Crafting with Purpose
I’m excited about being able to use my humble shoe making skills to help create my friend, A’s shoe design vision for Sole Hope…an incredible ministry she began just a few short months ago determined to put closed toed shoes on the feet of African children and adults who would otherwise suffer from terrible conditions caused by being barefoot. The challenge has been to make a shoe that the woman of Ndola, Zambia can duplicate with their own resources so it will have a sole made of the hundreds of spare tires that are just lying around. To find out more about the story of how this all began or to find out how you can help please visit Sole Hope’s website.
cookin’ up some happy colors
I had forgotten how fun it is to work with dye. The past couple of weeks I have taken a hour or so to play in the kitchen and cook up some new colors on some boring white baby onesies. Have I mentioned I’m not a fan of white? Well, at least, not in clothing. Yes, gotta have a few pieces of go-with-anything white but if I’m going to pick out something that I love it will not likely be white. So, when it got hot around here with summer hitting us full force I realized that my little baby girl was living in onesies all the time. You can’t beat them for being simple, cool and comfy when it’s baking hot outside. However, they do fail in one area…style. They are boring…at least the ones we had on hand were. Sure, I could go searching at the mall for some pretty ones but do I really want her wearing the same thing every baby on the block is wearing? No…not when I can have some fun making her some at home. So I got out the dyes and put the pots on to boil and had some great mad scientist fun creating pretty colors. Color wasn’t enough, though, I had to put the icing on them with some simple, fun & folksy applique.
I went a little crazy once I got to dyeing (remember I mentioned the whole mad scientist thing!) so I have plenty and have listed these in my Etsy store with more to come. Didn’t I say I forgot how much fun it is to dye things?
Might As Well Face It…
I’m addicted to wool. 
I can’t stop FELTING!!! Oh boy, with a new baby on the way my crafting dream to-do list is growing leaps and bounds. There are so many things I want to make for this little girl and now that I have my new serger I am having such a hard time not just sitting behind it all day long.
Here’s my latest recycled wool sweater creation. Little bluebird recycled wool longies size 6-9 months…
On another note, Lucy over at Attic24 has made an amazing advent calendar that is making me wish that it wasn’t already December 12. Maybe next year. Gotta go check it out if you can…love it!
Easy Crochet Hat
When you are pregnant, have asthma and a case of walking pneumonia and you get out of breath just going to the bathroom…what do you do? Crochet.
Here’s a link to the pattern…retro tam. I’m still a beginner at crochet so I tend to do it too tightly. So an adult hat becomes the perfect fit for a 4 year old. I think I’m going to add a nice size fabric flower to the side of it once I can make it down the stairs to the basement and dig through my stash but that is gonna require much more breathing than I have in me right now.
Little Dresses For Africa
So, we have all been MIA for a long time now. It’s not that we haven’t been crafting, just too busy with life and the blog has been a bit neglected because of it. Each of us are homeschooling our children and so fall has been a whirlwind of activity as we trade the lazier days of summer for more scheduled days. Kelly, Jen, and I, along with our friend, K, all pull our resources together once a week and co-op our schooling. Each month we work around a different theme or area of focus and this month our focus has been on “Serving Others”. We took a day to hike, play and do some clean up outdoors and we have worked on creating pillowcase dresses to send to Africa through Little Dresses For Africa. Such a great mission project has been going on with this organization and we really wanted to get involved ourselves. So last Wednesday we sent a total of, I think, 20 dresses to Africa and we’re working on some more…they are quite addicting. Here’s a sampling…
The Shoes In Action
So, I’ve been working on relaunching LilyGiggle for a couple of weeks now and finally have some new looks live on my site…yea!
Yesterday, Kelly and I spent 3 hours at the park…yes, I said 3 hours on that playground and it flew by like it was 30 minutes. We had over 2 weeks of catching up to do and the kids would have stayed for 3 more hours if we’d let them. We took the opportunity to snap some photos of her cutie-pie Claire wearing her new pair of LilyGiggles to go with her super cute skirt made by her mama.
Back to Shoes
Through a new turn of events that I won’t bore anyone with the details on, I am currently working on relaunching my neglected soft sole shoe business, LilyGiggle shoes. I really let it go after some difficult personal problems stole my focus and I didn’t think I would ever make them again. Though my online store and etsy shop are pathetically out of stock I’m working hard to change that by next week. I’m showing them next weekend locally and this pair even got a shout out on our local news station where they were worn in a small fashion show promoting Munchkin Market. Unfortunately, the cameraman apparently had not had enough coffee that morning because he never panned down on the shoes or even the outfit, for that matter, but kept his camera directly on the young model’s face the whole time! My whole family glued around the tv to see mom’s creations in the spotlight got a great laugh out of that one.
Godspell Returns
I posted a few weeks ago about finishing up a project working as the costume designer for a local production of the Broadway musical, Godspell. Well, I’m back at it since, due to popular demand, we are running the show once again in just a few short weeks…June 19-21. If you are in the area and missed it the first time you won’t want to miss it again. I can’t wait.
The costumes were, for the most part, made up from many trips to the thrift store and lots of refashioning/upcycling. Sleeves were cut off of sweaters to make legwarmers, lots of slashing, safety pinning, Sharpie scripture writing on blue jeans as well as hand painting on jeans, adding sleeves, removing sleeves, making arm warmers from stripey socks and “jewelry” from old wool earwarmers. It was great fun to come up with a slightly crazy, boho, vagabond look for the characters and I’m enjoying a second chance at creating a second set of costumes for each one for future shows. While I thought this job was behind me, I’m looking forward to seeing it run as long as it continues to bless.
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Re-Fashioning Spring
So taking this pledge to recycle clothing and not buy anything new is a little extra challenging right now while we are in the midst of a season change but that makes it all the more interesting to me. I’ve been cleaning out dressers and closets, taking out the old and bringing in the new (well, relatively speaking). I found that my daughter has many more spring tops than bottoms so I have spent a little time converting winter bottoms to summer bottoms and here are a couple of examples of what I’ve done…I’m not big on shorts so I wanted to do something besides the traditional cut off idea.
Here’s a close up of the appliques. I cut off the pants to capri length and added the appliques that were harvested off of an outgrown shirt that was a little stained up. I ran a top stitch across the bottom of the pants to ruffle them up a bit and to give it a more messy feeling like the unfinished edges of the appliques.
Last night I took a vintage pillowcase picked up on a thrifting trip and a pair of outgrown jeans…
And with a touch of vintage ric rac from my stash made some more summertime britches…
I’m quickly becoming addicted to this whole concept and look at all clothing now with eyes that are deciding how I can cut it up.
