Save My Pants!! Phase 2: Repairing Tears at the Ankles.

This is phase 2 of saving my pants!  The first phase was Turning Flares into Skinnies.

This...

...happens to every single pair of my pants.  It's because one of my legs is shorter than the other.  Seriously.  Like, an inch or more.  When I first told my husband when we were dating he just laughed at me and wouldn't believe me, but I used to wear a lift in my shoe and everything!

Now that my old jeans are new skinny jeans, this problem was a lot more noticeable, so I decided to try to fix it.

All I had to do is turn the jeans inside out, pinch together that rip up the leg, and sew it together.  If you have to do something similar, make sure you taper the seam so you don't get this:

Nice little peak in my pants...ughhhhh.

If you get this problem too, just turn your pants inside out and try again, tapering a little bit more.  It's really an easy problem to fix.

If it's frayed a lot, make sure you go over it a lot.  I don't know if you can tell in the picture below, but I sewed down this line at least 5 or 6 times to make sure it will stay fixed.

Now, my pants look like this!

There's still a little extra wear on the left leg, but it's hardly noticeable now that the tear is fixed.  And you really, honestly, cannot tell there's a seam there at all.

Save My Pants!! Phase 1: Turn Flares into Skinnies.

So...I have these pants.  They don't stay up, the front pockets pop out, one pant leg is worn off at the ankle more than the other, and they're about 5 years old.  I never wear them because of all the "issues" I have whenever I do.

I saw this post (via Pinterest, obviously) for making skinny jeans out of flared jeans, and I immediately wanted to make some.  I've been wanting some skinny jeans for a long while, but I have a ton of jeans and couldn't really justify buying another pair, so I thought this was just perfect.

In the tutorial, the girl uses a pair of skinny jeans as a kind of pattern, but, as previously mentioned, I don't have any skinny jeans, so...I tried anyway.  I figured if I ruined these pants it wasn't a huge loss because I don't wear them very often.


First, I turned the pants inside out.  Then I put them on.  Then I just eyeballed how skinny I wanted my jeans to be.  Be sure to leave a little wiggle room so these don't look like jeggings (unless that's really what you want...then go for it).  **REMEMBER:  You can always make add another seam to make them skinnier if you hate how they look.  It's a lot harder to make it bigger if they end up being skin tight!**  Then just pin in a line, tapering in from the seam at the knee and down to the ankle.

Take them off carefully, then sew down the line, taking the pins out as you go.  Be sure to back stitch at the beginning and end.

Turn them right-side out and try them on!  See if you like the look.  If they're still too wide for you, turn them inside out and sew another line a quarter of an inch in from the first seam.  Try them on, repeat if needed.

Once you have one leg looking how you want, turn them inside out again and lay the pants on a table.  Flatten out the leg as much as possible, then fold the pants in half, with the un-skinny leg on top of the skinny leg.  I don't know if you can see the seam on the bottom leg in the next picture, but you will fold the un-skinny leg over just to where the seam is on the skinny leg...I really hope that makes sense.  Hopefully you can see the picture to figure it out if you're not getting it.

(p.s.  Don't mind the pink stripe on the bottom pant leg in these pictures...it was my first attempt, which didn't work out.)

Then you're going to mark the un-skinny leg to show where you're going to sew.  I took a sharpie (which can bleed through jeans, so draw lightly, or just use something else) and drew a dotted line along the edge of the pants where the seam would be.

All the way up to the knee...

Making sure to taper the line in at the knee so you don't get any weird bulges of fabric.

Then you just connect the dots, add a couple of pins on either end to keep the layers together, and sew down your line.  Easy.

You might want to try your jeans on at this point to make sure they look even and they're how you want them to look.  Then just cut off the excess material.

And you're done!!  Unless you're like me and have a million other issues with your pants...

In the next few days I'll show you how to fix this problem:

And these problems:

For a Laugh--Harry Potter

I love Harry Potter.  I saw these two things on Pinterest and laughed out loud (for real, not just "lol").

Chia Seeds

Do you remember these guys???

They even have a "Chi-Obama"  Ha.  So hilarious.  I can't imagine why he would give that the okay...

Did you know that chia seeds can be eaten?? And they are actually really good for you???  Ha!  I didn't know either, but I'm convinced now.



