Repurposing Take 2

Today, I attempted a dress for Janey. I found an adorable white with tiny yellow polkadots shirt that I really wanted for myself, but there was nothing even similar in my size, nor do I actually *need* another shirt. So Janey gets it. Having learned from Breanne's dress, this time I cut off the "skirt" part of the dress first, and left it full. I cut out the top (in the fashion of Made's 90 Minute Shirt), using the original neckline again. The pattern on the fabric is SO light, so I decided I might need a little more contrast in it. I found an old, stretched out yellow t-shirt of mine, and cut a strip out to put in the middle of the top and bottom of Janey's dress. The last step was sleeves, which I was able to cut out of the extra scraps leftover from the top of the shirt. After I pieced it all together, I came out with this:




Janey really likes it, and insisted on wearing it all evening. Once again, though, it's just so-so. But better than Breanne's, I think. Progress. :) I want to take the yellow strip in, make it about 1, maybe 1.5" across instead of the 2.5" it is now. And while I do that, hopefully I can fix some of the gathering. This is really my first experience in sewing with knits, and it's definitely been a challenge. Maybe someday I'll sew with a pattern, and get things that actually come out looking nice... but first I'll have to learn how to do that. :/

In the meantime, Breanne loves her new dress, too... but mostly just likes to make crazy faces at the camera:

T-shirt to Dress Refashion

Yep, that's right, I'm jumping on the repurposing boat. And I'm excited about it. :)

In case you haven't heard, Shade is going out of business. So naturally, I had to go to their liquidation sale here by me, and get a few things for myself. While I was there, though, I noticed that all of their extra large clothing was marked down to $5. Now, that's not an *amazing* deal by my standards, however, for nice, new clothing for the girls (a $5 comfy dress? yes please!), I figured I could spend that much. So, here is my first project using one of the shirts.

I wanted to make Breanne a dress out of this sea-green-ish fabric. I ended up cutting the original sleeves off the shirt, chopping the shirt up into the size of dress I wanted, and re-sewing it all back together.


I added the shirring for a little detail, but I'm not totally sold on it--I think the dress either still needs something else, or needs to be a little bit shorter (maybe a drop waist? I wish I'd thought to do something different with the waist before I chopped it all off and made it skinnier, if that makes sense to any of you). I can't decide what it is, though. I still think it came out pretty nicely:



and Breanne insisted on wearing it all nice tonight (hence the chocolate milk stain down the front... good thing I'm taking pics with my phone so you don't notice it so much... :)), but I didn't think to get any pics until after she went to bed. Maybe next time, since she seems to like it enough to wear it many times.

Playing Hard

This morning I put Cailin down to play with the toys, and noticed a few minutes later that she was being awfully quiet.


Being almost 8 months is hard work, man.

Ariel in the Pink Dress

So... I was seriously planning on buying costumes for my girls for Halloween this year. Don't get me wrong, I love to sew. I'm just not quite good enough at clothing yet.

Breanne, on the other hand, had different ideas. When I asked her a few weeks ago what she wanted to be for Halloween, she very specifically requested to be Ariel, in her pink dress (she wears it to dinner, when she thinks the fork is a dinglehopper, in case you're trying to remember it). Her response has not varied in the slightest every time I've asked her since then. So, I looked around a bit for the costume, but it's difficult to find such a specific costume for a reasonable amount of money (read--I can't find it anywhere but on Etsy, cheapest I've seen is $240...what!?!). And so... I am now making costumes. Yes, costumes with an "s," because Janey now also wants to be Ariel in the pink dress. Only sometimes Janey's Ariel dress involves purple, too... we'll see what she ends up with. :) In the meantime, I've pretty much finished Breanne's dress--I may add some more trim (it's actually supposed to have some white around the collar and waist, as well as a lace-ish bottom), but if it doesn't get done, it will work as is. I tried to get a decent picture, but someone couldn't stop twirling around the living room in it, so this is what I got:





It's not perfect (obviously), but I wanted to make it big, so she can play in it for a while. Also, the fabric, while slightly stretchy, is not overly so, and I wanted her to be able to get in and out of it with ease. I can't decide if I should figure out something for the shoulder part to make it poofier, or if I should just leave it alone... The important part is that she loves it, which she does. Now I just need to get working on Janey's. :)

P.S. Not sure if you noticed my KCWC button on the side--this week is the Kid's Clothing Week Challenge, and this has been my project for days 1-3. I want to sew some actual clothes for the rest of the week... but we'll see. I feel like I need to get Janey's costume done, too, so she doesn't feel left out. :/

Bumpers!

I don't know how many of you have pacifier babies, but Cailin is definitely a pacifier child. As such, she is constantly throwing/spitting/knocking them behind her crib. I have to try to fit under her crib to fish them out of the back corner, and it's just been a pain. Since I had a bit of fabric leftover from the girls' quilts (just need to be put together, but my machine is seriously BEGGING for a service... weird sad noises and everything... ugh), I decided to try my hand at making a set of crib bumpers to help solve the pacifier problem. I'm pretty ecstatic about how they came out:




I finally finished them last night, and couldn't wait to put them up. I put Cailin in bed when she was almost asleep for a nap this afternoon, but her slightly open eye caught sight of the new bumpers, at which point her eyes flew open to examine her new surroundings. She hung out, awake, just talking to the colors, for about 20 minutes. And when I came back to get her out, she'd moved her head to the one opening in the corner so she could see out. Pretty darn cute.



Linking up to Amy's Sew and Tell. :)