Hair Cutting Lessons - Home Ec 102!

Ruffled Skirts and Ribbon flowers

Here's a cute project for Spring!
If you are following my blog and recognize these dresses, please don't mention it to the family who wore them as I wanted it to be an anonymous gift. I know hardly anyone is checking this blog. :o) Making skirts from cotton krinkle cloth makes a nice skirt with so little effort! I used a ruffler foot to gather these layers of a tiered skirt and a rolled hem foot to do the hem for each layer. It took quite a bit of practice to learn how to use the sewing feet which can be purchased at any sewing store. The ruffler foot costs 30.00--ouch! But we make a lot of square dance clothes, so it was worth it. (You could use a coupon at Hancocks to get 40% off.) Also, great for curtains and anything else you want a ruffle on.

This was so easy! I bought the beautiful scalloped cloth on clearance last summer. No hemming required! I roll hemmed the upper edge and than gathered the ruffle and then sewed it onto the bottom of an inexpensive baby t-shirt.
I had made yo-yo flowers before but found another neat way to do these flowers quickly. Just make a quick basting stich along the upper edge of a 12" strip of grosgrain ribbon, pull the loose ends to gather and then tie in a knot to make the circle. Then stitch it down really good, especially if it's for small children. I pinned the rickrack in place then topstitched it to hold it. The leaves were difficult. I had to fraycheck the whole leaf to keep it from coming apart. Grossgrain ribbon is not good for this! I pinked the edges and then zigzagged the leaves on to applique them to the shirt. I also decorated a cheap canvas tote bag with these flowers--so cute!! and quick! The blouses were on sale at Walmart and cost very little and coordinated very nicely with the krinkle cloth skirts.

Covering a Couch Cushion

This was a fun project! I recovered a bay window cushion for a friend. Here is one end view. I'll post a picture of the cushion wrong side out later so you can see how I did it.
1.The first step is to seam rip the whole original cover apart.
2. I used the pieces as a pattern to lay out on the new cloth.
3. I saved the zipper and piping to reuse. The hard part is figuring out how wide to cut the side strip to reapply the piping. I measured out a strip that was the width plus 2" each for the upper and lower piping. You can take up any excess by folding it behind the piping and into the seam allowance. That allows for a perfect fit.


Adding the zipper was a bit of challenge. But not too hard.

This was the most difficult part..pinning and then sewing around tight thick corners.

Right end of cusion.

Left side. To smooth the ends, you can tuck in strips of batting. I didn't want to make it so tight that I couldn't get the cushion back in!