Aren't they cute?

I just got this picture of my niece Owyn in a dress I made for her third birthday. Isn't she cute??

Owyn's dress matches this dress I made for Isabelle.
Here are the details on Owyn's dress and here are the details on Isabelle's dress.

Coordinating sisters on Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful day of giving thanks. I keep thinking of Psalm 118:1 which says, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever." We are so thankful for the Lord's many blessings in our lives; we are especially thankful for our 3 amazing kids. Here are Isabelle and Grace in their coordinating dresses on this special day.
I have already posted about Isabelle's dress here.
Grace's dress was a little more difficult but it was still fun. I used Simplicity 2392 Babies' Vintage Layette pattern. I picked and chose different parts of each of the dresses shown in the pattern so it took me a little while to figure out what I needed to cut out for the pattern. While sewing the dress, I had a really hard time following some of the directions so I just winged it for some parts. Despite the issues with the pattern, I think it came out really well.

I may still add some appliqued circles to the bottom of the dress like Isabelle's, but that will come later.

She must be a really good friend!

I have a really good friend named Autumn who has been a prayer partner of mine for many years now and we have been raising our young kids together. Her youngest son, Judah, turned 1 today. Here is Judah (on the right) with our son, Gabe (on the left) a few months ago.

I really wanted to sew Judah something for this special birthday. It is harder to sew things for boys because cute fabric and good patterns are harder to find for boys. What to do?

Well, Autumn's husband is a big Dallas Cowboy's fan so I decided to make Judah a Cowboy's hoodie. You have to know what a labor of love this was because the Cowboys are my LEAST favorite football team and they actually wound up beating the Giants the day I finished this hoodie. Oh well. I love you, little Judah! Happy Birthday!!

I have added something new to my projects... labels!


I realized that none of the clothes I was making had sizes on them and this might be a problem later on as I forget how old the kids were when I made the outfits. It would also be helpful for people who I give gifts to to know what sizes the clothes are. I am still working out the kinks but labels are really easy. You can get fabric that feeds through your printer so you print on it and it is ready to get sewed onto your project.

Using leftover fabric for fun fall accessories

I had a bit of this fall fabric left over from these outfits I made for the kids.
I thought and thought about what to do with it and came up with these two things:

1. An appliqued burp cloth. Burp cloths are so easy and fun to personalize and coordinate with other baby stuff you make. Want some more ideas? Check this out!
2. A fun bib for my toddler (I could not get the picture to rotate... sorry!)
   

What do you think?

Thanksgiving dress!!

I am so excited about this Thanksgiving dress for Isabelle!!!


The first thing that I absolutely LOVE is the sleeves. They remind me of something on a maiden's dress in mid-evil times. Does that make any sense? I thought that making the puffy sleeves and adding the elastic under them would be hard but neither of them were!! You just have to work on your gathering skills a little bit and then all you do is match up the notches (hooray for the notches!!) and sew. Here they are close-up:

The second thing I love is the contrasting fabric on the trunk and waist! What is awesome is that I already had all of this fabric and the only thing I bought was the zipper. So this dress only cost me $2.75!

When I finished the dress, it did not have anything on the skirt and it looked a little plain. I though about adding a band of the contrast fabric around the hem but I did not have enough fabric for that. So, I decided to applique' the circles on it. While doing the applique', I had the vision of bouncy balls bouncing around and landing on the dress. I think it came out really cute!! I thought about appliqueing the circles all the way around the bottom of the dress but I got too excited about finishing the dress so I just put them on the front.

Want to see some more applique'? Here is my niece's initial on a corduroy dress/top. The possibilities are endless!!

Fall-meets-retro for matching cousin outfits

Ok, who isn't excited about the cooler fall weather and sewing with corduroy? Well, when I started thinking about sewing some fall outfits for the kids and their cousins, I wasn't too excited because corduroy colors always seemed so bland and boring to me. Not anymore! I found some really fun corduroy at JoAnn's and had a blast making coordinating tops for Isabelle and her cousin Virginia Grace. The fabric would normally be a little too retro for my taste but I think it works great for a fun fall look. This pattern is pretty easy and has a bunch of variations.

I made Virginia Grace's top before I got a bunch of the polka dotted fabric so there is not a lot of contrasting going on with her dress. I tried to make it a little snazzier by appliqueing her initial on it and adding the ribbon at the trunk seam. I hope she likes it!! Hopefully, I will get pics of her in it to post.
With Isabelle's top, I went a little wild and did more contrasting fabrics. I have gotten into appliqueing and simple monogramming recently and had hoped to monogram or applique' an "I" on Isabelle's top, but I think there is too much going on with the fabric and pattern to do that. What do you think?

Normally, fake pockets drive me crazy but I did not want to spend the time on sewing on real pockets when I know Isabelle will never use them.

Here are some great pictures of Isabelle and Virginia Grace in matching pillowcase dresses and also in coordinating tops in nautical fabric.

My precious pumpkins!!

I have fully immersed myself in fall fever! I love everything about this time of year - the food, family, weather, sports, pumpkin patches, etc. I have so many fun ideas for fall-motif sewing projects. My first fall project was matching paneled pillowcase dresses for my girls.

Here is my latest project which involved all three of my kids!
Can you see the applique'? This is my first applique' project and I look forward to doing it more often and getting better and better at it!! Even though Grace missed out on being in the matching outfit picture, I got some cute ones of Gabe and Isabelle loving on their new sister in their pumpkin outfits.

Here are some sweet individual pictures...

Want to see more pics of this fully-lined romper?

Here are some rompers made for boys.
Here are some rompers made for girls.
Here are rompers made especially for football season.

