Recycled Jeans To Skirts

   I found this fun video tutorial by the Stitch Sisters on transforming a pair of jeans into a skirt and I had to try it.  Here is the link to the tutorial:  Jeans to Skirt tutorial. I went to Goodwill and found three pair of jeans.  Two for the skirts and one to use for the extra material needed to fill in the cut areas.  I now have two jean skirts for $18.00.  I love them.

    Here is a wonky picture of one of the skirts on.

Packaging That I Can Recycle To Hold Needles and Pins

   I've been trying to find a decent container for my used sewing machine needles and bent pins.  I had a pill bottle that I filled up over the last four years which I disposed of last month.  I currently have two pill bottles that I prepared and are ready to fill with old needles and bent pins.  Today I found some packaging that would work really well for this job.

   Burt's Bees makes a tinted lip balm that comes in a plastic blister package.  The blister package holds a cardboard tube that then holds the separate plastic tube of lip balm.  I bought the lip balm because I wanted to try it.  I had no idea that the packaging would be this cool.  The cardboard tube is closed on both ends and is the perfect size to store old needles and pins or you can even use it for your traveling sewing kit.

  The lip balm was $6.62 at the store.

   Here's a picture of the tube.

Yard Art Complete.

Okay, so I sanded the bowling ball and then I filled the finger holes with some of the adhesive that I used to glue the glass gems on.  I had read that one person filled the finger holes with cement but I think the caulk is fine.  I let the caulk dry for 36 hours and then I leveled the caulked holes.

On Saturday, I painted the bowling ball silver.  It's hard to spray paint in the wind.  hehehe
I let it dry for overnight.

On Sunday I glued on all the glass gems covering every bit I could.  I was surprised how long this process took because I had to let each section dry for about an hour before I could move the ball and do a new section.  I worked on this from 11:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.

This is the finished piece of yard art in my gazing ball holder.

This one is done and that ugly bowling ball looks pretty in the garden now.

Recycled Duvet Cover Makes a Super Utility Quilt

      Last year I wanted to make myself a utility quilt for the car/beach but I didn't want to take the time to piece a top with nice fabric.  I wanted to experiment.  I was thinking about using some used twin sheets to make my quilt, so I went on ebay and found this twin duvet cover.  I can't remember what I paid for the duvet cover, I think it was about $18.00.  I washed the cover and I stuffed a twin Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batt in it and pin basted it.  There is space on the edges of the long ends where the batt did not quite fill the cover completely and I probably could have pieced some of the extra batting from the short end to fill that in, but I didn't want to fuss with it.  I did straight line quilting on it diagonally with my walking foot on my domestic machine.  After I finished quilting it, I folded in the open end of the cover and top stitched that closed.  One of the best parts of this project was that I did not need to bind the finished quilt.  This quilt is super heavy and really useful.

    I love the madras plaid fabric (it looks like it was pieced by a quilter) on the top.  The bottom is the blue strip.