Sunny Inspiration

My crazy 3 year old is full of strong opinions. Many involve sunscreen and photo shoots. Since I love a good challenge, I have been making her wear hats and long sleeves and have been timing photo shoots when she is engrossed in something she loves. 

In an effort to break in my new sewing machine (thanks to the husband and my mother for my early birthday/ Mom's day present), Sora helped me pick out a dress and fabric inspiration. She chose something with much wider sleeves, but I loved the idea of sewing in the knit sleeves. She also technically only picked out the main fabric - she is still working on coordinating fabrics it seems. I added 8 rows of shirring to the front top and 6 to the back. I also added 2 pockets as my crazy kid always needs a pocket for the garbage she is habitually picking up. 

I also decided to throw in a hat. It in no way coordinates, but it is reversible and the two prints kind of how together. Since she needs both long sleeves and a hat to avoid sunscreen, we get crazy combinations like this on an hourly basis (upon which time she gets soaking wet and needs a complete outfit change).

I used an existing bucket hat to create a pattern. I felt like a genius since I even used math to figure out circumference of the circle to make sure all the pieces would fit together, but it did not come together as easily as math would have made me believe and I had to take in a few seams here and there midway through the hat.

She also picked out the fabric for the hat. It took 2 - 1/3 yard strips and I steered her to some duck cotton fabric that was on sale.

And now that the water's gone, we'd better get going! Stay tuned for some car adventure travel tips and craftiness soon!

J Crew Inspired Dress

 I love the idea of using commercial dresses as inspiration for beautiful handmade dresses. My problem is that I'm picky and usually don't like most dresses. When I saw this Chambray Tunic at Crew Cuts, I knew I had met my match! Of course, it's already off the J Crew website, so I'm lucky I saw it last week. I pulled out some vintage teal dot fabric and set right to work.

I love it! I love the double stitch detail on the pockets and all the contrasting stitching. Unfortunately for me, Sora is already turning into a teenager who only sometimes appreciates her mama's hard work. I did finally convince her to work with me on a scientific experiment to see how much each pocket held, which meant she had to actually put it on.

She fit an average of 4 toys in each pocket. Hopefully her love of pockets will get her to wear this cute dress a little more often!

Road Trip: Doll Mummy Sleeping Bag Pattern

We are less than two months away from another epic road trip! In the first installment of the Road Trip series this spring, I have decided that the dolls are camping with us this year. I am working on some other doll camping concepts, mostly heavily influenced by this concept. I love this idea, but hate the dolls and soda involved. Instead, I decided to sew some mummy style sleeping bags for two of our dolls from Sora's dollhouse (from Plan Toys and Ryan's Room).  

Don't they look snug as a bug?

Dress Up Mania

Lately, we have been playing a lot of dress up at our house. Sora's obsessed with acting out scenes from Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood. Our dress up box was overfilled! I finally decided to do something about it.

I have been saving this box in the basement for a long time with a dress up closet in mind. My sweet husband cut the dowel and came up with a system to keep it in place with nuts and bolts. I had wanted handles for the "doors", but it's already full, so maybe having it open isn't a bad idea.

Now that we had more adequate storage, Sora was in need of more clothes for the closet. We scoured the thrift store for some essentials: a medical top, a tiny blazer, a slip, a bathrobe. We also scoured the dollar store and came up with a fireman's hat and a dinosaur head. 



After looking around on Pinterest, I found this tutorial for a reversible play vest. I really liked the red stripe edge from this tutorial, so I combined them by using bias tape around the edges rather than turning inside out. Perfect for both a fireman and a pirate!

 I also found this tutorial for a cape. This might be my new go-to pattern for gifts since it's so fun and easy!

I used laundry bags from the dollar store as my "fabric" for the cape. Admittedly, it's not my best work and I'm hoping to make another royalty-related cape out of actual fabric to make up for it.

I'm sure this will be an ever evolving closet for many years to come!

DIY Pocket Calendar

After hearing that Target sells pocket charts in their Dollar Spot, I waited all year (okay, a few months) until September to buy some. What a steal! After realizing how frequently my daughter was snacking throughout the day, I pulled out one of the pocket charts to create a flexible daily schedule. We drew pictures to represent the words, and my daughter loves it. We've been using it for a few months, and it works great!

 I had been intending to turn one into a calendar for next year, but Sora is currently obsessed with the days of the week. Every night at our evening pre-bed snuggle, she says, "Let's talk about tomorrow." Which is quickly followed by, "Let's talk about Tuesday (or Wednesday or Friday)."

