Christmas Dresses 2011

So if you're my friend on Facebook, you probably saw my post about finishing up the girls' Christmas dresses the day before we left for Utah.  I was SO excited to finally be done with all my Christmas sewing, plus they turned out even better than I expected.  Truth be told, they'd been "finished" before, but didn't quite... um... work.  I mean, yes, the girls could wear them, but they had really wonky waistlines, and were just kind of ugly.  Well, not anymore.  I'm pretty excited about how they came out.

This is the only picture I have of all three dresses together.  I had to steal it from my mom.

Yeah, I know.  Lately, my girls seem to refuse to want to be all together for pictures.  Either that, or we're in too big of a hurry to get to church.  Something like that.

Now for a little more detail--

Cailin's dress:

(Yeah, she fell on our stairs and scraped up her nose. Poor girl.)

White satin-y bodice, green diamond pin tucked fabric skirt.  I fell in love with the green fabric before I'd figured out how exactly I wanted the dress to look, but this is what I came up with.

Cailin's is the only dress without a sash.  I'm not sure exactly why I didn't put one on hers, but I really like the way it came out anyway.  The little row of topstitching above the gathering just pulled it off for me.  Also, it really does fit her better than this picture portrays--the bodice doesn't actually drown her, I swear.

Her dress also ended up with buttons in the back, as I didn't make it with a stretch velvet like the other two.  Yeah, I did buttonholes without a buttonholer.  You may now tell me that I am awesome.  Thank you.  :)

Now for the other two dresses... Yeah, these pictures are even worse.  Why can't my kids stand still?  Crazy girls.  At least they like each other, right?

You can see the sashes here:

All I said was stop touching each other and hold still.  They gave me this.  I can't stop laughing every time I look at this photo.  They're posing exactly the same!  And I love Janey's face.  Hahaha.

And here, we finally have, after a rousing round of "Put your hands on your head.  Put your hands on your hair.  Put your hands on your stomach.  Put your hands to your sides." (*click*)  

Oh silly girls.  

Anyway, like I said before, stretch velvet on the tops, then some specialty apparel fabric on the bottoms.  They have sashes, and I really like how they pulled the dresses together--you'll just have to believe me when I say they didn't work before I put them on.  I also actually really like how the necklines came out--they're sort of a half-turtleneck.  I was afraid that they wouldn't stretch enough to get their heads through, but since I used my serger, which allows for a little more stretch, they worked out just fine.  Yay.  :)

So there they are, the Christmas dresses of 2011.  I love 'em, and I'm glad they're done.  Ha.

We're Thankful For...

I've been seeing "gratitude trees" all over the internet, and after seeing my friend Holly's yesterday, I finally decided to make one for us.  The girls and I spent this afternoon during Cailin's nap cutting, cutting, cutting, and then taping, taping, taping, and finally writing and taping some more.  :)

And thus was born, our Thankful Tree:

Yeah, a whole wall of gratitude tree... this house has huge walls, I never feel like I can do anything on a small scale.

Perhaps a little shy on leaves so far, but we have a whole bunch more to fill out over the next couple weeks.

Yep, I'm thankful for my sewing machine and serger.  And clean laundry.  Janey prefers flowers and school.

Breanne was certain to add an owl in a hole in the tree.

And then she wanted me to take a picture of her by the tree.  :)

She's thankful for red, mom, Hazel, dad, Janey...

And squirrels.  Still working on getting the s to face the right way.  :)

 Have I mentioned how much I love this wall in our house?  It's one of my favorite things about this house.  In case you don't remember (or I didn't tell you?), it also housed Cory's birthday wall,

and our colony of bats.

No, really, that's what a group of bats is called.  Also, I know some children who would be disappointed if I didn't ask if you see the sole upside-down bat.  He's a rebel.  :)

  I'm picturing snowflakes, hearts, birthday banners... I love it.  

