Hi All! Thanks for stopping by! The Fresh Christmas Wreath tutorial has been revamped and reposted on the new blog site.
https://craftybridge.com/portfolio/fresh-christmas-wreath/
I hope you'll check it out - making your own wreath is easy and can save you a ton of money!
Merry Christmas!
Thanks for stopping by!
Cheers,
Bridget XOXO
Happy Holidays friends!! I am currently knee deep in Christmas gift crafting and sewing. I’m trying to keep my head above water, but I’m too stubborn to admit that I might have taken on too much this year. Just ask Joe… my craft room doesn’t have a door and I keep finding him with the measuring tape. He’s too nice to tell me that the room looks like a fire hazard.
Alas, yesterday I finally made something I can post without spoiling any gifts. I keep seeing these pillows that are made of fur, faux fur, etc. They are luxuriously soft, fluffy, and so reminiscent of Winter. BUT. They cost a fortune. Pillow covers alone cost $40-$80, depending on where you look. Not in my budget.
Luckily, I found a bunch of different faux furs at the fabric store. I found the one I wanted – enough for 3 pillow covers – $ 13. Boom.
What you will need:
- Faux fur of your choice – I bought 1.5 yard
- Ribbon
- The Usual Suspects – sewing machine, thread, scissors
1. Cut your faux fur – I cut mine as rectangles 18” x 40”.
2. Fold your rectangle in half (the hamburger way) with fur sides together. Sew two parallel sides together, making a U-shape. I left the opposing side to the fold open. I like the rustic look.
3. Tack on some ribbon to tie closed the open end of the pillow cover. I used some leftover black ribbon – 10” each, two on each side. They make a nice little bow!
4. Before turning, I learned that the freshly cut edges made a big mess of loose fur – shake the pillow cover over a trashcan, then using a lint-roller, do a once-over. As awesome as this fur is, it makes a mess when it is cut.
5. Turn, do one more pass with the lint roller. Then cover your pillow. And prepare to fight for these pillows on the couch. The cat, dog, husband, and kiddos are going to be serious competition.
Enjoy! Happy Holidays!
Thanks for stopping by!
Cheers,
Bridge XOXO
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Just wanted to take a minute to wish all of you a special holiday. I am so thankful for the opportunity to blog and share my love of crafting. But I am especially thankful for my readers! Thank you all for taking the time to follow, read, comment and inspire me. You are all loved.
Now eat all the turkey and pumpkin pie you can get your hands on – and don’t let Uncle Harold drink too much wine. And ignore Aunt Betty’s passive-aggressive comments. Family is God’s way of priming your gift of patience ;) So, hold your wacky and wonderful family close. But not too close – the casserole gives Uncle Tom gas.
Sending wishes of hope, health, and happiness.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Cheers,
Bridget XOXO
Halloween is a hit at our house... Because its awesome, and because its basically Joe's birthday.
Every year we try to come up with an awesome costume idea. The hardest part is picking one that we can actually pull off. Our best year thus far: 2010 Avatars. We will never surpass this epic-ness, I have accepted it.
Oh, College… I miss you so much.
This year we channeled our favorite Muppet: Swedish Chef! Bork bork bork bork! Joe came up with the idea and after a little research we learned that Swedish Chef is actually married! According to wikipedia (we extensively research our characters…), during some episodes Chef has a ring on his finger... But nobody has met Mrs. Swedish Chef so we let ourselves go wild coming up with a persona for her.
I was pretty much a cross between Swedish Chef and Julia Childs. And failed on all levels with any attempt at any accent.
This costume was fairly easy to make but did require a bit of prep. We bought white aprons and chef hats at a craft store. We spruced up the hats and Joe spray painted stripes on the aprons.
For the Chef hats, I added orange hair (bought at a craft store for $1) for eyebrows for Swedish Chef:
I also made a mustache out of the orange hair – sewing elastic to each end.
For Mrs. Swedish Chef I added felt roses to her chef hat:
The rest of our costumes included button-down shirts and accessories – bowtie for the man, pearls for the Mrs..
Have fun you crazy party people!
Happy Halloween!
Cheers,
Bridget XOXO
I am so excited to share this post with you guys… this was my FIRST TIME quilting. Gotta tell ya, I was super intimidated. In fact, I was considering taking a class before even attempting to quilt… I mean, this is the major leagues of sewing, right? Well, that’s what I thought, anyways. Turns out, it’s not that hard.
I found a lot of inspiration on Pinterest for different styles of table runners, but I decided to start simple and go with strips. I tend to gravitate towards simpler design choices anyways, so I knew I wouldn’t mind looking at it for a long time.
One of my favorite parts of making this table runner? Coordinating fabrics! I literally filled an entire cart full of bolts of fabric trying to find my favorites to put together. You don’t need a ton of fabric, but a good variety makes it more interesting.
What You Will Need:
- Fabric: use this as a stash buster, or go to the store and find 5-6 coordinating fabrics (or just fabrics you like together – be creative). You don’t need much; maybe a 3/8 yard each and you’ll have some left over.
- Fabric for the back of the runner 1 yard
- Batting: I used Pellon Fusible Fleece 987F – I had some already, but use whatever you prefer, just not anything too heavy.
- Quilt Binding
- The Usual Suspects: thread in a coordinating color, sewing machine, iron
Halloween Quilted Table Runner
1. First things first: clean up your fabric, cut off the selvedge, press. I don’t bother pre-washing my fabrics.
2. Cut strips of your different fabrics. Make them all the same length, but vary the width for each strip. I chose to make my runner 20” wide. Length depends on your table and preference.
