Making a Baby Dress out of an Old Shirt

       


        When I was a kid I remember my Mom sewing me clothes because it was just so expensive to buy clothes for all five of us kids. Its funny how things have changed. I can go to the store and buy my daughter a dress for ten dollars or I can go to Hobby Lobby and spend eight dollars on a yard of fabric, two dollars on a zipper, one dollar on a dress pattern (if its not on sale I would spent 4-10 bucks) and then go home and spend a few hours making the dress. Sometimes it just isn't practical to sew when you can buy it already made. But If you get creative you can make things for relatively cheap. Look around your house and reuse things that you would normally just give to good will. Re-purposing things sometimes forces me to be a little more creative. Even though making things sometimes ends up being a little pricey and time consuming, I really enjoy it. In some ways, sewing has become my therapy. When I have had an absolutely horrible day where nothing has gone the way I planned. When I've spent all day trying to keep Alice from climbing on everything or when I have to scrub Charlies artwork off of the walls, crafting is my escape from the stress.

This week I was looking through a pile of old clothes that I keep with the intent that I may use them in a project some day, and I found a shirt that my Husband refuses to wear because he HATES to wear anything with a collar. At his last job they had a strict dress code and we bough him a bunch of polo shirts out of necessity. If he had a choice he would have gone to work every day in flip flops a t-shirt and shorts. Now that he has a choice as to what he can wear to work, he wears a t-shirt everyday. And I have a plethora of polo and button up shirts that he refuses to wear (even though he looks amazing in them). I couldn't just throw away all of these shirts (I am a pack rat) so I have saved them until I found something that I really wanted to make.

I figured I would make Alice a dress and here is how I did it. 

I used my seam ripper and took apart most of the shirt, the collar, sleeves and the short band at the bottom of the sleeves were all taken apart. I saved all of the pieces because I had no idea what I was was going to need. 

Once most of the shirt was deconstructed I took the main part of the shirt cut it in half just below the buttons.

 Then I laid a dress that currently fits Alice, on the top part of the shirt and use it as an outline to measure out how big I needed to make the new dress. Then I folded the shirt in half  so that I could cut the arm holes and the sides of the dress to the size I though should work. Since I didn't have a pattern I left the shit pretty big and put it on Alice to see how much I needed to adjust the arm holes. It was really nice to  be able to test the size of the dress on her as I made it. After a little adjusting I sewed both sides of the shirt until I got to the arm holes. Then I put the shirt back on her and I realized that the neck of the dress was just too big, so I took it in a little. The way I fixed the neck required me to adjust the arm hole location again. 

Here is what the arms look like up close

Since the old collar was just too big, I took one of the arm bands and sewed it around the neck opening as a new collar. Next, I took the remaining armband and cut it in half and used each of them on the arm area to give the sleeves a finished look.  I then took the bottom half of the shirt that I cut off earlier and gathered the fabric and attached it to the top of the shirt. I didn't need to worry about hemming up the bottom of the skirt because I kept the original hem.

This was the 3rd time I tried the top on her
to see how it was fitting. After the 5th try on she
started to get really mad and run away when ever
I came near her with the dress.

I pinned the arm band around the neck as the
new collar.

The dress is still a little too long for her, she trips over it when she climbs the stairs. I will have to shorten it a few inches. I am also working on some flowers to add to the dress so that it doesn't look so bland but I haven't had time to finish them. 

Thanks for reading!

Messing Up the Baby Blanket

The blanket is for my cousin's baby, it is crocheted with a fabric backing. I came across the idea on the internet a while back but like an idiot I didn't think to look for instructions. I thought "that would be easy to make" but it wasn't. I knew that crocheting the top was going to be a little time consuming and it took me about a week to get that part all done. But when the time came to assemble everything, I had a really hard time getting the top centered on the back piece of fabric and I spent about 5 hours trying to get the thing finished. When the sewing was all done, it at about 2:00 in the morning and I was so tired! When I looked at it I notice a bunch of puckering, I was just so mad I could have screamed! I almost got out my seam ripper and took the whole thing apart.

(I have a habit of taking my work apart when I mess up and then not finishing it because I just get so frustrated with the project.) Luckily it was really late and I decided to go to sleep and then I would take the blanket apart and try all over again the next day.
 After I got some sleep, I looked at it the next morning and it didn't look as bad as had the night before. It still had its flaws but I guess I just needed to step back for a while and look at it again with fresh eyes. I am still a little bit disappointed with my work but I know If I take it apart now I wont finish it until my cousins baby turns five.

