Boot socks

Another fun thing I made from this adorable little girl dress. Have you seen those tutorials floating around pintrest  for the boot socks? All they do is cut off the sleeves of a sweater and use it to peak out of the top of a boot. I actually have some fun boot socks but I never wear them because they are  soooo hot and rarely am I wanting to wear something that warm all day. So perfect solution. Remember how I cut off the end of the sleeve to make the sweet little sweater dress? Voila, boot socks.  It's awesome because all you do is add it to were the top of your boot is and it gives the appearance of boot socks without making you so dang hot.  Love it! And Kambria loves that we are wearing the same dress without being exactly the same :)

Valentine's Towels

Remember the fun Christmas towels I made here. I loved them so much I decided to make some for Valentines day.  I found these cute towels at Target and just added some ruffled some ribbon and added it to the bottom for added cuteness.  I love them! Some times little things make a big difference.

Valentine's traditions

 A few years ago we started this fun Valentines tradition.  About a month before Valentines day we put up all the Valentines decorations on family night. Included in that are our Valentine Mailboxes. I got these a couple of years ago at target and used my Cricut to cut out all of our names. (Excuse the blurry pictures I don't know what is happening with my camera.) It is one of my favorite traditions.  It is so fun to see the girls get so excited about writing little notes for each other and telling everyone the things that we love about each other. I leave out the box of stickers and paper in a cute red basket on the counter and encourage everyone to write at least 1 valentine per day.  I keep them all in a big zip lock bag and it it so fun to pull out all of the valentines from years past and see what we wrote or what pictures we drew for each other. Do you have any fun Valentine traditions?

Rice bag

So I've been trying to think of simple sewing things to make to help the girls learn how to sew. They ask ALL the time. And, as strange as it sounds I have never made these microwavable rice bags. 

 All you are going to do is measure how big you want it. In this case I did 2 rice bags and 1 flax seed bag. So I just placed the bag or rice on your flannel fabric and cut out 2 pieces. A front and a back. Or have your little girl cut it out :)

Make it however big or small as you want. We also made some pocket sized ones that I forgot to take a picture of :(    Next just sew or serge around the 3 sides.  You should be left  with a little pouch type thing. Fill it up with rice.

Then, being careful not to let the rice fall out, sew up the forth and final side. Your done. Throw it in the microwave for about 45 seconds and if will stay nice and warm for about 30 minutes.  My girls love them.  Perfect after a day of playing in the snow!

Snood

Remember this adorable dress I made for my daughter a couple of days ago.

Well I am equally excited about the fun stuff I was able to make for myself out of the scraps ! The dress had a very 90's large neck which I cut off when I made the dress. But, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out because it really was cute. It had buttons running down it and was a fun grey knit.  I didn't love it as a piece for a dress but I thought Ohh I could make a fun Snood :) I've been wanting to try one for a while.

One of my favorite blogs Cotton & Curls has 5 tutorials for snoods and they are all way cute. So check it out for an awesome tutorial (or 5 awesome ones:).

I'm excited about my new Snood and Kambria is excited that we get to be same same without being same same ;)

Adult dress to adorable little girls dress

After

Before

She is so ridiculously adorable right!! My Sweet little mischievous 4 year old is growing way too fast. She literally has like 5 things that fit. The problem is first of all she will only wear dresses. And 2nd of all she is in the same size as her 7 year old sister. It should be perfect right? They should just wear each others clothes no problem?? Wrong. This little cutie is very particular on her clothing. it has to be a dress and it has to be comfortable otherwise she refuses to wear it and sometimes it's not worth a fight.  So, when I found this very 90's sweater dress at the thrift store light bulbs went off and a refashion idea (or 3) was born!  So the dress was a size Large in ladies which is great because when you are doing a refashion the larger the better. 

 I started out by finding a dress that we already had that I could use as a pattern. I wanted to use the same bottom of the dress because I liked how it had a larger stripe on the bottom. So I simply layered it like the picture on the left.  I wanted to make it a little longer then the dress I used for a pattern, so I left some extra fabric along the bottom.


 I folded the sleeves in to show the seams along the body of the dress and simply cut along it. I added about an inch extra on either side for seam allowance and to make sure it would fit for a while. I also wanted to leave a little extra just in case the knit started to come undone before I could sew it.

Then, flip your new pieces inside out and pin along both sides. Sew or serge all the way up making sure you stop at the armpit so that you will be able to add sleeves later.

