Measuring Up

Derrick is such a creative husband and is always coming up with new ideas. I was having a hard time coming up with something to give his mom for Christmas and he immediately rattled off 5 or so ideas. (All were handmade of course). We decided to make her a ruler. (a what?) Yes, that's right, a ruler.
When I was growing up one of my favorite things to do was to go to my grandma's house and stand by her closet door so she could measure my height. We had measurements for all of us kids, my parents, and my grandparents and we were always eager to see who had grown since the last measurement. Derrick's idea was to make his mom a giant ruler so that she could start doing the same with her grandkids. I started looking online for some ideas on how this ruler should look. Our inspiration came from this picture from derlillieblog.blogspot.com

So cute, right?


Here is how our project went down:
1. We found a 6 foot piece of wood at Home Depot. This was actually really hard because all of the pieces were warped! It took us a while to find a straight one, but eventually we did
2. Decide on a paint color. This also took us a long time because we weren't sure what would look good in her house! I finally picked a burnt orange color.
3. Using my nifty Silhouette and vinyl, I cut out the lines and numbers for the ruler.

4. Stick the vinyl to the board and look what you've got!

Ruffled

Have you seen this fabric?? I've seen it around the world wide web and have wanted to play with it for so long! When I was working for Adornit I was able to go to the International Quilt Market with them and picked some of this fabric up for myself. Well I FINALLY got around to making some skirts with it and I am so happy with how they turned out.

Here's how it all went down:

Step 1: Measure! First I took my elastic and pulled it a little bit snug around my waist. I took that measurement and cut my elastic. Remember to account for your seam allowance! Next thing I did was measure the widest part of my butt. That is the width that I cut my fabric.

Step 2: I don't have a picture for this step either but it is fairly simple. You need to sew your elastic together so it makes a circle. So fold it and put the ends together. I also opened my seam and sewed the seam down so it wasn't so bulky.

Step 3: Cutting! This part was a little bit harder than measuring. Now is when you take that butt measurement and cut your fabric. When you are cutting make sure that your ruffles are all facing the same way! My cutting board was pretty small so I also measured how long I wanted my skirt and cut the length so I had a little less fabric to work with.

Step 4: Pinning! Pin the right sides of your fabric together. Once again, make sure that you pin all of the ruffles so they are going the same direction! Do you see how some of the ruffles are sticking out? Not a problem because you can just cut them off later.

Step 5: Sewing! This was the most difficult part of the whole skirt for me. I went really slow and tried my best to keep all of the ruffles going the same direction.....

 

But unfortunately some of them got caught up in the thread and I had to unpick. Lesson learned: use more pins! And I also learned that you can unpick on this fabric and it doesn't damage it-just unpick carefully :) 

Step 6: The Elastic. Once you have your ruffly tube skirt sewn together, you can pin your elastic on. Make sure you are pinning the right side of the fabric to the right side of the elastic. That way you wont be able to see your seams on your elastic when you're done. Now sew sew sew!   

Step 7: If you haven't done so already, now is when you can cut your skirt to the right length. I measured how long I wanted it and then added one more ruffle so I made sure it wasn't too short. The skirt was so simple to make because after you cut off your length, you don't need to hem! For a more detailed and picture filled tutorial, check out Vannessa Christensen's tutorial here. 

Happy Sewing!