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Today is a Day for Mending Worn Out Denim Jeans

I realized a few days ago that my favorite pair of denim jeans were wearing through at the inner thigh, so I set them aside to reinforce before they were beyond the point of easy repair.

This morning, I planned to mend them and then tackle adding patches to an older denim skirt refashion. I got all those repairs done and was planning my next project when I ripped the knee out of the jeans I’m wearing.

Worn out knee in my denim jeans

These are honestly worn pretty thin and they’re not my preferred cut, so I’m not sure if I will mend these or add them to the repurpose pile. 

If you’d like to learn my method for reinforcing worn spots in denim, check out this blog post. It’s actually really simple and works well, if you don’t procrastinate. If you procrastinate, then all your jeans wear out at once and you think, “Maybe I should just go get a pair of the ones I like from Old Navy,” but then you discover that they have discontinued that particular style and now you think you’ll never find comfortable jeans again, which is sad because you really like wearing jeans. Or something.

Have a great weekend!

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Make Your Own Aromatherapy Bath Salts Easily from Basic Ingredients

set of salt for bath placed on marble table

 

Creating your own aromatherapy bath salts is a terrific way to enjoy aromatherapy at home. Surprisingly, bath salts are very affordable to make and require no harsh ingredients. In fact, the main ingredients in bath salts include baking soda, table salt and epsom salt. Each of these are commonly found in a local grocery or retail store and are safe to use. The advantage to creating your own bath salts is that you can tailor the recipe to your needs and preferences. This way, you also know that the ingredients are going into your product safe for you to use.

Basic Aromatherapy Bath Salt Recipe 

First, you’ll need a large mixing bowl and spoon reserved for this type of project. Essential oils are not easily washed out, especially if you use plastic, so keep this bowl separate from your food prep bowls. The next step is to add 3 cups of epsom salt, 2 cups of baking soda and 1 cup of table salt into the mixing bowl. You can also add pink Himalayan salt or sea salt instead of table salt. Once each of the ingredients are added, begin mixing them with your hand or the spoon.

Coloring your Aromatherapy bath salts

If you’d like to color your bath salts, food coloring is a great option. If I’m coloring my bath salts, I try to match the color to the intended purpose of the bath salts. For example, if I’m making lavender bath salts for relaxation, I would choose a calming color like blue or purple.

Once mixing is complete, slowly add the food coloring to the mixture. Adding more drops will darken the color and adding fewer will make it softer. If you’re blending colors, such as blue and red to make purple, mix them before adding to the bath salts. Otherwise, you will end up with splotches of red and blue, not an even purple.

set of salt for bath placed on marble table
Photo by Monstera on Pexels.com

Adding the essential oils

The final step is to add essential oils until the desired scent is achieved. While I have made lavender bath salts by adding the lavender essential oil directly to the salt mixture, it is best to dilute the essential oils in a carrier oil. This is especially important with things like peppermint essential oil that could be very uncomfortable in a bath if not diluted properly (essential oils do not dilute in water!)

I like to use 1-2 tablespoons of carrier oil and add the essential oils until I get the scent level I’m needing. Ten drops of essential oil per cup of bath salts is a good guideline to start. I then add the diluted essential oils to the salt mixture and blend well.

Essential oil alternatives

If you’d prefer not to use essential oils, you can use skin safe fragrance oils or a bit of your favorite perfume. Just be absolutely sure anything you add is made to use on skin. I would use the same method for adding the fragrance as for essential oils.

Storing your Aromatherapy bath Salts

For the best results, store your bath salts in an airtight container. I like using glass canning jars because they are reusable, the essential oils don’t get embedded into the glass, and they are pretty. If you choose to use glass too, just be careful not to drop them in the tub.

Aromatherapy bath salts

I do offer aromatherapy bath salts in my shop, so check them out if you’d prefer not to make them yourself. 🙂

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Quick Summer Refashion Video Inspiration

spool of purple thread near needle thimble and measuring tape

I’ve been working on some summer sewing and refashions lately. Here’s a quick video showing a few of them. The first is a backless halter top made with quilting cotton and ribbon. The second refashion is a halter tube top with a matching loose kimono/beach coverup. They were made from an old maxi dress that wasn’t getting much love. The beach coverup is my favorite. I love how it turned out, especially the print.

I hope you find these inspiring for your own projects. If you like these kinds of videos, follow me on TikTok. I also post on Instagram and YouTube. I tend to prefer the length options on TikTok, so that’s where most of my complete videos are located.

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Upcycling Fabric Scraps

Fabric-Scrap-Upcycle

This isn’t going to be a full tutorial because I didn’t do a great job of documenting the process. If you’d like a full tutorial, please let me know. I will link to the page I learned it from here.

I saw this really cool way to make a bunch of fabric scraps into new, usable fabric that is really textured and cool. First, you need a backing piece of fabric. I used an upholstery sample square that I hadn’t found a use for yet. Then, you cover it in fabric scraps. I went with all pieces from my “blue” sorter bin and let them fall all over randomly. I did try to keep it all in one or two layers and moved pieces around to cover all the empty spots. I left some upside down to add more variety in the colors, and I didn’t worry about ironing the pieces first. 

Once I had everything in place, I pressed it with my iron to smooth it down. Then I pinned water soluble stabilizer on top to help hold everything in place for the sewing machine. To sew, I lowered the feed dogs on my machine and crazy free motion quilted everything together. You can see that in the first video below.