 Next, lay the sleeve you cut out, over the sleeve pattern you are wanting to use and cut it out.  If the dress you are refashioning doesn't have sleeves you can use the fabric you cut off or make it sleeveless. Be creative!  In this case I chose not to make the sleeves thinner. I know how my girl likes it and she doesn't like the sleeves too tight. So I decided to go with comfort. All I did was cut off some of the length.

Next pin the sleeves to the dress and sew or serge them on.




Once you have sewn up the sides and attached the sleeves the dress should end up like the picture below. 



Fold over the top of the neck, back and sleeves about and inch and pin all the way around.  Sew all the way around leaving a small opening and add some thin elastic. I just add the elastic and watch it getting smaller and eyeball it.  Once you get the size you would like cut the elastic and sew the 2 ends together. Then sew your hole closed that you used to put the elastic in and your done. 

I did tie a ribbon around the waist to break it up a little.

It turned out so adorable! And she loves it which is always a bonus :) Don't throw out all the scraps. In my next post I will show you the fun stuff that I made for myself out of the scraps! Love it!!

Make a scarf

My cute little sewing student has been over eager to start working on projects.  Since she's only 7 I thought we would start out with some non-sewing projects to get her used to cutting out fabric and having a fun finished  project to wear in a short amount of time.  She is really into scarfs right now so all we did was measure around her neck and see how long she wanted it. Then we just cut a strip out. It was 6 inches by 30 inches. Next we simply strips on both ends for fringe. No need for sewing at all :)

We did one in red and one in fun sparkly black Fleece.  So cute, and she is so proud which I absolutely love! She is also working on a fleece blanket for her sister.  She is super excited to surprise her with it once it's all tied. 

Cutest Pillows ever!

 

My awesome friend Heather brought over the cutest pillows ever for us at Christmas time. I've been meaning to blog about it for a while but we've been sick and life has been a little crazy.   Aren't they ridiculously cute? I love love how they turned out. 

 She followed my post from here to make them.  All you do is find a place mat that has fabric on both sides. Unpick a small section and stuff it with batting then once it's stuffed to your liking stitch it back up. You can use a sewing machine but it's probably easier to sew it by hand which is what she did here.  I just love how they turned out. She is so super nice to bring me some. Now she's got me thinking I need to make me some for valentines day! I'll be on the look out for some fun place mats :) 

Thanks Heather!! You're the best!
On a side note they are also looking to adopt and are the most amazing parent ever! Check out her blog here.

Add Sleeves to a Baptism Dress

 

 My Sweet Niece was Baptized this last weekend.  Isn't she so Darn cute?!!  

My Sister found this adorable dress online and completely fell in love with it.  The Only problem was that the smallest it came in was a size 10 and my cute Niece is a very small size 8.  She also preferred for it to have short sleeves.  I told her to go ahead and get it and I was sure we could make it work.  It was so easy to take in.  I simply flipped it inside out and had her try it on and pinned along the bodice.  We didn't need to do a whole lot to the skirt. The skirt had a layer on the inside to make it a bubble type skirt. I just tapered out on the inner layer of the skirt so that it would fall nicely and that's it.  Next I took a sleeve pattern to a more dressy pattern and cut out sleeves from some sheer fabric and attached them to the straps. I gathered it a bunch on top so that it would have that fun poof up top.  

Relatively simple and she looked like a princess on her special day!

Mommy & Me Skirts

 My girls both received18 inch dolls for Christmas. It was the number 1 thing on Kambria's list. With these American Girl type dolls they want all the fun accessories that go along with them. Let me tell you that you could spend a small fortune on the American Girl stuff. My girls got the knock off American Girl dolls and the accessories are still SOOO pricy. So I decided to make my own.  There are tons of blogs that are dedicated just to these dolls. I was shocked by how into it people get. I am certainly not that into it but the kids love it so the free patterns are good for me :)  There are lots of fun free patterns out there. Here is the one I used for the grey skirt below.  There are some other cute ones here.

Like mother like daughter

Deja got some money from her grandparents for Christmas. So, today I took her to Walmart so she could pick something out. She was looking for a Brave Doll but saw this kids sewing machine & literally started jumping up and down. I swear I didn't even try to coax her. I am so proud. :) I'm excited to start teaching her how to be a little seamstress. She's already asking if she can sell stuff in my boutique :) love this girl!