Upcycled Disney T-shirt Trinket Bag

I have shared this tutorial on the blog before, but it is amazing to me how many of these little bags we use and how handy they are in my travel gear. So I hop you enjoy this rerun from March of 2014!

We are gearing up for another road trip, this time to Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort! In preparation for that, I am getting out all our road trip goodies. I realized that my previous case for all my electronics was woefully lacking in space for my new gadgetry. I needed something with a little more room that I could slip in my knitting basket or my purse without a lot of fuss. And I like having it all in one place, but not a tangled mess in my purse! As I was scavenging through my bin of t-shirts and clothing to recycle, I noticed a t-shirt that Little Chef was not too fond of because the printing on the front was uncomfortable. I didn't even put it in the rotation for Minnie. It was an 18-month Mickey T-shirt and perfectly suited for the job!

This was the easiest project I've done in some time. I simply cut the sleeves and bottom off the shirt, centering the Mickey image, and leaving the neck in tact as a ready-made casing for the drawstring. I used an overlock stitch and sewed up the three sides of the shirt. I then angled the corners in and cut them off, because I like a flat-bottomed bag. This is certainly a step you don't need to take, it just adds a nice touch. If it intimidates you, leave it out.

I then opened up a hole in the collar seam using my seam ripper, and slipped a ribbon through the casing the same way you would in a pair of pants. Because this is jersey, you really don't need to worry about the fabric unraveling, so I simply left the hole in the collar! I tied the two ends of the ribbon together with a knot, turned the bag right-side out and there you have it! Easy as can be!

Now I have a place for all my iPhone, Kindle and iPad cords, earbuds, etc., and they won't be a tangled mess when I want them! These would also be terrific bags for Tinkerbell Treasures, either to give filled with goodies or to give as a goody! And if you don't have an ample supply of 12-18M shirts in your cottage, the Goodwill is an excellent place to get exactly this sort of thing for a bargain price. In fact, I have found some wonderful park merchandise there that we wear in the parks! (No one has to know!) I do love a good bargain. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Fused Plastic Rain Bucket Hat

As Earth Day approaches, I thought I would run one of my all-time favorite upcycled projects! Enjoy this oldie but goodie from last summer!

Are you looking for the perfect accessory for your Disney rain poncho? Well, look no further! You can upcycle some old shopping bags for this unique Disney look!

For this project I used 8 grey shopping bags for the lining, (available from Kohls, Lowes or Walmart in this area) and one large Disney shopping bag for the exposed side of this hat, as well as some white seam binding I had in my stash and purple thread for contrast! Which means that this Disney hat was completely free to make and helps the environment by not putting all that plastic in the landfill. Wouldn't Jiminy Cricket be so proud?

For all the details and instructions from fusing the plastic to creating the hat, I used this tutorial from Makezine. The only change I made was adding the seam binding to the two brim pieces before sewing them together. You could always just seam it the way the pattern suggests, without the seam binding. But I like the extra touch it gives this hat. So cute!

To fuse the plastic, I set my iron to somewhere between cotton and wool/silk, the highest and second highest settings on my iron. Fusing the plastic was the longest part of this project. It seemed to take forever! But setting the iron too hot was also a mistake; when it was set to the highest setting, the plastic shrank so quickly it pulled holes in the "fabric." Not so good for keeping the rain out!

To cut the pieces out, you can actually trace around them with ballpoint pen. That way you can see exactly what parts of the design will show. Just keep in mind that you will have a 1/4" seam around the pieces. And if you do try this at home, make sure the words will not be upside down when you sew the hat pieces together. You CAN pick the seam out of this plastic, but it is no picnic! My advice is to check everything twice before sewing!

I hope to see several of these hats the next time we are in the Disney parks! After all, what better place is there for a fabulous hat than Disney? Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Upcycled T-shirt Dress

This dress came about on a whim. Millie loves her dress that this was copied from, and it too is made from jersey knit fabric. Her favorite dress is from Christmas and has long sleeves and matching leggings. It's beyond cute, but we needed an alternative for our sweltering summers here in the midwest. Especially since she was insisting on continuing to wear said Christmas dress!

So I traced the pieces of her favorite Christmas dress, adding a half-inch seam allowance to the pieces and made this little sleeveless number from two old t-shirts that were begging for new life!

The Donald Duck t-shirt wasn't quite wide enough for this pattern, so I had to use an additional T. This one was actually from my alma mater, but it didn't really matter since you couldn't see the design. I used the overlock stitch on my machine to create the rough edges of the ruffle you see here. I completely made this up and won't even attempt to explain how it was done. I'm not even sure myself! But I love that we gave new life to a grumpy old Donald shirt and a this girl seems pretty happy with it.

Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Fused Plastic Rain Bucket Hat

Are you looking for the perfect accessory for your Disney rain poncho? Well, look no further! You can upcycle some old shopping bags for this unique Disney look!

For this project I used 8 grey shopping bags for the lining, (available from Kohls, Lowes or Walmart in this area) and one large Disney shopping bag for the exposed side of this hat, as well as some white seam binding I had in my stash and purple thread for contrast! Which means that this Disney hat was completely free to make and helps the environment by not putting all that plastic in the landfill. Wouldn't Jiminy Cricket be so proud?

For all the details and instructions from fusing the plastic to creating the hat, I used this tutorial from Makezine. The only change I made was adding the seam binding to the two brim pieces before sewing them together. You could always just seam it the way the pattern suggests, without the seam binding. But I like the extra touch it gives this hat. So cute!

To fuse the plastic, I set my iron to somewhere between cotton and wool/silk, the highest and second highest settings on my iron. Fusing the plastic was the longest part of this project. It seemed to take forever! But setting the iron too hot was also a mistake; when it was set to the highest setting, the plastic shrank so quickly it pulled holes in the "fabric." Not so good for keeping the rain out!

To cut the pieces out, you can actually trace around them with ballpoint pen. That way you can see exactly what parts of the design will show. Just keep in mind that you will have a 1/4" seam around the pieces. And if you do try this at home, make sure the words will not be upside down when you sew the hat pieces together. You CAN pick the seam out of this plastic, but it is no picnic! My advice is to check everything twice before sewing!

I hope to see several of these hats the next time we are in the Disney parks! After all, what better place is there for a fabulous hat than Disney? Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Upcycled Disney Resort Map Bucket

You know, I'm always surprised at how the easiest map projects become my favorites! This little bucket is no exception. And honestly, it was really easy to do! All you need is a paper cutter, a map and a tape runner.

I started with a bucket of Ghirardelli chocolates (minis) that we picked up at Downtown Disney this fall. They are not nut free, so I liked that Doc still have them as a treat, yet could keep them up on a high shelf away from Little Chef (and his nut allergy) in this handy bucket. Once the candy was gone I rescued the bucket from the recycle bin, not yet sure what I would do, but certain it would be useful in the future.

And yesterday, inspiration hit! I grabbed an Epcot map from my stash and cut it in two strips to cover the entire bucket. Future World for the front of the bucket and World Showcase for the back! I just used my tape runner (dry adhesive) to adhere the map to the plastic bucket and voila! I have the perfect little catch-all for my desk area! I am in constant need of another container for pens, colored pencils, googly eyes, colorful elastic, you name it! I love the way this looks. And wouldn't Jiminy Cricket be proud? We've upcycled this into something wonderful!

Until next time, dear readers, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney T-shirt Quilt | Phase 3: Using Smaller T-shirts

As I mentioned in my first post about this t-shirt quilt, I have t-shirts of varying sizes. Some are as small as 6 months onesies, others are 3T. I have some sentimental attachment to many of these and I wanted to include them in the quilt - a way of keeping them and making them useful again. But I was clearly not going to get an 11"x11" square out of them. So I decided to appliqué them onto larger squares.

This is the process I used:

As I was cutting the adult sized t-shirts, I laid them flat and cut through both the fronts and the backs of the shirts. This way, I had the printed square from the front, and a blank square from the back.

I then took the blank square, ironed on the fusible interfacing (Pellon) to stabilize it. (I did not use the Pellon on the smaller square as it felt it wasn't necessary.)

Then, I cut out the printed design from the child sized t-shirt using an 8"x8" square. Again, I made a pattern from scrapbooking paper to make it easy to cut.

Once the smaller square was cut, I centered it on the larger square and used Stitchery Witchery to bond the smaller one to the larger one. If you've never used Stitchery Witchery, it's very simple. It will bond two fabrics together by just ironing it on, the perfect thing to hold the small square on the larger one in order to appliqué it.

After the smaller square was securely adhered to the larger one, I simply used the zigzag stitch on my machine, and stitched around all four sides of the small square. And since I had plenty of scrap material from the left-over t-shirt parts, I was able to test the zigzag settings to get them just the way I wanted them prior to sewing on the first square.

I almost have all my squares completed! The next installment should be the sewing of the quilt top! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney T-shirt Quilt | Phase 2: Preparing the Shirt Squares

As my regular readers will know, I am currently working on a t-shirt quilt. This is my first attempt and I thought what better way to share it than while it's in progress?! Last time, we discussed the measurements and gathering up of t-shirts. This time, I wanted to show you how I prepared the t-shirts for the quilt.