Halloween Bag Mini-Tutorial

So... I was planning on making another trick-or-treating bag so I could show you all how I made them. Turns out, though--I don't feel like making yet another bag. I did have Cory take pictures along the way while I was making a Frankenstein bag for a friend, but I actually made it exactly the same way Jill did here. Which is different from how I made the original bags, so I'm going to just show you the basics of how I made them. They're very, very simple bags, and are actually quite similar to the messenger bags I made a few months ago, so if you have any questions about the actual construction of the bag, you can just look there. Or leave comments or email me or whatever. I'm flexible like that. Just let me know.

And now, a mini-tutorial of sorts.

So this is what we're going for:

A cute little ghosty bag. Yay!

To start, you're going to cut out your pieces. You'll need two ghost shaped pieces, and enough strips of white to go all the way around the edges, and to make a strap the length you want it to come out. Then you'll also need your face pieces--eyes and a mouth for each side on this guy. If you plan to reverse-applique them, like I did, you'll need to make each piece a little bigger than you want it to appear when complete.

Once you have all your pieces cut out, you'll start by sewing the face pieces onto the back side of your ghost faces. When you're finished they should look something like this (keep in mind this is the backside of the ghost):


After the face is all sewn on, it's time to start assembling the bag. Take your strips of white fabric, and cut them to the lengths of the sides of the ghost--one to match the bottom edge, and one for each side, ending up high enough that there's a good-size opening to the bag. Then, like the backpack tutorial, sew them together into one long strip (don't sew the handles on yet though), and then sew them onto the bag. As fleece is very stretchy and shifty, I would highly recommend pinning a LOT, and start with the bottom, as it is the most crucial part to match up--the sides can be trimmed down if they stretch, but the bottom needs to match up fairly well too look nice. Ask me how I know. :) When it's sewed on, it should look something like this:

Next you're going to attach the strap--I'd recommend doubling up the fleece, and topstitching down each side (not shown on this bag) to give it more strength--the fleece, like I said, is just too stretchy--if you get a couple pounds of candy in there, it's going to drag it down. Strength is good with kids. :)

Turn the bag right side out, and cut out the white over your face features. Just pinch the two layers apart, then cut very carefully into it, and trim the excess away, revealing the black underneath. Feel free to play around with how you trim them out--for this side, you can see that I cut basically up to the stitch line.

On this side, however... oh wait, you can't see it. Dang cat. Does anyone else's cat seem to like hanging out in the most inconvenient area? Haha.

No seriously. I couldn't leave this photo out though, haha. The ghost is terrified of the cat! Ahhh!

Ok, enough with my lousy humor (though I am very funny. Seriously, guys. I am). On this side, I didn't trim the eyes all the way out--I trimmed out my initial cut to make the hole, and realized that I was in love with the scared ghost look.

So I left it.

And there you have it. One cute little ghost bag. Yay! If you're doing the pumpkin, you don't have to worry about the bottom of the bag, so it's even easier--just sew one long strip all the way around, stopping where you want to the top of the bag to be. The only tricky thing is making sure the two faces of the pumpkins stay matched up--so don't stretch it at all as you go. And then add the handle in green. Keep 'em lined up. And then, enjoy watching your kids fill those new bags with goodies.... that hey, you can sneak later, right? :)

Trick-Or-Treat Bags

So I was recently commissioned to make some trick-or-treat bags for our upcoming Super Saturday (where the women in our church get together on a saturday to create all kinds of fun craftiness). These are not fantastic, but they're what I came up with:


You can expect a tutorial soon, as I'll be making instruction pages for the women who will be taking the supplies home to make them there. A very few details about the bags--they're made of fleece (which allows for unfinished edges without unravelling)(I'm still debating the necessity of lining them with something slightly less stretchy, but at least fleece will stretch, and then return back to regular shape, unlike felt), and the little details I sewed on for faces are all reverse-appliqued. Way easier than it sounds.