To help her comprehend this better, I dug out my extra pocket chart, drew lines to divide it equally into seven sections (just under 2" wide), and sewed all but one pocket.

 It worked perfectly, and is a great addition to Sora's "cabinet of learning".

Toddler Belt

 In an effort to clothe my perpetually nude daughter, we pulled out her 3T clothes a little earlier than I had planned. Most fit fine, but she is very skinny, so I decided it was finally time to add a belt to her wardrobe.

This was such an easy, quick project, which I really needed after that pettiskirt! I went with stripes from the leftover doll skirts, made them four times wider than my D rings, folded the ends towards the middle, folded again and topstitched it all. Easy peasey lemon squeezie!

 The hardest part was finding a willing model. Maybe I need to resort to some type of bribery in the future?

Pettiskirt Success!

 Sometimes, it's hard to remember my crazy daughter is still only two. Her third birthday is rapidly approaching, and I'm in the midst of making her birthday outfit. I tried the no-sew tutu last year and wasn't very pleased with the results - it was always very static-y and never laid very well. It turned into a big ball of tulle. This year, I decided to go for the real deal and make an actual pettiskirt, using this tutorial as inspiration.

I ended up buying the chiffon rolls which are indicated in the tutorial, which was very convenient, but I didn't have any left over to work on tension! There wasn't any special instruction on tension or sewing in the tutorial, and I had a very hard time! I spent a week on this skirt, and most of it was repeating the same mistake over and over. I even swore off chiffon at one point and decided I need a new machine for my birthday (which still may be true - the machine I use is older than I am). I finally figured out, that for my machine at least, the tension needed to be just less than the mid-point (4 of 10) and that I needed to significantly increase the pressure on the presser foot. Once I figured all that out (by the time the skirt was almost done sadly), it was smooth sailing!

My daughter obviously has a purple obsession (I'm not sure where she gets that from) and loves the skirt. It has great flow and is perfect for all the spinning and twirling that she does!

Topsy Turvy Dolls

Finally inspired to make another doll after several semi-failed attempts, I chose to make the Margot doll from Wee Wonderful's book for my niece. Sora played with the doll, even naming it Emily Elizabeth, before sending it off to her cousin. I was able to secretly make another for Sora also.

 In order to make Sora's doll more quickly, I took some liberties with fusible tape rather than hand stitching all the clothes together. It worked well and looked fine! I also used marker for the face rather than embroidering it like I did for the first doll.

 Here is the first Margot. I used boucle yarn for the hair, which was very time consuming and hard to pull through with the needle.

Interestingly, each girl has a side of their doll that they strongly prefer, so there isn't much "dressing up" and "dressing down" going on, but they both love their little dolls, which is all that I can ask for!

Handmade Christmas Ornaments

Our daughter asked for a tiny tree this year, which gave us a great excuse to include only handmade ornaments! I've been waiting for this day for years.

Here are some of my favorites:

Football for Kyle. I used felt to sew this simple ornament a few years ago.

 Mini mittens for me. Back in the pre-child day, I used to love to knit.

 Sweater for me. To commemorate a sweater that I started pre-child being finally complete.

Paper balls. I love these ornaments! I made 9 from 7 12"x12" sheets (for $1 total). They are made of 12 pieces shaped like a flower with 6 petals each and interwoven together. I'm sure a few will be crushed during the year, but they are cheap and relatively quick to make.

Monrovian star. I didn't make this one personally, but since we bought it (for $.25) at a local museum, I have been obsessed with them! They will be featured in a later post.

And two owls for Sora. Both are self designed, with a lot of inspiration from Etsy browsing.

Hooded Sweatshirt Tutorial

 After sewing some brown and red pants for Sora, I realized that all of her sweatshirts had some shade of pink in them! I had to remedy the situation by sewing her a new, non-pink-related sweatshirt, and because I realize it's been a while since I've posted a tutorial, I decided to document the process for you.

 The hood was perfect for today's beautiful but slightly brisk fall weather.

 This is my husband's favorite sewn item, although he does say that about almost every non-girly item I make for Sora.

Little Blue Dress

 Sora's recent lack of napping has really put a cramp in my crafting! I surprised myself yesterday by making this entire dress in one day. Sora "helped" me cut out the pattern and fabric, and I finished sewing after bedtime. I was inspired by this tutorial and used this pattern as a template. This dress is ultimately part of Sora's Halloween outfit (part 1 of 3 - she's getting options this year), so it needed long sleeves to be warmer.

I used a woman's 3X shirt ($2.50 from the thrift store), and used the original buttons on the front to create the buttons down the back of the shirt. The sleeve ruffle was part of the original shirt as well (although I wish it wasn't).