KCWC-Days Three & Four: Stripe-y Knit Dresses

For days three and four of KCWC, I made up these simple knit dresses for the girls with a little embellishment and ruffle. I saw a stripped knit dress with a similar embellishment in an email awhile back and I really wanted to recreate the look.

This awesome knit came from a local quilting shop of all places. They do have a small selection of apparel fabrics. The bolt was labeled “t-shirt knit” and that was it. I’m convinced that it is a cotton/rayon blend. It’s lightweight but very very soft and it sewed really well.

Check out the KCWC Fickr Pool, there are some really awesome kids clothes there!!

KCWC-Day Two: Easy Knit Shrug + TUTORIAL

Tuesday, day two of the KCWC, I made a little knit shrug to go along with the Tiered Ruffle Dresses I just finished for the girls. These dresses were unique enough in color and style, they needed their own shrug; nothing the girls already had seemed to go with them.

This shrug was made with a few alterations of my TNT T-shirt pattern, Jalie 2805. Click below to see the details and how to take any t-shirt pattern and turn it into a shrug of your own!

KCWC–Day One: Tiered Ruffle Dress + TUTORIAL

Truth be told, I started these dresses over a week ago, but I finished them on Monday-Day One of the KCWC.

These dresses were inspired by a dress I saw in a popular children's clothing store, but it’s no longer on their website (otherwise I’d link you to it!).

I loved the tiered ruffles and fullness of the skirt, and after working on the ruffled skirts for the girls, I knew my plan of action for these dresses.

It started with my FAVORITE pattern, McCalls 5793. It’s not a fancy pattern, but it has so many possibilities. It’s a basic bodice (with options for sleeves or a yoke) and a ruffled skirt. I mainly use the bodice only and adapt the skirt portion to suit my needs for the project. I’ve sewn up this pattern at least 10 times now in all sorts of variations, each of them unique. For the 99 cents I spent on this pattern (on sale, of course) I’ve got my money’s worth by a hundredfold!!

Anyways! I’ve put together a little tutorial on how I made these. Click below for the details!

Kids Clothes Week Challenge–KCWC at Elsie Marley

I didn’t realized that I hadn’t posted about it yet, but I signed up for Kids Clothes Week Challenge at Elsie Marley. It starts today! I certainly have enough projects lined up to fill the entire week, but I almost never get a chance to sew every day of the week. We’ll see how it goes!

A Blog Award + Other Updates

I just received a blog award!! I’m so surprised and very excited. Thank you so much to Lily at Lily Can Sew for nominating me for the Liebster Blog Award. Please go visit her brand new blog to see her sewing creations. Her little girl is super cute and Lily has made her some really sweet dresses this month!

The Liebster Blog Award aims to recognize blogs with fewer than 200 followers – the up and comings! To ‘pay it forward’ I’ll select 5 blogs to nominate myself. So here goes:

Sara Jane Sews – go check out her post on the Petal Skirty & Ruffled Leg Warmers, SO CUTE!!

Sophisticated Seams – she’s working on a great maternity mini-wardrobe right now, and I’d expect lots of new baby goodness soon!

Sew Easy Being Green – she’s go an eye for design and makes some great outfits for her kids.

Frogs In A Bucket – I really love her style, she makes the best dresses for herself.

It’s Elementary! – I may be biased on this one, but it’s deserving nonetheless. This is my mom’s blog, she was an AWESOME homeschooling mom to my brother and I and now is working with my three kids. Check out all the great stuff she does with them and see why my five-year-old son is reading like a 1st/2nd grader! (and leave her a comment too, she loves comments!)

I’ll go let all of these great blogger know about their awards too. Thanks again Lily!

 

And since I can’t leave without a project update, I do have four new finished dresses for the girls. Plus some extras, I just have to get them photographed on the girls. I’m writing a nice tutorial on one of the dresses too, so watch for that later this week. Here’s a sneak peek to get you excited!

