I Could Make That

New craft ideas every Friday

scoop-neck t-shirt mod

So my blog post is late this week. *GASP OF HORROR* Well, I’m pretty horrified, but I did have a good reason for not doing it yesterday: I was out in the woods climbing trees and swinging from bits of rope 45 feet in the air in celebration of a friend’s birthday. Seriously. And it was awesome. And my abs totally hurt now.

Not that I couldn’t have written this post earlier in the week. So really it comes down to me being lazy and unorganized. Plus I was busy making my friend’s birthday gift. And rescuing orphans from burning buildings, which went fine until I had to get their sweet little kitten down from a tree across the street, at which point I tore my cape on a branch, so I had to spend some time later mending it. And there were some tree sap stains as well, and those are a bitch to get out.

In case you hadn’t noticed, today’s post is the third offering in my series of t-shirt modifications. I bought this shirt because how could I not?!?? And then my mom came for a visit and she helped me modify it. So today’s post is a team effort by myself and my endlessly creative, effortlessly talented and stupefyingly clever mother, and you will love it. <3

*This utterly awesome shirt is from Snorg Tees, and you can find it here.

What you will need:

  • a t-shirt - either start with one that is already a good fit, or you can use this basic tutorial to make it more fitted
  • fabric scissors
  • pen or pencil
  • straight pins
  • sewing machine
  • bias binding – in a colour that matches, compliments or contrasts appealingly with your t-shirt

Putting it all together:

1) Start by laying your t-shirt out flat, right side out. Notice how the cloth of the t-shirt is, essentially, folded in half right now. The back and front of the shirt make a double layer of fabric lying on the table.

2) Fold the t-shirt “in half” in this same manner, but so that the folds run down the middle of the front and the middle of the back. The sleeves should be in about the middle of either side of the shirt.


3) Pin both sides of the shirt together at the shoulder, in two or three places along the shirt’s collar, under the arm and in two or three places along the fold on the shirt’s front.


4) Decide how low a scoop you want to have in the front. In my case, this was largely determined by the printing on the t-shirt. Make a pencil mark at this point along the front fold of the shirt, and another mark at the shoulder. If you want to widen the neckline from side to side, as I did, make the shoulder mark out a few inches from the t-shirt’s collar.


5) Draw a curving line from one mark to the other.

6) Decide how low a scoop you want to have in the back. (It may be a good idea to decide this based on where your bra sits, and put the scoop just above that. Keep in mind that if you make the scoop too low you will have to put crisscross straps on the back in order to keep the shirt in place.) Now make a pencil mark at the desired low point of the scoop along the back fold, and another mark at the shoulder, matching up with the shoulder mark from the front of the shirt.


7) Draw a curving line from one mark to the other.


8) Cut along these lines on the front and the back.


At this point, depending on where exactly you drew and cut your lines, your shirt should look similar to this:

And the piece you’ve cut out of the shirt will look similar to this:

9) Make sure your shirt is still right side out. Take your bias binding and unfold it completely. Now fold over one end of the binding and pin it up against the edge of the new collar line.

Important notes:

  • a) Notice how, when the bias binding is folded in half lengthwise, one side is slightly longer than the other. You will want this longer edge to be on the inside of the shirt. Therefor, the shorter edge is the one you want to pin along the collar’s edge in this step.
  • b) Be sure the shirt is right side out, and that you are pinning the binding to the outside of the t-shirt – as in the side that has all the printing and such on it! This may seem a bit odd, but it will work out perfectly, trust me.

10) Pin the bias binding all the way around the collar in this manner, pinning frequently – every 1 1/2 to 2 inches. Be sure to pull the t-shirt fabric tight so the binding will sit evenly once sewn.

11) Sew the bias binding in place. See that first fold line on the binding? Sew along that, as precisely as you possibly can.


12) Fold the bias binding over to the inside of the shirt and pin it in place.


13) Keeping the shirt right side out, sew the now-folded bias binding in place. You will do this by sewing just inside the line where the bias binding and t-shirt fabric meet. Or, if you are able, sew exactly along that meeting line for the neatest possible finished look; the stitches will be nearly invisible.

14) Iron your shirt’s new collar, getting the bias binding to sit as flat as you can. Depending on how tightly you did or didn’t pin it, it may curl outwards a bit. Some of this effect will wear off with washing.

