How to

HOW TO SEW BABY BIBS


In the rain last week, between coats of paint on the doors, as you can see in the background, I sewed some baby bibs.  They are very, VERY easy to make.

Start with a pattern you make yourself. 

This is a paper grocery bag with a 5 inch bowl traced across the middle and folded down in half afterwards. Lay the pattern on top of a terry cloth dish towel you have folded over by one third and cut it out.  The ribbing is 12.5 inches by 2.5 inches cut out, folded over and sewn with 1/4 inch seams.

Next you pin the ribbing that has been sewn into a circle and folded down half way into fourths.  Do the same with the terry cloth dish towel.  Match up the pins, putting the ribbing seam in the middle of the back of the towel bib.

Next just sew with a tight (10-12 stitches per inch) stitch, stretching the ribbing to fit the opening of the dish towel and easing between each pinned one fourth segment.

Once you have gone around the opening once with a straight stitch, go back around using a zig zag stitch twice.  Or if you have a serger, better yet, but I don't.

Turn and check for any mistaken folded over parts that you need to unpick and restitch.  Clip long threads.

And you're done!  Post me a question if this is not clear enough.  Have fun and Happy Baby Showers!



HOW TO REFINISH A METAL HEAD BOARD.

I found this great head board at the first garage sale I went to this past spring. It was marked at $5! I bought it and brought it home.

It was pretty scuffed up. First I gave it a good scrub. Then I bought a couple of cans of flat black spray paint and gave it a few (3 or 4) light coats of paint.


Here is what it looks like today!

HOW TO BUILD A GREAT FIRE PIT.

Brian built this wonderful fire pit a few weeks ago. First he bought a 6 foot round cattle water trough. He cut out a large section of the bottom. Then he and some friends dug a nice hole not far from the original fire pit, which was too close to the cabin and a tree. They buried the water trough and then back filled it part way. Using rocks we found close to the cabin, he built up the edge. Since then, he has filled in more dirt up to the edge of the rocks.  The last step is to put loose sand in between the rocks to act as grout.  Not bad looking, eh?

HOW TO MAKE FIRE STARTERS.

Well, I had to experiment with this. Our neighbor Lloyd, gave us the best tip. It was to use a crock pot. So, I went to Deseret Industries and found a small crock pot sans lid. Then I found a lid sans pot that matched. I got a 10 pound block of parafin at Hobby Lobby (thanks Lloyd for the 40% off coupon), broke some pieces off and put them into the plugged in crock pot.


After a few hours, the wax was melted and I started with dryer lint in egg cartons. I needed 2 small ladel-fulls to fill each egg compartment. Once they were dry, Brian used a saw and cut them apart. They turned out weird looking, though.

Next I used shredding from my office shredder. It still looked a little weird. THEN Lloyd told me I could dip pine cones in! Kelsey brought me 2 big bags of nice fist sized cones from her apartments. Lloyd warned me that they would have to be really dry or they would explode in the wood stove. So I put them in the oven with only the pilot light on for an hour or so.

Once they were good and dry, I held them by the very tip and dipped them into the wax. I let them dry on newspaper. I actually used much less wax on the pine cones than the other styles. 

They look nice, too.