Did I mention it also travels in time?

Hello all! How are the last days of 2012 shaping up for everybody? I am enjoying these last few days but I am eager to see what 2013 has in store for me.  While I am trying to muster up the energy to do one of those year end mosaics you are seeing everywhere right now I thought I would share my only two handmade Christmas presents this year.  

This year I had the extreme honor of introducing some of my friends to the great show of Doctor Who, and much to my delight they have fallen in love with it like I have so I decided to sew them up some nifty (if I may so myself) TARDIS pillows. To the uninitiated, the TARDIS is the Doctors Time and Space ship, and it also happens to be stuck camouflaged as an old fashioned British police box.  While the show has been around nearly 50 years and is up to it's 11th actor portraying the doctor, the TARDIS has been pretty much the only constant on the show, and I wanted to do her up proper for this pillow.  After an insane amount of sketching and designing, and one completely terrible first run, I came out with these two beauties, and I honestly am in love with them.

I am definitely marking this project as most successful of 2012 because they turned out exactly as I had hoped and we all know that is not the case when starting on a new idea! The majority of the TARDIS is pieced together like a big quilt block, I embroidered the windows and public call box and painted the police box sign with a freezer paper stencil cut out from my cricut. (Which was a 2 hour lesson in patience trying to get all those little letters cut out without ripping! It all paid off in the end I think) 

Because I am so proud of them and a quick peruse on Etsy lead me to think they might have a place to fill on someone else's couch I decided to list them for sale, since I know I will be making at least one more for me and a few more friend requests that have come in since the big reveal.  They are 16 x 24 and fully lined with an envelope closure in the back for easy washing, in case other people have as messy a family as I do.  I've filled these with really nice down pillow inserts, because we are pillow SNOBS at our house, and I can't stand those cheap inserts of fluff that get all smushed and wadded up within a month. 

I made this up in the brighter blue colors of the current 11th doctor, but I'm scheming a variation in the older, antique shades of blue from the 10th Doctor's Tardis. (Who is, as they say, MY Doctor.) Now that I have a design I am in love with the children have both requested one for their room, so a double sized floor pillow might be in the works, along with the king sized bed quilt that has been on the back burner for a year or so might finally come to fruition. So, what do you think? Any other Whovian's out there?

KCWC First of the Month Challenge, Day 2 + 3

For the second and third days of KCWC I sewed up 4 flannel nightgowns, two for each girl.  

I used this Butterick pattern I picked up for $1 at Joanns a few weeks ago on the allure of FAST! and EASY! ringing in my ears.   Ever since I started sewing with Oliver + S patterns early in my sewing career I have been very hesitant to sew up Big 4 patterns, what with their crazy ease and usually terrible directions, but since Lily is sized out of my pajama pattern and this being a no spending challenge I had to make due with what I had around. That, and the girls are gaga for nightgowns. A dress that you get to sleep in? Pretty much a sure win. 

cheap black friday Joann flannel nightgown = lots of toddler kisses and loves.

So anyway, I can't say much for the ease, as it is your standard raglan sleeve nightgown, not a fitted party dress, but I can say that I chucked those directions in the trash after reading in the first step they wanted you to sew the bodice together and then do a strange origami folding and sew the arms in a U shape to the bodice. It's a RAGLAN, the easiest garment with sleeves ever, and not by sewing the arms in a U shape to an already completed bodice.  Why do they insist on making things more complicated than necessary? Anyway, they came together in a veritable flash, the girls love them and they are residing in a very empty cold weather pajama drawer.

 Frankly I am underwhelmed with the fit, the drafting seems to give both girls an odd hunchback look to them and the whole thing just hangs weird, but I guess you get what you pay for. 

cracks me up they are doing the same pose as in the picture by the bedside. They just might be one trick ponies.