I should have double checked the placement
 of the pins before I started sewing.
I might have avoided all of this puckering.

There is puckering all over the back of the blanket because
I over stretched the crochet top when I sewed the blanket together.

Here is what went wrong...when I was putting the blanket together I over stretched the crochet part and because of this, the back of the blanket puckered. It didn't turn out too bad for my first try though. I think the next time I make this I'm going to set it up on a quilting frame and tie it before I sew the edges. I will let you know how the next one turns out.



Thank you for reading!

My little sisters wedding cake

On the 18th my youngest sister Lorane got married and I volunteered to decorate the cake for her. My plan was to have it done two days before her wedding but after spending all week at my parents house I decided to take Wednesday off and get some cleaning done at home, since my poor house had been so neglected (and my husband was running out of clean clothes to wear to work).
I figured that I would have enough time on Thursday to decorate the cake and I barely finished it in time. I had to change my plans and go with a totally different design after we realized that our frosting wasn't working right. Here is what I came up with.

Baby room make over in progress!

Its funny sometimes how things don't always work out in the time frame you expect them to. My plan when we moved into our house was to have the bedrooms decorated, painted and looking amazing with in the first month. Of course things don't always work out the way we planed. So here is the baby's partial bedroom make over 3 months after the time I planned it to be finished.

Before

Before

Before

After

Before

Cute Baby!

After

I made a crib sheet using this tutorial and I also made a cover for the changing table. I had some fabric covered diaper boxes that I made a little over a year ago and just used those as toy boxes. I still have a lot of work to do in this room but things are starting to come together. I want to add some lighter colors in here to brighten up things up and I would also like to put in some curtains. I still need to get a laundry basket and a trash can that look good in this space but its been hard to find what I am looking for. 

I will post more pictures when I get the nursery finished. Thanks for reading!

Pacifier Clips!!

Did I ever tell you how much I absolutely love pacifier clips? Its great to not have to worry about the baby dropping her binky on the floor and when I need it its always attached to her.
My son has gotten into the habit of stealing the baby's binkys right out of her mouth and then running off with them. I would bet that I have about 20 binkys floating around my house right now but when I need one I can never find any because my little boy likes to hide them.
I have found them in kitchen drawers and cabinets, under my bed, in the trash can, inside toy trucks and anywhere else an almost two year old can reach. He hides them EVERYWHERE! Its really frustrating when you have a tired screaming baby and you can't find a binky. So I have been keeping her binkys clipped to her for most of the day just to keep her big brother from taking off with them.

These were really easy to make and would have only taken me 10 minutes to make but I have kids so it really took me an hour. It has been a little over a month since I've used my sewing machine and it felt good to sit down and sew something, even if it was only for an hour.

I will make a tutorial for these clips and a few others when I get more time. Thanks for reading!

Painting the Kitchen

When we moved into our new house all of the walls were painted the same color. The first room we decided to paint was the in the kitchen. I didn't really want to paint the whole room so we painted an accent wall. 

before

before

after

after

It still needs more work but it's really nice to add some color to our house.

Thanks for reading!

Big Changes!

The past few months have been crazy for my family. We have added a new member to our little clan. Her name is Alice and she is just adorable! Charlie is just starting to learn body parts and he loves to poke her eyes and say "eye!" I am afraid to leave him in a room alone with her because she may lose an one. Other than poking at her all the time he seems to get along with her very well. He spends a lot of time giving her kisses and patting her stomach while he says "baby".

Another big change for our family is a new house! After 4 1/2 years of marriage my husband and I finally own a house. We have lots of work to do on it but we love having a place that belongs to us.

When we moved into our house, the baby was just two weeks old and adjusting to having two children has taken most of my time. Because things have been so crazy, I haven't really had time to work on any new projects but I will try to get things moving along as soon as I can. In the meantime, here are some other tutorials I've found online that I can't wait to try.

Totoro Hat

Painted chevron pillows 

This monster hooded towel looks so cute!

Thanks for reading!

Moved to Utah!

Its been a while since I have posted anything so here is a little update.

We have left beautiful Tri-cities Washington to live in Utah so we could be closer to my husbands work. We don't live near a big river any more but Utah does have beautiful mountains!