Some benefits:

   Chia has so many vitamins and nutrients.  Calcium, b12, omega-3 fatty acids, and amino acids are all found in chia seeds.

   Chia has a lot of fiber, both soluble and insoluble.

   Chia seeds are a great source of protein for how small they are!

   Chia seeds are thought to reduce blood pressure and can control blood sugar levels in diabetics.  Obviously  if you have one of these problems you would want to talk to your doctor about incorporating this into your diet before stopping or reducing medication, but what a great natural way to keep your body healthy!

   Chia seeds expand as they absorb water and can absorb somewhere from 7-12 times their weight in liquid. This is supposed to be great for runners.  Because the chia holds onto water, it's supposed to keep you hydrated for longer.  This could also be used with dieting.  Since the chia expands in your stomach, it will help you to feel full without all the extra calories.


 
How to eat chia seeds:

   Chia seeds have (almost) no taste.  You can add them to almost anything without adding any extra flavor.

   You can eat them in their raw form, completely whole.  I love the idea of this because a lot of seeds (like flax) you have to grind up before you put them in things so you get all of the nutrients.  Chia seeds expand and form a kind of gel (more on that in a second) so you get all of the nutrients inside, even if you eat them whole.

   You can snack on these if you want, but it is so easy to put them on top of a salad or in something you're already eating without really noticing they are there.

   You can put chia seeds in smoothies.  I'm really weird about textures I'm eating (example--I have to chew yogurt, ice cream, smoothies, yeah...basically anything that's thick, even if it's semi-liquid), so when I add these I make sure I also have some berries so I don't think too much about eating the seeds.

   You can make a chia gel!  This is my favorite way to use my chia seeds.  This elliminates the "texture issues" I have with these seeds.  You can use the gel as a substitute for oil, you can add it to soups, sauces, and baked goods, and you can easily put the gel in smoothies.  This is just my opinion, but I think by making the gel, it uses up the absorption power of the seeds, so you won't necessarily get the "full" feeling as easily as with the raw seeds.  You still get all the nutrients, fiber, and protein though.

   You can also buy ground chia seeds or grind them with a coffee grinder.  You can use this all the same ways listed above.  Additionally, you can substitute some of the flour in baked goods with ground chia seeds.  You wouldn't want to take out too much of the flour, because that could mess with the integrity of the recipe, but adding a portion of ground chia seeds can make brownies a "health food!"

   You can use chia seeds as an egg substitute if you have egg allergies.  I haven't really researched this one, but I'm sure you can google it and find plenty of resources.



How to make the chia gel:

Measure 2 cups of water and add 1/3 cup of chia seeds.

  Give it a little stir.

 Wait about ten minutes and you will have a gel to use as your oil substitute or use however you want!

You can store this gel in the refrigerator for about two weeks.

I'm sure you will see chia seeds pop up in quite a few of the next posts I have.  I'm on a chia kick!

CH-CH-CH-CHIA!!!

Three-Armed Baby

For Halloween last week, the little Mister was a three-armed baby...

 He didn't want to keep his extra arm out of his mouth...

To make this you need:
~Two identical shirts or something similar.
~An old doll with cloth arms; NOT plastic ones.
~Thread that coordinates with the shirt.
~Scissors.
~Sewing machine (or you can hand sew everything; it probably wouldn't take much longer).

1.  Find two of the same shirt/sleeper/romper/onesie and a doll you don't mind cutting up.
2.  Cut off the arm of the doll past the seam (pretend you're cutting on the neck side of the shoulder--does this sound morbid to anyone else...?).  Set aside for a moment.
3.  Cut off one arm from one of the shirts (if you want to try to put it back together later you can try to unpick it, but all of mine had serged edges, and I didn't want to have to deal with it).
4.  Sew the doll arm inside the free sleeve from the first shirt.  This is where the doll's "shoulder" (a.k.a. seam) can come in handy.  You can sew right along the seam so you don't have to try to sew through quite so much stuffing.
5.  Cut a slit near the side seam of the second shirt.  This is where the sleeve will be.  Make sure you make this as close to the same size of the sleeve opening that you can.  Err on the small side, because it's easier to stuff extra fabric in (again, you can TRY to unpick the side seam, but by now you've probably realized, like me, that it's impossible).
6.  Stuff the sleeve and excess shoulder parts through the slit, turn the shirt inside out so when you sew all of the seams will be facing inside the shirt, and sew along the same seam.  Be sure to back stitch.  We don't want a leper for Halloween! (What do you call lepers in a hot tub...?  Stew.  Haha gross.)

