Pillowcase Dress

Is it me, or are pillowcase dresses something that never goes out of fashion for little girls? I love the way their loose fitting silhouette looks on a little one. So carefree, comfy & beautifully simple. Makes me wish I could handle billowy, shapeless dresses.

I've been meaning to make one for a while, but hadn't found a pattern that I liked. I didn't want one that scrunched up around the arm pits (or did that horrid looking V that no arm hole should ever do), or looked like it was choking the poor child wearing it. Bless Susan of Freshly Picked! She has the perfect tutorial, the only thing lacking is the width measurement for the fabric since she was using a pillow case and I wanted to use scrap fabric. So I found the dims on a standard pillow case and cut the fabric to 21" wide. In the next hour, I managed to rock this dress out, embellishments and all.  (embellishments found here at Ruffles and Stuff)

Such a cute dress, maybe a little wide for the intended child, but adorable just the same, with room to grow.

4th of July Dresses

I had this vision that my daughter and her best friend would wear matching red & white dresses on the 4th of July. So, I grabbed some old fabric my Mom had given me and my trusty Simplicity pattern and whipped out two matching dresses for the girls.

The only glitch was that my daughter's bff had a potty training accident while wearing hers before I snapped a picture of the two of them! Oh, well, such is life.

I did manage to get a shot of my daughter's, complete with jeans, from the night of.

It is a dress, but the cotton is very light weight, so the pants went on to help battle the night chill and bugs.

As I type this, she's wearing the dress with a pair of black capri leggings. It may just be my favorite dress from that pattern yet!

Summer Staple

As promised, here are the pictures of the shirts I made for my daughter while I was sick, using Simplicity Pattern 3511. Knowing that the two of you who read this blog regularly want to see pictures, I snapped some shots today in full sun. I don't recommend taking pictures outside during the sun's zenith, but I'm impatient to get a post up (really, how is it the 11th of June???). So, high contrast and all, here are they are.

My first attempt: pattern size 2, white seersucker yoke & sleeves, striped seersucker from the TuttiFrutti collection 3 years ago, pink ribbon & white 1/2" buttons. Result: slightly big for my girl (she weas a 2t bottom, 3t top in RTW) overall, and the sleeves were far too billowy for her.  That said, I love the look of the tunic top and she'll grow into it.

Second attempt: blue shirting with a raw thread from my mom's fabric stash, 1/2" white flower buttons, pattern size 1 with a size 2 length. Result: perfect fit, lovely billowy fabric that floats away from the body, perfect for summer (I wish that there had been enough left over for a top for me). The color is amazing on my blonde haired blue eyed girl.

This pattern is super easy, fast, and a great staple for summer. I'm working on two more dresses using the same pattern, one with a plaid skirt and striped yoke, the other with seersucker. 

Summer Toddler Dress

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. I've been really sick for nearly two weeks, so I've been sewing a lot but not taking pictures. I seem to only have enough energy for one thing :)

Anyways, a few weeks back I picked up a new pattern to use as a summer staple for my daughter's wardrobe. You know the kind that doesn't take much fabric or time to make?  I rarely buy Simplicity patterns, but blast it all, they have the best toddler patterns. 

So the one I picked up is 3511, a square neck dress/top with flutter or elastic sleeves. It's so easy - I've been making one a day (cutting out and all). I've had to stop because I ran out of fusible interfacing. Sad.

Hopefully I can get a few good pictures of the shirts and dresses up soon. I can't promise too much, since my daughter and husband are fighting the same bug as me - my girl hates picture time when she's healthy. I'm not sure how she'll do if I try while she's sick!

Toddler Star Skirt

My dear friend, whom I call the Bestie, had a complete stroke of genius while making one of the elastic banded skirts. 

She put hearts on the sides! 

I just about died with glee when I got the picture. And she says she has no talent *scoff*

Being a natural artist, I had to borrow her idea and tweak it just a bit.

 I used photoshop (because my copy of illustrator is being a pain) to create a template for the stars, then cut them out of white seersucker I had laying around. Using the same method for the elastic skirt, I cut out the fabric to the dims I wanted. I used a medium weight denim that my Mom had given me, but used the wrong side (the right side was that dated blue blue denim that was popular bakc in '93).

 Then before making the back seam, I measured and pinned the stars to the side of the skirt. I played around a bit and decided that I liked the look of a tight zigzag around the outside of the stars in white.

And here you have it - a star skirt!

Next time I may follow my sister's advice and make pockets, which would be stinking adorable, dontcha think?

Elastic Band Skirt {Toddler Size} Revised!

