Excited about twirling

My precious daughter Isabelle loves all the typical little girl stuff - dress up, princesses, pink, sparkles, accessories, dancing, twirling, etc.  I have gotten the creative juices flowing and sewn with this super fun twirly skirt for her and two of her little co-princesses, Ruthie and Vivian.

Twirling skirt mania!
This all started with an awesome book my mom bought me last Christmas called, "Sewing Clothes Kids Love"

In the book, there are clothes that just make you smile!  The patterns have a ton of possibilities with all of the embellishments that you can add so you can stay simple (and "get her done") or you can go wild with trim galore!  The pattern that seemed like a good place to start was the Insa dress.

 It is a double layer skirt where each layer (or gore) has 4 equal sections so you can add in as many fabrics as you want.  I chose four different fabrics for the top layer 

and then one fabric for all four pieces of the bottom skirt.  

There are placement guides to help you put in vertical elastic strips on the top skirt to give the scalloped effect.  Isn't it cute?

The skirt has a wide waist band that helps you put in a complimentary fabric to the rest of the skirt.  I really liked the look of putting the plaid on the angle.  This uses up more fabric but it was not that big of a pattern piece.

Can you see the circular beaded things that I appliqued onto Isabelle's skirt (above)?  They were special to me because I bought those in Central Asia when I visited my friend Leslie in October.   Unfortunately, they disintegrated in the wash. :(

Do you like the ruffle that is sewn on the hem here?  The technique is new for me and is called ruching.    All ruching means is gathering, ruffling or pleating.  I really love how it adds some more femininity to the skirt and helps give a finished look since it is the same fabric as the waste band.  I am going to do a post to give some tips on how I did it.

If you look closely, you can see the row of basting stitching that I never took out.  I can be really lazy sometimes with those finishing touches!!

 After I did the trial run with Isabelle's skirt, I decided to make two more for two little girls that live in Central Asia.   One of the girl's mom sews so I put the elastic in the waist casing but left the safety pin attached so the mom could adjust it for the girl's waist size.  I don't think the other girl's mom sews, so to avoid the issue of guessing at how big her waist is, I put in a ribbon that she can use to cinch the waist.  I hope that works out.

 So, off these two skirts go...

 in this duffle bag... 

 to go make two little princesses very happy (I HOPE!!!).  We love you Ruthie and Vivian!

Here is a picture of one of the little girls getting her skirt... How adorable is she???????

Beautiful in blue

My oldest daughter is obsessed with wearing pink but I managed to sneak this blue dress into her wardrobe in late June of this year.

I used this same pattern for Isabelle's 3rd birthday dress earlier in June
and loved how it turned out. This dress is so much fun - mostly because of the back. The 7 rows of casings give the back a smocked look that I really like. The casings take a little bit of work but the final product is worth it to me.

If you are going to make this dress, first check out some pointers I give for the pattern.

Fall fun

I am so excited about these coordinating fall outfits!!
I will post individual posts with info on the patterns I used for each outfit and comments about the patterns soon.

This one is for my oldest daughter:
This one is for my youngest daughter:
My daughter is still crawling so the pants will be useful for protecting her legs.

This one is for my niece:
The only difference between this dress and my daughter's dress is that one of the panels has a mushroom fabric in it instead of the fall collage fabric. This picture is better at showing the pretty sunflower fabric that is on both dresses.

Now that you have seen my ideas, show me what has inspired you this fall...

Beach cuties

As I write this post, I am in Central Asia visiting one of my best friends. I am missing my husband and my kids a lot so it feels good to write this post about the beach trip we all had together this past summer.

I have put a hold on making dresses for the girls for a few reasons:

• Isabelle has STRONG opinions on what she wants to wear and it is not a battle I want to fight at this time so she gets to wear what she wants. I am reluctant to make a dress that she won't wear. She has about three or four dresses she really likes to wear right now and I am content letting her pick those out. So, no more new dresses recently.
• Isabelle has so many dresses at this point for warm weather that I am a little burned out from sewing. I know - it sounds strange, but it does happen from time to time.
• This past summer was so busy that I hardly got any sewing time.

