Chicklet's Easter Dress

Well at first I didn't quite know where to start. Then I thought for sure I'd ruined it. Then I realized this could work... And finally I was done with it and it came out much better than I feared it would when I was hacking away at it with the scissors! ;)

She had untied the bows at the shoulders just before this pic was taken and I had a grabby baby in one arm and a clingy son on one leg and after a few failed attempts to retye the bows one-handed while fending off cute little grabbers, I just snapped the pic as-is. ;) It's even cuter when the bows are tied!

First I cut armholes out of the waistband of the skirt.

Then I turned it inside out, laid the shoulder strap ribbons in place along the skirt waistband at the armhole cuts, and sewed those armholes and then zig-zagged the edges. The skirt is made of cotton gauze and the built in slip is a knit polyester/nylon. The waist is elastic. I just kept those features and made them work for the dress.

Then I turned it right side out. I used 2 yards of ribbon for the straps. I cut it in half and sealed the ends so I had two 1-yard lengths. I could have cut those in half before sewing but I waited until after I sewed them in to cut them in half. No reason why I waited to cut, I just did. Lol! So they were these big loops like way too huge straps which I tied a little knot in to try on her real quick. That's why the silly knot in this pic instead of bows.

When I tried it on her I decided the armholes were too floppy and big and I'd messed up on the strap placement but I thought topstitching creatively could fix all those problems. I cut my gigantic ribbon loops to make tieable straps- the way they are supposed to be- and heat-sealed the ends. Then I topstitched all the way around the armholes and front and back of the neck, scrunching the fabric up tight to gather it in just in the bottoms of the armholes. It worked wonderfully and surprisingly it came out much better than I'd feared! I was worried that I had made a real disaster of it but God blessed me and allowed it to be fixable. Here's a pic of the finished topstitching:

And a full pic of it laying on the table:

So there you have it. My almost-disaster turned out pretty cute! I will have to get some better pics of Chicklet wearing it for Easter. :) Now I just have to make a peasant top to go under it. The t-shirt she's wearing in the pic does look pretty nice with it though, I must say. What do you think?

~Mirage

Easter Sewing Plans

Well this weekend my goal is to get some sewing done!!! Seriously need to get my older daughter's Easter dress made (wanna see a pic of what I'm going to make it out of? Wanna wanna? Wait for it...) and my younger two's outfits washed up. My son's came from WalMart and is going to dual-duty for my brother's wedding this spring. My baby's dress is a beautiful brand new with tags dress that I actually swapped for on SwapMamas.com. (As an aside, if you're thinking of joining SwapMamas you should know that they are totally revamping their system and relaunching in about a month so if you don't want to deal with their growing pains in the meantime you can wait until the relaunch.)
We have searched for an Easter dress for my oldest and come up empty. We found a few stunningly beautiful ones that when I examined them closer turned out to be pathetic quality and/or workmanship. Since I don't want her Easter dress to fall apart in the wash, I decided to be brave and sew her one. Ahhh! I'm not that great at sewing. I understand the basics but pattern instructions confuse me. I think whoever writes the directions on those things gets a thrill out of making things seem harder than they have to be and scaring off would-be budding seamstresses. I have once or twice just ignored the instructions and pieced the item together without them.
But I digress; I was going to tell you about the dress for my daughter. I am not really good at sewing and I can count on one hand everything I've sewn since I had kids that wasn't a plain skirt. I can also count on one hand all the dresses I've made in my entire lifetime. Scary thought. Considering the fact that I not only have to sew my oldest's Easter dress this weekend, but also a formal skirt for myself for something I have to do in a few days. Jury duty. I don't think my full flowery go-to skirts are quite what they have in mind when they said to wear something court-friendly. Maybe it doesn't matter but to share a little secret I'm kind of paranoid about doing something wrong since someone I know told me about a mom who got arrested for contempt of court because she couldn't find a babysitter! Eeek! So that's got me all in worry mode that if I do something they deem inappropriate they're going to arrest me or something. I'm kinda shy so I think if they merely gave me the dissaproving eye I may well just wet myself in terror. Okay maybe not quite that bad but you get the drift, I aim to please. ;)

Now where was I? Oh yes, the dress! I happened to have swapped (yes on SwapMamas again) for a lovely spring skirt that is definately way too small for me back in the middle of the winter and saved it. See?