I'm thinking of adding some decorative buttons and/or bows to the front neckline, looking at these pictures I think they could use some distraction to break up the great expanses of fabric on their little bodies. Of course I had to do the typical "jumping on the bed in new pajamas pose"

These definitely count as stash busting, the elephant fabric is going on 3 years old, and was the leftovers from another pair of elephant jammies made forever ago, and Lily's green flowers and blue rainbow/hearts/peace signs fabric has been laying around for 2 and 1 years, respectively. Out with the old!

Full disclosure I managed to break my rule of  no spending to buy 1 1/4 yard of Hello Kitty flannel for Isla's nightgown. I'm devoting a larger chunk of my sewing energies this week to clothing the big sister, so when she requested this fabric she remembered from Joann's specifically, I had to relent. So far then I have spent $5 more than I planned. (She's totally worth it)

Apparently I never managed to get a full shot of the second slightly psychedelic jammies, and this is the best I can do. Lily picked this fabric because she got a shirt from Grandma at Christmas with a peace sign and now she LOVES peace signs, even though it weirds me out a bit, I just go with it.

After digging through all my bits of fabric scattered around the house I have unearthed enough flannel to make another dozen (or more) nightgowns, so I might be adding another set if I have the time (and energy) this week!

KCWC End of the Month Challenge, Day 1

Whew, this week is flying by! I'm participating in Elsie Marley's kids clothes week challenge, and commited to sewing kids clothes for an hour every day this week. I'm putting my own spin on it and am trying to use only my stash fabrics and already owned patterns to keep costs down and make use of all this cotton laying around!  And I have been keeping good on that commitment! I have been knocking out projects left and right, it has just been a struggle to get them on my little models to photograph and blog which is keeping me behind. 

She decided in these photos she was going to try and "Sell" me those heart sprinkles. Where is she getting her modeling ideas from?

Lily has really grown over this summer and none of her pants fit her anymore, she has been wearing  some really odd combinations of too small dresses over shorts, too tight leggings and mismatching knee socks, so I decided to devote  a big push towards making her some basics to wear around the house and at school.  For the first day of the challenge I decided to sew up some Oliver + S Afterschool Pants. I've made this pattern once before in a crazy stripe and decided to calm things down and just go for a nice slate gray corduroy. 

These pants are pretty straightforward with no zippers, just an elastic waist, which is a must for us since Lily has been boycotting zippers for the past year, ever since she zipped up some tender tummy skin one morning.  I forgot what a nice sew it was to make these, even though there are a lot of little extra details on these pants everything comes together nicely and looks great in the end. Strange to think that Lily was still fitting in a size 4 in late spring I sewed these up in a 6 and the fit is perfect, Here's hoping they will last her until next spring as well, all the of the sudden is growing up super fast. 

As it is, they have plenty of room for all of her ninja moves, and apparently they are "so soft" so she is happy with them! I am happy that she has something to wear to school that isn't skin tight leggings showing off her little plumbers crack. (While it's a totally adorable plumbers crack, I think she is getting to that age when it is less socially acceptable to show off ones crack.)

KCWC Fall 2012

Guess what, I'm signing on to Kid's Clothes Week Challenge Fall 2012! 

You know, the huge kids crafting phenomenon that happens twice a year where you cross your heart and promise to sew clothes for your kids at least one hour a day for a week? Except, I think secretly it's really more like, cut and prep all the outfits weeks ahead of time, then sew for 3 hours a day, then take two more hours to photograph and blog your outfits and look like a superstar/generally awesome person who accomplishes so much in just 7 hours in one week! I kid, but I am guilty of it too. It really does feel good to take a week and just get stuff done, and look back at all the cute new stuff your kids are (hopefully) wearing.

This time around I have spent very little time planning or prepping so my outcome won't be nearly as impressive as I would like people to believe I am. Coupled with the fact my hours at work have been reduced since both my girlies are in at least part time school I get to pretend I am a stay at home mom, and I have the paycheck to prove it! This means lots of time, but little extra money to spend of fun things like new fabrics and patterns. Good thing I have plenty of perfectly good fabric lying around just waiting to be made into something fabulous. So my goal is to make my girlies some much needed basics while spending as little money as possible. I was going to call it, KCWC, Broke as Hell edition, but decided that was too negative so I'm going for KCWC, First of the Month Challenge! See you soon!

