Maize & Blue Michigan Ribbon Shoes

Frank and I are leaving today for a New Year's road trip to New Orleans. Why? To see the Michigan Wolverines play in the Sugar Bowl, of course! In honor of heading to one of the BCS bowl games I thought I'd share a shoe mod that I did for wearing to the Michigan games.

At the end of the summer I found a pair of navy flats with light blue ribbons on the discount rack at DSW and thought they would be perfect to convert into Michigan shoes. 

To modify the shoes I cut the light blue ribbon and pulled it out. It was glued down so in some sections I had to use tweezers to reach through the grommets and pull the ribbon away from the glue.

To add the yellow ribbons, I threaded ribbon onto a large tapestry needle and then wove it in and out though the shoe's grommets. I left long tails on the ribbon so that I could finish off the shoes by tying the ribbon into a bow. The shoe on the left is one after I modified it and the one on the right is before.

The shoes turned out cute and only took about 15 minutes to mod. I wore them for the beginning of football season (until it got too cold!) and I am hoping it is warm enough in New Orleans on January 3 that I can wear them again for the Sugar Bowl. Go Blue!

Monogrammed Fleece Scarves

I wanted to make something fun and personal for Frank's nieces for Christmas and I thought that fleece scarves would be cute. I made the scarves in each girl's favorite color and then appliqued each girl's first initial on the scarf.

To make the scarves I started off with a piece of fleece and used my rotary cutter and quilting ruler to cut it 6" wide and then cut 1/2" wide fringe on the ends.

For the monogram applique I printed out each girl's initial in the font Georgia and cut it out. I placed the letters right side down on a coordinating piece of felt, traced them and then cut them out.

Frank and I are heading to New York for a pre-Christmas vacation so I had plenty of time on my hands during our drive yesterday. After I had done all the cutting at home I brought the scarves with me to do the hand stitching in the car. I pinned the felt letters to the scarves and used a small stitch to applique them, hiding the tails of my thread under the letters. 

I bought the fleece when it was on sale half off and got the felt at a ¥100 shop (Japanese version of a dollar store) when I was in Japan. With the fleece, thread and felt each scarf cost under three dollars and took less than an hour to make. I am really happy with how they turned out and hope that the girls like them on Christmas.

Kitschy Christmas Sweater

Last Saturday, my friend hosted a house warming party for his new condo with an ugly Christmas sweater themed party. I was incredibly jet lagged from just returning from Japan and was not up for going out to hunt for a Christmas sweater at the local thrift stores. I knew that I couldn't show up without wearing something festive so I decided to quickly decorate a green sweater that I already had.

I wanted my sweater mod to be temporary so I decided to use some white craft felt that had a low-tack sticky backing that was easy to attach to the sweater but also easy to remove. I drew a reindeer onto the back of the felt, cut out the design, peeled off the backing and then applied it to the sweater.

The reindeer needed a little gussying up so I attached a googly eye and then safety pinned on a red pom-pom nose and white pom-pom tail. The final touch was tying a red ribbon and small bell around the reindeer's neck.

The whole effect was pretty kitschy and it fit right in with the other crazy Christmas sweaters at the party. It only took me 15 minutes to decorate the sweater for the party and then the next day I returned my sweater to normal by just peeling off the felt and unpinning the pom-poms.