Evolution of a Dress

So I went to the thrift store looking for shirts to "upcycle" into dresses for Kaila. I found a bunch, and especially liked this one:

I had bought this pattern when Kaila was a baby and have made hats from it but hadn't made the dress yet. 

Here's how it turned out, BORING!!

Yes, I had the rick-rack that the pattern asked for, and could have done the pattern ruffles but didn't particularly like that. So I cut out some awesome paisley butterflies to applique on. Then didn't like them. So the dress sat around for a couple weeks. It looked like a sack. It wasn't just boring, it was boring and sloppy looking. Then it hit me. I could add some tie-backs to it to make it fit my skinny little Lava Girl better.  I could coordinate the tie-backs with an applique and it would decorate the front AND the back. I grabbed some scraps of Michael Miller's Carnival Bloom and made Lava Girl's favorite shape, a star, for the front, and tie-backs for the sides, and then opened up the side seams, stuck the tie-backs in, and used my serger to close it back up, while at the same time tidying the rest of the inside seams with the serger. 

I finally am happy with my serger. 

Thanks again Mom and Dad!

It still needed a bit more pizazz, so I added a ruffle with my handy dandy ruffler out of some more Michael Miller scraps. You can't go wrong with Michael Miller fabrics!

Here's the end result, with some bonus shots of SharkBoy, the photo shoot crasher.

Pillow Case Dress Success!!

My friend's little girl is having her birthday party on Sunday. I've been thinking of making this dress for her forever and it took me ages to go get the fabric and then get the guts to sew. There are pillow case dress tutorials all over the net, so I won't bore you with that.  I did it "old school" style, with ribbon at the neck, no elastic. People who sell these have gone to elastic necks, with bows for decoration, because of the strangulation hazard of actual things that tie near the neck. ugh, as morbid as that is, I'm pretty sure people have survived pillowcase dresses for hundreds of years.

It's a dinosaur theme because this pretty little girl is in LOVE with dinosaurs and bugs and everything icky and slimy and gross. Here's a close-up:

I attempted to make a ruffle around the bottom, but the ruffler and I were NOT getting along, and then the serger ate a bunch of fabric and thread broke and blah blah blah, I got frustrated and just made it a coordinating bottom rather than a ruffled bottom.

The sash is a copycat design from Fray Baby Bibs and More.  I don't know if she does hers with elastic at the neck or not. I LOVE the ribbon she uses at the shoulders, but it's pretty hard to get, even online.

I have no interest in selling these, so if you want one, please support "Fray Baby Bibs and More" through facebook. I don't know the owner personally, but I love her work and she has really inspired me to try new stuff in the sewing room.

Twirl Dress For LavaGirl - Part 2 of 3

I read on another blog that gathering and applying the last layer of this crazy patchwork circle dress can drive a person insane. Here's how I did it. I didn't go insane, but I'm not a perfectionist.  It's a dress, not a space ship.

First, I laid the dress out in a circle. Then I folded the last layer to find 4 equal distances, and pinned those 4 points. Imagining the circle dress as a compass rose, I then pinned the 4 points to North, South, East, and West. See:

Then I took the half-way points of what was left, and pinned them at NE, NW, SE, SW. See:

Then, I took those half-way points, and pinned at NNE, ENE, NNW, WNW, SSE, ESE, etc.

Then I just kept going like that, pinning, sometimes folding and pinning until it was all pinned down and ready to be sewn. 75 pins is "all" that it took. 

As I pinned, Wyatt played next to me and we even took a couple snack breaks for him. Here's my view during a snack break:

Twirl dress for LavaGirl-Part 1 of 3

I often drool on things on Etsy.com, but rarely buy. It has to be REALLY AWESOME for me to buy from there for some reason. One day, as I was surfing and drooling, I found this dress pattern. At about the same time, Lava Girl climbed onto my lap and went NUTS over the dress. For $4 I couldn't NOT buy the pattern. I have plenty of scraps to make it from.

Then I got intimidated by the gathering involved, went Ebay and bought a "Ruffler" for my sewing machine. That will have to be a whole new post. I cut and sewed the squares while I waited for the ruffler to get here. Then I waited to have time and guts to try putting it all together.

WHY DID I WAIT? I didn't even need the ruffler. When I make another one of these, I'll just do it. No elastic, no gathering, Just pin and go. So easy, and SO AWESOME.

These pics don't have the bottom layer on yet, because I stopped last night, not knowing if my short girl would even need that last layer. I'll add that layer tonight if SharkBaby lets me. Then I'll post a pic of it all finished and on her, if it ever stops raining long enough to go outside and take a pic of her twirling in the grass.

Thank you "SweetShop" for making my little girl Extra Cute!!

Since I returned the serger that my parents got me for my birthday, I'm going to finish this with pinking shears to stop fraying on the inside seams. The pattern says to serge or zigzag the edges, but well, no, I'm too lazy. We'll see how this works. I am going to buy the serger on Friday and try again with it. My mom was right, if I'm going to keep sewing lots, I need it.

Thanks MOM for knowing what I always need.