Round & Round in Circles We Go

I interrupted my scheduled sewing projects last week to do something I’ve wanted to do for some time: participate in the Project Run & Play Sew Along. However, I wasn’t able to finish my project in time to be included in the sew along/contest. :-(

But I did finish them eventually, so now I present you with…

I made my remix of the circle skirt tutorial to be ‘fully loaded’, which means this skirt has

• Pockets
• Full Lining
• Peeking Ruffle
• Modesty Shorts (does this make it a circle skort?)

And it’s a hit! The girls really like them, because they twirl! And because of the pockets. They LOVE pockets. The Wild One came screaming from the other end of the house when she discovered the pockets.

Want to make your own? Click below to see my changes to include the pockets, shorts and lining!

Spring Sewing Has Begun!

I’m sure it began a while ago for most, but I’m just getting back into my sewing room since winter and it feels great! My first finished project for spring was inspired by some rather simple, but cute t-shirts I found at Target for my girls.

These little shirts were just screaming for a white ruffle skirt to pair with them. I love the look of ruffles, but I’ve always dreaded sewing them… their just tedious. Until now!

I’m SO HAPPY Dana posted this fantastic tutorial on ways to gather/ruffle fabric. Her “cheating” way is now my ONLY way to gather a ruffle. SO much easier than fighting with that ruffler foot, which I’ve never really quite managed to get to work on my machine.

I also used Dana’s Layered Skirt tutorial as my basis for making these little skirts, with just a couple of adjustments.

I used a biased cut waistband from Simplicity 2483 and attached it to the top of the last connector piece. I did this so the distance between the waistband and the first ruffle would lay flat under a longer t-shirt and to add some overall length. I prefer longer skirts over shorter ones.

I put in a lining as well, I knew at least in early spring this would be worn with tights so I thought a lining would be good to avoid the skirt sticking to the tights or riding up.

This was a white seersucker from my stash, and just enough of it too, I think I have about 3” of it left!

And the girls really love wearing them. They were so excited to put them on for these photos, they could not hold still for even a second!

The only change I would have made was to increase the width of the last ruffle and connector piece. There is plenty of ease to wear it with, but I think it hangs just a little too strait. I little more a-line shape to it I think would have been just perfect. So, that being said, I moved right into my next project, which also includes ruffles and a little different remix of the same layered tutorial. It turned out SO CUTE!! Just need to get some photos now!

I’m Alive!!! And returning to blogging…

Really, I am still here!!! All I can say is… whew!! What a winter. We were hit with every single virus under the sun, and were pretty much continually sick with one thing or another for months!!!

One of the twins started school in the fall. Prior to this, they’ve all stayed home with me. No schools, no daycare and therefore no regular exposure to viruses. Which has been great, up till now. With the introduction of one child into the school system, we were hit by everything we’ve missed these last five years. Yikes!!! I’m so glad spring is here!

Because of the afore mentioned state of our house this winter, I barely did any sewing at all these past few months. I think I went about six weeks strait without going into my sewing room. So, I have some pent up sewing in me!

And what better time to get back to it than Spring! I’ve already made a few new things for the girls, and I have lots more planned. I made my annual spring fabric shopping trip a couple of weeks ago, and it was so much fun. Last year, JoAnn Fabrics was the spot, I hit their Quilters Showcase sale and got tons of cotton prints for $2.49/yd and made so many little summer dresses. This year, when the sale came around, I was seriously disappointed. There was not selection at all.

While my favorite local store is still SR Harris, it’s a bit of a drive for me to get out there, so I stopped at another local shop, Mill End Textiles. They carry mostly quilting cottons, but some apparel fabrics too and I found a ton that I loved.

This Fat Quarter stack came from JoAnns, and will soon become a pair of pillowcase dresses (I hope! Not sure if there’s really enough there for two dresses)

All together I have an overflowing laundry basket of sprint/summer fabrics, all ready to go and with pattern/design ideas picked out for each of them.

So check back later this week for a look at a few of the things I’ve already stitched up this spring. Here’s to staying healthy!