Even though I haven't been sewing matching dresses, I am still not immune to buying some when I see them. I found these adorable matching dresses in the summer at the Chez Ami warehouse and had to get them! When I was packing for the beach, Isabelle wanted to bring this dress so I thought I could get a cute picture of the girls there. Then, I thought about getting Gabe in on the matching action. I pulled out this romper

that I made a while ago from fabric my mom-in-law bought me and it worked really well. I have made this romper so many times before and I really like it. Gabe especially likes the pockets now and I think he looks so cute with his hands (and toys) stuffed in them.

I hope this beach picture gives you an idea of how you can take an existing dress you already have for your daughter(s) and make a quick romper that is really cute to match.

Tractor mania

A friend named Julie asked me to make her daughter a festive tractor dress for a special trip that she and her family are taking to Kentucky to see family. She gave me really fun John Deere fabric and a solid green fabric that would make a great accent. Hmmmm.... what to do? I looked and looked online for inspiration and came up with nothing. So I decided to look through my patterns and see if anything jumped out at me.

I found this McCalls 5918 pattern
and got inspired! I have made it a couple of times before and thought it produced cute garments. The John Deere fabric made a great main/dominant fabric and the green really complimented it well - don't you think?

Front

Back

The only thing that I would change for next time is the ribbon. I wish I had some white ribbon with green polka dots on it to match the green accent fabric. I did not want to go out and buy more ribbon since I have oodles already and I knew I could find one that worked. A really cute idea that I got from my friend Carly is to make button holes to weave the ribbon through so it does not ride up. How cute and practical??

Isabelle's room

My 3 year old daughter loves cupcakes so much and I have been wanting to incorporate them into her bedroom decorations somehow for a while now. I saw this adorable McCall's pattern and got inspired!

What is so fun about this pattern is that you can use up A LOT of fabric scraps that you have. I tweaked the pattern quite a bit to simplify it but the basic idea is still the same.

A long time favorite romper pattern

I have used this McCalls 6304 pattern for a long time. It used to be McCalls 2033.
It is a great romper pattern! It is very easy to make! Some comments I would make about this patter are:

• when you cut the lining pieces for the top, do not use the tissue paper pattern to do it. Use the fabric pieces that you have already cut for the main parts of the garment. This way, you make sure that the lining shape matches the garment shape and it will be easy to match them up when sewing.
• Use fusible interfacing!!! Don't mess with having to use sew-in interfacing (Ugh!!).
• When when cutting the lining pieces, don't cut a curved bottom. Just cut a straight line across. This will make finishing the bottom edge of the lining easier.

Here are the rompers I have made over time with this great pattern.

Shorties

Easter shortie in orange linen

Fun spring/Easter shortie

Fun Steelers shortie

Classic navy gingham shortie (no pockets)

Orange seersucker shortie

Longalls

Christmas corduroy longall

Feeling fishy in this flannel longall

Cheering on Big Blue in flannel longall

Sailing away in nautical flannel

Train flannel

Happy 4th of July!!!

I have found these patterns that I am crazy about because they are incredibly fast to cut out (woo-hoo!), really fast to sew (woo-hoo!), and has a lot of cool variations.
These two patterns have the same general concept with subtle differences.

McCalls 6303
I like the side ties and pockets in this pattern.

Butterick 5625

I like the diaper cover included in this pattern.What is really fun about Grace's outfits is that the top is reversible! Check it out!

The pattern is INCREDIBLY easy to make reversible. The only thing that is tricky is how you do the shoulders. If you make the outfit continuous (a little tricky to figure out but it is possible if you take some time and have some patience), you don't need to worry about the shoulders. If you use a ribbon or tie for the shoulders, it is very easy to make the outfit reversible because the ribbons or ties close at the top of the shoulder and it does not matter which side of the garment is out. If you use buttons, you just have to put buttons on both sides of the front piece (or whichever side you attach the buttons).

Isabelle's outfit is made from the same pattern. It is not reversible because I did not have enough of the white and star fabric to do so. I love the appliqued star on their outfits!