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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Casserole Holder Tutorial

I will preface this post by warning you all that it is long!  But, there are a lot of pictures.  Since this is my first semi complicated tutorial, I wanted to be as thorough as possible so I took a ton of pictures and I will try to explain it all as clearly as I can! 

This weekend I made another casserole holder.  This one was for my mom and was part of her Christmas present as I mentioned before.  I got the initial idea from this pin.  Which led me to the original tutorial which is found at this blog.  Now, I’m not an expert on the sewing machine so I thought I would create this tutorial for anyone else who is beginning just like me.

First things first, here are the materials you will need:
1 Yard of InsulBright – It’s sold in bulk, usually with the batting type material and the label looks like this

2 Yards of fabric – Now, for me I did two different patterned fabrics, so I used 1 yard of each.  So, you will need either 2 yards of the same fabric or 1 yard each of two different fabrics, make sense?

2 yards of canvas handle material – I found mine over by the “by the yard” Velcro and things.  It comes in a few different colors and looks like this

Color coordinated thread – Just normal thread, no special type needed

Measuring tape – I used my husbands, but if you have the fabric/sizing kind, that works too.

Some sort of closure – Be it buttons, or Velcro, or ribbon to use as ties

Let’s get started! 
Step 1:  Layout your InsulBright and cut out a 37” by 12” rectangle and a 30” by 15” rectangle.  So one should be shorter and wider, and the other longer and skinnier.


Step 2: Place the two rectangles of InsulBright on top of your fabric.  If you are using two types of fabric, you will need to cut one of each size rectangle out of each type of fabric.   When you cut out the fabric, cut about a 1 inch outline around the InsulBright.  This doesn’t need to be exact.

You should end up with your two pieces of InsulBright, a 37”x12” and 30”x15” piece of fabric 1, and a 37”x12” and 30”x15” piece of fabric 2 (if using two different pieces of fabric, otherwise you will have 4 pieces out of the same fabric)



Step 3:  Take your two 37”x12” pieces of fabric and place them right sides together.  So it should look like its inside out.  Then place your 37”x12” piece of InsulBright and place it on top of those.  Like so

Step 4:  Sew these 3 pieces together (straight stitch).  Make sure to leave a 4” or so gap on one of the 12” sides so that you can turn it right side in.  




Step 5:  Repeat step 4 with the 30”x15” pieces.  You should have two pieces like this. I cut off the excess material.  If you do this, make sure to leave some excess material where your 4" gap is.

Step 6:  Now you turn each piece right side in. Reach in between the two pieces of fabric, and turn it right side in.

Step 7:  Next you will do what’s called a top stitch all the way around.  This is really the same thing that you did the first time around (just a straight stitch) except that this one will be visible.  It kind of makes it look like there is piping around the edge.  The purpose of this is to make sure all of the layers stay together and the InsulBright doesn’t shift and bunch.  The top stitch also closes that 4” gap that we left when we turned it outside in.  Now your two pieces look like this

Step 8:  Now we want to sew the two pieces together.  Lay the 30”x15” down horizontally (placing the side you want to show on the outside face down).  Then lay the 37”x12” down vertically on top of that (again placing the side you want to show on the outside face down).  Make sure that you measure the sides and that you have the top piece centered.  And pin those together.

Be sure to double check with a real casserole dish to make sure all the sides will close before you sew it together.


Step 9:  Sew the two pieces together.  You should end up with a square in the center.


Step 10:  You’re almost done!  Now we just need to attach the handles and the closures.  To attach the handles lay them in a loop along the backside of the 30”x15” piece like so


Step 11:  Pin the handles down, and mark about 3” to either side of the center square.  This is where you will stop sewing the handles.

Step 12: Sew on the handles

Step 13: Now you get to decide what kind of closure you want.  I used buttons and loops on my first one (I don’t know how to sew buttons holes yet).  In the tutorial I linked to at the top of this post, she used Velcro which is probably the easiest.  You can find sew on Velcro at Joanns (make sure you get the kind made for sewing) .  You can refer to the tutorial I linked to above to see how she sewed on the Velcro. 

And that’s it!  You are done!  These make great gifts and they definitely get easier the more you make.  Please feel free to leave comments and questions!  And if you end up making one yourself, tell me about it, I would love to know!

Friday, January 27, 2012

High Five for Friday!

Hello lovely people!  TGIF!!!  I love Fridays.  And today is no exception.  I am looking forward to sleeping in, having a productive craft day on Saturday, hanging out with my hubby and my puppies, seeing my parents, and just some basic relaxation.  This weekend I plan to work on another casserole holder for my mom.  It was part of Christmas present....just now getting to it.  Whoops!  Sorry mom :)  I posted pictures of a previous one I made here (scroll down to see it), but this time I promise to take pictures along the way and post a little tutorial.  And side note: I'm super excited to try out my new sewing machine!  How terrible is it of me to have gotten such a wonderful gift, and still not used it yet!?  That will soon change my friends.

