Things I'd Like to Make: King Duvet Cover

This week I had this idea for a duvet cover, and I love the idea, but I'm not sure I'm actually going to make it. The reason is that I'm not yet sure it will go with the rest of what I have in mind for my master bedroom. So I thought I'd go ahead and share it with you in case I never end up making it.
My inspiration comes from this fabric by Anna Maria Horner:

I've always loved this print and made a dress for Ava from it. But it's not the proper scale for making a full duvet with. So I thought I could customize the print to whatever color and size I'd like, maybe something like this (try to imagine this covering a bed):

Here's how I'd do it. I would buy 2 white cotton sheets for the sides, and cotton fabric in each of the desired colors for the middle. I'd then cut strips of the colored fabric to the appropriate length and sew them all together. Then I'd lay the two white sheets out with the color strips in the middle and pin it down and sew all the edges under (somehow). That part might take a little messing with to get it right. So there's the top and I think the rest would be fairly self explanatory. And it would be pretty darn cheap to make too. I'd love to see this as a final product, I might just have to do it.

DIY Father's Day Treats

This week it was my task to come up with a Father's Day idea for some of the young women in my neighborhood. So of course I scoured the web for ideas and modified a couple of things I saw to come up with this:

And these are the templates I designed for the collar and tie and top tag. Click HERE if you'd like to download the PDF. (There are 2 style options for the necktie).

I usually just recycle my baby food jars, but this seemed like a great way to repurpose some of them, since we had a small budget. You could also use mini mason jars, but you'll want to enlarge the collar and circle tag on the top.
Here are some instructions:

Supplies:
clean, empty jar and lid (use Goo Gone to remove any sticky residue)
Reeses Pieces candy
solid white paper
solid colored cardstock
patterned scrapbooking paper
piece of thin ribbon or a strip of the patterned paper
tape or glue
craft circle punches-: 1&3/8" and 1&3/4"

Fill jar with candies. Cut out white collar piece and fold over on dotted line.
Trace necktie pattern onto patterned paper and cut it out. glue or tape it (hiding the tape) under the collar flap of the white collar paper.
Wrap collar paper around your jar and glue or tape it on the overlap.
Using the larger circle punch, punch a circle out of solid colored cardstock. Use smaller circle punch to punch out the "love you to pieces" label. Using tape or glue, attach them to the lid of the jar. Wrap the ribbon around the lid and secure it with glue or tape.

Enjoy!

Stroller Makeover

I have a nice stroller, but I still generally prefer the $15 umbrella stroller for most occasions. When my daughter was born I had bought the only available one at Target one day, because I needed one and didn't have time to shop around. I've never cared for the fabric print on it, and now that my little boy is the passenger it's even worse. So finally I got around to making a new seat for it.
This took about 2 and a half hours total, even with a few interruptions from the kiddos. I just took off the old one, unstitched a few threads, traced around it and put the new one back together. I just wanted to get it done without another trip to the fabric store, so I used what I had on hand. The fabric is from IKEA (given to me by a dear friend) and is the heavy duty canvas-y type. The orange binding is all I had at home, and probably wouldn't have been my first choice if I had been at the store. I think a simple thinner black would have been better, but anything is better than my boy riding in pink strawberries.
Obviously the before photo was taken some time ago. I knew if I waited I would forget to take a before photo.