Cupcake Party Dress

This dress just makes me happy!  Winter can be so dreary but this winter is full of fun and color in my sewing repertoire. 

Cupcake dress front

I made this dress for my younger daughter to coordinate with the below Feliz party dress that I made for my older daughter.

 

 This Butterick 5017 pattern has been a favorite of mine for babies/one-year-olds for a while.

The pattern has horizontal panels but I like the vertical panels instead.

Cupcake dress back

To make sure that the dress coordinated well with the Feliz dress for my older daughter, I tied in the cupcake corduroy, purple plaid twill, hot pink rickrack, pink and green pom pom fringe.

 My daughter still is not walking, so I made coordinating pants to go with the dress. 

 

I love the idea of sewing elastic about 2 inches above the hem and creating a cute ruffling at the bottom.  I also sewed a ribbon onto the ankle area that helps tie the pants into the dress.  I think next time, I will make the pants longer so the ruffle can be more distinct.  It is  too subtle for me on these pants.

 

Feliz fun

I have latched onto this book called "Sewing Clothes Kids Love" that my mom gave me over a year ago.  I made some really fun twirly skirts from this book for my oldest daughter and some other sweet little girls in my life

 and they were all big hits.

Then, I wanted to push my skills a little bit and try something new so I picked the Feliz Party Dress (how fun is that pattern name???) from the book to tackle.

"The Feliz dress is a two-layer dress.  The full skirted underdress is topped with a shorter, pinafore-style overdress that's open in the back.  An elasticized panel at the center back provides comfort and room to grow and ties cinch the raised waist for a custom fit. (Sewing Clothes Kids Love, 2010)"

Feliz front

What makes this dress (and all of the clothes made in this book) fun to sew are the endless embellishing options.  I used rickrack, ruching, ribbon and pom pom fringe on this dress and I could have done more.

Feliz back

 Comments on the pattern:

1. The pattern runs a little big so make sure you measure your child and use those measurements to gauge what pattern size to use.  I am a lazy sewer and skipped this step.  This dress will probably fit my daughter for three years or more (wowzers!)
2. This dress has a LOT of fabric so keep that in mind when you are using scraps or buying new fabric.  For a 3T-4T dress, I used almost 3 yards of fabric.
3. Embellishments can be very expensive so try using up those 40% off coupons at JoAnns, Hancocks, Michaels, etc and stockpile ribbon, pom pom fringe, rick rack, etc.  You can also look online.
4. Make sure your ribbon, rickrack, etc is long enough to go all the way around the part of the dress that you are applying the embellishment to before you start sewing.  Again, I can be a lazy sewer and just jump into sewing it on to the dress.  This almost became a problem on the bottom of the overdress since it is so wide.  Think ahead and measure (unlike me!), especially if you are using leftover embellishments from another project.

Wild about fish

My son rarely gets excited about fabric.  He gets dragged to the fabric store and then has to watch as I pick out fun fabric for little girls.   He spends most of the time trying to touch every single fabric in the store.  Recently, we were in the fabric store and Gabe started squealing and saying, "Momma, I love this!"  Well, I whipped my head around who had mimicked Gabe's little voice perfectly.  Lo, it was Gabe with this sweet smile on his face touching this fish-themed flannel.  This mommy heart melted and I bought some on the spot (woops - impulse buy!).

Gabe hammin' it up for the camera

I got to work later that night and knocked this McCalls' romper out pretty quickly.  It does not have pockets because I ran out of fabric but they can always be added later (and they will be since all little boys - especially mine - love pockets to hide their treasures in).  

This McCall's pattern is really easy 

and I have used it many many many times before for both shortalls and longalls.  I encourage you to use it if you are looking for a solid romper pattern.

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.