If you've ever worked with jersey, you know it can be a little finicky in the machine. You can approach this in a couple of ways. For smaller projects, such as these adorable boxers from upcycled t-shirts, you can starch the heck out of the jersey and it sews up just fine. But for these larger squares of jersey, I wanted something more stable, especially since I want the measurements to stay fairly accurate. I happened to have some pellon fusible interfacing on hand, and used it (and another bolt I purchased from Amazon) to stabilize the t-shirt squares. If you've never used it, it's extremely easy.

To begin, I made a pattern from scrapbook paper of an 11" x 11" square. I placed it on top of the shirts (no pinning) and cut around it with my scissors. I cut out the back and the front at once so I would have the back squares for the smaller shirts, as I mentioned in my Phase 1 post. If you are a quilter and have a rotary cutter, this would be even faster. I don't have a mat for cutting on at the moment, so I just went old school with the scissors.

I also used that same pattern to cut out the interfacing. Once I had all my squares and all my interfacing cut out, I then ironed the interfacing to the t-shirt squares using the interactions included with the interfacing. I like to start in the middle and work out so there's less chance of puckering, stretching, or wrinkling. Jersey has a tendency to want to stretch as you iron it.

Once I have all 54 squares done it will be time to start sewing them together. Next time I'll walk you through using smaller t-shirts and how I made them fit the larger quilt blocks. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney T-shirt Quilt | Phase 1: Gathering Materials

It's official. I have begun work on my very first t-shirt quilt! This is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. And what better way for us to do it than with our Disney shirts that we've been saving? In fact, I was amazed by how many shirts this quilt was going to need! I used several resources on-line to get started on this project, but finally settled on Totally Stitchin's tutorial. At least this gave me a good place to start with measurements.

I decided to make a twin size quilt. We generally use our quilts more as a throw while we are on the sofa watching movies, and less as a bed cover. To that end, I wanted this quilt to be easily accessible and not too big. I also realized that my t-shirts would not go nearly as far as I thought they would! Another good reason to stick with a twin-sized quilt. According to my measurements, I was going to need a LOT of shirts!

Since math is in no way my strong suit, I wanted my measurements to be even, meaning no half shirt squares to deal with for the quilt. For my twin, I decided to use 11" x 11" squares that would sew up to 10" x 10" squares. A twin quilt is 60" x 90". This way it was easy to see I would need 6 squares across and 9 down, for a whopping total of 54 shirts! This is actually more that I had on hand - shocking, by the way. So I gathered up the family and went to Goodwill. Did you know that the first Saturday of every month they have a 50% off the entire store sale? Neither did I, until we stumbled upon it. Great for the pocket book, not so great for the kiddos waiting for Mama to sort through all the shirts and then wait in line. Next time I will leave the kids with Mr. Photos From The Parks!

And to make things just a little more complicated, I realized that all my shirts were different sizes! So I needed to find a way to make them all work together in a way that would be pleasing to me. I didn't want to put something together only to think every time I got it out, "that looks so odd." Been there, done that! To address this problem I settled on appliqué. The baby and toddler sized shirts would need to be appliquéd to larger squares that fit the pattern.

The solution was easy, since most of my adult-sized T-shirts didn't have printing on the backs. I would use the backs of those T-shirst for the 11"x11" base square, and appliqué onto them the baby size shirts. In theory, it totally works! I'll keep you posted on how well it goes in real time!

Now that I have all of my shirts gathered, my next step is to get them all cut and prepped! I'll keep you posted on this project - I'm super excited to get it done! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Disney DIY Belle Inspired T-shirt Upcycle

I've been noticing some adorable princess t-shirts on Pinterest of late and I LOVE the idea of my daughter dressing in character without being in one of those hot synthetic numbers all day. And then I realized that this would be the perfect way for ME to dress as a princess in the parks too! And viola! This lovely upcycled Belle t-shirt was born.

I started with two basic white t-shirts that had lived good long lives, but were in need of recycling, and one blue long-sleeved t-shirt that had some armpit stains. I first used this tutorial on how to remove deodorant stains. I was very impressed by how it worked! No bleaching on the blue and most of the staining was gone! Perfect for a refashion.