And you're done!  If you have a husband like mine, he will want you to do the same thing to the other arm, and the legs, and the head (on the shoulder, Michael Scott style) while we're at it...

**This project was inspired by this photo.

Scrappy Necklace

To start, I thought I would post about one of my favorite things I've done from my boards so far--the scrappy necklace:

Okay, this is sooooo easy.  It took me less than an hour to make three or four of these.

1.  Braid strips of fabric together until you have a braid as long as you want the necklace to be (I safety pinned the three top ends to the hem of my pants friendship-bracelet style to start the braid and wrapped the braid around my foot as it got longer).
2.  Overlap the ends and sew them together.
    2.a  Alternately, you could tie the ends together in a knot.
I like sewing the ends together, because unless you're really looking, you can't see the seam, so it doesn't matter if it comes out from behind your neck.
3.  Wear your new accessory.  It may not make the cut for church or a fancy dinner out, but it does make me feel a little fancier when I'm out running errands or on a Saturday.

TIPS:
   Use a couple of different coordinating fabrics.  If you use three different fabric strips or two of one and one of another it will make it a little more interesting to look at.
   Fabric with a small pattern works best.  I tried this with a bright yellow fabric with a big, spread out pattern and it did not look cute at all.
   Use different kinds of fabrics!!  I used a flannel strip and two cotton strips on this one...

 (Please don't judge too harshly with the awkward hand position and the surplus of "Myspace pictures"...I should probably get my husband to take these in the future.  Noted.)

...and I love how it turned out.  For this one I also made one long braid instead of two smaller ones.  This way I can wear it as a double stranded necklace or a triple stranded necklace.  I'm a lover of versatility!

**Created thanks to this tutorial.

Hope you're turning your pins to projects, too!


NOTE:  I have a board on Pinterest that I've named Check.  This is where I have put all of the pins I've already completed.  If you want to see what I'll be blogging about next, I'll probably update that board before it actually makes it to the blog.

Pins to Projects

Today is the beginning of something.  Something awesome?  Yes!  Something inspiring?  I hope so.  Something fun?  It better be.  This is where I am going to turn my pins into projects.  I'm really excited about this, because I need somewhere to document this crafty woman I'm turning into.  There was a time when I didn't sew, paint, glue, decorate, or craft at all.  Then I got pregnant with this sweet guy...

...and that all changed.  I turned into a mom.  I had to make everything for him.  I made burp cloths, a boppy, a blanket sleeper, more burp cloths, a glider for the nursery (just covered that one, didn't actually MAKE it), decorations for his room, and probably some other things that I've long forgotten about by now.  If I had to buy it I thought it would show the world that I wasn't prepared to do this "mom" thing.  Ha.  Silly me.  I didn't make half the things I wanted to for him, and then he was here!  And I realized you're never really "prepared" to do the mom thing...It just happens to you and you have to learn.  Every.  Day.

So that's how I started on this craft train, and I haven't gotten off.  I love it.  It's so fulfilling to have something to do that is just mine, and that that something doubles as making our house a home--even better.

Now, why the name?  Because I have become addicted to Pinterest.  Seriously.  I have a problem, and aside from going to a 12-steps meeting this is the only way I know how to deal with it.  I am going to start doing instead of just pinning.  Oh, I'm sure I'll still pin, but hopefully I'll be productive along the way, and instead of being a time-waster it will be inspiring me to hone my skills as a crafter.

Maybe this blog will only be for me.  And if it is, it will be so worth it.  On a hike, I'm that person that looks behind her every few feet to see how far she's come, and that's exactly how I am in life too.  I need constant reminders that I'm better than I was yesterday; that's what gives me hope that tomorrow I'll be better than I am today.

Maybe, hopefully, I'll be able to inspire some others to get up and start doing something.  Whether you pin or not, I hope you can do the things you want to do, instead of just making more lists of things for someday.