3. Organize your strips by laying them out and picking an order that you like. Once you like your layout, stack the fabric strips, keeping the order that you want them sewn.
4. Start sewing! With right sides together, line up one edge of these strips and sew a 1/4” seam.
5. Press open the seam.
6. Now add on to your sewn strips with another strip and keep going in that order – sew, press seam open, sew, press seam open. I sewed half of the runner at a time so it was easier to manage with the sewing machine – less bulk to move around. Then I sewed the two halves together when I finished both.
7. Cut your back fabric to match your runner length and width, as well as your batting. Make a batting sandwich. Pin together.
8. Press your batting sandwich.
9. Starting in the middle of your runner, start quilting. This is a ton of fun. You can do anything you want, but I did parallel seams and made them totally random. This is my favorite part. All of a sudden, it seriously looks professional and finished. It like, transforms… I’m not even kidding.
I rolled each end of the runner so it was easier to manage while I sewed. Also, please ignore the mess haha
10. Press your table runner. Clean up your edges so they are squared and clean. Pin on your binding. Don’t forget to miter your corners. I also sewed the two ends of my binding together and pressed open the seam for a clean finish.
11. Sew your binding in place. DONE!
Jump up and down and celebrate and show everyone on Facebook and Instagram how awesome you are. :)
Literally, it looks awesome. I’m not trying to brag, but I was so flipping surprised at how easy it was to get to the finished product. The whole time I was waiting for the moment where I shrugged in defeat and said “well, I’m a beginner, it’s not going to look perfect”. And that moment never happened. That means you can do it too.
Please comment if you have questions and if you make one! I love to see your hard work!
Happy Halloween!
Cheers,
Bridge, XOXO
Since we’re on a roll with the DIY workout gear this week, I might as well throw this one in too. Another simple DIY, but this one includes some sewing. Don’t be intimidated, it’s about as simple as sewing can get – straight line stitching.
We found this link for DIY wrist wraps by End of Three Fitness the other day when Joe’s wrist wraps broke and he wanted a new pair, but with some fun print on it instead of boring plain black. Of course he went to the store and found the perfect print for lifting – Marvel comics (think the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Spiderman). I guess he wants to channel their super strength during his workouts… not a bad idea, really. Between you and me, I have no problem with him wanting Thor’s muscles :)
Here is how ours came out:
How awesome is this fabric? I need to find more fun projects to use it for!
I wonder if putting a little backing in the middle would be nice? Or maybe it would make them too bulky?
Thanks to End of Three Fitness for sharing their tutorial!
Happy DIYing and Happy Fitnessing y’all!
Thanks for Stopping By!
Cheers,
Bridget XOXO
Joe works out all the time and doesn’t limit himself to any particular form of workout; be it running, crossfit, weightlifting, endurance training, etc. He has run ultra marathons over the last four years and even completed a 100 mile, 24 hour race. Two weekends ago Joe participated in his first crossfit competition and came in second place. He also runs Spartan races all year. I think you get the point…he’s a fitness freak. However, with all this action comes sore and aching muscles and joints.
Floss bands help with compression of muscles to decrease swelling and improve healing time. But, they can get expensive. We found this tutorial online using a bike tire inner tube and it is so simple… and costs less than $5!
Very excited – tire tube in hand!
Cut out the valve
Cut down the inner seam, then cut your long strip in half
Wash the powder from the inside of the tube.
Done!
Disclaimer: please do not use these wraps without educating yourself on their use first! If used improperly, can lead to loss of circulation! We like Dr. Kelly Starrett and his book “Becoming a Supple Leopard”. He also has great videos on YouTube on proper use of these floss bands and ways to improve muscle movement and prevent injury. Check him out!
Thanks for stopping by!
Cheers,
Bridget XOXO
I am so blessed to live on the shore… there is something about the ocean that grounds me (does that make sense?). It reminds me of how small I am in this vast world and that comforts me… keeps me from letting my everyday stresses take over my life.
Of course, I’m white as a ghost and don’t tolerate the sun for very long, even with SPF ten billion on, but I try anyways. It occurred to me a week or so ago that J and I only own two beach towels… and we always use them to sleep on at the beach as well as dry off with. Which creates a dilemma….sand gets, er, everywhere and the towels stay wet. Growing up, we had an off-white felt beach blanket that we kept in the car at all times. It was huge, it didn’t hold sand, and it dried super fast. I have no idea where my parents got it or if they even know how awesome it was, but it was still perfect. So I decided to try to make one for our beach day this past weekend.
What you will need:
- 2 yards soft felt
- felt decorative decals (made by you or pre-cut)
- The Usual Suspects: thread, sewing machine, scissors
1. After tidying your edges, pin a 2 inch seam. I like a substantial blanket edge. Don’t forget to miter your corners prior to sewing (learn from me, it is a huge pain to try to do it as you go along).
2. Sew the edge of your blanket. I like the serge stitch – it holds up the best under wear and tear.
3. Sew on some felt decals. You could always embroider, cut your own decals, or go to town with any other accents. I happened upon some cute nautical felt decals at the store (in the kids craft section) for about .75 a piece.
4. Head to the shore!! Super easy beach blanket…. and cost me less than $10!
See? Full of sand already… but shakes right off.
Nice set-up eh? Cheers, from the Mister! For a little town pride we brought some local beer from Two Roads Brewing Co. Delicious craft beer – worth a try!
FYI- I chose baby blue because I wanted something that wouldn’t hold heat. I was so tempted to do a red or cobalt, but I was afraid they would hold too much heat.
Happy Beach-ing!
Thanks for stopping by!
Cheers,
Bridge XOXO