Making the World Cuter: Making the World Cuter-Sugar Bee Craft Edition

I am on Maternity Leave from September 4th-October 12th: This post was contributed by Mandy, blogger at Sugar Bee Craft Edition.

Hello Making The World Cuter readers!! I'm excited to be here. I am Mandy from over on Sugar Bee Craft Edition. I am lucky to stay home with my four kids and enjoy all the fun that comes with it. I also (obviously!) love crafts and creating. Here's the whole gang in our "crazy" faces at the lake a few weeks ago.

I've been blogging on my craft blog for about a year and half now, and it just keeps growing. I feel that if I can do something, you can too, so a lot of my posts are tutorials. I do a lot more than crafts (although plently of those!) - - I especially love easy sewing projects, like this Shirred Pillowcase Dress.

I love making glass tile pendants and made some with pictures and even clipart using the school mascot (perfect gifts for grandmas and teachers!)

I love to feature favorite recipes of mine, like my go-to treat whenever it's potluck: Furnkies!

I also dabble in photography and photoshop elements tips - I'm not an expert, but I like to share what I know, like how to get that "blurry background" look from your pictures.

And recently I did a whole redo of our basement and created a great Playroom all centered around the wall tree that turned out perfect - I LOVE it all!!

Also, I have a link party on Tuesdays called Take-A-Look Tuesday - - where YOU can link up what you've been working on - I love checking out all the fun ideas and projects.

Today I want so share a quick Fabric Embellished Shirt and Headband:

The boutique look is such "the thing" right now, but those outfits seem really time-consuming to make and I'm all about being simple. I think you can get a great personalized look by just sprucing up something store-bought. For example, this shirt. My daughter was attending a birthday party so I needed to get a gift - I grabbed this shirt at Walmart - I think it was $3.50 (my goal is to spend under $5 on birthday gifts for my kids' friends - I'm sure this will have to increase as they get older, but for now it's worked). The shirt is fuschia, but my craft room cannot take a picture of hot pink/fuschia - ever. And then I had some scrap fabric sitting around:

The shirt already had a cute ruffle, so I thought I'd just embellish it a little more. I cut a strip of fabric and then hemmed one side and sewed it down (fold over and then fold over again for a nice edge). The other side I ran through my serger but you could zigzag it as well - anything to keep it from fraying.My strip was 1 1/2 inches wide (before I hemmed it) by 21 1/2 inches long,

Then I sewed a gathering stitch on top of the serged edge and pulled it to gather the strip into a ruffle. Below shows the start of my ruffling. You'll then need to fold over each end and sew that so the end edges look nice.

After the strip is ruffled, pin it down under the existing ruffle on the shirt. Then sew again on top of the serged part (the sewing should be hidden under the original ruffle when you're done).

It was a tight spot at the start and stop of the strip so I couldn't sew there - so I grabbed my fabric tac glue (like liquid hot glue for fabric) and tacked down where I circled. The white dashes are where the hidden sewing should be.

And that's it - easy, right?!

Now of course it needs a hair accessory. I would normally do a fabric flower or something, but my daughter has been big into headbands lately, so I went that route (fun for her to give something that she loves). And I made it ruffly to match the ruffle shirt. I got a pack of 6 or so headbands at the Dollar Tree (everything's $1!) - what a deal. I cut a scrap of fabric and sewed a gathering stitch on both sides. Then pulled them simultaneously for an even gather.

After gathering I ran each side through the sewing machine to sew down the gather. (But my stitch was still really long and I didn't realize it, so it made for bad sewing - just ignore that in the upclose pictures!)

To attach it to the headband I just fabric-glued it on. It seemed pretty secure, but I'm sure if a kid really yanked it would come off. Hopefully that won't happen.

I think it turned out really cute - I kind of want to make one for me...

I have an embroidery machine, so I took and extra step for the set and added the little girl's initial and name in the corner of the shirt. You could hand do this, or freezer stencil, or iron on letters - lots of fun personalization techniques.

So that's it - for under $4 - cute, easy, personalized - my kind of project.