I finally got a hold of some wide elastic to put on my daughter's "princess" skirt. The smaller width just looked like underwear to me. So, I decided to revise the tutorial to reflect the use of a wider band. And I made it all one page, so clickety click to make it big.

And of course, I had to take pictures of the skirt, being modeled by my adorable girl. She sure loves anything princess these days and this full twirly skirt seems to fit the bill.

Oh and Rachel, I know there are tons of typos. I'll fix them later. Maybe. :)

Getting Ready for Easter

Growing up, my Mom always got my sister and I new dresses for Easter. I'm pretty sure her mom did it, too. I've been driven to have the same happen for my daughter.

Last year, I spent too much money on a beautiful dress from Macys for her. he wore it a lot to make up for it!

This year, I spent $3 on her dress. Amazing, huh? I got the fabric and lace from my Mom's stash (I think I had something made out of this eyelet). All I needed to buy was thread and a zipper. I also used the same pattern that I used for her Christmas dress, but left off the time consuming pleated sleeves. 

My girl sure loves her princess dress and won't take it off. I love how she totally posed for me - usually she sees the camera and yells, "No say cheese, Mommy!"

This week LollyChops is doing Wallflowers Week and is show casing all kinds of flower crafts. She highlighted the fabric flower tutorial done by MollyChicken yesterday, which I was so excited to see. I've been trying to think of what to make for my daughter's hair accessory to coordinate with her dress (last year I made a giant korker bow) and this was perfect! I didn't like all the raw edges (she is, after all, wearing this ensemble to Church), so I zig zagged them. It didn't make a huge difference, but I tried :) Not sure what I'll put in the center, but I love the way it looks.

Elastic Band Skirt {Toddler Size}

Because the Bestie asked me to, my first post is a sewing tutorial on how to make a

~toddler sized elastic band skirt~

So here's my take.

Now before you get started {with any clothing project} there are two things that seperate a well made article of clothing from a poorly made one: 

1. Reinforcing your raw edges by running them through a serger or using a zig zag stitch on a regular machine
2. Pressing all your seams open

For this project you will need:

• a piece of fabric 46" wide and 14" long
• 2"-3" wide elastic (I used what I had on hand, which was 1" and it was far too small)
• sewing machine :)
• thread
• iron/ironing board
• seam gauge

Step 1

Iron any wrinkles out of your fabric, then cut the length to 14". I used the width of the fabric, leaving the selvages on to save me the step of having to reinforce the raw edges of my back seam.

Step 2

Overcast your raw edges - make one seam 1/4" away from the raw edge and a zigzag on the edge, lining the raw edge of the fabric up with the inner part of your machine foot.

Step 3

Taking the selvage edge (or short edge if you didn't leave the selvage on), machine stitch right sides together, creating a 5/8" seam. Iron open the seam

Step 4

Turn lower edge up 1/4", using your seam gauge as a guide, and press. Turn up another 1/4" and press, encasing raw edges. 

Sew hem, staying as close to the upper edge. (I use the inner part of the machine foot to guide me)

Step 5

Make two running stitches on the skirt top. Using the largest length stitch your machine has (mine only goes to a 4, but it's ancient) and not back stitching, make one seam 5/8" away from the raw edge and another one that is 1/4" away. Make sure you leave nice long tails of thread. Using two running stitches, you create a nice flat surface to sew on later, when you attach the elastic.

Step 6

While holding the top ends of both seams, push the fabric back and away from the seams, creating gathers. 

Step 7

Sew the elastic together.

Step 8

Pin the skirt top to the elastic, stretching the elastic out and adjusting gathers to fit. Start by pinning the middle front and back of the skirt and elastic together, adjusting the gathers, then marking the middle between the front and back pins, pinning that mark and doing the same. {This was really hard to take a picture of, seeing as how my toddler can't work my camera, so I'll post pictures later when my hubby is home}

Step 9

Unpin and baste gathers. Then repin elastic to top of skirt.

Step 10

Sew elastic band to skirt with a zigzag stitch. (a straight stitch will pucker and look funny) Hold the elastic taught while you sew, using your left hand to stretch and guide the fabric and your right to hold the back taught. Make sure to keep the needle in the fabric and elastic when you adjust your hold on the elastic, otherwise it will create funny gaps in your stitches. Backstitch.

If you use a wide elastic, it will look 100% better than mine does - looks like underwear, doesn't it?

Step 11

Unpick your basting stitches (because they will show)

Yes, I initially used a straight stitch to attach the elastic, which promptly puckered and ripped as soon as I stretched out the elastic.

And you are done!

I wish I had a picture of the finished skirt, but my camera batteries died and my daughter would not wear the skirt long enough to snap a shot of... Maybe another day.