Matching pillowcase dresses for the fall!

Fall is here and I am so excited!! I wanted to make some matching dresses for Isabelle and Grace but since I am still in the newborn baby fog, I decided to keep the patterns simple and make pillowcase dresses. I love the fall fabric and I love how the dresses turned out!!

The hardest part of the whole thing was getting a decent picture of the 2 of them in their dresses! Oh well...

The individual pics came out much better! Here is Isabelle and her dress:


Here is Grace and her dress (gotta love those sleeping newborns!):

Want to see some more pillowcase dresses?

Want to see some more pics of matching outfits for kids to get some ideas for those special little ones in your life?

Nursing pillow cover

Well, I have gone off the beaten path again of sewing primarily matching outfits and have made a non-clothing item. Since I nurse Grace, I use a nursing pillow and I wind up washing the cover a lot because she spits up quite a bit. I decided to make my own cover because the ones in the stores were either not very soft or too expensive. So, I found this great free pattern online. It actually calls for using a zipper but I have not mastered zippers yet and figured that iron-on velcro would work just as well and it did!

A couple of hints about this pattern in case you wind up using it... it calls for a 1/4" seam allowance. I am not sure if it is because I have washed my nursing pillow or if it because I have used the pillow with 3 kids, but when I made the pillow cover, it was a bit big for my pillow. So, I recommend sewing it with a 1/4" seam allowance, trying it on your pillow and then you can go over it again with a larger allowance. It takes no time at all to run the straight stitch around it. I wound up using a 1/2" allowance and still think it could use a few nips and tucks here and there.

Here is a picture of the back so you can see where the velcro is.


Here is a picture of my little Grace enjoying her new cover!

Welcome Grace Liesel

Our precious Grace Liesel was born on September 18 and I am so in love with her!! It is so fun to snuggle with her and to put her in all the cute girl outfits that we have.

Can't leave the baby out!

I have been itching to make the baby an outfit that matches something I have made for Isabelle. I had some fabric left over from this dress that I made for Isabelle.
I am not a big believer in putting babies, especially newborns, in dresses because the babies need to be in as comfortable outfits as possible and as stain-proof outfits as possible and most dresses don't really fit either one of those categories. What to do???? Hmmmmm...

Alas!! I saw this awesome idea on my friend Rocky's blog!! How adorable is that?!?!? So, I went to the original posting and sewed away last night!! I had a great time and think this onesie will be adorable on the baby. It is a little on the fru-fru/girlie side for my taste but I think I can handle it for how much I will love Isabelle and the baby having coordinating outfits. Rockie freezer paper stenciled a bird on the onesie she made but I plan on stenciling our baby's initials on this one (which are still a mystery right now!).

My first matching outfit order!!

My friend asked me to make her son and daughter matching outfits for the upcoming holiday season (bring on the fall and winter!). She gave me a lot of freedom in the planning and only asked that the fabric be red corduroy that was soft. Well, let's just say that I was so excited to make these outfits and I really hope she likes them.

Her son's outfit was pretty straight forward. I chose a simple romper outfit that I have made before. The pattern is easy and I was sad to learn that the fabric stores don't sell it anymore. Do they bring patterns back every now and then like they do Disney movies??? If you want it, you can probably order it online. This romper pattern is a little different from my favorite romper pattern because it only has a little lining in the trunk as opposed to the full lining in my favorite romper. Because corduroy is warm, I did not think my friend's son needed 2 layers of it. Only having a partial lining reduces the overall fabric cost, too.
Want to see how I have made this same romper in a shortie version? Here you go!!

The daughter's dress was a little trickier because there are so many options for little girls' dresses!! I finally chose the dress that is in the same pattern as the romper for the son. I picked that same pattern because:

• I have made it before
  
• trunk of the dress is fully lined (better for cold months)
• the hem of the dress has a tuck or fold which means my friend can use this for at least a couple of years as long as she just undoes the tuck. I am always an advocate of stretching clothes out as long as possible.
  

The only down side to this dress is that it does require a bit of fabric due to the 2nd and 3rd reasons I just listed for choosing the pattern. I needed 2.75 yards for a 4T dress. Good thing corduroy was on sale at JoAnn's when I bought it!!
I added the ribbon as a trim to the dress because the dress looked too plain with just the corduroy and this dress is going to be used during the holidays. I wanted to add a little pizazz but my friend definitely did not want anything fru-fru so I kept it to a minimum.
***This dress pattern is a little difficult to make and I would not recommend it for a beginner sewing project. The continuous lap placket (aka. "pleat in the back" that makes it easier to put on and off) is hard to understand and the pictures on the pattern are terrible. Also, the trunk lining needs to be hand sewn to the skirt portion and figuring out how to keep the lining separate from the main trunk fabric while sewing is tricky.

Are you ready for some football?

I have finished all of the football outfits that people have asked me to make for the season (but I am ALWAYS open to making some more!!) Here they are:

Fully lined rompers (pattern)

• N.C. State for my son. Want to see more details on this romper for boys and other pics of non-football rompers I have made in this pattern? Here you go!
  

• Washington Redskins for one of my daughters little friends, Holland. Want to see all of the details of how I tweaked this typically plain romper into a girlie outfit for Holland? Here you go!

• N.Y. Giants for my niece (thanks mom for ordering this!!). I "girly-ized" this romper just a little bit by adding ribbon around the hem. My daughter had fun modeling it!

Partially-lined romper (pattern here)

• Pittsburgh Steelers outfit for one of my friend's son, Aiden. Want to see more info on this romper and other non-football rompers in this same pattern? Here you go!