New Shirt for Me!

So a few months ago, I bought myself a new shirt, to wear in our family pictures.  

Despite my crazy face in the picture, I love the shirt.  Except for the sleeves.  It has these weird flutter sleeves that do nothing for me.  Nothing.  So, I always cover them up with a jacket.  I've been thinking lately that I should just replace the sleeves, but I haven't found a fabric that matches well enough to do it. And to be honest, I didn't want to mess up the shirt.  Anyway.  So yesterday, during my restful Sabbath, I decided to just attempt to make a new version of the shirt, with a sleeve I like.  I did my best at creating pattern pieces based on the original shirt.  My result:

Have to be honest, I'm kind of in love with the result.  I feel like it's the little details that totally make the shirt--the cuffs on the sleeves, the buttons, the gathers, and the neckline.

My first ever (faux!) button placket.  

I feel I must have you note, though, that the bottom has yet to be hemmed.  Not by my choice, but by the choice of my machine.  (We're in a serious power struggle these days.  She thinks it's ok to skip 5 stitches in a row, I tend to disagree.  The sewing machine repair shop seems to think it's basically unfixable.  Truly a sad day).  So, if I ever get a machine that works again, I'll be hemming this baby up.  The vast majority of this shirt was actually done on my serger.  The neckline and button placket are the only pieces sewn on by my machine, and had to be redone a number of times to make them look reasonable and hide all the skipped stitches.  :(

Anyway, enough sob story from me, here it is on:

Yeah, I kind of love it.  Next time I'll make the sleeves slightly looser, but other than that, seriously, I'm so happy with how it came out. 

KCWC Day 1

Remember Janey's skirt I made for Christmas? Well, now Breanne has an almost matching one.


Not perfect, but I like it. I think I'm going to topstitch the seams, just above the gathers to make it a little smoother, but other than that, I really like it. Breanne thinks it's ok, but wishes it was pink or red. *sigh*

Also, I used a new stitch today, I'm so proud! It's the one that looks something like this: /\__/\__/\. Apparently, it's meant for an invisible-ish hem. Can you see the hem on the skirt? Well, I can, but I think that's because my tension was a little bit off. Live and learn, right?

Two More Skirts

Did I mention that Janey is obsessed with skirts and dresses lately? Cory asked her if she likes pants, and she said "No, pants look kind of funny." So there you have it. Due to her obsession, I decided to just make her skirts this year instead of buying her pants like the other girls. First was yesterday's denim number, today I have two more--

A purple twirly skirt,

The flowers peeking through are the inside, which can also be worn as an outside, as it's reversible--

And then there's this purple knit skirt. I'm pretty proud of this one, as I actually got the gathering to work right, and the skirt came out just as I envisioned it. Now if only I was a better photographer... Oh well. Maybe in another lifetime. In the meantime, just believe that this is much cuter in person than on the hanger. I'm excited for her to try it on.

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.