Your shirt should currently look something like this.

Now, at this point, you can stop. Leave the sleeves as they are and enjoy your new shirt. Or, especially with a shirt like this, a bit of bias binding sewn as trim around part of the sleeve may create a really neat look. Here are a couple of options:

If you’re like me and prefer to be sleeveless in the summer, follow these next steps:

15) Turn the shirt inside out and cut off the sleeves, cutting right along the inside of the seam. If you want, you can cut along this same curved line a little further in, to narrow your shirt straps. But I found that, since I’d widened the collar a fair bit on my shirt, this wasn’t necessary.

16) Follow steps 9-14, but putting the bias binding around the sleeve edges this time.


17) If (like me) you didn’t pin your bias binding tightly enough, it may bunch out a bit, especially under the arms. To fix this, just pinch the binding to the inside at one or two points under the arm and handstitch these little darts in place. And again, the binding should soften up a bit with washing and sit better.

That’s it! You now have a simple summer shirt that looks considerably more feminine and interesting than just your average t-shirt.

If you cut your scoop in the back quite low, or if you just want something more interesting back there, try putting some cute little criss-crossing straps back there. Here’s an example of this on a similar shirt my mom modified:

Notice she’s also done some insets in the waist area to help bring the shirt in while adding interest, and a fringe along the collar. I may have tutorials for these up later on. Or maybe she’ll write some for me…

2 Comments by admin on August 1, 2010
filed in Sewing, T-shirt Modifications, Wearable
tagged , , , , , , ,

la moustache (on a stick)

James Bond, Peter Parker or any competent six-year old can tell you that disguises are very important. You never know when you’re going to encounter monsters, evil masterminds or your mother calling you in for your bath. It’s critical never to be caught unprepared.

Also, you may have to be one person one moment, then turn around and be someone else five seconds later, so it’s important to have a disguise that, while brilliantly concealing, can be quickly removed and stashed behind your back.

And some of you will be familiar with Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s insistence that everything is better on a stick.

All this must certainly be the reasoning behind the sudden popularity of the moustache on a stick. Really, it is a crucial accessory that one should not leave the house without. Here is probably the easiest and nearly cheapest way to make yourself one.

What You’ll Need:

  • felt in a moustache colour of your choice
  • stiff felt or cardboard (like, for example, a piece of cereal box)
  • bamboo kabab skewer
  • superglue
  • pen
  • scissors

1) Draw your moustache onto the cardboard or stiff felt. You can draw it onto a piece of paper first, if you like. If you want it to be exactly the same on both sides, draw it on a piece of paper, fold the paper down the middle of the moustache and cut it out. Like cutting out a paper heart. Except that it’s a moustache.

2) Cut out the cardboard/stiff felt moustache.


3) Trace this onto your moustache-coloured felt, and cut that out.


4) Glue the cardboard/stiff felt moustache onto the back of the soft felt moustache.


5) Put a glob of glue on one side of the back of the moustache and place one end of the bamboo skewer in the glue.


6) Cut a small rectangle of felt and glue it overtop of the skewer to help keep it in place. You’ll want to hold it tightly down for a moment till the glue sets.

7) Practice conveying a subtle air of mystery.

Other Ideas:

Try making a set of bushy eyebrows, or perhaps a gotee on a stick!

11 Comments by admin on July 24, 2010
filed in Felt, Geeky Goodness, Wearable
tagged , , , , , , , ,

cassette tape notebooks

Last week I told you that flowers are in, very in. Well vintage is also very in, along with retro and old school. And though it might sadden you to realize it, cassette tapes are entirely old school these days. How many of us even own a tape player anymore? I sure don’t, though I refuse to get rid of a handful of my favourite old tapes.

What with your iPod or your iPhone or even your non Apple brand mp3 player (I hear that some people have those??), you sure don’t need to carry around cassettes, but they’re kind of fun to remember fondly. Here’s a project that combines the charm of such an outdated piece of technology with different functionality – notebooks!

