Winging It: Apron from Old Pair of Jeans and a Top

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Just like much of my cooking, I'm pretty much winging it with my sewing.  Here's another recycling project where I used an old pair of my husband's jeans and a top that I never used.  Yes, I am still in a refashion frenzy.  How is it Thursday and I don't remember the last time I actually made a meal?  Apparently, my brain is in sewing mode and is incapable of focusing on much else.

Anyway, tutorial to follow as soon as I sort out the photos that I took.  And like I said, because I was sewing by the seat of my pants, I have to edit out the mistakes I made to make this tutorial more useful! Please check back soon for complete tutorial.

Update: Here's link to the tutorial.  I hope it helps!

Pinterest Refashion From Trash To Couture: Men's XL T-Shirt to Women's Dolman Shirt

Pin It Needless to say, I am in a refashion frenzy.  I am determined to do most of the 68 pins on my Sewing Projects board on Pinterest.  Anyway, this is a great tutorial from Trash to Couture that gave me an idea what to do with all those free t-shirts we get from events.  They are usually in men's XL, which is too large for either me or my husband.  So here's the before and after of a shirt I got from a NY Ranger game:

Before

After

I wish I didn't cut the neckline so large because this will only work with either a sports bra or a bathing suit.  At least I'll have something kind of dressy to walk the pup in or a nice cover up for the beach.  For my value-added in this post, a little about making gathers.  My source, again, is the Singer Complete Photo Guide to Sewing.

To make the gathers at the bottom of the shirt, adjust the tension on your machine to zero and the stitch length to the largest.  The book suggests using contrasting thread colors for the bobbin and for the top thread to make it easier to identify the bobbin thread.  The bobbin thread is what you're going to pull to make the gathers.  Sew two parallel lines of 5-6 inches each from the bottom of the shirt.  Lock only where you end sewing.  Don't lock the stitches closest to the bottom of the shirt.  This gives you a side to pull the gathers from, while keeping the other end locked which prevents your gathers from coming undone.  Pull the bobbin thread of both lines you sewed at the same time to make the gathers. Once you've done your gathers, adjust your machine tension and stitch length back to normal.  Sew a line along the gathers you made.  It helps if you have your hands holding the gathers on either side of the presser foot when you sew the lines.  This time, lock the stitches to make sure the gathers are held in place.  This is pretty much the same technique you can use with making ruffles.

Enjoy your shirt!

Refashion: Oversized Yoga Pants to Maxi Skirt

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For my next project, I decided to say goodbye to my favorite Chinese buffet pants. Sure, they called them yoga pants at Target, but I never used this pair for yoga! Instead, these were always part of my game day outfit--that is, for me and my former roomie, going to a Chinese buffet was a sport.  Of course, you don't want to wear skinny jeans when you're planning on stuffing your face with Peking duck and steamed buns!

Anyway, because I have since been converted into this low sodium, low fat diet, the pants are now too big for me. I thought it would be perfect for my refashion experiments.  So it is now a maxi skirt.

To start, cut the inside seams as shown below:

Turn pants wrong side out.  Then match the outside seams and pin at the bottom to keep from sliding around:

Next pin the cut seams together so you can mark where you're going to sew and cut:

I like to sew and then cut to make sure the garment fits right before I permanently chop off parts of it.  For the front part of the skirt, just sew straight from the top to the bottom.  For the back, start sewing straight from the section of the skirt that will rest on the fullest part of your butt to the bottom of the skirt. Don't worry if your seams don't match at the bottom. You can re-hem the skirt as the last step.  In my case, my pants were so old that the hem was all crooked when I closed the seams so I did have to re-hem the skirt.

As an aside, you will notice that I pin perpendicular to the seams.  This is a tip I got from my sewing bible: the Singer Complete Photo Guide to Sewing.  This makes it easier to remove the pins as you sew and I find actually stabilizes the fabric more than pinning parallel to the seam.

Next, cut the excess fabric off the seams.

Finally, trim the bottom to make a straight hem and sew.  My pants were really long on me so even if I had to cut the original hem, I was still left with a long enough skirt:

And here's the finished product... forgive the cloudy photo as I need to dust my mirror!

This project only took about an hour, considering I had to figure out how to re-shape the pants into a skirt. It might have been quicker if I had a tutorial!

Salmon in Soy Sauce (Tinuyoang Salmon)

Pin It One of my favorite Filipino dishes is tinuyoan.  Literally translated, it means "soy sauced".  The tinuyoan that I grew up with is made with pork.  Yes, we Filipinos love our pork.  But, again, in my efforts to healthify (I know, it's not a word.) our meals as much as possible, I made it with salmon steak.  Salmon is not the cheapest fish, but I got it for 40% off at the seafood counter.  The health benefits of omega 3 fatty acids are well advertised so I went through a huge salmon phase that the hubby decided to put a stop to.  Although he is careful not to encourage it too much, he actually liked this salmon dish.  And like most of the dishes I make, it took less than 30 minutes and just five ingredients to make.

2 salmon steak cuts (or whatever is on sale)
1 medium white onion
about 1 and 1/2 cooking spoons of soy sauce (I use a Filipino brand:  Marca Pina or Silver Swan, but if you haven't had it, you won't know the difference.)
about 1 cooking spoon of water
black pepper
1 tsp sugar
canola oil

Heat oil in sautee pan. Pan sear both sides of the steak in medium-high heat.  As Anne Burrell put it, the fish will unstick itself when it's ready.  So just sear until the fish unsticks itself.  The fish will still be undercooked at this point. Take the salmon out of the pan and set aside.  Sautee the onions in the same pan only until slightly translucent.  Add soy sauce, water, and sugar.  When sugar has dissolved, add the salmon back and season with black pepper.  Braise in low heat for about 10 minutes just to let the soy sauce flavor the salmon.  Serve over rice.