 

@subearthancottage

Trying a new technique to make usable fabric from my fabric scraps. #upcycling #zerowaste #asmr #sewing #quilting

♬ original sound – Charity

After I had everything thoroughly stitched down, I rinsed out the stabilizer, shown here.

@subearthancottage

Rinsing out the water soluble stabilizer. It’s so cool to finally see the colors pop out as the stabilizer dissolves. #upcycling #sewing #quilting

♬ Lofi Vibes – Gentle State

That’s it. Now I have this really cool piece of fabric. I can’t decide what to do with it. It almost looks like it could hang on the wall like that as art. I also thought about making a couple of zipper pouches or sets of coasters out of it. It would also be fun to use as patches for clothing. 

What would you make with it? Leave your suggestions below. 🙂

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Homemade Candles are the Way To Go

I love candles. Making your own is a great way to recycle old wax into something uniquely yours. This post from Crafting a Green World shares several methods for candle making.

Whether you’re rolling beeswax candles with kids or pouring a multi-color, multi-layer jarred candle, homemade candles give you the power to fill …

Homemade Candles are the Way To Go
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Wicked Weeds or Nutritious Wild Edibles

It has always bothered me that only certain plants are seen as acceptable and others are weeds that must be pulled or poisoned out of our yards. When you consider that the so-called weeds require fewer resources like water because, if left alone, they grow like, well, weeds, it makes even less sense. Why remove a low maintenance plant and replace it with something high maintenance? This thinking got me researching the uncultivated plants that grow in my yard and in my neighborhood. To my surprise, many of the weeds are actually wild edibles that are often highly nutritious or medicinal. 

Even though we live in the city, our large lot provides plenty of variety of wild edible plants. I’ve found the Picture This app very helpful for identifying the plants in my yard. Here’s a few of the most common I’ve found.

A few notes on Safety with Wild Edibles

If you decide to look around your neighborhood, please, be sure you know for sure what plant you have before eating anything. I recommend checking multiple sources. Foraging for wild edibles is fun, as long as you use caution and only eat the plants you are 100% sure about. 

I’m finding that most wild greens are high in oxalic acid, so it’s important to not overdo it and be extra cautious if you have any medical concerns.

Henbit

Henbit, or Lamium amplexicaule is very common to see in early spring. It gets it’s name because chickens love it. As one of the first flowers of the year, it is an important food source for bees, so be mindful if you choose to harvest any.

Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

A member of the mint family, henbit is rich in vitamins and minerals. You can eat the leaves and flowers raw in salads or cooked. Tea made from henbit is also thought to reduce stress and anxiety.

Wood Sorrel

Wood sorrel is super easy to identify. It’s a little shamrock! The wood sorrel we have produces little yellow flowers and has a lemony taste. My favorite part are the little seed pods. They look like teeny tiny okra and taste like lemon candy.

Image by GK von Skoddeheimen from Pixabay

Wood sorrel is delicate, so it’s best to eat it fresh. Like many foraged plants, it’s high in oxalic acid, so don’t eat a lot and proceed with caution if you have any condition that would make oxalic acid especially dangerous.

Sunflowers

Did you know that you can eat more than just the sunflower seeds? The entire plant is edible! The leaves are eaten like spinach or brewed into tea. The petals and roots can be made into tea as well.

Dried sunflowers waiting to be made into tea, balms and soaps.

Flower buds can be cooked and eaten. I haven’t tried it yet, but I read they taste similar to artichokes. Apparently the stems taste like celery, and make a tasty snack. In addition to tea, the roots can be steamed, roasted or eaten raw.

Sunflowers are high in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Sunflower leaves are thought to help with inflammation when applied topically as a poultice or drank as a tea. The tea is also supposed to be good for sore throats.

Want to learn about more wild edibles?

I started with the most common and easily identifiable plants, but there’s so many more I can share just from my own yard. Let me know if you want to learn more or share your own experiences in the comments below.

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Shop Sale!

All items in my shop are 15% off until Friday, July 16, so please, check it out. Here’s just a few of the things you’ll find.

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T-Shirt to TV Pants

I went on a little Pinterest binge a couple days ago looking for ideas to help clear my refashion stash. Saturday night I decided to make a pair of yoga pants out of a t-shirt using this tutorial. I wear a size eight on average, and used an XL adult t-shirt.

I did make a few changes to the design. First, instead of cutting the shirt down the middle, I cut it down the sides from the middle of the underarm to the hem. This also means you’ll have an inseam and no side seams. That keeps any design on the front or back intact and moves them to the hips. For the waistband, I cut the underarm seam from the sleeves and squared them up to be two equal rectangles, leaving the hem intact. I sewed the short sides together making a big, short tube from the sleeves. I then put the tube inside the waist of the pants with the pants right side out and the right side of the tube facing the inside of the pants. The raw edge of the tube lines up with the raw edge of the pants. I serged the top together like that. This made it so when the tube is folded down to the outside, the seam is covered.

IMG_4449IMG_4452IMG_4459

Sorry for the awkward pictures. No one was around to take the pictures and Doctor Who was about to start.

I sewed it all on my serger and it took less than ten minutes. I probably should have added two minutes and switched from white to black thread. Or not.

They are a little loose at the waist. If I were planning to actually do yoga or wear them in public I should probably add some elastic at the seam. Since they will probably be used mainly for watching Doctor Who while sitting on the sofa, I probably won’t bother.

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage

T-Shirt to TV Pants was originally published on SubEarthan Cottage