Anyone wanna make some trick-or-treat bags? When I was a kid, we just used pillowcases... everything's so fancy these days! :)

Easter Dresses in Action

Alright, back by popular demand are the Easter dresses, in action. You'll notice (this is so funny to me) that Breanne is actually the only one wearing a sash in these pictures--everyone started out with one, but I didn't have enough time to measure and cut and *sew on* anyone's sashes, so they were just tied around them like a belt. Of course this meant they were falling off everywhere, so Janey's and Cailin's ended up in my bag. Breanne was the only one who kept hers on all day. And she was the one who chose the satin ribbon (not as thick or bright a white as the grosgrain, but I ran out... sashes are LONG!). Sigh. :)

I love how the dresses turned out, and I love even more how much the girls liked them. Breanne was begging to wear hers for the two days it was finished before Easter, and couldn't wait to put it on on Sunday. I love reactions like that. :)

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I give you a video clip... so you can see how Cailin pretty much destroyed her dress (not really, it's in the wash and doing fine, but it sure looked bad after this). It was all my fault, really, since she didn't want to come outside and take pictures after church (she desperately needed a nap). I may or may not have told the girls to bribe her with her Easter basket of treats. That girl loves her some treats. Maybe someday I'll be able to just get pictures of them all smiling and happy... but for now, I'll take what I can get (and do it in video so you can see that they're actually happy). :)

Easter Dresses

Now this is why I sew. I love, love LOVE when a project in my head actually comes out looking like I want it to. I'm not sure I've ever made something I like so much. So... one down, two more (partially done) to go!

Close-up of the fabric:

It's hard to see it not in real life, but the shirring caused the embroidered flowers to gather up as tight little puffy flowers... love:

There is some debate about whether or not to add the ribbon (Breanne doesn't really want it), but I think it looks better with it. What do you think?

To give credit where credit is due--I based this dress off of images of Made's Summer Vacation Dress, with a lot of help on the sleeves from my wonderful friend e. over at pinksuedeshoe (this is almost the same as her Turtle Dress). I love the look of the shirred bodice, and it's so easy to do! I changed it up from both of those, though, with my own addition of a circle skirt. I love me some circle skirts. Minus the hem, but that's a different story. :)

Advent Calendar Day 14

Today we made sequin trees. I saw the basic idea on my friend Amelia's blog a couple years ago, and have just been waiting for Breanne to be old enough to make one. Amelia makes her trees with buttons, which are adorable, but I didn't want to pay for a million pretty buttons, and the girls tend to like shiny things anyway, so we went with the sequins. I love how they turned out!

Advent Calendar Day 7

Today we made snowflakes. I did most of the cutting, though Breanne made a few herself, too. Janey decorated using her favorite medium, markers. Of course. :)

My Christmas masterpiece... Ha. I love cutting out snowflakes.

Advent Calendars

So that fabric?



It was destined to become an Advent Calendar.

(Oh yes, I did just hang that crookedy on my dusty blinds... I haven't figured out how to put it up somewhere more practical yet--that will have to come tomorrow).

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a meeting with a few women where we talked about starting up good traditions with our families. Mirjam, the woman who was leading the group, talked a lot about her family's advent calendars--she has one for each of her children, to be filled with little treats and toys, and then one for the whole family that is full of activities. I loved both of these ideas, and immediately started planning out how I'd like to implement them in some way in our own home. For each girl, I came up with a pocket calendar, in which I'll be putting little treats, toys, books, and other fun things. We already have a calendar I made a few years ago that is just a big Christmas tree with little ornaments you place on it--I plan on putting an activity we'll be doing in with each ornament this year, and letting the girls pick them out every day. Several days I have crafts planned as our activity--on those days, the treat in their pocket will be the supplies to do the craft. Lest you think I'm totally insane, be assured that some days the activities are very, very simple, like building a fire in the fireplace, visiting friends, and attending parties we'd already be going to, regardless of whether we had the calendars or not. It just gives me more motivation to do fun things with the girls, too, like making cookies, cupcakes, garlands and ornaments.


So, I've made 3 of the pocket/bag calendars, one for each girl. Actually, to be honest, it's currently 2.5, because after sewing something like 68 little pocket bags, my sewing machine jammed up, and I have no idea what's wrong with it, so it'll be heading to the shop tomorrow... sigh. But I'm excited to see how the girls like them, and I know that they'll be a wonderful thing for all of us--I am really looking forward to having something positive to do planned for each day. I do so much better at providing good days for the girls when I plan ahead a bit. I am hoping to really make some positive memories this year.

What I'm Working With Today

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. :/