get it all done. My daughter has been wearing these shorts all summer and she'll probably wear them for a few weeks more since they are forecasting a hot fall around here. And if they don't fit anymore next year, it's not a big loss because they cost next-to-nothing anyway.

For more ideas on how to reuse & upcycle kids pants, click below:

Have a wonderful week!

Upcycled tablet cover

Right before our summer vacation I decided I needed a new cover for my iPad. Over the years, I've made a few different covers for different tablets, some of them I even shared here, but this time I decided not to use a pattern and just do it the easy way: upcycling.

I've had the piece below for a very long time. It was originally a changing pad that came with a diaper bag I received as a gift when my daughter was born, six years ago. 

I never used it as a diaper changing pad because it was too small. As you can see, folded in half it's not much bigger than the iPad, so it was small even for a newborn. 

But I also could not bring myself to throw it away because...well, because it was cute. And I always thought I could make something with it too. 

I found it in the back of my crafts closet and decided it was time to finally use it.

To turn it into a tablet cover I just added a zipper on one side and sewed the rest of the opening shut. 

It took me less than 10 minutes to finish it once I figured out the best way to sew the zipper, and because it was originally a diaper changer, it's not only padded but also virtually waterproof, which is great to protect the tablet. 

I wish all sewing projects could be this easy!

Happy Monday,