Fast DIY Upcycle of an old sock and a cone to a unique winter/ Christmas decoration

We have been making sock monsters this week and then I suddenly had the idea to make these little fellows. All you need is a worn out kids sock and a cone. If you use a big pine cone you might need a grown up sock.

You need to cut the cap of a sock and then half it. Turn it inside out and sew the long side closed. Turn it back right side out and pull it over the cone. Cut another straight piece of the sock, thick enough that it fits as a scarf for the size of cone you use. In our case it was roughly a centimetre. Cut the loop open and tie it around the cone. If you want to you can use a permanent marker to make hime two eyes. Tada, you are done. See how fast this was?

If you have an old red sock you could easily turn this into a Santa with some added cotton wool for a beard.

How to make Homemade Ricotta Cheese - simple and fast!

Today I was frantically looking for a kid friendly recipe to use up my left over Rocket salad  (or if you tuned in from the states - you call it arugula) as you know it is a bit spicy. So I came across a recipe for a pasta dish with rocket in it, but it required ricotta cheese, which I didn't have. But I remembered seeing on many pages various recipes for homemade ricotta cheese, stating how simple it is! Well, let me tell you: it is not just super simple but also very fast! If you are not to picky on the consistency you can have it done in under an hour! If you like it more solid it might take 1,5 hours. But as I only needed it for a sauce this was a fast make!

How to make any old cheap withered wooden chair look like an expensive teak wood chair

As you might remember I refurbished an old teak wood chair back in April (If you missed it, click here). I was surprised for how little money you could make it look like a new chair. I was also surprised when I read on the label of the teak oil can, that teak oil was actually made on a base of linseed oil  and you could use it on any wood. There was still so much oil left in that can and no more teak wood furniture in this household so I thought of this very withered and old looking Ikea garden table and chairs set that I still had from my long passed student days.

refurbish that withered teak wood chair and give it a new look and safe a lot of money

I take it, you all have figured out by now that I can be a bit of a save the environment nutter! So here is my appeal to you to not kick your old withered looking teak wood garden chair into the land fill and make it grow even bigger! Rather, spruce it up! And if I can´t make you see the impact on the environment let me show you the economical impact it will have on your wallet!

A Carpet that tells a story of family and love

You know that stack of onesies, baby clothes, kids clothes, grown-up T-shirts and pyjama trousers and anything else made of cotton jersey that you didn't have the heart to get rid of? Well how about you cut them into stripes and crochet a carpet for your cosy home? It will make a carpet filled with memories that you and your family made....I just love the sentiment of it!  You save hundreds of Euros and it won't be riddled with chemicals and their fumes. With this carpet you won't have to air for weeks before you can enter the room again without getting a headache...

I started making this carpet nearly 2 years ago and it took me about 3 months. Most of this time was spent cutting the material and turn it into balls of jersey yarn. Be warned, it ´s a dusty & fluffy work!  You shouldn't be wearing anything black and then need to rush out while you are rolling up the cut T-Shirt yarn!









What you need:
12mm crochet hook
A lot of old clothes made from jersey (baby onesies, PJ´s, T-shirts, leggings, long johns, vests......the list is near endless....)
A very sharp scissors (otherwise you will go nuts!) A cutting mat and a rotary cutter should work, too.
Basic crochet skills

Start by cutting the jersey cotton into stripes. There are plenty tutorials on You-Tube that explain how to cut up a  T-shirt pretty fast. To a certain point this will work for leggings and PJ bottoms, too. All T-shirt tutorials stop under the armpits and waste the rest, I just kept cutting in a never ending way till the whole shirt ( including Sleeves!) Was turned into one string! The only things discarded were the very thick collars.
The stripes should have a width of roughly 3,5 cm. They do not need to be exact or straight, as the yarn will roll in its sides and you won't notice any errors. Just make sure you do not get too thin as that would tear eventually.

