Maxi Dress DIY Tutorial

I tried making another dress today. A long maxi dress made using an old tank. It is inspired by Yellow Tutorial Sunshine Poured Out Maxi Dress @ Kojo Designs. I thought it would be simple. And it was. I created a pattern using my old tank and extended it to a dress pattern. Then I cut it out and all. I did it in a very weird way as you can see in my photos.

When I tried it on it looked good, except for the fact that I had used to little fabric in the butt area, so it really followed my body in the front. It was the total different of the loose dress I had imagined.

So I must admit I have really lost my confidence in sewing from my own pattern from my last two failed dresses. So this is probably going to be the last sewing project for a while, as I am doing a series over the next two weeks. But now I have learned that I really need to take measurements when creating my own pattern.

DIY Fleece Dress

I saw this really simple tutorial for a 30 minute maxi dress @ The Winthrop Chronicles. It looked super simple and I knew I wanted to create at least one. 

Every summer we stay about a week at a cabin on an island. My parents are members of the club so we get one of the four cabins every summer. We always hope for the best weather. But even if it is sunny it does get cold in the evenings. I have wanted to bring something semi-warm that I can easy dress in when I get cold, as well as something I knew I would not mind if got ruined. I wanted to use the 30 minute maxi dress as a guide for my fleece dress. 

I started with a fabric, 100x150 cm. I folded over one side so my final piece would be 100x75 cm.

I then sewed around these three sides.

Then a cut two holes for my arms. About 15 cm.

And 10 cm for the neck.

I tried it on and it looked aweful. It was so bulky and the fabric would not lie nicely. So for everyone out there, only use the 30 minute maxi dress with a light weight fabric.

I however could not be stopped. I found a fitted t-shirt and just traced round the edges on the side and sewed in, and cut of the extra fabric. I also cut more out of the front of the neckline. It ended up looking like this:

I do like most of the dress. It does however look very bulky in the shoulders, but I have no idea how I will be able to fix it. I tried pinning it in different ways but it did not look good. I have therefore just decided to keep it this way until further notice.

I finished it last night and have now been wearing it for a couple of hours this morning and I must say I really love it. The fabric is so soft and I really like that it does have some length to it. 

Link Party

The best project last week was.... *Drum roll please*

Jessica Anderson @ Oceanside Daydream with her Glitter Galore Project

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Glam Belt

Hey everyone!

Today I am going to show you a quick tutorial on making a stretched belt. It was really simple and took me about 15-20 minutes to make. I apologize for the bad photos, but with little lighting available I had to use the flash on my camera to take clear photos. 

So I started with my material; a buckle, a piece of fabric (Sorry! Don't know what it is called in English, but its sparkly. If anyone knows please write it in a comment), some thread and a needle. Then I just inserted the fabric and sewed it by hand. Because of the sparkly stuff I could not use the sewing machine. I did the same on the other side and cut of the access. Voilá!

Bedroom Wall

Three weeks ago I organized my bedroom and showed my projects and did a Bedroom Reveal. One of the things I was not able to complete was hanging photos up on the wall. I was just completely lost on at what height I would hang the photos. This weekend my mother came to visit and she helped me.

I really like the grouping of the three photos. Its in my Relationship corner in Feng Shui. I have a Rose Photo and two frames with pictures of my boyfriend and I.

The other photo is in my creativity area, and I thought it would be suited to hang a canvas I have painted of me drawing.

If you want information on Feng Shui, I have found a simple pages on WikiHow and Care 2.

Office / Guest Room Desk

The first challenge I started with was the desk area. I had two desks there that where always messy and were very unorganized.

So I started by removing everything from the desktop. I used the same technique as when I was tidying my night stand. I put everything in a box.

All the stuff from the desk top. What a mess.

I then decided to remove one of the desks and move the laundry organizing in its place, with the printer on top. Currently we are using one of these and a big laundry basket (and the floor), but to get everything more organized I used the money from selling the desk to buying another.

Then I decided to just dive in the pile of stuff, some things where to go back into the desk, some moved to a different location and some thrown away. I decided to organize my drawers in this order:

1. Office supplies - the usual; pens, pencils, highlighters, tape, stabler, hole puncher, calculators, scissors as well as some things I like to keep handy, such as a lighter (for lighting candles), some matches and tissue.

2. Desk top - whenever I want to do crafts and such at the desk I will have to remove EVERYTHING located there.

3. Papers - I have quite a bit of paper that I haven't sorted yet, must to that. In the mean time They are in a drawer.

4. Electronics - well, everything with electronics. Label maker, Cd's, cables and such.

5. Printer Supplies - normal paper, pink thicker paper, photo paper and cartridges.

1.                                                             2. 

 3.                                                             4. 

5. 

I wanted my desk top to be organized with minimal stuff and clutter. I ended up - for now - keeping only my laptop, personal binder, water bottle, vase with pens and a tissue box.

Over my desk I have some sticky notes with my goals - meant to be fuzzy yes. The orange is "My Goal", the yellow is the numerical order on the goal. The blue is the actual goal. The green is more detailed, how to succeed, how I want things to be and such. I really absolutely do not like this.

I guess it could have been a good idea but it did not work out. However I do feel that staring at a blank white wall is a bit to boring. What do you have on the wall over your desk? Or do you place your desk differently?

This is actually the only thing I was able to complete. I was not disappointed however, I think it was a lot more work than I could imagine. It does look a lot better than when I started anyways.

To be continued...

Link Party

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Office / Guest Room Project Planner

So as I mentioned yesterday I have created a Project Planner. Basically its just to get organized, write down thoughts on a project and just other general stuff project related. I want to be able to create a binder where I have all my organizing projects in one place. This is so I can review my organizing better as well as finding out what worked and what did not work. I also have to be able to keep inspiration for a room there as well.

Sorry I don't know how to get the PDF on the blog post, so here are some pictures and a link to download a copy is below. Here is what I came up with:

You can download a blank copy here. If you do use this in a blog post or such, please link back to this post. Just keep in mind, this is a work in process. As this is my first project where I am using a planner I still do not know what I need in this planner, but at the moment I am very satisfied.

UPDATE: PDF. To download click on the Scribd button in the lower left corner.

Project Planner

Office / Guest Room Make-over

So my next big Organizing project is the office / guest room. It has been a dumping ground for me while I did my bedroom (as well as a dumping ground in general). So it is SUPER messy. This room is one of the hardest to keep clean and tidy. Every time it gets messy I just do not even bother going inside. And when we have guests (our parents), I tend to just try to hide all the junk. But not this time.

Before:

View from the door                           View from the opposite side

 Closet

 Close-ups

As you all see, there is way to much stuff in here. Every surface - and floor - is covered in stuff. Everyone knows that's NOT good. There is also just to much furniture here.

For the next few days I will share with you the process of my make-over. I will be having posts about my project organizer I created, the plan for this room. The process and then the final results. I did start this yesterday, and I have to be done before Friday evening, because my mum is coming to visit. However the blogging might take a bit longer.

Toilet Roll Cord Holder

So I saw this great idea on I Heart Organizing. And decided to make it myself! It took my longer than i expected - basically because I kept forgetting to keep the toilet roll! But I finally managed to save two rolls (but forgot my sister also has a curling iron so I need to save one more).

I did have a basket for all our hair-stuff. But it was a m-e-s-s.

So I got my two rolls,

... and my supplies.

So I started measuring the toilet roll, both around...

... and height.

Then I took some craft paper and drew an outline for where I was to cut...

... and cut it out.

Then I glued it onto the rolls...

... and secured my cords.

So now everything is much more organized!