Are you afraid of clowns?

Oops, been a while since my last post, sorry! I've been completely neglecting this little old blog, but it is summer, I know you understand.  Our weather in Oregon has been wonderfully summery, and we've been trying to fit in all the summer activities we can. Sadly, that has left little time or motivation for sewing. I sew in the garage, which turns into a little oven this time of year, combined with the smell of the chickens my neighbor keeps in her garage makes it not the most pleasant place to be.  Hot chicken smell, and I'm not talking KFC. Anyway, I've been spending my evenings on the couch, messing about with a bit of embroidery. I've been stitching away on a few silly things and a few secret things, and now I can let this one out of the bag now that it has made it's way to it's new home! Early in the summer it was discovered that my awesome sister-in-law and I both share a huge soft spot for the Stephen King movie IT. Perhaps I should clarify, I do so love the book and movie, but, Pennywise the clown seriously freaks me out! The nightmares I used to have were terrible, and even now I try to not think about him late at night or I know I won't be sleeping easily. So as soon as said sister-in-law finds this out, I started getting things like this

And this

 

popping up all over my facebook page. Isn't that sweet of her? Yeah, my husband's family is awesome like that. So, one time after I was telling her how I sometimes imagine him slowing rising up into view at the foot of my bed at night, I got inspired to make this piece. 

It was my first time attempting felt applique, and even though I thought it was looking pretty amateur while I was making it, I think all together it looks pretty good. I stuffed the balloon with some fiberfill to give it a little dimension and then painted the wood hoop a silvery shade to go with the silver text. Did I mention my sister-in-law is a social worker for children? I thought it would be a super awesome piece of art for her office...don't you think?

I have a companion piece in mind, but it's been weeks since I've sewn anything and I can hear my machines siren song calling me, not sure how much longer I will be able to resist her, and put my embroidery back on the shelf for a few months.

Scirocco times 2

How is every one's summer going? Our summer has been pretty awesome so far, the husband and I are both on vacation for two weeks so we've been having lots of fun (and lots of laziness.) Also, with this vacation I have made my triumphant return to sewing! I hadn't even touched my machine in weeks since coming off of a very disappointing Zephyr fiasco. Do you ever have such a fail that it just puts a bad taste in your mouth for a while? That was definitely me and the Zephyr romper top. I halfway salvaged the fabric and 4 hours I put into it by making it a top, I just need to sew some buttons on and maybe I'll show you. Or maybe not, it made me so mad I don't know that I will even bother. (I should add that my frustrations had nothing to do with the pattern per say, more like I just discovered that I might actually hate sewing with knits.) However, fabric has already been bought for a second woven version, I paid full price for that pattern, you'd better believe I'm going to churn out something wearable for $17, like it or not. ;)

So, after a few weeks cooling off period I looked at the calendar and realized that we have a summer wedding to attend to in one week and the girls had nothing to wear! Oh, shock and horror. Rather than go to the store and buy an overpriced, cheaply made dressy dress I made the girls two new ones, in 24 hours and at under $20 a piece, no less.  I actually conjured up a sewing storm and sewed three dresses in two days. I'll share Lily's wedding dress later, this post is all about the Sciroccos! I think I've talked before about my new admiration of Figgy's Patterns, and I even have a few pieces made up I just neglected to blog, shame on me! The PDF is available on the website for a bargain $10 price. You don't get the cute tag and the lovely packaging, but you can print the pattern as much as you like (no tracing!) and if you misplace the directions you can reprint them. How many hours have I wasted looking for misplaced directions? Too many...

The back doesn't gape in real life, but too lazy to fix it!