When rolling up the yarn, pull it through your fingers with a little force, the sides will roll in and it will be easier to crochet. Now get started! Make a slip knot. Next, make as many chain stitches until you have roughly 2/3 of the width of your carpet. It will get a good bit wider after adding rows. I had to unravel my first try because it got too wide! Now all you need to do is proceed with single stitches, row after row until your carpet has reached the measurements you would like it to have! It really is this simple!

You can find Videos on You-Tube how to connect the ends of two balls of yarn without having a knot. I tried it, but went back to knots, it worked better for me. In the end I pulled all knots to the bottom side of the carpet so they wouldn't be visible. But they will come up again after a while...

Pros and Cons of a Carpet like this:

Pros: It is incredibly soft, any chemicals will have long been washed out. You will keep pointing at certain rows and say things like " Oh this was my favourite maternity top" and many others similar sentences...

Cons: Dirt falls through and gets caught in between the stitches, it is not an easy clean! Depending on the size washing is no option and it gets very heavy.

I hope you have as much fun creating a similar piece as I had!

How to make an ever so cosy T-shirt scarf

I am currently going a little mad with the sewing machine. A young friend cleaned out her cupboard and gave me 4 bags full of old clothes. After that my husband and I did the same. Now my sewing niche looks like one big messy pile and I can hardly walk around the desk to get to the sewing machine. I really need a few mornings to get organised in there! Have you got any tips? What works for your sewing room? How do you organise all your materials, zips, buttons and other utensils? I would love to hear!

Anyway as I had 2 kids on the mend at home, I could only do something basic that wouldn't need too much concentration on my side. Our workshop is not exactly toddler safe, but the two guys love being down there as it is one big adventure park to them. Which also means I am in a constant high-alert-mommy-modus.

So I started this project working out how to cut up old T´s in the most efficient way to get enough stripes for a nice length scarf. I took 3 of the softest shirts and turned them into scarfs. Two of them I made as presents and one is for myself.

My next planned project is making hats for the boys out of old T-shirts. I have a basic plan in my head, I will just have to figure out how to get it out of there.

As for those scarfs...let me introduce ROARY to you. He kindly volunteered to be my model as I am a little camera shy due to some childhood trauma involving my dad and his very trigger-happy finger. ROARY is my boys piggy-bank dragon. He also thought my youngest walking, by holding on tightly to him while being pushed round after round through our living room. I am just mentioning this, so you know this guy is not just someone random, but has become a well established member of our little family.

My first attempt was a birthday present for my mum. And I tried the lazy way using the sides of a T-shirt to save myself a few seams. I used an XL shirt.

So here is what I did: First I made a straight line from the shoulder line down to the bottom of the shirt.

Then I cut it (front and back at same time). First along my pink line, then I opened the sides. Here I used a zick-zack scissors. I first thought it would make it look nicer and wouldn't frazzle. But later I cut them off and made them straight. I prefer the straight look, I think. But what you use is entirely up to you.  Once you unfold front from back you have one long stripe. You do the same with the other shoulder part of the T-shirt.

When you reach the sleeve while cutting the sides open, just cut along the seam very closely, for now it doesn't matter if there is a little seam left on your scarf side of the material, as you will later have to straighten the sides anyway. I also had a little of the print left on one side, as you can see in the left middle of the picture below. That two will fall away later when you clean the sides. So don't worry too much about these things when getting started.

Now before you pin your two parts together consider this: If you leave the seam at the shoulder bits, your scarf will be slightly curved, which looks a bit unusual when you hold the scarf in your hands, but if you fold it the right way around your neck it fits perfectly. But you can open the seams, straighten the material and sew them together straight if that is what you prefer or you can follow the second tutorial that will follow later and leads to the scarf ROARY is wearing in the first picture. 

Now take your two parts and pin them together. Right side should show outside on both sides! We will leave the sides raw.  You should try to put them together that printed parts you want to cut away stick out on that side, same for seams left from sleeves. It sounds more complicated than it is. 

