Tank Top Dress

I got inspired after seeing a dress at Gymboree and just had to make on like it.  I got the dress made and then as I kept looking at it I decided it was missing something.  Ah just the thing! Flowers around the neck using the left over t-shirt material.  See how boring the dress looked before.  ------>

 Using the bottom of the shirt I cut 1 inch strips. Used a gathering stich and then pulled to gather the fabric.

I rolled the fabric around, see already looking like a flower.

This is what it looks like from the back

Then sew together on the bottom 

I sewed it on tight.

I made one big flower and then 3 smaller ones for the sides.

This is a very easy dress to make.  I bought a tank top and 1 1/2 yards of fabric for the skirt.  Basically you hem the top of the skirt and then gather it and leave it on the outside.  I can't wait to make another one.

Homemade Freezer Jam!

The sugar and strawberries went on sale this week at my Price Chopper.  That meant one thing, time to make strawberry jam!  I stumbled across a recipe for freezer jam about one year ago and decided to give it a try.  At that point I was sick of spending so much money on jam at the grocery store.  Now I know you can get it pretty cheap but I try to steer clear of food that has large amounts of high fructose corn syrup in it.  So the result was I was spending $3 on one little jar of jam that only has a little over a cup in it.  For the price of $7 I can make 12 cups of strawberry jam.  Throw in another $5 if you need to buy containers. Way cheaper than buying it at the store.  I use the recipe on the sure jell box. It works great every time. 

Gather all the ingredients.  You need 4 lbs of sugar, 2 containers of stawberries, I always buy one extra. Two packages of Sure Jell, a chopper, and containers.  I like the small twist and store plastic ones. They hold 2 cups each.

Wash your fruit

Cut off the tops of the strawberries

Chop up the strawberries.  Don't chop up to much you want bits of fruit in the jam.

Chop up enough to get 4 cups.  The recipe only calls for 2 cups but I double it.  We eat it and it can stay in the freezer for a long time.

add 1 1/2 cups of water and 2 packages of Sure Jell in to a 3 quart sauce pan.  Turn on high.

Measure out 8 cups of sugar.  It takes almost the whole 4 lb bag.

Add chopped strawberries to sugar

and mix well.

While the strawberries are sitting soaking up the sugar goodness.  Stir Sure Jell and  bring to a boil.

Stir for one min after it comes to a boil and then take off heat.  Don't let it burn! 

Add strawberries

mix well.  Turn the heat on to medium, stir until all of the sugar is dissolved.  The recipe on the box doesn't tell you to do this but it turns out much better if you do.  =)

Measure out 2 cups in each container.

Its so good Molly loves to lick the spoons after I'm finished.

Put lids on and let sit over night.  Once the jam is like jello when you shake it lightly back and forth it is ready to go in the freezer.

Birthday Shirt

My new love is shirts with the kids ages on them.  I made this one for Molly using a shirt from Hobby Lobby left over fabric from a pair of shorts I'm in the process making for Molly and my old jeans.  Oh plus some buttons I had laying around.

Before I cut up the jeans I drew what I wanted the number to look like for a pattern

 Next I cut out some of the flowers from the left over fabric.  And placed them where I thought they looked nice.

 

The best thing I found at the fabric store is called heat and bond.  It sticks to whatever you want to sew on and then the paper peels off to stick to whatever you are sewing it to. 

Trace around the shape and then cut out.

 Iron head and bond paper on to the back  and peel off the paper.

I ironed the flowers down that I wanted behind the four first so I could stitch around them.  I use a zig zag stitch length set at 0.3 and the width at 4.0

End result, One happy birthday girl!