Begone, Tacky Topsy-Turvy Planters!

Back in this entry I gave a peek of my cool-looking burlap-covered buckets.

Now whooooooo's ready for a tutorial?!

It started out when I saw this pin on Pinterest:

Here's the original post, BUT

...it's in another language.  One with umlauts.
So even if there was a tutorial there, I couldn't read it.

SO.

I kept looking at at the photo, trying to figure out the dimensions of the "bag" these
buckets were in,  when I had a revelation:

it's not a bag at all!  It's a TUBE!

Which means that making one is super-easy, even if you don't sew a bit.

On

to

the 

tutorial.

To start with, you'll need a bucket.  If you don't have an old detergent bucket,
places like Home Depot sell five gallon buckets for about three dollars.

I also heard that doughnut shops get their shortening
 or something in big buckets,
and will give you their empties.  
Let me know if that's true!

(I'm only here for the buckets.  Honest.)

I cut off the handles with a wire cutter; 

they wouldn't be accessible, anyway.

Don't forget to drill some holes in the bottom!

For your supplies,
you'll need to buy some rope or twine.  I got 1/4" sisal rope.

If you don't have a sewing machine, buy a tapestry needle. 
I got a size "13".

To figure out how much burlap to buy,
measure around the widest part, and add about three inches.
 I think my buckets were about 39" around,
 so I needed  at least 42" of  40" wide burlap.

If you don't have a measuring tape, just use a piece of yarn
or hold the fabric around and mark it with your pinched fingers!
That's what I did the first time.

Sewing info!
Fabric usually comes in widths of 40" or 60".
  You'll be using the 40" wide.

Get a little extra for wiggle room, though; 
a yard and a quarter would be a good amount.

You might want to cut the fabric a little longer at first, 

to make sure it fits right.

It's a lot easier to tighten up the tube

than it is to pick out the seam and make the tube bigger.

 You want it to be snug, but not too tight.

Now you're ready to go!

To make a nice edge to cut/sew, pull a thread out of the burlap

ACROSS the width of the burlap...

...then cut along that empty space. 
 Repeat the thread-pulling/cutting at your desired width.

Now fold the rectangle in half so those CUT EDGES are together.

^^^^^ This is the cut edges, together. ^^^^^

You're going to sew along here.

If you have a sewing machine, go to town!

If not, it is SUPER EASY to just sew with your big fat tapestry needle.

What should you use for thread?

Why, you can just use that thread you pulled out for your cutting line!

If it broke, just pull another one off the edge.

Sew about a half inch away from the edge. 

(I used a bigger seam here; you don't need to.)

Once you've sewn along that edge, 

you're going to FOLD the tube down on itself,

so the seamed part is on the inside.

This is how it will look on the top.

Now you have a tube, a couple inches bigger around than your bucket,

and several inches longer.

The top of the tube is the folded edge,

and the bottom is the two other "loose" edges.

Take that tube to your bucket, 

and pull it up like you're pulling on a pair of comfy jeans.

Have the nice FOLDED edge on the BOTTOM.

Once the tube is pulled up,
 roll it down a few times for a decorative folded edge.

Break out your rope/twine...

...wrap it around a couple of times, and tie a bow.

As the Frenchies say,

VOILA!

A couple of tips:

the first time I did this, I gathered the bottom and put it underneath.

AAAAIIIIIEEEE!!!!

The water wicked up and made the burlap all moldy.  Yuck!

So don't do that.  It looks perfectly fine to just have the edge of the tube even with the bottom of the bucket.

Also, put that bucket up on bricks or something!  It helps with drainage,

and will keep the moldy thing from happening.

Okay.

ALL DONE,

I thought.

But...

you know how when you fix up one area of your house...

the rest starts to look extra-shabby in comparison?

Yeah, that's how I started to feel about those icky,
 faded-green Topsy-Turvy planters.

Anyhoo, in a flash of BRILLIANCE,

I realized I could do the same burlap thing with them!!

The only thing different is I used less burlap.

It was a bit trickier with the Topsy-Turvy

I was using in the way it was actually designed to be used,
since I had to pull it over the top where it was hanging from a hook.

But I asked the Sweet Man to hold it up,

and I slipped the tube over the top.

I did gather the bottom edge on the Topsy-Turvy

that had the tomato plant growing out of the bottom;

the green lid thingy meant that I had to make the tube pretty big.

It looked way too baggy before I gathered.

Lookin' good, yeah?

It's All Very Sunrise, Sunset, Around The House These Days

Today, the Sweet Man and I helped this boy...

... buy his first car.

It's been very much an experience like what the Daddy goes through in

that great Suburu commercial (you know the one)...

... but I gotta say, it's not like I turned around

and The Boy went from the  mysteriously smiling seven-year-old

to the almost-twenty-one-year-old he is overnight.

Nope, I'm feeling every minute of the twenty years it took to get

from caring for these bitty babies...

... to having a son who towers over me.

HOWEVER,

like the above commercial, I am PAINFULLY aware of how vulnerable

the Boy and the Girl are when they get behind the wheel.

For the love of the sweet baby Jeebus, people,

 please stay out of their blind spots!

Don't brake too fast in front of them!

Don't even THINK about having too many drinks and drifting into their lanes!

Ahem.

*

*

*

*

Anyhoo, looking at the above photo of the baby Boy and Girl
makes me remember their baby quilts, which you can see behind them. 
I worked on those throughout my pregnancy, staying up late when I couldn't sleep,
hand-quilting them while I listened to Bob Costas interview random celebrities on Later. 

(I spent so many late nights listening to Costas, that it's a wonder one of the babies didn't emerge sporting a side-part and a tie.)