So my super secret sneaky plot is to turn it into a pillowcase style dress for my daughter's Easter dress. :D See how well I cheat? Lol! If I can manage not to mess it up too bad it should be fairly easy and not time consuming. The PROBLEM with this style of dress is that, as per my opinions on modesty mentioned in the previous post, I think a pillow case dress is going to be a mite skimpy. So I want to mommy-rig a plain white muslin peasant top for her to wear underneath, using this pattern as a guide:

So we shall see if this takes my time and effort quota into "shoulda-just-made-a-whole-dress-from-scratch" territory. I'll keep you posted...

Handmade Gifts- Soft Block for Baby

For Christmas this year I'm hoping to go as homemade as possible. Store bought gifts are fun, for a while, but homemade ones are heart to heart! Homemade gifts are sentimental, personal. They just mean more. :)

My nephew just turned 1 and I made him one of these for his birthday. He had a ball (pun intended) tossing it around, and since it is soft there were no bonked noggins and no sad faces. :) Now I'm thinking of making these for Christmas for all the babies on my list.

Step 1. You'll need to cut out 6 squares of your selected fabric.

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Make sure they are as close to perfectly square as possible. You will have to zigzag or serge the edges of each square so it doesn't unravel if you do not use pinking shears. It doesn't really matter how big your squares are, as long as they are all the same size. You probably want them to be at least 4" though. 6" would make a nice big block and be easier to work with.

Step 2. Sew ONE side of each of 4 of the squares to EACH side of 1 of the squares, leaving the 6th square unattached for now, as shown:

The square in the middle will be the "bottom" of your block and the 4 attached to it will be the "sides."

Step 3. Sew the SIDES of the SIDE BLOCKS to each other to form a box:

Remember to always sew with the right sides of the fabric facing each other so your pretty seam is on the pretty side of the fabric.

Step 4. Now you're going to put the "lid" on. You can press open the side seams to make it easier to work with.

Now sew your 6th square onto your "box," leaving one side open:

Step 5. With block right side out, iron all the seams as shown to make the block more square.

Then iron under the edges of the open side to make it easier to sew up later.

Step 6. This step is optional, I just like to do it because it helps the block to be more block-y looking and then I can use the machine to sew the hole closed after stuffing instead of hand slip-stitching it closed. It also re-enforces the seams to help prevent them from coming unraveled with rough play.

Sew as close to the edge as possible along all the seams as shown in the picture above. Do not sew the block closed accidentally or you won't be able to stuff it! ;)

Step 7. Stuff your block with polyfill, making sure to arrange the stuffing in the block with your fingers as you go in order to make it most block-like. Don't stuff it too full if you plan to machine sew it closed! In fact, if you plan to machine sew it closed, leave enough room near the hole for the block to fit under the sewing machine's foot. You can pinch and squish the polyfill around to "fix" the empty spot once the block is sewn closed.

Step 8. Pin the hole closed and sew it closed as shown.

If you skipped step 6 then you'll want to hand slip stitch it closed instead.

This was only my second one so the seams are not real pretty... I need more practice! ;) It didn't help that my 2 year old kept reaching up and pushing buttons that would adjust the tension, needle placement, etc. as I was trying to sew. Lol! I'm sure it would look a lot fancier if I didn't have any "help"... hehe... But it's cute in a handmade toy sort of way anyway I think.

This post is linked up to the following where you can find more handmade gift ideas:
4 Moms, 35 Kids; Christmas Craft Linky
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Raising Homemakers; Homemaking Linky

Skirt pictures finally!

Skirts, kids, books, and burnt meat.
So I'm sitting here procrastinating becuause I don't feel much like blogging right now, but I won't be here later and I know that once I get started I'm on a roll and it will be hard to STOP so here goes... ;)
Last weekend I posted about some pretty new fabric I bought to sew myself a new skirt. Well after making myself a skirt, there was enough left to make Chicklet a matching one. Here's the fabric I used:

Pretty isn't it?
And here is the skirt I made for myself:

And here is a pic of the one for me along with the little one for Chicklet.

See how cute and matchy? Lol! You can read about how much she loves her new skirt in this post.

I'm currently reading the book "Only the River Runs Free' by Bodie and Brock Thoene. I'm still on chapter 1 so totally lost on the plot! Lol!

