Do-It-Yourself Toe Blooms!!!

So I found a website called: http://www.toeblooms.com/ that sell these stunning wraps that ruffle around your baby girls little ankles and feet and have a pretty flowers on the top:









I love love loved these but honestly didn't want to pay the $25.00 plus shipping just for one pair  so, I thought WHY couldn't I make those myself?! And that's exactly what I did!


First, I started with an old cotton skirt:



Then, I took a stretchy elastic band that was close to the same color as the skirt. This I wrapped around my daugther's ankle and foot to measure. It measured 11 inches (and she's 8 months old FYI), so I laid it flat on the table and cut 12 inches to give me an extra inch of material to work with and hem.



(NOTE: You can always by the pre-made stretchy ribbon at the store, but they only come in so many colors and types, and I wanted something more frayed and rustic which is why I chose to make it myself. IF you are using a pre-made band skip the next few steps where I explain how to figure eight, and sew them)


After cutting two 12 inch pieces, I went to my old skirt and cut a 4 inch by 50 inch strip out of the bottom of the skirt. This would eventually be used to make the ruffles for the band. I didn't cut this very carefully because I knew that once I sewed it to the elastic band I would trim both sides to make it even. Plus the 4 inch width gave me room to make mistakes if the line from the sewing machine went off a little.


Now comes the tricky part. I then used my Ruffler Foot attachment on my sewing machine to make the ruffle for the bands.



This can be a little tricky because you put your elastic band below the ruffler and then you thread your cottom fabric through the Ruffler (and above yet on top of the elastic band) so that in the end the Ruffler ruffles the cotton fabric and sews it to your elastic without ruffling the elastic. I am a complete novice of a sewer and I was able to accomplish this so if you are new to sewing and have a Ruffler Foot attachment you will be able to do this to I am sure! Just practice on some old stuff beforehand so you don't waste anything expensive.


So basically I took the cotton stip from the old skirt + the 12 inch elastic band, used my ruffler to ruffle and attach them together which made a lovely 12 inch elastic ruffle band for one of the Toe Blooms:





Because I originally made it around 4 or 5 inches wide, the ruffle on the band was WAY to wide, and in places I had sewn it a little crooked so I just took my scissors and cut a pretty even edge on both sides so that the entire band was only about 2 inches wide.


Then I repeated all of the above steps for the second band. Afterwards I took both bands and wrapped them around my daughter's ankles and feet to get a final measure. Then I pinned them in place and removed them to sew.


(NOTE: As it turns out, giving the extra inch was not necessary. I originally measured 11 inches and cut 12, but since there is some give with the elastic, I really only needed the 11 inches. So I had about 1 inch extra that I ended up trimming off the band).


It's hard to describe how these actually go around the ankle and foot but it's sort of a figure eight. The trick is that they have to wrap around the ankle, cris cross over the top of the foot and then wrap around the bottom of the foot. This is how the underneath should look:



(REMEMBER: The cris cross is on TOP of the foot not underneath or behind the ankle)


I hand sewed the seams together in such a way that the seam would be right at the cris cross because the flower would then hide the seam. Now all that was left was to attach the flowers!! I used 2 tyes of silk flowers, some maroon ones and then some little purple ones.



I started by taking the flowers off the wire stems and then completely took the flowers apart. Once you do this you will find that the inside of a silk flower has a bunch of plastic pieces inside to help it keep it's shape. Just take those all out, because you want your flower to lay flat. After dismantling the flowers I decided to do four layers of the maroon petals and two layers of the smaller purple which made for a nice full flower.



Then I wipped out my hot glue gun to put it to work!

I started by hand sewing the first layer of the maroon flower to the actual Toe Bloom band. Then, after sewing I reinforced it by adding a few drops of hot glue as well. Then I hot glued the remaining layers of flowers one on top of the other. Once all the flower layers were glued in place I did a tiny drop of hot glue on the back of the faux diamond and placed it directly in the center of the flower.


And the end result was.......







Then, just to make it Over-The-Top I went ahead and made a matching hair accessory!!!



She looked soo cute today in church!





Whew!! All in a days work!! Total cost = Less than $5.00!!!!