I think I love refashioning Men's shirts! I found this one at an Op shop for about $2 and thought I might be able to do something with it. After last time making a top from a Men's shirt I thought I should try a skirt this time. I had a look around Pinterest and was inspired by this page of ideas.

The Men's shirt was a size 42 and was the largest I could get on that day. Next time I would try to get something larger to have more fabric to play with.

First up I chopped off the sleeves and upper collar area. 

I ended up chopping about 5 cm above the pocket as I wanted to keep to pocket detail.

But it ended up being too high on the skirt so I should have just chopped it at the widest part to start with. 






Then the scissors chopped off the sleeve cuffs.

I kept the buttons - I love keeping buttons for some reason!








I then chopped the sleeve material in half long ways to make the waist band for the skirt.

The top of the sleeve was rounded so I straightened it up with the scissors.










I had quite a bit of fabric in the sleeves and thought I could use them as ties to give some interest to the waist so I evened up part to the sleeve fabric to be about 10cm wide.










I decided I wanted to keep the pocket but not in its original place so I carefully unpicked it.

Then onto some sewing.

I pieced together the sleeve parts for my waist ties and overlocked them together and turned them inside out so the rough edges were on the inside.







I then got the rest of the wider reserved sleeve pieces and overlocked them together to make a circle about 20 cm larger than my waist.

I sewed in the waist ties where my hips would be.








Then I overlocked the waist band to make a tube  which ended up being about 10 cm wide.

That part was then overlocked onto the rest of the shirt which I had straitened the top of with my scissors. I left a 5cm gap at the back to thread in some elastic.











Then I carefully re sewed the pocket back onto the shirt front lower down.

I also sewed the front of the shirt down by the buttons so when I moved around there wouldn't be any embarrassing gaping parts through the buttoned up part.






Then I threaded 3cm elastic that was cut to fit my waist through the hole in the waistband and sewed the ends together well. Then I sewed the gap up.


I am really happy how the skirt turned out since I made it up as I went along. The waist ties can be tied to the front or the back. I think I prefer the back as it gives it a bit more interest.

The only thing though is it does look a bit like my high school uniform with the small checks but Mr T doesn't mind that at all!

Ages ago I found this awesome idea on Pinterest for Where We Are From gingerbread men styled map wall art. Unfortunately they had sold out and the site was in the UK, so I thought I might be able to make something similar myself. I decided that this would be awesome gifts for all my family for Christmas. Hence I couldn't post this until after the festivities had ended!

I found an old map book that had been hanging out unloved under the car seat. It was really out of date so perfect for what I needed.

I tried to trace my gingerbread man cookie cutter but the shape wasn't quite right, so I ended up just drawing a shape I liked.

One man shaped and then one with a skirt for the girl.

I then found the map that coincided with where my family was from. 

Some maps had to be found on the net and printed out as some of the map areas were on the binding edge, and also I don't have many maps of Malta lying around!

I cut out the map so the word of the persons home town was near their heart. I also cut out some cardboard the same shape and stuck the map onto it to make it a little raised up.

Then the gingerbread shapes were stuck onto some nice textured art paper with some PVA glue.

Lastly it was just a matter of popping them into some nice box frames and I was done! Well after doing 3 or 4 more for the rest of the family!

Everyone seemed to like them and I think I actually should make one for me and Mr T as well. Will have to find another map book to cut up I think!

So I mentioned in an earlier blog that Tigger has a slight obsession with Cookie monster.
We decided to have a Happy Monster Birthday Party for his 1st birthday and to go with the Cookie Monster hood I made him we had to have a Cookie Monster cake.

For the cake I make two 20cm Chocolate cakes and sandwiched them together with raspberry Jam and fresh raspberries. YUM! Recipe here.

Then I made butter cream icing and dyed it slightly blue with food colouring.
We had heaps of fun putting lots and lots and lots of blue sprinkles all over the cake.

For the eyes I melted some white chocolate melts and spooned them onto some waxed paper and made big circles for each eye. I then pressed a dark chocolate melt into the white chocolate to make the iris. Then I put it in the fridge to harden up for about 10 minutes. Once then were firm I had lots of fun making them all goggly eyed like our favourite monster!

I used a Cookie Time cookie with a bit broken off ( and taste tested of course!) and pushed it into the icing and slightly into the cake for Cookie Monsters mouth.

It tasted so good with the Chocolate and Raspberry combo and I just love butter Icing. Tigger loved it too, although I'm not sure he really knew what all the fuss was about!

Last year Mr T and I were invited to a party were the theme was travelling. We decided to go outside the box and go as Steam punk Time travelers.
For those of you who don't know what Steam punk is, have a look at this wikipedia site. It is a very cool alternative style and very fun to dress up.
One of the main features of Steam punk is that most of the outfits have goggles similar to aviation goggles but jazzed up a bit.
I really tried to see if I could hire some or even buy some 2nd hand goggles, but with the party looming I just bit the bullet and made some with some great help from Youtube. See these sites for inspiration.

Threadbanger on Youtube.
Instructables.com

This is what I used to make my goggles using everyday items I had at home.

Old denim Jeans
2 Empty Toilet rolls or kitchen roll
Plastic clear drink bottle ( like a Sprite bottle)
Sellotape
Black sewing thread
Sewing Needle
PVA glue
Black, gold, brown acrylic art paint
Paint brush
Thumb tacks of different shapes

To make the eye pieces first of all I cut the toilet rolls on an angle so it would fit nicely on my head. These would be the round parts of the goggles.

I got the plastic bottle and traced around the end of the toilet roll to make two circles that would fit on the end of the rolls nicely.

I then carefully stuck them on the straight ends of the rolls with clear sellotape on the outside and the inside so it was attached well.
(I would have used fancy glue to make it neater but I didn't have any and I was on a time limit!).

I cut the second toilet roll into four thin strips about 1cm wide.
I stuck these with the PVA over the sellotape that was attaching the clear plastic to cover it and to give the ends of the eye piece some definition. I did two layers to make them stand out more, overlapping them as they were not long enough to go around fully.

I painted the eye pieces gold with black and brown to give it a dirty bronze look. 

To make the strap I cut the hems of the jeans off about 3cm up from the end.

I cut the denim in half and cut a 2cm piece off to be the nose piece.

I followed that by measuring around my head from temple to temple to see how long the band of denim had to be and cut it to size with about 1cm extra on each end for sewing allowance.

I shaped the denim with the ends getting larger towards where they would attach to the toliet rolls to look like triangles. This makes a more aviator look I think.

I then hand sewed the triangle ends onto the eye pieces with black thread. It was a little hard going through the cardboard but you could use strong glue if you had some.

Then making sure the band wasn't twisted I sewed the smaller 2cm piece to make the nose piece onto both eye pieces.

The denim was then painted black with gold and brown accents.

I finally added some different shape thumb tacks around the front of the eye pieces to make them look more mechanical and gave these a little brush of paint to blend in.


I was really happy how these turned out and made another pair for Mr T for his outfit. It took me one evening to do 2 pairs and mainly took me that long because I had to figure out what to do.

Below is a picture of our full Steam punk Time traveler outfits. We had a blast at the party and have used the goggles for other dress up party's too.