 This is our tenth (yes that is the # 10) move in 4 1/2 years. I have to say this was probably one of the easiest moves I have ever been through. My husbands work was nice enough to hire movers for us (honestly I think I would have lost my mind if they hadn't). I am very thankful to his work for keeping my sanity intact.  We were also very lucky to  have my sisters in-law there to help. They took care of Charlie for me while we were getting ready for the movers and while they were packing up our house. THANK YOU Charlotte, Brenda and Andrea! I don't know what I would do without you guys.

We made it to Utah safely and Charlie did better than expected on the 12 hour car ride. He did get a little fussy but that is to be expected when you are stuck in a car seat for that long. He spent a lot of his time playing with puzzles and making his stuffed bunny hop. 

Since we are looking for a house we put most of our stuff into storage, including my sewing machine and all of my many bins of crafts. I really miss my sewing machine! I guess I will just have to borrow my mom's until we can dig mine out of all those boxes. I will try to finish some new projects to show you guys soon.

Thanks for reading!

Kindle Case Tutorial

When you have a 1 year old running around your house, none of your possessions are safe. Charlie loves to play with anything that belongs to mommy or daddy, our phones, keys, wallets and computers. I probably spend about 50% of my day making sure he isn't getting into something he isn't supposed to.
A few days ago I caught Charlie playing with the kindle touch I bought my husband this last Christmas. He moved a chair close enough to our bed to climb on then got the kindle off of our dresser which is right next to our bed. After realizing how easily he could have just dropped the kindle on the floor and broken it, I decided it was time to buy it a case.
I looked at Wal-Mart and found nothing. They had cases for iPads and other electronics but nothing for the Kindle. I looked online and found a few cases that I liked but I didn't really want to spend a ton of money for just a case. So I looked through my plethora of crafting materials and came up with a plan.

I used...
1 Kids craft foam sheet
Elastic
Material
1 Button
1 Thin elastic hair band

1) Cut 8x11 inches of the foam

2) Cut 9x24 inches of the material
(If you are cutting your fabric on the fold cut 9x12)

3) Fold the material in half (good sides facing each other)
then put the foam in between it.

4) Sew the fabric around the foam and leave a 4-6 

inch hole so you can invert the fabric in a later step.

Make sure you don't sew over the foam!

5) Cut off the extra fabric except the fabric around the hole.
You want to leave the extra fabric there so that you tuck it in
and sew it down when the time comes. It should look like this.

6) Pull the foam out.

7) Turn your fabric right sides out. It should look like this.

8) Put your foam back in, fold under the extra fabric and pin down.

9) Sew a top stitch all the way around the case.

10) Find the center of you case and sew a straight line from
top to bottom. This will be where your case folds.

(Click the image to see it full sized with measurements)  
11) Add the Elastic. Measure 2 3/4 in. from the side, 
1 in. from the bottom and mark with a pencil. 
Then measure 3/4 in. from the side and 2 1/2 in. 
from the bottom corner and mark it. 
Do the same thing for both the top and the bottom .

12) Add the elastic hair band vertically centered of the
back side of the case and the button to the front side.

Here it is!

Thanks for reading!

Baby Skirts!

The past couple of days I have been looking through my fabric and extra craft stuff, trying to get some inspiration for a new project. I had some remnants from a project that I finished a week ago and there was just enough to make a skirt for my new baby. 

I didn't have a patter so I just made some thing really simple.

First I cut out a piece of fabric 32 in x 8 in, then  I used remnants of fold over elastic from one of my other projects. Since I don't have a baby to measure to make sure I am making this skirt the right size, I took one of the 0-3 month outfits I recently purchased and measured around the waist band of the pants. I ended up using about 17 inches of  Fold over elastic. Just to be sure that was the right size, I did a search online  for baby waist sizes and found a baby sizing chart.

Put the material wrong sides together and match up the ends that are 8 inches long then sew. Flip it right side out (you should have a tube). Next sew on the fold over elastic, you have to pull the elastic tight while sewing to get it all the way around the skirt, which can be a little tricky. I usually tack down about half a centimeter of the elastic before I start pulling it tight so that it is anchored down to the material. Once the elastic is on, hem up the bottom and your done!

Fold Over Elastic

I made some flowers on just for fun

I love the way this turned out

Each skirt took about 20-30 minutes

Thanks for reading!