What You’ll Need:

  • cardstock (black, white, brown and possibly a bright colour)
  • scissors
  • pen/pencil
  • gluestick
  • coloured markers
  • silver paint pen or sharpie
  • blank or lined printer weight paper
  • a paper cutter

Putting It Together:

1) Make your template. Mine is based off the size of an actual cassette tape. You can draw your own, or print and cut out the templates in the pdf I’ll attach below.

cassette tape templates

You need two rectangles (2 1/2 by 4 inches), one smaller rectangle with the top corners rounded and a round-ended rectangle cut out of its middle, two small circles (about 1/2 inch across), one small rectangle (about 1 inch by 1/2 inch), and one rectangular shape with inward-slanting ends – that center bit along the bottom of the cassette.

2) Trace the components of your template onto the various paper colours and cut out.


Here’s a tip for getting really neat lines when cutting with scissors: use the back of the blades. Do your cutting towards the back of the scissors, closest to the handle, and you’ll have more control and get cleaner lines.

3) Take your silver sharpie and draw a line around the edge of each piece A and of piece B, and also of each small circle (piece E). I use this technique a lot with my cards and other paper crafts. I find it gives a nice definition to the edges of things. Just run the tip of your marker carefully beside the edge of your paper, bumping up along the edge.

Do the same in a complimenting colour with piece C.

4) Take piece D and trace it onto your brown paper. Draw a slightly curved line across either end of the rectangle, then cut out these two ends.


5) Glue the brown shapes onto piece D. For detail, draw some fine pen lines on the brown paper to imitate  lines of wound up tape.


6) Take your two piece Es and draw six little silver rectangles from the edges, facing inward, at evenly spaced intervals.


7) Glue piece B to the bottom center of one of piece A. Glue piece C above it. Glue pieces D and E into place.


8) It’s all about the details: using a dark pen, draw a small “A” box on the top left of the cassette, with 2 or 3 lines across the top of the tape. Using your silver pen, draw small circles and rectangles on piece B, as shown.


9) Using your paper cutter, cut a stack of printer-weight paper the same size as piece A – 2 1/2 by 4 inches. Stack this paper between both piece As (front and back cover).


10) Take your pages and covers to a print shop to have them bound. I simply got the print shop to punch the holes for me, since I already had coil binding at home, recycled from old notebooks and calendars.

Be sure to explain to the print shop employee exactly which edge you want to have bound. They have a ton of things on the go for customers at any given time, and lack of clarity on your part might lead them to punch the wrong side. As happened here. Not that it’s a BIG deal, just kind of a pain.

They may also have to bind the short edge, depending on their machine. The print shop I used was unable to bind the top long edge of my cassette notebooks, as this made the paper too short for them to feed into the machine. So there may be that limitation.

You can do the hole punching yourself, by tracing an old spiral bound page and punching holes in the appropriate spots. You’ll have to repeat for every few pages though. This is what, in technical crafting terms, is known as a massive pain in the ass. I’d just use the print shop.

And enjoy! Write yourself some old-school notes.

9 Comments by admin on July 17, 2010
filed in Geeky Goodness, Paper Goods
tagged , , , , ,

easy felt flowers

Flowers are in. Very in. Perhaps it’s merely the season, or the never-do-anything-truly-new-just-recycle-every-20-years laws of fashion. Or perhaps a world so full of little black and white iPhones is craving colour. Whatever the reason, I love this trend. Unlike neon leg warmers, it’s a good one. (C’mon, even Barbie never truly pulled those off.)

I’m going to show you a quick and easy way of making colourful flowers that have some volume and punch. Use them to decorate your hair, your clothes, your fingers, a wrapped gift, whatever you can think of. Please do leave the cat alone, though.

What You’ll Need:

  • paper (of thickish, cardstock weight is best)
  • a pen
  • 5 coins (all the same denomination. Such as 5 pennies, 5 quarters, etc.)
  • felt in one or two colours. Maybe a bit of green for leaves, if you like.
  • fabric scissors
  • a needle
  • thread - preferably that matches the colour of your felt

1) Place your 5 coins in a circle on your paper (there will be some space in the middle) and hold them in place while tracing around them. This is your flower template. Use different coins for different sizes of flower. You can draw the petals in to points, or leave them rounded.

2) Cut out your template.

3) Placing the template on your felt, trace four individual flowers and cut them out.


3.5) [optional] Cut one slightly larger flower from another colour of felt.

4) Thread your needle, knot the end of the thread, and set it aside.

5) Take one of the four flowers and fold it in half, but NOT so that the sides match up. You want the petals on one half to line up roughly with the indents between petals on the other half.