Next step would be to check your scraps for a wee bit of colour to add. I decided that this one includes all the colours my mother has in her cupboard and gives her lots to mix and match. I made the scarf for her as a cosy one to wear when walking the dog, nothing fancy. And her Raincoat is black. So it is very easy to match something to it. 

Now I had come up with two possibilities for decorating this little present. I tried them both, but couldn't make up my mind. So I asked my sisters and some friends and took votes. I first thought that the material might be a little loud and I should only use it in small doses, esp. considering I was sewing this for an mid sixties lady. 

So this was my first design. It got one vote out of eight.

This one got 7 votes.  I would love your input! Which design would you have gone for?

And I got one voter saying I should not use this material unless I was sewing a clowns costume. My hardest and most honest critic went for the last version, so this was another reason why I went for the "louder" version.

Now that I had pinned down my design I just sewed all the bits together and then cut both sides straight which also removed the printed bit, and the little bit of seam from the sleeves.

While this is the fastest method, it will not give you the longest scarf. but it will be very cosy anyway!

Dressing up Nappy Boxes or any other cardboard box

I was finally fed up with all the big boxes of toys in our living room, and made some space in our Billy shelf with doors. I realised that Pampers boxes fit in there and I am still able to close the doors.

Pampers Boxes are not exactly very pretty and homey looking, so I was searching the net for some creative deco ideas and stumbled over this (cover and lining). I followed her instructions to a T and I love the way it turned out! I am actually soo happy with it, that I think it is way to pretty to be hiding in a cupboard. So now it is holding the wooden blocks in the kids room.

For the next one I thought I might try velcro instead of glue for the outside cover so I can take it off and stick it in the washing machine or onto the next box if the first one gets to battered in the play action with my two wild cowboys.
I added some photos, that will hopefully help you with Mandies instruction but they are already pretty straight forward. I was reading them overtired and managed to follow them. I didn't add photos for every step, just for the ones I either used or did something else or I needed a while to understand the original instructions.

I first cut of all flaps and taped the little latch from both sides with sello-tape

the outside taped

 You then have to find the center for the bottom of the box on your piece of material.

I marked the centre of the box, then measured 5cm towards the corner of the material at each edge of the centre marking. 

from the 5 cm point I made a line to each side of the material

cut the squares in each corner and then the 5cm line towards the centre

Iron seams and material.  This will help a lot when glueing.

I first glued the bottom, and added my husbands weights  to help the process a little 

that´s the glue I used

Glueing the sides: You start with the short sides. let your seam go over the edge onto the long side.  when glueing the long side, have your ironed seams right on the edge of the box. I measured my material a little longer so it reaches into the box by ca. 3 cm all around, these where the last bits I glued.

the lining: mark the middle of each side with a needle and then measure half the box and seam allowance in each direction and mark with needle. 

crossing the lines from the outside needles will make squares in each corner of your material, cut these squares out. 

now sew the two sides that remain after you cut out each square together. And at last hem all around.

Voilà

Now I can´t wait to get my hands on more material, to make a few more. We for sure have enough toys to stow away. I was actually amazed with how little work and time you can finish these off.

Little Paper Basket

You, too probably have lots of paper for recycling. Far more than you could ever use to light your fire at night...here is a way to use some of it!

Take a magazine or newspaper and tear the single pages out. Now fold them in half, and half it again and again, until you have slim stripes as pictured below.

Now bend them and glue them in a form you would like your base of the basket to be.

Now make the sides, by only gluing the bottom half of your stripe to your previous layer. So the upper half sticks out. And keep going until your second last round.

For me it worked best to turn the stripes this way (above).

Once you have reached your second last round, half one of your stripes. Out of these you can now form the handles of your basket. And glue them as shown below.

For the last round stay kind of level with our round before, so you don't have an end sticking out or standing over, I also glued every layer of the last stripes while folding them so they would make a sturdy rim.

Now if you want too, you can colour the whole thing. I used green and red, because these are the colours in my kitchen. I made this basket for a few toys that I keep in the kitchen to keep the little man out of mischief while I cook.