Hair Bow Holder For Dirt Cheap!

Recently at I shower I saw a cute hair bow holder made from an old window pane. Well. . .I don't have an old window pane just laying around, so I decided to adapt that idea and use a picture frame instead. I just went to the thrift store, found the largest cool looking picture frame and snatched it up. It didn't have any glass which was just fine because I wasn't going to use it anyway. I didn't take any pictures at the time, so the step-by-step pictures are from some other frames where I did the same thing. . sorry.

First thing I did was sand it. This is a very important step. I did this with these other frames and did not sand the stain off very well and when I distressed it the stain showed through and I didn't like the way it looked. I know it is a pain, but you'll never regret it if you sand it, but you probably will if you don't.


Then I found some crappy old house paint just laying around (not kidding, it had a big lump in it and some rust fell in it when I opened the lid). I didn't really care because I was going for a distressed look anyway, so I figured it just added character :)


I just did one coat of paint because it was very thick. I wanted the wood to show through just a little.


Then I sanded a few of the edges to distress it (make sure your paint is very dry or else it will peel and look bad).


Lastly, I glued the ribbon into place and the back and voila! (gluing worked just fine, but I'd recommend using a staple gun). My frame also didn't have a place to hang it so I just hammered in one of those little saw tooth hangers.


I love it and it only cost me $1.50. . .awesome! My only wish is that I had been able to find a bigger frame. . .oh well, I think instead I'll just have make two small ones instead of one large one.  I liked how it turned out so much that I repurposed some random mismatched frames I had laying around.

If you really want to make it cute, I've seen fabric placed behind the ribbons and I think it's adorable.

Ruffled Shower Curtain Tutorial

I came across this cute idea for a ruffled shower curtain from Moda Bake Shop. I thought it was really cute, so I tried it out, only with a few modifications.

Materials you will need:
* 1 inexpensive, plain shower curtain (72" length x 70" width)
* 9 yards of fabric (one yard ea. of 9 different patterns if you wish)
* 2 yd jumbo ric rac

The first thing I did is lay out my shower curtain and using a ruler I drew horizontal lines every 2 inches beginning just below the grommet holes where you hang the curtain.  You should have about 35 rows.

In an effort to save money, I just bought nine yards of fabric rather than using jelly rolls like the Moda site recommended.  I also liked that by doing this my rows were a uniform pattern across the whole row. I cut 2 1/2 inch strips with my rotary cutter with a pinking blade. This wasn't as much work as I thought it was going to be, so I'm very glad I did it because I saved at least $50 right there. I cut 12 strips of each fabric except for one which I cut 9 (because I had 35 rows). Because of only needing 9 strips of one fabric, I could've gotten by with only 3/4 or 2/3 of a yard of one pattern. Then I pretty much followed all the instructions on the Moda Bake Shop site.

I laid out all my strips to decide the order I wanted to sew them onto my curtain.

To make one row for the shower curtain, you will need 3 strips of fabric sewn together to create one long row.

When it came time to sewing my ruffles, I used my ruffler foot to sew the rows into ruffles.  You can use any method of ruffling the fabric that you choose, I just found this to be easiest and it gave me nice uniform ruffles.

I started at the bottom of the shower curtain and sewed the strips on one by one, using 1/4" seam allowance.

No close up shots, but to finish off the raw edge at the top of the shower curtain, I simply sewed on some jumbo ric rac of a coordinating color and TA-DA!

Ah, I am in love. . .I am very pleased with the way it turned out.




Here is what I liked about the project:
*You don't have to be an excellent seamstress.  If you don't sew perfectly straight you'll never know because the ruffles conceal it!
*You can personalize it as much as you'd like.
*I love the ruffles and I love the way it looks in my bathroom!


Tips:
* I thought it would be slick to use my ruffler foot to create the ruffle and attach it to the fabric at the same time.  I thought it would save time, however, it cost me time in the end to fix all the places where the thread missed the fabric.  I should have sewn my ruffle strips, then attached them in two separate steps. 
* If you're going to put this much time and money into the project, use a fabric shower curtain to sew onto.  I've heard that you can sew onto vinyl curtains, however I worry about them becoming brittle with time, so I'd recommend spending a few extra bucks on a fabric curtain.