6) Take a second flower, fold it the same way, and place it perpendicular to the first flower, with half of it overlapping. The straight folded edges should face inward.


Basically, you’re going to overlap all four folded flowers the way you would a box lid if you wanted to close it flat without taping it down. If that helps.

7) Fold a third flower in half, place it parallel to the first flower, overlapping the second flower.

8) Fold the fourth flower in half and place one end overtop of the third flower, the other end underneath the first flower.


Make any sense at all? If not, my apologies, that’s what the pictures are for. It’s way clearer visually than verbally, but all and all it’s pretty straightforward.

9) Sew the four flowers together by stitching an X and then a square around the centre of the circle of flowers.


9.5 [optional] Take your other, slightly larger flower and sew it to the bottom of your four-sectioned flower.


10) Sew a bead, a button, a felted ball, or whatever else you can think of to the center of the flower.


Voila, that’s it! No hemming and no fraying, since it’s felt. Also because it’s felt it will have more volume and oomph than other fabric flowers. A little more oomph is never a bad thing.

Add some green felt leaves if you like. Sew your flower onto a bobby pin, hair clip, barrette or elastic.

Or if you’re like me and have really short hair, make the flower into a ring and wear it on your hand. You can do this by getting some thick wire,  putting a little loop in each end with some needlenose pliers (so it doesn’t poke through the felt), and sewing the wire into a long rectangular band of felt.

Then attach that to the base of your flower and you have one-size-fits-most flower bling.


5 Comments by admin on July 10, 2010
filed in Felt, Flowers, Sewing, Wearable
tagged , , , , ,

two ways to make felt beads

I love felt. It’s lightweight, it comes in every imaginable colour, it does not require hemming. It’s soft, it’s versatile, it’s inexpensive. And it brings back happy childhood memories. Who else out there remembers felt boards? Good stuff.

Felt is basically made by mashing a bunch of wool fibers together until they become one big mass. There are a couple different techniques for doing this, one involving hot soapy water and one involving sharp stabby needles. Each has its advantages, and today’s post will explain how to use each of these methods to make simple felt beads, leaving you to practice and then move on to make felted scale models of the Starship Enterprise, or whatever your preference may be.

Below are instructions for wet felting and needle felting. Wet felting tends to be a bit faster, but you have to wait for the felt to dry before using it. It’s also a great craft for kids to try. Needle felting has the advantage of being able to manipulate the wool into different shapes and add more fibers in order to enlarge and detail your felt object. However, it involves the danger of stabbing a very sharp, barbed needle through your finger. Definitely not for kids.

[Retroactive Note: I have just learned that merino wool is particularly amenable to wet felting, giving you a smoother result than other coarser fibers. Merino actually wet felts better than it needle felts, though you can still use it for either.]

Both of these felting techniques are hugely popular right now, as part of the general interest in getting back to old-school, earth-friendly, historically charged activities. Felt has been around since perhaps 6300 BC, and the process of wet felting pre-dates spinning, weaving and knitting. So get ready for some deeply historical, all-natural crafting while you read through these instructions on your iPad or laptop or ancient, historical iMac.

Wikipedia describes wet felting as a process “where the natural wool fibre is stimulated by friction and lubricated by moisture.” Sexy, huh? And it really is that simple – you’re just creating friction to get everything to knot together. Just like Bob from Accounting does at the office.

What You’ll Need

  • wool rovings (these are bits of combed and carded wool that have otherwise been left un-processed. You can get wool rovings at some craft stores and many knitting and yarn stores. Here in Victoria we have a whole store dedicated to wool, and there are many places to buy wool rovings online. The most common and inexpensive is corriedale wool, which comes from New Zealand sheep. You can also use other fibers, such as silk. Rovings come dyed in just about every colour of the rainbow.)
  • a dish or hand towel
  • small bowl of cold water
  • small bowl of hot soapy water (no special soaps needed – dish or liquid hand soap work just fine for this)

1) Lay out one of your towels with the two bowls of water on top. Divide your wool rovings into bits – different sized bits for different sized beads.

A couple quick notes here: it’s very difficult with wet felting to add more wool to an existing bead to make it bigger. So whatever size bead you get, that’s the size of bead you have. You can always try to compress it more to make it smaller.