I know, it's freakin adorable

 I made Isla's dress in the 2/3 size in a shiny blue satin that cost me a whopping $8 for a yard and a half, with plenty left over for whatever, due to the extra wide yardage. I tucked some white velvet ribbon under the pleat in front but somehow managed to get the exposed ribbon widths uneven on both incarnations of the dresses I made. I swear I checked and double checked to make sure they looked even before I sewed them down, but oh well! Hopefully no one at the wedding will point out that one ribbon is one centimeter wider than the other. I was able to sew this dress up in a few hours, (about 4 episodes of Doctor Who, for what it's worth) and it really was a lot easier than I expected. 

I totally had to bribe her with jelly beans for these pictures. Mother of the year.

Which is not to say it was easy, if Figgy's didn't already have this totally awesome tutorial up on their site I'm not sure I could have puzzled out the interesting construction on my own without throwing another sewing tantrum. As it was, I think it took me 3 tries to figure out how to finish off the tops of the sleeves, but really, once you see how it's done it all makes sense. I'd heard this pattern runs a little short but forgot to lengthen the pattern pieces, so I cheated and used steam a seam around the bottom of my ruffles and just ironed them up and topstitched. That's what I say, but really, it was laziness.  I don't have a rolled hem foot like suggested, my serger makes pretty pathetic rolled hems, and satin is slippery(!) and doesn't hold a crease well.If it was a cotton I would have just folded under twice, but it worked out well enough for a one occasion dress. 

The skirt portion does tend to ride up around the girls hips abit, but I think I just need to put in a longer elastic and that should correct the problem. I followed the length guide in the pattern because it was too late to measure for myself, but I must have sewed the casing a smidge too tight because it was a bit of a bear to get the elastic all the way through and I had an extra 1 1/2" I couldn't seem to get in the casing so I just left it out which made it snugger.   All in all I am super pleased and think it came out just fabulous, my little blue eyed babe is going to be turning heads when she is out dancing at the wedding!

Fresh off the success of the blue dress I pulled out some cheap cotton lawn from fabric.com and made one for big sister. I had just enough fabric to cut out the skirt and the outside bodice, but had to use a cream batiste for the bodice lining and the ruffle lining, and a dusty cotton lawn for the skirt lining.  I had to do some really creative cutting to get it cut out of my 1 yard cuts, but I did it! (I just don't recommend it.) Naturally as is the case when making a pattern the second time, I learn from my first mistakes and screw up everything I did right the first time instead. Oh well. Third times the charm? Also, I had to figure out how to arrange the pattern pieces to have different fabrics on the inside and outside, which shouldn't have been so hard but...oh well. For Lily's dress I cut out the 4/5 but lengthened the skirt pieces to the 6/7 mark, but even those got shortened a bit because the dotty lawn was a bit scratchy and super sheer so I cut out and extra set of ruffles in cream and just sewed them right side together to create lined flounces. Easy peasy, and I didn't have to hem 3 rows of ruffles. I think I will probably always do it this way, unless my fabric is quite thick I don't think it affects the drape.

 

 The first time I saw Scirocco I thought it was just adorable, but wasn't 100% sure how I felt about the exposed back. It made me a little uneasy to see all that skin, but really I was just being a fuddy duddy because seeing it made up it's not inappropriate at all. The dress is a bit slim fit and can be difficult to wrangle on, but once it's on it fits so well it's worth it. 

I was thinking of cutting out a third scirocco dress to sew tonight, but decided to pace myself so I don't run out of sewing mojo!  I'll leave you with this picture of Lily, my newly five year old going on 15. 

Welcome New Friends and Sewing with Friends!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day, I had so much fun finding new blogs and entering giveaways, I even won one myself! Super awesome. Maybe the best part is my blog has grown to 18 followers now, I'm practically bursting at the seams with excitement. I'm so happy you new readers saw something you liked in my short history to take a chance on following me. Okay, enough gushing, I'll play it cool now.  

I haven't had too much time for sewing these past two weeks, we went on a short camping trip before Memorial Day and then I have been working like a fiend since we got back and have only  been able to fit one day of sewing in the last two weeks! But it was a good day, so it made up for the dry spell before.   My best friend Alicia is a great knitter and decided she needed a new bag to hold her current projects and some extra yarn. She picked up this pattern ages ago and we finally got around to getting it sewn up. 

