Who is gifting wine this Christmas. Send me a message I will send you my address. Let’s be friends.
These “wine sleeves” used to be part of my husbands sweater until it had an unfortunate adventure in the washing machine.
I measured the height of the bottle, sewed the sleeve closed, cut the sleeve off the sweater and tried the top closed with ribbon.
There are two people in my house that love to wear socks, and there are two of us that don’t. My husband and oldest son are the sock wearers. They seem to go through socks so quickly. I am not a fan of socks, and only put them on with sneakers, or in the winter. The rest of time I am barefoot, as is my youngest. I rarely wear out a pair of socks, usually the elastic goes before I wear holes in them. This is not the case for our resident sock wearers, they are constantly wearing through socks. I have been saving them because it seems such a waste to throw them out.
I am also an avid recycler. Pants, shirts, doors, milk jugs, new socks and now even the holey old socks in our house gotten a new lease on life. Meet our newest house guest, “Sunday” the sock snake. He is constructed of mainly of my husband, and eldest son’s holey socks. He is named Sunday because one of the pairs of socks said Sunday on the bottom, so I though that it was fitting. He is also the only snake that I know that has a mustache, or many mustaches.
If you are interested in giving your old socks a new lease on life, check out this tutorial from Grosgrain. I made a couple of alterations to the tutorial with the main one being using quilting batting instead of stuffing. I learned when making sock monkeys that it’s really hard to get the socks stuffed with out having big lumps, so for the snake I used batting. Here are some pictures of my battle with the batting. It was a full body workout to get Sunday stuffed. Now I will need to make a second one because I still have a pile of holey socks.
There are lots of things that I should be doing and making sock monkeys is not on the list. I was in Michaels a couple of weeks ago buying these socks with the intention of wearing them as socks when the cashier mentioned that she had bought some to turn into sock monkeys. Obviously I thought that was a good idea because now we have a family of Christmas sock monkeys. Using the great tutorial I found here and a walking foot for sewing knits on my sewing machine it was pretty easy to make these little monkeys. Sasha was quite involved with the little striped one that he has claimed as his. He helped by turning the body parts inside out, stuffing them and selecting the eyes. I am going to have to teach him how to sew next!
I LOVE wine, who is with me? Yesterday I posted how to make a pillow from a dress shirt, today I am going to reuse the sleeves. Have you ever been caught drinking wine from a paper bag? Me neither but if I am going to go that route I think I will class it up a little bit with these shirt sleeve wine bags. But in all seriousness, I wouldn’t mind getting a bottle of wine in a reusable bag such as these. Who am I kidding if you are giving out wine I am taking it in any form.
Should you have an extra shirt that you don’t need the sleeves for try making one of these wine bottle covers.
Step 1. With a wine bottle, full or empty your choice, measure the length of the desired wine bag. Yes that’s right, use a wine bottle as a measuring device. Forget the measure twice cut once rule just this one time.
Step 2. Cut off the sleeves so that the bottle will fit.
Step 3. Turn the sleeve inside out
Step 4. Pin the edge you just cut
Step 5. Sew the edge closed.
Step 6. Put the bottle in the bag, close up the buttons. You could make it fancy by tying a ribbon.
Keep crafting, creating and drinking?
I had my sewing machine out last night, and no good can come of that. I have no idea why I think it’s such a big deal to get out a sewing machine, but once I have it out I must make those projects that I have been planning that require it. A while ago I saw a picture of a pillow made of a man’s dress shirt. My thoughts after seeing the picture were a little morbid, I though what a great idea for someone who has just lost their husband, partner, or loved one. It doesn’t have to be quite so morbid though, maybe it would be useful if you are in a long distance relationship, or have a partner that travels a lot, or maybe I have totally lost my mind. Or for the environmentalist, what a great way to recycle clothing. I will leave the judgement up to you. My husband’s comment was “Seriously don’t we have enough pillows”. He does have a point I couldn’t argue with, but seriously what’s one more? In case you can’t figure out which one is the dress shirt pillow in the picture above, it’s the beige one. It is a little boring, but everything can’t be flashy.
On the bright side, this was the fastest easiest pillow I have ever made. And FREE, who doesn’t love free.
Step 1. Start with a men’s button dress shirt, I asked my husband nicely and he gave me an old stained one. That’s true love, isn’t it.
Step 2. Iron the shirt (if you are lazy, just iron from the arm pits down)
Step 3. You do need a pillow form, or an old pillow you want to recover. Put the pillow into the shirt and check the size. For the one that I made I used a FJADRAR 20″x20″ pillow from IKEA. The instructions below are based on the 20″ pillow form and a men’s medium dress shirt.
Step 3. Lay the shirt on a flat surface and using a straight edge mark a line from arm pit to arm pit, you can use chalk to make a line, or pencil/pen lightly. If you want to get super fancy, you can mark the cut lines to make sure the button’s are symmetrical. Cut along the line you marked.
Step 4. Trim the bottom of the shirt to be parallel with the line you just cut. All you want to do is square up the bottom edge, usually the bottom edge of dress shirts is not straight.
Step 5. With all of the button’s fastened, turn the piece of the shirt you cut off inside out. Pin the 2 open edges. Sew the edges closed.
Step 6. Open the button’s. Stuff with the pillow and fluff it up.
So now what do we do with the rest of the shirt? Great question, I will show you how to make something with the sleeves tomorrow. Crack out the wine, you are going to need it.
Keep sewing, crafting & creating.
Making A Life 