No Sew Kids Craft Apron

This is technically not really an apron more a general cover-up, but it's a 5 minute T-shirt recycling project that will keep your toddler's clothes clean from glitter, glue and paint! It could be the perfect (and way cheapest!) solution for a playgroup, Preschool, Sunday school or any other toddler (group) doing crafts. I know there are really cute crafts apron pattern out there and also tons of cute fabric, but really how much time and money does one invest in something that will only get dirty and spilled on, especially if you have to make 20 or more?

All you need per apron:
-one old men's T-shirt in size M or L (XL might so huge that you'll actually have to sew it smaller)
-two 15 cm/6" pieces of 1/4" elastic

You'll also need a pair of scissors, 2 safety pins and a few minutes of your time.

First get your toddler and hold the T-shirt up on him/her to check if the size is good. The T-shirt's width from sleeve to sleeve is about the same as your toddler's wrist to wrist measurement. Most likely a M or L will fit any toddler, XL will probably be to big and you'd have to sew the sleeve a bit shorter but I won't go into that here.

Turn the T-shirt inside out. Find where the seam meets the hem on the sleeve. We'll use the folded hem as casing for the elastic. To do this you have to cut 2 small holes through the inner layer of fabric (the folded bit on the hem), one hole on each side of the seams, but make sure not to cut the seams open. (see pictures below for clarity).

Pin one end of the elastic to the sleeve using a safety pin. Attach the second safety pin to the other end of the elastic and insert into the casing, all the way through. The sleeve will start gathering up a lot, that's why we pinned the one end down so it won't slip through.

Now you should have both ends of the elastic next to each other peaking out of the holes like this:

Tie the two ends of the elastic together with a double or triple knot (or sew the two ends together, but hey, this is a no sew project!); and remove the safety pins. That's how the finished sleeve looks like:

 Repeat on second sleeve. Turn the shirt right side out and put on your toddler to see if it fits. The sleeves should be snug around the wrist protecting any other shirt underneath from getting all dirty. The shirt will be pretty long on the toddler, protecting his/her pants, knee-length is the best, protecting most of the clothes but not getting in the way of the little feet. Most likely you can just leave the shirt as is, but if it's way to long cut off a bit from the bottom. And you're done!

Now put the shirt on your toddler and start the crafty fun...

How to open a pomegranate?

I just made these addictive double dark chocolate pomegranate cookies. The recipe is from Dana. Click here to go directly to the recipe. I can't stop eating them. OMG!




So anyways, while I  had to open a pomegranate for the recipe, thought I might as well snap a few shots and show you how to open a pomegranate without creating a giant juicy war-like scene mess in your kitchen. Most people just cut the pomegranate in half (and inevitable also some of the seeds who than start "bleeding" their juice for happy mess-making). Here is how I do it.

STEP 1: Cut of the top and the bottom of the pomegranate.

STEP 2: Examine from the top. You can see where the natural borders of the clusters are. Cut into 3-4 of the broader white spaces. Don't cut deep into the pomegranate just into the outer shell. The deeper you cut the more seeds will spread there juice!.

STEP 3: Pull the pieces apart along the cuts. That should go easy, since you are breaking the pomegranate apart along its natural sections.

4 pieces. Some seeds fell out on there own. You could already do this step over water, so the mess is even less. I just forgot it in the whole cut-snap a picture-pull-snap a picture-process...

STEP 4: No work section by section over a bowl of water and remove all the seeds... the remaining white skins will float on top for easy removal. The seeds should more or less fall of on their own if you work along the sections.


STEP 5: Take out the skins from the water and rinse.

STEP 6: Enjoy your heap of pomegranate seeds in a clean kitchen.



Bonus information: The darker red the pomegranate on the outside, the sourer the taste. If you prefer the sweeter pomegranates don't get tricked by the nice red color... buy the pale looking ones. They taste sweeter!

5 Minute Shirt

  This is probably the simplest and quickest shirt I've ever sewn. I needed something new to wear  in the last minute... So that's what I came up with:

cut 2 identical rectangles of fabric

sizing: 

height - measure from shoulders to hips (or longer if you wish) 

width - i took a different boring regular wide T-shirt and measured from sleeve to sleeve

my rectangles were each 50cm x 65cm (about 20 in x 26 in)

Cut out a rounding on both sides of each rectangle and on top according to the sketch. (You should now have two identical pieces of fabric looking like the darker shade of blue in the sketch) :

Pin the two fabric pieces right sides together and sew along the rounded side edges and the two straight edges on top (the purple dotted lines on the sketch).

Believe it or not,

You've got a new shirt!

Well, you got a shirt with raw edges... you can always finish off the edges with a regular hem or whatever else you like... but than it might take you 10 minutes to finish the shirt :-) I only finished off the edges on the sleeves in my version in order to hide the selvedge of the fabric that was showing on one side. It looked odd to have one sleeve with a wider stripe of the light blue color...

Some notes:
- If you use a striped fabric like I did line up the stripes when cutting the fabric and before sewing the fabric together line the stripes up again and pin in place.

- Add a matching fabric flower for a fresh look!