UPDATE:
The thief was caught!  In reality, a much less exciting success, but I received this email from the google team in response to my complaint I filed.
Hello,

Thank you for your note.

In accordance with the DMCA, we have completed processing your
infringement complaint and the content in question no longer appears on
the following URL(s):
Please let us know if we can assist you further.
If anyone else has had their conent blatantly stolen and reposted as someone else's idea, go here to file a formal complaint, and I've been surprised google removed her post so fast.
________________________________________________________________________
In this crazy niche of the internet known as crafting blogs, it's not surprising to see ideas reproduced or tweaked.  Hopefully most of us give credit to the other bloggers when we have been inspired by or actually used their tutorial. That's kind of what it's all about to me, sharing ideas and getting ideas for free with other crafty, creative people out there.

But there are of course losers that just steal your idea.  

But what's worse is when they blatantly steal your idea in an attempt to profit financially from it.

Like this blog called In the Garden with Mary. I received an email from Jenna at Sew Happy Geek telling me this Mary had totally ripped off my lattice decor pillow tutorial.  I'd give the link to this Mary's thieving blog, but "Mary" will just delete any negative comments and probably love all the traffic, so I'd say just stay away from In the Garden with Mary, none of her ideas are original and apparently most come from Craft Gossip anyway.  

  Jenna's tutorial was also plagiarized on this lame garden blog and this is how she feels about it.  

My lattice tutorial was copied exactly, obviously removing my name/ signature from the bottom, but all the text and every photos were posted with no reference to me.  

There's not much you can do, I've filed a formal complaint to try to get Google to delete the Mary Garden blog, as Jenna did also.  "Mary" doesn't have her info to contact her directly and all negative comments are deleted each day.

So basically my point is I'll have to break down and first figure out how to add watermarks to my photos, and second thank Jenna for keeping her eye out and letting me know my work had been stolen and anyone else who's been plagiarized to let each other know, and just keep filing these formal complaints.

I have mixed feelings on this.  Obviously kind of ticked and mad someone would be so lame to just steal other's ideas and post it on a blog to try to make money.  I post my idea, steps, and photos as a free offering to anyone who would be interested, so I gave it away essentially and you can't follow everything you throw on your blog....I just hope I won't let a little blog stealing bug me enough to ruin my day....

....because I'm actually on vacation visiting family and have been having a lot of fun, like this big mud fight with my nieces and nephew. 

 I guess in reality it's just a blog and there's more important things in my life that could be stolen. 

On a positive note, this chubby girl is starting to smile but this is the best I could catch.

I don't do that much clothing refashioning.  I don't know why, it's usually easy and cost effective.

Probably  a big reason is the fact I hate shopping for clothes, and I never look in the clothes at the thrift store.

I'm don't mind wearing used clothing, but I don't buy thrifted clothing because I'm just too cheap.  It kills me how expensive used second-hand clothing can be.  In my mind used clothing that has been worn, should be $2.00 tops.  Used t-shirts should be less than a dollar.  I could go on about thrift stores with rip-off prices, but I will move on to the project at hand.

I'm starting off with the pants.  I was killing time in an Old Navy and they had a huge rack of clearance pants for $6.00 a pair.  I found these grey pants that were way too short.  Pants are usually too short.  But I thought they were worth $6.00 to cut off into shorts because usually shorts are also too short for where they should be.  So basically I just cut off the legs and hemmed them for a pair of bermuda shorts. 

So I cut down the center of the sweater front.  Next I sewed twill tape on the right sides of the sweater, right along the raw sweater edge. Then I folded the twill tape under and top stitched it in place.  This created a finished edge, and the twill tape minimized distorting and stretching the sweater, and provided thick backing for the buttons and button holes.

Then I just sewed a row of buttons on one side, the button holes on the other.  I rarely button cardigans, so to be honest, I only cut a few button holes in the middle of the placket.  So the majority are just decorative buttons really.

So quick easy ways you probably already knew to get something old out of the closet and make a cheap pair of shorts. 

 My hair has grown out to fit in pig tails now.  I can't wait until it's long enough to be an actual pony tail again.

My best friend got married this past week.

We were assigned to be roommates as freshman in college and have been close ever since.

For her wedding, I was the maid of honor and so I made Ellie a little dress to match the flower girls even though she just sat in the audience with her dad and no one probably noticed her matching.

I received this grey layered dress from Baby Gap from my sister in law as a gift, and I thought it was so cute.  It came with a little black wrap sweater.  The wedding colors were red and black so I decided to use the black sweater and make a red layered ruffle dress...last minute the day before I had to drive to the wedding.

Just for fun I wanted to show you my friend's wedding dress because my mom made it.  Years ago my mom gave Molly a certificate that she'd make her wedding dress, and she ended up redeeming her coupon and had Sheila sew the dress she designed.  I'm pretty sure she loved it because she took 3 or 4 dresses each with a different element she liked and put them together in her custom dress.

Here's a bridal shot she sent me:

You can kind of see the laced back and petal sleeves.

This costume was kind of for no reason (I've got big plans for Halloween already brewing), but it was fun to make, mainly because he was so excited and following the process along with me.  It will be sad when he grows up and his mom making him things is lame.  But for now it's kind of magical I think.

I made one of these for the baby bedding a few weeks ago HERE.

Pattern and tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew HERE.

I wanted this pillow to have more muted colors, since the design is pretty bold.  

Part 3 of Master Bedding
Part 1 The Whole Bed
Part 2: Lattice Pillow Tutorial

This isn't a tutorial, but just explains how I made the pillow shams.  It's kind of a sloppy version, but works and who's to know except you?

Basically it's just a big envelope pillow cover. But you sew around the rectangle 2.5" from the finished seam edge to make the sham border.

 ...BUT you do have these unsightly openings where the envelope overlap/ seam is in the sham border on the back.  But these little gaps didn't seem that big of a deal for me, so I went with the quick and easy way.


The next pillow isn't a big deal, but I just hate normal pillowcases with the one end open.  It seems the pillow falls out, or gets twisted weird.  So while I was at it, I made new envelope pillowcases for our bigger pillows we sleep on.  Rather than buy fabric, I just bought a white twin flat sheet from Walmart for $4.00.

For these pillows I cut an 18" wide vertical strip off of one side of the sheet.  Then I was able to use the thick top hem of the sheet as a back envelope piece, then save the thin hem at the bottom of the sheet for the other envelope back piece.  The pillow front I used from the middle section of the strip.