It was a pretty easy sew, just a little time consuming. She literally spent the whole day with me, from noon until 10 pm, although we did have to go to the fabric store and stop for lunch, we were probably only sewing for 4 or 5 hours. (Which still seems a bit excessive for just a bag, but good company/gossip makes the time go by fast) The 7 outside pattern peices all have to be interfaced, and then you layer an additional 2 kinds of interfacing in the body, so this bag has some serious heft to it. Once we got everything cut out and interfaced things went much faster, it's just a basic bag pattern so there wasn't anything too head scratching, but sewing through all those layers of pellon and making due sew in interfacing instead of fusible slowed us down considerably. The most frustraing part of the project was the completely erronious yardage requirements on the envelope. I understand giving a little wiggle room, I appreciate that, but when a pattern calls for 7/8 of a yard so you can cut the 31" straps on the lengthwise grain instead of just placing them along the length of the fabric is ridulous. All you need is 1/3 of a yard to cut those straps and you would still have a sizeable chunk leftover, instead of almost 2/3 of a yard acording to the envelope. Times 2 because there are straps AND  contrasting straps. Almost a 1 1/3 yd extra is unnaceptable to me. End rant. 

When we finally got it all sewn up we could see that it is huge. HUGE. The more I think about it the more I wonder if it will be too big to just carry around as a project bag, not only is it big it is sturdy, but hopefully it will work well enough for her to pack up all her things to take to knitting circle.  While trying to take these dismally poor photos late at night I stuffed all the yarn I have, enough to make two hats for everyone I know, which is about twenty skeins (hats are as far as my knitting skills go) and it didn't even make a dent in the bag, so I stuffed it with some fabric remnants to try and plump it out to it's full capacity.  It still could have taken more.

 

Here is my adorable friend modeling her new bag! Looks good on her, I know. Alicia was very sweet in taking my daughter Lily's council in selecting the colors and I think they turned out great. I think Lily might have selected polka dots, that girl is wild about polka dots.  

I think sewing with friends is probably the best way to sew, so thanks for coming over Alicia! Next time I attempt to pick up the knitting needles again you can expect some frustrated phone calls!

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!

Edit: Giveaway closed! The lucky winner is Quilterbell! Thanks for playing along everyone!


It's here! Sew, Mama, Sew! Giveaway Day! 

The day each year I go around clicking and commenting like crazy trying to win cool stuff!  All that clicking has paid off since even though I haven't won a single thing, I have found some of my most awesome, favorite blogs through giveaway day, so I figured I would celebrate my 10th post (!) with a nice little giveaway of my own. Who says a two month old blog can't join in on the fun? 

This year they are extending it from just one day to a whole week of giveaways! After much deliberation I decided to offer up one of my new favorite patterns, 
The Oliver + S Badminton Dress. 
I have already made half a dozen different incarnations of this pattern and will be making many more. You can make a top, a skort, or a dress just from one pattern! I love getting a lot of bang for my pattern buck. ;)

I will give away one Badminton pattern in your choice of size 6m-4t or 5-12 to a commenter picked at random from this post.  I will ship anywhere in the world, so everyone is welcome!  

To enter, just leave a comment with your favorite summer dessert! Because, why not?!  The post will be open for comments until Friday the 25th until 5pm, And I will be drawing the winner at random by Sunday the 27th so leave a comment and maybe you will be the lucky winner! Make sure to leave an email address if you are a no reply blogger so I can contact you, if I don't hear from the winner within 48 hours I will pick a new one.

A long overdue KCWC day 7

This was my final piece of children's clothing I completed for KCWC, yet another class picnic shorts, this time in pink and white linen, made up in 4t. I got most of these shorts completed Sunday, but did have to finish the rest of it up on Monday, as I had to recut and resew the entire waistband have entirely mucked it up and was faster just to start over than unpick all of my seams. Other than messing around with the waistband these came along much faster the second time, and they fit really well, despite Lily being almost completely sized out of the smaller range of the O+S patterns.

super wrinkly, partly because they are linen, mostly because she had been wearing them nonstop since the night before.