I finished the Girl's quilt on the night of August 6th;
the babies were born on the morning of August 8th.
 They came home from the hospital wrapped in their quilts,
and slept under them in their shared crib.

The Girl latched onto a silky-edged receiving blanket as her Lovey,

but the Boy loved that star quilt,

and carried it with him, and wrapped his stuffed animals in it,

and slept with it until it was raggedy enough that I had to replace the binding.

Fortunately, although worn enough you could poke a finger clean through,
it looked just fine all those years,

and not so babyish that a not-so-baby would feel silly taking it over to his cousins' house.

So, y'know, keep that in mind when giving a quilt to a new baby.
How is that quilt going to look when your baby is older?
When your baby is maybe six and cuddling his quilt,
what would he like to take to a sleepover?

Maybe... instead of giving a little guy a pale blue lambykins quilt, 
hows about a cooler shark quilt?

And would you rather see your daughter haul around a pastel pink heart quilt

or one with hot pink hearses?

Your kids will probably outgrow their quilts before they get their driver's licenses,

but you never know. So instead of a powder-blue teddy bear quilt...

Why not a sugar skull quilt that can double as a "seat protector"?

If for no other reason,
it's something you wouldn't mind seeing for the next however many years.

I'm On A Bunting Bender!

I already showed you the Jiji bunting...

Now it's time to do a tutorial on the primitive bunting I saw at the craft fair I worked!

As you may remember, the lovely Shannon of Random Sacks of Kindness

showed me some primitive bunting she made to 

decorate her booth and her camping site when she went camping:

I loved, loved how they fluttered in the slightest breeze;

and was determined to make some of my own.

To the crafting table!

I wanted to make these as quick as possible, since they were going to be looooong.

I started with an easy width:  six inches wide, so I could just zip across

my six inch wide ruler.

To make the triangles, I also wanted easy, so I used a triangle template I already had.

This triangle template came from a set I got years ago;

it's a "triangle within a rectangle" template.

As a bonus, I found a Mother's Day card in the template envelope.

Judging from the tippy writing,
I'm guessing I got this from the kids when they were about three.

Awww!!

 (*Takes a minute to get misty about those sweet little preschoolers, then recovers

when I realize my almost twenty-one-year-old twins can both now

drive their own dang selves wherever they want.  Hurrah!*)

Most of these fabrics are either batiks, plaids, or okay-when-viewed-on-either-side,
and I only used a single, unseamed, unfinished thickness of them for the bunting.

BUT, I did have this cupcake fabric I wanted to feature

that really wasn't that cupcake-y on the back side.

So after cutting the six-inch strips, I placed two six-inch strips together,

WRONG SIDE TO WRONG SIDE, 

marked the triangles instead of cutting them...

 ... pinned along the edges of the two strips...

then sewed a quarter inch on either side of the blue lines.

Once I did that, I cut along the blue lines, so I had a two-sided cupcake pennant!

Now it was time to sew!

I nerdily used a complex method of assuring there was a sufficient randomness

to all the pennants.

Then I stacked the pennants to the left of my machine, 
zigzagged over an eighteen-inch "attaching" tail,
placed the yarn above the upper edge of the first one,
and just zigzagged right over the yarn.

You can't see it, but I put a little Sharpie dot on my clear surface,

about an inch in front of the sewing foot.

When the sewn pennant was all the way sewn, I would line up the NEXT pennant

on the dot and put the yarn on it.

It made the spaces in between the pennants pretty uniform.

To keep the yarn corralled, I put it in the box taped on the edge of my sewing table.

I found the trick to the yarn to be keeping it nice and taunt.  I pulled it straight back, firmly,

so it wouldn't go wibbly-wobbly on the top of the pennant when I was sewing it.

I used about fifty pennants, and it made a looong string!  About eleven yards!

For some of the fabrics, I couldn't find a wide enough variety,
so I did a little fabric painting before sewing.

For example, I used some gold paint on some yellow-gold batik to make this pennant

for my Harry Potter Gryffindor bunting:

You can see below I also painted some of the red fabric for this string.

That's all the same string!  Like I said, fifty pennants made a lot of bunting.

Wouldn't this Gryffindor bunting be awesome at a Harry Potter party?

THIS PIRATE BUNTING.

The idea of it being used at a Pirate Wedding makes me clutch my heart and swoon.

This silvery-green bunting was hard to photograph to do it justice,

but it would make the coolest Slytherin bunting

OR

the prettiest, sweetest garden bunting for a wedding.

(Every once in awhile I make something that I'm tempted to keep,

and I can't stop imagining this around my own back patio.)

Sometimes, a girl would just like to get her princess on.

The pinks, purples, whites and creams would be great for a real girly-girl.

And what about that cupcake bunting?

Looks pretty good, no?  It's going to be a gift.

But all the rest will be available in my Etsy shop!

It's All About YOU

A while back, I posted a tutorial on making this Jiji bunting:

And ever since, I've gotten a steady hit on this blog for that post.

And I thought, it looks like people really like Jiji bunting!

So I've added some to my Etsy shop in 

purple...

...green...

...and blue.

Because I'm a giver that way.

It's all about you, my dear readers.

For Those Brave At Heart, Whose Daring, Nerve and Chivalry Set Them Apart

It's done!  And photographed!  And available in my shop!!

This is just a taste of the Harry Potter Gryffindor Quilt. 

Head on over to BadBabyQuilts to see the whole thing.

And if you decide you can't live without it, remember:

entering MINNIE at checkout will get you 10% off the price!


ETA:  I sold it!
But I made another, similar one, the same size.