We are the Featured Sellers today in our favorite Etsy Team!!

We are so excited about many changes in our Etsy shops. First we changed our name from the main shop, Sew4Thought to Jewels4Thought because we are mostly selling jewelry. Our sewn items will be in the children's shop, Sew4Munchkins on Etsy and a new shop, yet to be named.

I just got a pile of scrap socks from Little Bunny tutus and started creating some fun Valentines Arm Warmers.

Along with a striped turtle neck from Goodwill, I was ready to get sewing on the arm warmers. Since each pair has multiple colors and patterns, you can use pretty small scraps. Most of what she sends me are just the feet she cut off to make her baby leg warmers. I was lucky and just paid her for the postage.

I cut off pieces between 4 to 6" long. I use either two or three depending on the length. Audrey likes them to be about 15" and most adults buying on etsy prefer the longer length but with younger tweens or people who just want fingerless gloves, shorter is fine.

The super stretchy striped turtleneck worked out perfectly. I cut a piece that was six inches long by 6 inches wide. I folded it and serged it up so it matched up with the socks scrap and it is easy to serge the two pieces together into one long tube. Some ribbing added to the top keeps it secure as well as at the bottom by the thumb hole.

The results are selling well on Etsy and so much fun.
Audrey and Lauren did a modeling session for me with their long pretty arms.

New Students, more fun for me♥

We are on our third week of lessons with two darling tween girls and having so much fun. I really look forward to seeing them each week. We started on paper at the first lesson and they both went zipping along. We jumped right into the tote bags and got finished half way the first week. I was so proud.

Now to make me laugh a bit, this past Saturday being also my 50th Birthday, everyone was running late. One girls machine was missing the foot and add to that my son's both being at home and baby Hayden arriving halfway through for birthday lunch and we had kind of a circus going on in the front room. Than one of the mommy's hung out and it made both girls a bit silly and they were making mistakes they never make from the past few weeks. She is the most laid back mom too. I loved that she was hanging out and chatting with my daughter about High School classes,etc...


Meanwhile, we had some interesting errors on the tote bags. Both girls learned about a seam ripper at this lesson.

The importance of ironing your projects is always one of my first lessons. The girls loved choosing a trim for their bags. It was interesting to me that both girls picked blue fabrics. None of my current female students like pink! Not that I am complaining one bit since I love blue myself.

I just adore how sweet their tiny hands look as they work on the sewing machines. Both these young ladies are very talented already.

We finally got done and I am so glad because I don't want them to lose their enthusiasm for sewing and crafting. I had feared the arts would be lost to this next generation as so few sew anymore.

Our next project is going to be Up-Cycled Aprons and this week the girls will be combing Thrift stores or mom's close for something that they can use in the next lesson.

Blog Give Aways!

We have just finished being featured in several blogs with give aways so its time to start doing our own. With the new year, we have so many new projects in the works.
Beanies or Tuques as they are called in Canada have been popular with chilly weather.
Audrey and I made up a few with some sock scraps and a t-shirt. Here is our result.

The socks were actually baby tights that we had cut off to make my new neice some leg warmers and so we made a long tube out of them to put around the band of the hat. Great up-cycling project.

We measured Audrey's head, 21 inches around and cut a rectangle out of the shirt bottom that was 11.25" across and 10" tall x two for the hat's body. Simply sewing up the sides, leaving a small opening at the top for the pom pom.

For the pom pom we shredded some sock scraps up and gathered up the center of the hat around the scraps so they kind of poufed out of the hat.

The band is the sections of the tights all sewn together into a 21" band which we easily stretched and serged around the bottom of the hat. It took about 20 minutes to make our first one.

Carl was forced to model for another try but this hat was given to my nephew Parker to keep and take home to Utah with him.

We hope to make some of these for the shop eventually and see if anyone else likes our Repurposed shirts and socks in a new form. The arm warmers are still selling okay in our shop and we have given some away for gifts to teachers and friends.

These were made from socks on clearance right now at Target for $1.50. Not exactly up-cycling since they were purchased but it is a re-purposing of the socks so it fits our blog.

What have you been re-making lately? Please post a few ideas. In the meantime, anyone who comments this month will be entered into a drawing to win a free pair of arm warmers from our shop Sew4Munchkins at Etsy.

Thanks for reading...Tracey

Way to long!!

No excuses...it has been way to long since anything was added to this blog.
We have been sewing away and being as Green as possible over the past few months.
Our most exiting news is that there is now a Goodwill store here in our town of Marina, California, and we can get there by walking in just 10 minutes!!!
We ♥ Goodwill!