It has been raining in Portland for the past week nearly nonstop, so I took advantage of this cloudy yet not quite raining weather to try and get some modeled shorts shots. (try saying that 5 times fast) Rumor has it the weather will be in the 70 degree range later this weekend, if so maybe I can get some of the girls wearing their coordinating shorts!!

More gratuitous shorts/cute kid pictures....

KCWC Days 5 + 6

Whew, still chugging along for KCWC, but I am running out of steam. After all the irritations of the badminton skorts, I moved on to a new pattern, the Oliver + S after school pants. Now that I think of it, every piece I have sewn this week is an O + S pattern, and that is because I love them. I had my first sewing success with their patterns and they haven't steered me wrong yet. I hadn't yet sewn up these up so I was hoping everything would go smoothly, and it did! Pants usually are pretty straightforward, but you never know.

However, these pants are crazy! When I saw this striped corduroy on clearance earlier this fall I thought it would be perfect for these pants, and I was either very right or very wrong.  I cut all the contrasting fabric bits going horizontally, to add some "interest" although I don't think these pants needed anything extra interesting, I still like the effect. I originally planned on doing the girly version with ruffles at both the front pockets and the back seams, but I decided to nix back ruffles as I saw how crazy these things were coming. Other than my interesting fabric choice these really did sew up fast and easy, a great pattern with simple clear directions. 

For some reason these pants remind me of outdoor music festivals and the grungy snowboarders that trickle down from the mountain. I made a size 2 for my 3 1/2 year old, and they fit great in the body but with virtually no growing room in the waist.  She does still have a round little tummy, so it's possible that if she grows an inch or two I can let down the pant hems and these will fit better than ever.  It is impossible to buy anything but stretchy leggings for this girl from the store, everything in 2t is slightly too tight and still too long, and she swims around in 3t. 

For day 6 I sewed up the class picnic shorts, also for Isla. (I sew a lot of bottoms for her, as mentioned above) I definitely put my time in on these as they took me about 3 hours to make, but I think they were worth it! I love the cute retro look to them, and they fit great. The pattern is really straightforward and easy to figure out, but I spent a lot of time trying to get all my white facings perfectly prepared so they would look as awesome as possible. Mission accomplished?  I did get some puckering where I attached the waistband to the shorts, which irritates me, but not enough to unpick and try again. I used the same linen I did for the badminton skort, and it has a looser weave and stretched out a bit while I was sewing it on I think. Someday I will invest in the $175 walking foot for my machine and then maybe I won't have these little issues. We don't really tuck in her shirts so I figure nobody will probably see/care about my little mistake.

  

 

Not much to say about these shorts, except for that I think they are super cute, especially paired with a blonde cutie in a black sabbath t-shirt of mine I cut up to fit the girls a few years ago. Yes, my girls are awesome, I know.  Only one more day of sewing and then KCWC is over until fall. It has been fun, but I am ready for a break from kids clothes!

KCWC Day 3 + 4

Alternative title, the skorts that were almost more trouble than they were worth.

I had cut out two more badminton skorts for the girls and naively thought I could get them both sewn up on day 3 and maybe even have time to move onto another piece. Um, no. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  Which I find really interesting, as the first time I made this pattern I had no problems at all, it was like a dream. Why is it when I remake a pattern I often make tons of mistakes I never made the first time around? I must be very arrogantly thinking that I don't need to check the directions or what side is facing what exactly because this always happens to me. Anyway, the blue skort was sewn up first, as I had blue bobbin handy so I figured it would be a good place to start as any. Things were actually going pretty well until I sewed the skirt portion on wrong, so the inside seams were facing out, not pretty. So after I ripped it all out and fixed it, I put it on little sister and it was huge! I shortened the elastic to fit her waist and also noticed I made a mistake when sewing the legs together, and the crotch seam is also on the wrong (and I mean right) side. Oh well, too bad.