But enough about all that, it's time for High Five for Friday! I'm linking up to Lauren again over at From My Grey Desk.  Here are my 5 favorite things from the last week (in no particular order)

1) Getting to babysit this little cutie patootie over the weekend!  
Check out his Mom's blog here.

2) Getting (semi) random flowers from my parents!
This is me trying to be artsy 



3) Our new media cabinet for the loft upstairs

4) Accomplishing my goal of running 5 days out this week :-)

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Pinned here

5) Um...baked donuts?!?! YES Please!!!
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Pinned here

What are your top five from the week?


From My Grey Desk
Linking up with Lauren!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Rearranging Cabinets



Last night we made our THIRD trip to Ikea in the past week.  Yes, you read that right…3 trips!  The first was to get my lovely craft corner desk (seen here).  While we were there the first time, we found a mini media center for our upstairs TV that we both liked, but they were out of some of the parts.  Ok, no problem.  We’ll come back next weekend as they were supposed to get another shipment in on Tuesday.  So Sunday night we traveled back to Ikea (a good 30 min drive from our house) to purchase the media center.  We get down to the self-serve furniture area (for those of you that don’t know Ikea – 1. Go to one! Seriously they are amazing.  2. Most of their furniture comes in boxes that you have to go down and pick out all the pieces from the warehouse area) and we get the frame, and the shelves…annnnnd they are all out of the doors!  Fantastic.  I hope you sense the sarcasm here…So last night, one more time, we made the trek down to Ikea after work.  Of course this time we called the warehouse to make sure they had that part in stock.  They had 20.  Phew!  We finally got all the pieces we needed.
BESTÃ… Storage combination with doors, walnut effect Width: 70 7/8 " Depth: 15 3/4 " Height: 29 1/8 "  Width: 180 cm Depth: 40 cm Height: 74 cm
We only purchased the left two. The right section is a separate optional piece.

Now, since this idea of rearrangement kind of just came to me the first time we were at Ikea, let me explain my train of thought.  Hop on board!  Train…on board…get it?  No? Ok, moving on.  We have our big tube TV upstairs in the loft sitting on top of an old weird grayish-yellowish colored file cabinet.  Don’t get me wrong it’s a nice file cabinet and I’m thinking I can give it a face lift with some paint and such, but for now it’s a bit of an eye sore.  
Functional, but not so pretty
Problem being that it was also functional and holding all of our files (imagine that!).  So, after picturing some rearranging in my head I decided that all of the random tangled mess of cables that are in our bench storage ottoman (from Target) would have to be organized, purged, e-wasted, etc.  So we ended up with a small plastic bin of the cables we wanted to keep, and a giant trash bag of cables and random items we were going to donate. 

So, if you are still on track with me (train…track…yeah?), here’s where my mind was headed.  Place all of the files from the gray/yellow file cabinet into the ottoman.  Replace the file cabinet with the new media center, and move the file cabinet somewhere in the garage for future face lift.  Got it? In order to make the files work in the ottoman, we got this little number from Staples. 

Only about $10.  It’s basically just a metal frame that we could pop into the ottoman like so…

Side note: I finally fixed the setting on my camera so everything doesn't look oddly yellow.  Anyways, fits like a glove.  Then I moved all of the files over. Please, ignore the mess on the floor around it.  It never fails that as soon as I get a room cleaned up, I think of another project and another way to get it all messy again.  Does this happen to anyone else?
After fixing the camera setting...

In the mean time, John was putting together the media cabinet.
Before fixing the camera setting...


And Lexi was supervising…”Keep up the good work Dad…ZZZzzz”



Isn’t it so much prettier than the file cabinet??  Can’t wait to get that sucker in place with all of the components on their own little individual shelves.  The only snafu here was that there is no hole in the media cabinet for cables to come out the back.  So we John will have to drill a couple, no biggie.  Hopefully in the next couple of days I will have some pictures of the new cabinet in place! 

Happy Thursday everyone J

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Wednesday Pinterest Picks

I have been pinning a lot the past week in the For The Home section and also the Fitness section.  So I thought I would link up today with The Vintage Apple and show you my top 10 Pinterest Picks for this week.  Here we go!

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Pinned here


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Oh Martha...you're so smart.  Pinned here

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Why did I not think of this?!

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Love this

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Best expression ever!

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So sad, but so cute.  Pinned here

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Good advice.  Pinned here

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Maybe a little more than half?  Pinned here

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Yep, that's the goal...via

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Awesomeness

Happy Wednesday!!
Linking up with:

google