I then used this tutorial from Whitney Sews to make a puff sleeve. So much easier than I thought it would be! And Whitney's video is really easy to follow. Finally, used chalk to mark where I wanted the neckline to be and used this tutorial from Vintage Pollyanna to make the neck ruffle. I'm not in love with the way it lays on the shirt, but it's cute and for a shirt that is most likely going to have chocolate from a Mickey Premium Bar on it, it's just fine! If you were concerned that the sleeves would be too much (as Florida can be hot no matter what time of year you travel!), you could always make a cap sleeve instead or just put a ruffle on the edge and make it a tank. I love the simplicity of it and it'll look great with a pair of white shorts for the parks! Now if I can just get a picture with Belle while wearing this....

Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Upcycled Disney T-shirt Trinket Bag

We are gearing up for another road trip, this time to Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort! In preparation for that, I am getting out all our road trip goodies. I realized that my previous case for all my electronics was woefully lacking in space for my new gadgetry. I needed something with a little more room that I could slip in my knitting basket or my purse without a lot of fuss. And I like having it all in one place, but not a tangled mess in my purse! As I was scavenging through my bin of t-shirts and clothing to recycle, I noticed a t-shirt that Little Chef was not too fond of because the printing on the front was uncomfortable. I didn't even put it in the rotation for Minnie. It was an 18-month Mickey T-shirt and perfectly suited for the job!

This was the easiest project I've done in some time. I simply cut the sleeves and bottom off the shirt, centering the Mickey image, and leaving the neck in tact as a ready-made casing for the drawstring. I used an overlock stitch and sewed up the three sides of the shirt. I then angled the corners in and cut them off, because I like a flat-bottomed bag. This is certainly a step you don't need to take, it just adds a nice touch. If it intimidates you, leave it out.

I then opened up a hole in the collar seam using my seam ripper, and slipped a ribbon through the casing the same way you would in a pair of pants. Because this is jersey, you really don't need to worry about the fabric unraveling, so I simply left the hole in the collar! I tied the two ends of the ribbon together with a knot, turned the bag right-side out and there you have it! Easy as can be!

Now I have a place for all my iPhone, Kindle and iPad cords, earbuds, etc., and they won't be a tangled mess when I want them! These would also be terrific bags for Tinkerbell Treasures, either to give filled with goodies or to give as a goody! And if you don't have an ample supply of 12-18M shirts in your cottage, the Goodwill is an excellent place to get exactly this sort of thing for a bargain price. In fact, I have found some wonderful park merchandise there that we wear in the parks! (No one has to know!) I do love a good bargain. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Little Chef Aprons for a Ratatouille Themed Party

I found this wonderful child-sized apron pattern on line and decided I really needed one for my Little Chef. In fact, he had a fabulous cooking party earlier this month and we made one of these for each of the guests.

A few things about this pattern make me very happy:

1. It attaches with velcro, so little hands can do it themselves.
2. It has an elastic neckband so it fits easily over all size heads
3. It takes very little fabric and requires only straight stitch sewing

I am all about repurposing, up cycling and the like (Jiminy Cricket would be so proud). I found two pillowcases that were in sore need of a new life. I was able to get TWO aprons from one king-size pillowcase! And since I had some elastic and velcro on hand, these were absolutely free to me! Now that's a project anyone can get behind! And not just that, but the pattern was so easy I was able to make three of these in one afternoon. That is time very well spent.

I decided to leave these white, with on embellishment on them at all, since they were part of a larger party theme. But these would be so easy to personalize with your Silhouette or even just different fabric and trims! I'd love to know if you decide to make these. And stay tuned for scenes from our big Ratatouille party coming up on Thursday! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Upcycled Disney Nightshirt

Spring is eventually coming and Minnie is going to need some lighter sleep attire. And, as you may imagine, we have a plethora of old T-shirts from Disney. So when I saw this easy tutorial from It's Always Autumn I knew this was a project that would be perfect for us. And it was, both easy and perfect.

Minnie is currently wearing a size 12-18 months, so I used an adult size XS shirt. It was just what I was looking for. I don't know about you, but I find that the sizing of Disney clothes can be wildly different across the board. Especially kids clothes. I always get a size up if there's a question. So I was nervous about how this would fit; but there was no need. She fits it quite well. And in a year or so, I think it'll be cute with a pair of leggings and a hair bow; perfect resort wear!

Incidentally, if you don't have a plethora of Disney t-shirts hanging around your cottage, Goodwill (or your local donation center/thrift store) is a great place to find park merchandise for a steal! Especially t-shirts and hoodies. I found this one for $4.00. I was sad it wasn't in my size but I knew I'd find a way to use it. And here it is! Just the right thing for a growing girl. I also have dreams of a Disney t-shirt quilt...we'll have to wait and see if that materializes! So until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!