Super Hero Capes

Back in May, I made a super hero cape for a friend's birthday gift. I didn't want to blog until I had made one for my own son, Sharkboy. Now, almost 4 months later, I've finally finished Sharkboy's cape.

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 3 of 3

The weather was gorgeous this morning, so I finished up the twirl dress and took Kaila outside so we could show it to all of you awesome fans! I still need to serge it on the inside, but it will work without for now.

Of course, Springy always accompanies us outside.

75 Pins

75 pins. That is how many it took to put the fifth and final row onto Lavagirl's twirl dress.

Of course I forgot to hem it before I started pinning so now I have to hem it and then finish the inside mess of seams and strings and it will be done. Stay tuned for the pinning how-to.

The %&*@$# Doll Stroller-finally fixed!

So, I'm pretty anti-stroller to begin with. They are so inconvenient and unnecessary about 70% of the time. The major exceptions would be going shopping for clothes, and working out to fit into those new clothes.

Regardless of how I feel about them, every little girl in the neighborhood has at least one doll stroller, and they all fight over them, so, naturally, I had to get one for Lavagirl for her 2nd birthday, last August. Instantly, it was the bane of my existence. The seat part is removable, and was removed 89% of the time, leaving a bare bones stroller frame for poor little baby dolls to perch on. After a month or two it got chucked into the garage, with plans to eventually glue it on or something.

So recently, a neighbor kid spotted the stroller frame in the garage and demanded that I put it together. A couple weeks later, I found the $%&*#@ seat part, and we started going through the same removal, fix, remove, fix, remove process. ARRgh!!!!  One morning, fully caffeinated, I had had enough of the whine, whine, whine, fix my stroller, blah blah blah. Luckily I was having to look around for glue, and it hit me. If I glued it, I wouldn't be able to take it off and wash it if, lets say, someone decided to use it as a wheel barrow.  So, I grabbed some ribbon, sewed it on, and tied it with knots onto the frame.

YAY!!!  NO MORE WHINING!!  IT'S BEEN ON FOR A FEW WEEKS WITHOUT BEING TAKEN OFF!!

Snuggies

Sharkboy has been wanting a Snuggie since before Christmas, thanks to the nearly constant commercials for them on Sprout leading up to Christmas. I thought it was silly, so kept saying no. Then Special Stitches announced everything 30% off, and I decided to make snuggie-type things, but personalize them.

I started with the pink. I cut it to the size of one of Tyler's blankets, and then folded it in half to find the middle and eyeballed where to put the arm holes.

Using the excess length, I sewed two sleeves and attached to the holes.
When Lavagirl woke up, she loved it! and it wasn't even done yet.

and then I worked on the orange one. I wish I had put his arm holes further apart, but hey, it still works.

Here's where they are BETTER THAN STORE BOUGHT.

I personalized Sharkboy's with a knight's shield and his initial. Lava Girl's is still waiting to be embellished. I plan on a tiara and her initial.

Here's a video of Tyler enjoying the long sleeves on his. He wouldn't let me shorten them...

and I can't figure out how to embed video, so click the URL below the pic it will take you to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/v/KwrMubwsMkU

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.

Kids' Room Curtains.

Remember when I said this blog is about experimental homemaking? Well, it really is.

Sharkboy (3) and Lavagirl (2) share a room. It's had a yellow and sage green bumblebee curtain up since we moved in about 18 months ago, but now that they are getting a bit older, that just seemed wrong. Wal-Mart had some awesome Disney Cars fabric, so I set out on a mission to find some Princess fabric that would coordinate. The black background was key. I wound up finding it on Etsy, and ordering from JAPAN! Add some coordinating borders and tabs, and in my head, this was awesome!!

Guess what? I managed to make the borders different sizes AND the green panel has 7 tabs, while the purple panel has 8 tabs. Seriously! I wasn't drinking or anything. It was such a simple project, and my inability to focus made it just not work. Oh well. Luckily, Sharkboy and Lavagirl are not paying customers!

Oh, and to top it off, when I cut the section of the Disney Cars fabric, I managed to cut it right below where Lightning McQueen is, so it's Cars WITHOUT LIGHTNING MCQUEEN.

When dreaming this up, I also forgot that that wall in the kids' room is green. Had I actually been thinking, I would have made the green border red. or yellow, or blue, or something other than a 2nd green.

Sincerely, The Experimental Homemaker.