Also, you do not need to cut wool rovings. Put one hand on the end of the roving, and the other hand several inches along the roving. Pull. It should come apart easily, and if it doesn’t, just move your hands a bit farther apart and try again. Then you can pull these pieces apart lengthwise to get smaller bundles of wool.

2) Roll a piece of roving into a tight ball and dip it in the hot soapy water, getting it wet through. Mash it between your fingers a bit without letting it out of it’s balled up form. Really make sure you wind the rovings as tightly as possible, and keep it tight throughout all these steps. This will give you a smoother, more uniform surface.

3) Roll the wool between the palms of your hands, pressing in hard. Same technique you’d use to form a ball of play-dough. Continue to do this for probably 30 seconds to a minute. Dip back into the soapy water as necessary. You want the felt to be wet and soapy, but not too soapy, or it won’t cling together. Some practice and experimenting will help you find the right balance. And I find the total time for making each bead is between 1 and 3 minutes, depending on the bead’s size and how much rolling it needs.

4) Dip the felt ball into the cold water and squeeze it to get cold water into all the fibers. Then squeeze the water out. This is shrinking the fibers and helping them hold together.

5) Set the bead down on the towel to dry, and continue making more beads. They’ll need to sit for 12 to 24 hours to dry out completely.

Needle Felting

What You’ll Need:

  • wool rovings
  • a foam pad about 4 to 6 inches across and 2-3 inches thick, or a couple pieces of thinner foam you can stack and tape together
  • felting needles (Again, you can find these in some craft stores, in yarn and wool shops and in many sewing or fabric stores. They are longer than a normal needle, with a little tab at the top, and small notches in the bottom. They’re very sharp. And get at least two, because when you’re first trying out needle felting you’ll probably break a couple needles getting the feel for the technique.)

Notes: See my notes in the wet felting segment about how to divide wool rovings. You can also read my post on felted bacon bracelets for some more details on needle felting, and the idea of combining needle and wet felting techniques.

1) Depending on your foam, cut and stack and tape it together if needed to create a foam pad on which to do your needle felting. This protects the surface of your desk or table, keeps you from breaking your needle, and provides a surface with a bit of give, which you need for needle felting.

2) Roll some wool into a ball.

3) Holding it together, start stabbing it with the needle. Jab over the whole surface, evenly, to get all the fibers to stick together and take shape. Note that the more tightly you roll your rovings in the first place, the less stabbing work you’ll have to do. You’re also going to lose size here, so your unfelted rolled ball will shrink, probably by a quarter to a third of its original size.

THE #1 RULE OF NEEDLE FELTING: NEVER TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THE NEEDLE. Stabbing yourself through the finger with one of these is not fun. Trust me. It really really hurts. Don’t do it.

4) Continue. Seriously, that’s all there is to this. Stab all over until the felt is as compressed as possible (it can end up just about as hard as a marble, though much lighter, of course).

To shape an object, add felt or stab more in one area to compress it. For example, to make a strawberry, start by making a sphere. Then add more felt to one half and stab it down with the needle. On the other half of the sphere, do extra stabbing to compress the felt and make it smaller. Now you have a strawberry shape – tapered at one end and round and fat at the other.

So obviously you can make different shapes of beads using this technique – round, oval, squared, etc. Or berry-shaped.

Needle felting is mostly about practicing until you get a feel for manipulating the wool and getting the shapes you want. Start simple and work your way up to more complicated shapes.

Using your felt beads

As I mentioned earlier, felt is great because it’s so lightweight. You can make earrings, necklaces, bracelets, garlands, ornaments and more with your felt beads. Experiment and see what you can come up with.

Because these beads are felt, you can sew into them. So use one of those bead holer things (what the heck are they called, anyway??) to make holes in your beads, or just string some thread or yarn onto a needle and push it through your beads. Make really big beads and embroider on them, or sew little seed beads on. You can also sew felted objects onto other things, using them as the buttons or eyes on a plush object, or the head on a finger puppet or doll, etc. There are endless possibilities.

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting crafts that incorporate needle felting to make some part of the finished product. It’s a wonderful technique for using with a huge variety of projects.

4 Comments by admin on July 3, 2010
filed in Felt, Jewelry & accessories, Ornaments, Wearable
tagged , , , , , ,

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