 I was done with that skort, and not looking back. Time to work on the yellow one for big sister. Then I realized that I had actually sewn up the 4t for the 3 year old and that was why the fit was so bad. More seam ripping, new elastic and a big headache later and it was *really* done this time.

This is her smarmy face

       I would like to say that I got all the problems out on the blue skort, but alas, that was not the case. First I sewed the waistband on backwards (@ # $ %! More seam ripping) then I completely botched sewing the skirt on again. It was even worse than the first time, I made a mistake sandwiching the waistband, it was like some sort of fabric origami gone terribly wrong. MORE seam ripping. Then I gave up and went to bed. Got up and resumed seam ripping, and finished it right. Whew. In the end they are adorable and I like them, but they totally gave me hassles. 

The hem isn't really uneven, it just kept slipping down the hanger

 I made the blue out of a linen (blend?) I got from fabric.com last summer for a song and stashed away and forgot about, and the yellow is twill from Lisette at Joan's. I added an extra two inches in length and almost 3 in width to the skort pieces. I obviously didn't do the scallop bottom and left out the hem facing, just folding under and sewing. I added the width to make the skirt more gathered and twirly, and while it's a sound concept I think my materials were a bit too stiff for it to look as nice as I liked.  Overall, I still love this pattern, I just need to check the directions more, pay less attention to Doctor Who on the television, and not be sewing past 11 pm before I make another one!

 

KCWC Day 2

Still sewing along for KCWC and today I again only managed to sew one Oliver + S Ice Cream shirt, which actually was supposed to be a dress. I had traced off a size 4 last year and never got around to sewing it, so I found the old tracing and got to work. Since I didn't remember why I traced it off in the first place I definitely didn't remember that I traced the top and not the dress, and naturally still didn't realize this until I was almost ready to attach the hem facing, which would have made this the most ridiculously inappropriate mini dress ever. I was pretty bummed as I think this would have made an awesome dress, but wasn't about to go back to the fabric store to buy more fabric to remake it, when the top is still adorable.  

Lily is doing robot arms, whatever that means

The fabric is Blue Mumsy by Dear Stella with coordinating Blue from their solid collection. Dear Stella is a pretty new company and I am going to out on a limb and say that every design they print is awesome. I'm usually attracted to one of two prints out of a collection, but I would buy every single print from collection if I wasn't on a self imposed fabric diet.  Not sure if I am going to go with the chevron or the peacock print for my next purchase, but pretty sure either one will make something amazing. 

I cut this in a 4t even though Lil will be 5 in June, but I was able to get away with it since this is quite a roomy top to begin with.  I am definitely getting to the end of squeezing her into the high end of the smaller pattern sizes and am going to have to save up and buy the next sizes in my favorite patterns, she has grown so much since this fall it is amazing, and just a little sad. But I don't want to leave you on a down note, so here is a picture of Lily's own styling of her new top. Yes, those are clothespins in her hair, and she is making that face on purpose. Life is all about compromises, no?

KCWC Day 1

I'm participating in KCWC over at Elsie Marley, and on day one I sewed up an Oliver + S Ice Cream top in Denyse Schmidt Greenfield Hill Voile. I bought a yard of this awesome print last year when it was on clearance for $5 and have been wondering what to do with it ever since. I initially thought it would be too much for a child's outfit, but after seeing the sophisticated prints Figgy's has been using in their new pattern line I had to go for it. I think it works, do you? (As was linking to Figgy's it appears they have announced their newest patterns, available in May! I'm not usually a big jumper fan, but Zephyr looks awesome!)

I sewed up a 3t with no modifications ( I forgot to add the extra 2 inches I always add in length, my kids have long torsos and round tummys that usually need a little extra coverage) but I think it fits great and should last all summer. The voile is soft and breezy, and didn't need to be ironed when I pulled it out of the dryer, so that is always a plus.

I Have some charcoal linen that I am thinking of making cordinating puppet show shorts with, maybe I can finish them by the end of KCWC! As always, more pictures in my flickr stream.