Friday night I was reading blogs until late. Yeah yeah I'm getting addicted to blogs, I know! ;) Well I had thawed some ground beef and was cooking it to refreeze in 1 pound baggies for future convenience, and it was cooking away while I was in bloggyland. Yeah you guessed it- I started to burn it:

Yummy. That's what I get for not paying attention, eh? :p

The kids are both being so difficult sleep-wise this past week! I don't know if it's the sudden change in weather or what! I would say Buggie's teething again because he's drool city, but there are no little bumps in there yet so it could be a while. He currently has the front 8 teeth. Chicklet could be teething too... she's got a molar that's halfway in and growing slowly. She has been biting her hands all the time now when she's tired or upset. I have to keep reminder her to stop biting her hands and when I pull her hands out of her mouth they are pruny from drool. Icky!
Schooling Chicklet is going about like I expected; good but slow. We are working on the learn to read in 100 Easy Lessons book but I have to break it down a LOT because she's not yet 3 and has an attention span of almost 3 minutes to coordinate with her age. So we started about a month ago and we are on lesson #2. Yeah. Really slow. But that's okay, I'd rather do it at her pace and have her love learning than push her and have her hate it and be difficult to teach! Right now she loves learning everything and asks me questions all the time. She is really a joy to teach! :)
Bug is still not walking, but he's letting go and standing on his own for nearly a minute at a time now. ;) He's loving being in the walker again and zooms all over the place. He's a little speeder like his daddy... Oops did I say that out loud? *wink* No seriously my hubby doesn't speed anymore now that he has kids. He loves us too much to do that. :)

Speaking of my wonderful amazing awesome husband... did I tell you he brought me home a frappuccino not too long ago? :) I love my Starbucks but it's 45 minutes to the closest one. Well on his way home from work he grabbed me one and when he walked in the door I melted (pun intended)! It was deeelicious! :D

Well that's all I can think of on the update front. For now at least. Let me know if there's something you want to hear more about. :) Have a great rest of your day!

If you're pregnant, or have a baby, or know someone else who is pregnant or has a baby, don't forget to check out my giveaway this week!

Guess what I got today...

Happy Sunday! It's 1:00 in the morning as I'm writing this. I know I know... I said the other day that I was going to work on the whole actually sleeping at night thing. I will! Starting right after this post. *wink* I have tried lots of times to just go to bed earlier but if I do it too much earlier at once I just can't sleep so it's pointless. I have to go to bed just a little earlier, an hour tops, each night until I'm back into a healthy schedule. So 1am (or 1:30 when I'm done posting?) in the morning is not really bad if you consider that last night I was up until 3:30am! So if I can get my body to fall asleep anywhere this side of 3am it will be a miracle. Plus I had caffiene today and I love my Dr. Pepper once or twice a week but I'm one of those people who can't even look at caffeine or I'm wired for a week.
So here is my goal;
Tonight (or rather this morning) to sleep by 2:30am.
Sunday night (monday morning?) to sleep by 1:30am.
Monday night (Tuesday morning?) to sleep by 12:30am.
Tuesday night I should be able to go to bed on the near side of midnight if all goes as planned! :D Woohoo! I really love to stay up late but I just don't have the boundless energy to do it anymore like when I was 17! Especially not with my dear children thinking it's grand fun to wake up at 5am. What are they thinking?! Morning people! :p They didn't get it from me, that's for sure. ;) I'll bet it's my mom's morning person genes. They skipped a generation or something because *I* sure didn't get any morning person genes!

So now you're sitting there wondering if I had a point to this post or was I planning on just rambling on about how I should go to bed but don't... Yeah my main goal was just to yap about my sleeping habits but now that I've sufficiently bored you I might be able to squeeze in something a little more interesting... Hmmm.... *thinking* What shall I talk about? ;)

Okay okay I can't hold it in anymore... I went to WalMart today! Okay well not today actually since it's 1:21am now which means it's technically Sunday, hence the "happy Sunday" comment. So that means it was technically yesterday we went to WalMart even though that was a few hours ago but that is neither here nor there so... *takes deep breath* I bought fabric "yesterday" (aka a few hours ago, Saturday, today that is technically not today, you get it...)!!!