Our first shop on Etsy, Sew4fun114 went through a transformation in October to Sew4Thought and in November, we added a second shop focused on Teens, Tweens and Children called Sew4Munchkins.

Over the Holiday Season, our best seller by far was our Eco Arm Warmers made from up-cycled socks. Audrey had a group of her friends model for us including a couple of awesome boys!

Audrey really can ham it up for the camera at times and this photo shoot was no exception.

We got the sock scraps and leftovers from our stash and from another etsy seller, Littlebunnytutus. She sent us some really fun colors and patterns.

Thank you to Lauren, Jessie, Samantha and everyone else at Marina High School for posing for the pictures. You are all AWESOME!

We really enjoyed coming up with fun and crazy color combinations with the different socks. We sold over 100 pairs on Etsy. It was wonderful and helped us get some nice christmas gifts for the family.

Next we had a great visit from my baby brother Ryan and his children, Ariana and Parker. Ariana loved the arm warmers too and took three pairs home to Utah. She helped Audrey model a few new styles for our shop before leaving for Disneyland.

Now I am working on making some arm warmers or fingerless gloves from some old sweaters that we bought at the new Goodwill. The first problem I have had is that they are really thick to serge so when I get this resolved, I will put up some photos and a DIY guide of sorts.

Hope everyone had a Happy Holiday season.

Remaking of Jess's skirt, DIY for a thrift store skirt that is too big!

This is the giant size 20 skirt we found at Goodwill Thrift shop. Jess loved the blue color and the skirt had a swirly factor thanks to the v-shaped godets inserted around in sections. We did not want to lose that great wrap around sash either but Jess is a tiny size 5.

I carefully measured on Jess to get the right size and cut out one section of the skirt including the godet and the sash. I wanted to leave the zipper in tacked if possible. I am sorry, but I really HATE replacing zippers. It is a pain.

After removing this section, I picked out just the godet or v-shaped piece so I could reinsert it to the side when I sewed it back up to fit Jess. I also needed to make sure those two sash or tie pieces got back in at the waistband. It ended up being fairly easy to pick out the piece and put it back in to that side. Since the zipper stayed in tacked, Jess had a new skirt that fit and still twirled.
Next up we hope to teach Jess to keep her eyes open when we take her picture!!!

The blue color looks so awesome on Miss Jess. This skirt was on sale for half price the day we picked it up so we spent $1.75 and about an hour repairing it. Not bad!

Secondly, long overdue photos of the floral skirt that Jess made herself this summer. She worked hard to learn to stitch straight and add the ribbon trim. Audrey and Jess took to sewing like pros in the making. Maybe they will become famous designers of one of a kind, Up-Cycled clothing.

Jess in the finished product! I am so proud of her and still waiting on Audrey to finish hers!!!!

A few more photos of Destroyed or Damaged Denim

I am about to go head to the thrift stores to find some more jeans to destroy!!! Audrey said everyone at school was crazy about her shorts yesterday. Here are a few more photos from some items in our etsy shop.

This one I later decided to add a yellow mustard colored rinse to it and it looks even better. My kids said the tree limb on the back side was strange. I liked it.

It was a bit tricky to sew the leaf shapes but turned out fine, just took some patience. And after I washed it, they all held up really great.
The other one is a younger girls skirt, a little more fun with the stars and stuff.
Jess has requested a Celtic Knot theme on a pair of her jeans so I am trying to figure that one out.

Next I will be trying to dye some ballet slippers and dying or at least painting on chinese mary jane shoes. I have already listed two pairs of sneakers on etsy that I painted a bit on with Jaquard fabric paints and some paint pens. The purple pair I did dye with RIT dye first. I am not sure how the chinese shoes will turn out.

Another really fun project is to DIY decorate a jeans jacket. I love putting in some grommets to make it lace up as well as adding some silk ribbon embroidery and a few patches. Audrey wanted me to do a kind of Fall colored one and she drew the little fox with fabric paints onto cloth for the patch on the front of this jacket.
We saw these One of Kind Jackets at a boutique in Haight Ashbury up in the City selling for over a $100 each at least so maybe some day someone on Etsy will take a fancy to have one.

I used regular copper grommets across the back but the special flower shaped ones that I found at Michael's around the waistband. This is the jacket that got a feature on Etsylush. The trick with the grommets is to use Fray Check around the hole BEFORE you pound the eyelet in and again after.It really helps it stay in place.

Hope you enjoy these ideas and destroy some denim of your own soon.