Drop Waist Knit Dresses

Recently, I have been playing around refashioning t-shirts.  I trimmed down a few old adult tee's into some little girl nightgowns, but then I wanted to make some dresses.  I first tried a dress from scratch.  I constructed this completely from a maternity shirt that I have no intention of EVER wearing again in my life.  While it went pretty well, it ended up being about a size 4, and really did not fit Abigail.  I also didn't realize until after I washed this dress that I needed to be using a ball point needle.  Not to shabby for a first attempt.  It could have been cute on her, next year, but I scrapped it to make an even better creation.

My next efforts were based off of three t-shirts that Abigail already had that fit her.  I simply added a tube of material, cut from another t-shirt, to the bottom to make them little dresses.  Each dress is slightly different though they are all built on the same construction principle.  

This skirt is the least gathered.  It was constructed from a shirt of my eldest daughters that was too short for her to wear any longer.   I was able to stretch the t-shirt to its max girth to match the skirt addition.

 The Purple skirt was formerly a plain shirt of mine.  It was a very cheap t-shirt that had absolutely no shape, so its second life is a drastic improvement.  I needed to sew a gathering stitch around the tube before attaching to the top.  I'm thinking about adding a purple gathered ruffle around the bottom of the sleeves to make it more co-hesive.   

 This dress ended up having the most gathering of the bunch.  The skirt was the above mentioned maternity shirt that masqueraded as a toddler dress for a single day.  The skirt was twice the width of the t-shirt making the skirt much fuller than the others.  

I love these simple dresses for so many reasons.  

1. I don't need to find a coordinating bottom when dressing her in the morning.
2. I don't need to find a coordinating bottom when dressing her again a few hours later.
3. Only one piece of laundry to wash.
4. Only one piece of laundry to fold.
5. Only one piece of laundry to put away!

With 15 minutes of time, a $4.00 t-shirt from Target, an old t-shirt and one seam to sew, anyone can fill their little ones closet with cute every day play dresses!

Quick Fix - Changing Pad cover

I am a procrastinator.  I over plan, and under achieve.  This should be the vinyl saying on my craft walls.

I bought a terry cloth fitted sheet when I was pregnant with Abigail.  I did get it died as an experiment that wasn't all that successful as the brown is streaky, but the cover looks better brown than the yucky cream it came to me in.  Unfortunately, it didn't fit my changing pad, since it was a standard fitted crib sheet.  I tried to keep the excess fabric tucked under the pad, but honestly, I'm not that detail oriented!  I just used it as it was, and didn't really put much more thought into it.

Nesting comes in different forms, and for me, this just needed to be fixed.  Tonight!  

So while Kolton read The Storm Testament II to the family for bedtime, I turned the cover inside out and put the sheet onto the changing mat.  That allowed me to easily pin 4 places to sew new box corners and also able to cut the excess sheet away leaving an extra 1/2 inch allowance hanging past the table.   I also pinned where to sew 2 button holes for the safety belt to be threaded through.  That only took a chapter.

Once the kids were brushing their teeth and heading to bed, I quickly sewed the new seams for the box corners and 2 button holes. Then I took underwear elastic and zig-zag stitched that around the entire bottom of the sheet pulling the elastic taught around each corner.  15 minutes :) tops for this... and it only took me about 2 years to actually get done :)

  

Onesie Refashion

Abi has decided it is time to start learning to go to potty, which renders her onsies pretty useless. She has quite a few long sleeve onsies from winter time that still fit her so I have decided to make them work for a little while longer.

Using my sewing scissors, I trimmed right above the leg binding all around the bottom of the onesie first, and then slightly eased the curve to be a bit less dramatic. I then just set my sewing machine to a wide zig-zag and pulled the cut edge taught while stitching to create a lettuce effect. Since it does not require turning under a hem the shirt is still plenty long enough for her. If summer ever arrives I think I will further refashion her onesies to be short sleeves. This refashion took about 5 minutes with Abi helping on each step. She knew they were her shirts and wanted to take part after all!

Up-cycled Ribbon Edge Lovey

Bell and I had fun today up-cycling an old dress of mine into a Ribbon Edged Lovey for Abby! I also had a nice stock pile of ribbons that I bought when making hairbows for the older girls so this project was made completely from things we already had. Bell had a lot of fun helping cut each of the ribbons, and then handing them to me while I was sewing. I roughly followed the instructions found on this blog. I did not applique anything but I did add a thin batting. This does make the lovey less likely to be carried nicely in my purse, but with all hard wood floors, everything is nicer with a little cushion. Now only to wait a few months for her to be interested in it!
This lovey is a bit smaller than I had wanted, some darling little one was helping out a bit too much when I was cutting this material. I plan to next make a quilted top and back it with fleece with no batting. I am going to try 24" with ribbon tags only at the corners... I think it will be a little more useful that way.

Faux Boppy

Because we chose to not find out the sex of this baby until birth, I had very little in the way of clothing and equipment. After all, if it was a girl, I would want to buy pink frilly things. Where as a boy needs lots of driving equipment printed on his clothes, and sweaters. There are few things cuter than baby boys in sweaters.
While shopping the past week, I looked at the prices of Boppy Pillows. Wowzers! $35 dollars. Their were also no super cute pink patterns, so it was pretty easy to pass up. Who pays that much for a pillow? You can make a pillow right?
A Googling I go.... and end up with this Boppy Sewing Pattern. I used some material I already had on hand to make the pillow form with. I must admit, my boppy is not as pretty as the commercial counterparts.... but I'm rather attached to my Franken-style stitching. Tomorrow I'm going to delve into the fabric stash and see what I can come up with for a cute cover.