Woohoo! I am going to make myself a simple skirt so I got some fabric and am all excited now. *big grin*
Okay I'm done now. I apologize for having wasted 10 minutes of your life reading this that you cannot get back, but I was just so happy over the prospect of brand new fabric that I couldn't contain myself. :D You see, I've been living off someone else's castoff fabric stash that was given to me of scraps and remnants for the last... oh... 10 years or so. It was wonderful generous of them and I have loved every scrap! But after 10 years, what little I have left is rotting now. :( So when I got new, fresh, picked out by me fabric today, I was kind of like a kid getting ice cream for the first time or something. Although I about fainted when I looked at the prices on the bolts of fabric and saw that most were about $4-6 per yard. *feeling a little fainty again* Is fainty a word? I don't think it is. Hmmm...
Anywayzies I'm going to go to sleep now so that I will wake up and then I get to make my pretty new skirt. And I will try to post pictures so stay tuned! *wink* Now that you're totally intrigued and can't resist.

Toddler Sleeping Sweater: Crafty Saturday!

Sleeping Sweater
It gets cold here at night in the winter. Especially the bedrooms. Well it's started to get kind of chilly at night here as of this past week and my kids had a bad habit of kicking off the blankets. I have been putting Bug to bed in a sweater vest and Chicklet to bed in one of my sweatshirts. It's an old ugly sweatshirt and I had to roll the sleeves half a dozen times! So I cut it up to make a sleeping sweater for her out of it.
First I laid it out flat on the table. Then I cut up the sides about 2 inches in from the side seam.

I cut 2/3 of the end of the sleeve off. Then I cut the sleeve about 3 inches in from the seam and paralell to it. I made my cut along the bottom of the sleeve and my cut along the side seam go in straight lines until they met. Then I took the same amount out of the side and the sleeve on the other side of the sweatshirt. I did not alter the neck hole or the length at all. Just the width and sleeves.

Then I cut some hearts out of fabric scraps and applique sewed them onto the front of the shirt to cover the logo.

Now, I've never ever done this before so it looks kinda sloppy but she's wearing it to bed and it's an old ratty sweatshirt anyway so I figured it's good practice. I also cut matching rectangles for cuffs out of the scrap fabric.

I sewed the cuffs onto the ends of the sleeves

and then I laid the shirt inside out and matched up the seams and sewed along the underside of the cuffs, arms, and along the sides,

sewing it together to form a very long floppy toddler sized sweatshirt that she can wear to bed. :)

I folded back the cuffs (I will unfold them when she's older and has longer arms) and put it on her and she loves it. I have her wear long pants pajamas underneath it and a cami under that. The sweatshirt comes down to her knees and looks tube-dress-like so over the pajama pants it looks very feminine and modest and it keeps her nice and warm at night.

The sweatshirt I used was an adults Medium and Chicklet usually wears a 4T if that helps for guaging size. :)

Sew tired!

So today my sis came over and brought some sewing supplies. She's preggo and due in a week. She doesn't have a crib, just this family heirloom cradle of her hubby's which needed a new mattress. Well I'm sure you can guess how easy (impossible) it would be to find a mattress the right size for a handmade cradle that's been handed down through several generations. So she brought an appropriately sized chunk of foam padding and some fabric and we sewed. And by we I mean mostly me since she was intimidated by my sewing machine and was going so slow it would have taken all week. Hehe... So I took over and she took her cankles for a break on the couch and verbally corraled the kids (mine 1 and almost-3, and her son almost-5). I finished up the cover for the foam pad, tried to cut out a makeshift sheet for it but messed up so I got out my fabric (I had a nice bit of some lovely light buckskin colored soft flannel) and made a whole new sheet, one which actually fit this time. Then I made a burp cloth for her out of the scraps and she edged a waterproof pad for the mattress. It took us 5 hours! Bleh! I'm exhausted. I can imagine with her being pregnant she is probably totally exhausted too.
Speaking of which, I have a bone to pick with her! Her midwife threatened to put her on bedrest at her appointment this morning. So instead of going home to nap she came straight here to sew all day. :-/ I should call her and make sure she's chilling at home now with her feet up. If she doesn't take it easy I'm gonna have to pull rank and give one of my big sister lectures. (which, if you know me, consists of giving a dissapproving look and sarcastic "uh-huh's" because I'm too much of a doormat to actually out with it - especially to my fearlessly verbal sibling.)