First Pinterest Refashion Project: Work Shirt to Summer Blouse

Pin It Having lost all that grad school weight (20 pounds, to be exact), I am left with relatively nice stuff that are now way too big.  Shopping for new clothes isn't really an option right now, and I actually like sewing so recycling my old clothes was a no-brainer.  (After all of 20 years, I will confess that while my classmates in Home Economics class were swearing at our projects, I was secretly enjoying them.)  So inspired by all the upcycling and refashion projects on Pinterest, I decided to try this particular project from madebylex.com.

The project probably took me a total of five hours to complete, doggie distraction included.  I only did one layer of ruffles, though.  One, because I really didn't want to go overboard with the ruffles, lest I get haunted by nightmares of our very ruffly grammar school uniform.  And more importantly, I found that making the ruffles was actually the hardest step to do! And of, course, because I don't have a serger and I had an incredibly fray-prone fabric, the hemming took some time.  (That's next on my wishlist:  a serger.) Also, I decided not to do the belt.  The shirt's fabric had a pretty nice stretch that hugs the body quite nicely, and I never look good with these fabric belts anyway.

Before

After

I can't deny how proud I am of this.  Although this is not my first refashion, this was the quickest.  I hope I've made my grandma, Nanay Mitang, proud.  After all, I do come from a family of seamstresses!

Crunchy Sweet Chili Shrimp

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What??? You still don't have Panko in your pantry?! These Japanese bread crumbs simply have the ability to transform a blah dish into something special.  Running out of dinner ideas, I decided to use the same technique in my Baked "Fried" Chicken recipe on shrimp.  The beauty of any shrimp dish is that it is always the quickest dinner you'll ever make.  So for this dish, I used exactly the same flour, egg, and Panko breading that I did with the chicken recipe.  I peeled the shrimp but left out the tail so that I have something to hold on to when I'm breading them.  Bake in a 375-degree preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes until the egg in the breading is visibly cooked (when it is not very yellow anymore).  You will know that the shrimp are cooked when you see that the tails have changed color to orange.  I served this with my favorite sweet chili sauce--Mae Ploy brand, which you can get in most Asian grocery stores--, along with steamed rice and spinach sauteed with garlic and oyster sauce.  Don't worry about getting a whole bottle of this sweet chili sauce.  If you think you'll only be using it for this one dish, you are terribly mistaken.  After you try this, you will be working your menus around this dipping sauce.  It's that good.  This was another inexpensive, quick dinner that the hubby and I both enjoyed as if there was more effort put into it.

There's Always Time for Banana Puddin' Pie!

Pin It And I'm back from my CFA exam hiatus. Hopefully, I pass it so I never have to take the darn thing again!

Anyway, I was obsessing about making this pie the two weeks prior to the exam, my way of finding delicious distraction from all the studying I'd been doing. So despite the test looming, I spent a little time trying this recipe that didn't use instant pudding.  My first try had a great meringue, but my pudding sucked.  It was delicious, but the pudding itself was too soupy.  That was mainly due to my impatience.  I was thinking, it had eggs, it had flour, so maybe it didn't need to be too thick when I poured the pudding over the bananas.  Big mistake.  This is a relatively easy dessert to make, so take the time to actually thicken the pudding into the desired consistency before pouring into the banana.  On my second try a week later (the husband told me I don't wait too long to correct my mistakes), it took about 20 minutes for the pudding to thicken with constant stirring. So the pudding was great, but my meringue wasn't so great.  I might have to wait a little longer for the third try, though.

Meringue from the first attempt

Pudding from the second attempt

So here are the tweaks I made.  For some reason, I have a resistance to making my own pie crust.  So I used ready made crusts for both attempts: shortbread and graham.  I know, I know... I refused to make the pudding with instant mix, but I used store-bought crusts, so sue me.  I find that the shortbread keeps its crunch better than the graham crust so I actually prefer it. 

For the pudding, this recipe was, as the Chopped judges would have put it, cloyingly sweet. I had cut the sugar in half for the first pie, and it was still too sweet for me.  So for the second pie, I only used 1/2 cup plus about 2 teaspoons of sugar for the pudding, and only about 1/8 cup for the meringue.  Also, I used fat free half and half instead of whole milk, which is probably why my first attempt wouldn't thicken.  So I used slightly less half and half and more flour than the recipe.  Two cups of milk made too much pudding for my ready made crusts anyway.  I ended up using 1 and 1/2 cups of half and half, and 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon of flour.  Make sure you bring the pudding to a boil before lowering the heat so that your pudding doesn't taste like raw flour.  Finally, I squeezed a little bit of lemon juice onto the bananas to keep them from turning brown.

Even though there was still something to be desired from my second attempt, this is still a delicious and inexpensive dessert that I hope to get right someday.  Heck, I finished the whole of the first soupy pie myself! Hubby couldn't bring himself to eat sweet banana soup.  This is definitely a dessert that must be consumed within two days, so it's best when you're having company.  Even with the lemon juice, the bananas turned brown after some time. Oh, and the pie must have cost less than $5 to make, so it would be a crowd pleaser and a money saver at the same time.