Sister Sunsuit/Sundress Pair

I found a tutorial online of how to make a sunsuit (or “bubble,” as I call it). Since the Little Miss has been wearing these almost exclusively this summer, I decided to try to make one. The first one I made was a refashion of a baby dress, but this one is from scratch. I purchased the remainder of the fabric on the bolt and it turned out to be exactly enough for the bubble for the baby and a simple sundress for the Peanut.

The sundress is basically the Sweet Little Dress (the same as this dress and any other dress I’ve made) but without sleeves. I made straps (thanks, Rae!) and ran some elastic through the top.

For the bubble, I used this tutorial but changed the bottom. I based it off of an existing outfit that the Little Miss has. Pretty proud of myself for that, and for getting the snaps to line up!

And totally randomly, the morning after I made these, the Crafterhours blog posted the same idea—making a dress for the older girl and making it into a romper for the younger! I love it!

Foray Into Foldover

I saw this Five Minute Skirt tutorial which used fold over elastic (FOE), and wanted to try it. Since it’s cut on the bias, it uses quite a bit of fabric, and if I’d make it for myself, it would use even more fabric. What’s a girl to do? So I made one for the smallest, most willing model in our house.Did you think I meant the baby? She’s small but not particularly cooperative when it comes to sitting still and being photographed. Sorry about Bitty’s lack of a shirt—she has a few she could wear with this skirt and I wasn’t inclined to make anything else once I finished.

And since the reason I bought FOE in the first place was to make headbands for the Little Miss, I made a coordinating one for Bitty. Here’s the skirt. It’s not really quite so odd-looking—I took the picture at an angle. I did fudge a little bit on the proportions, as Bitty’s ratios aren’t quite the same as a person’s (and that’s just her leg length—to say nothing of her man shoulders!) It took more than 5 minutes, but was not particularly involved.

Dress to Sunsuit Refashion

A couple of years ago, I bought this fabric and made a little sundress for the Peanut.  I was early in my sewing, and instead of actually making straps or anything fancy, i used ribbon.  I did use the excess fabric to make a diaper cover (which is nothing to write home about—you won’t see any close-up pictures of it.) Here is the Peanut in the dress.  She was such a cute little baby! (I think she’s 12 months in these pictures).   

A glimpse of the diaper cover:

Then along came the Little Miss, whose sizes—and seasons—didn’t match up with her sister’s.  She was able to fit into the dress this summer, though it was longer than it had been on her sister.  Also, since she’s four months younger, she’s not cruising and spends her days crawling.  Dresses are not so conducive to crawling.  I found this tutorial of how to make a sunsuit, and decided to refashion the dress into a sunsuit.  Easy peasy—I just needed to make the bottom of the skirt into legs.  I learned how to attach snaps, shirred the leg openings, and made nice straps for variety.  Here’s the Little Miss, showing it off:

When I get a chance, I’ll add a picture of the garment sans baby.

Ruffle My Feathers

Here’s my version of the Turkey Dressing/Can Can skirt made by Dana at Made.  I also love the fun, brightly-colored versions at Brown Paper Packages, but wanted to stick to the shades of brown, as I’m sewing for this fall’s wardrobe.  The girls already have enough summer dresses that we might need to find an additional church to attend just to have a chance to wear all of them!  Anyway, I’m moving on to my fall sewing and these skirts were first.  I fell in love with the turkey skirt the moment I saw it, and was elated to find that I could purchase the pattern.

 

   

 

 

Although the ruffles are fairly labor-intensive, the most difficult part for me was making the gathered tiered skirt that is the base of the skirt.  Gathering the ruffles was fun and gratifying.  One of my favorite parts of this project was the chiffon, which was soft and doesn’t fray, which means I didn’t have to do anything special to the edges of the ruffles.  My rotary cutter got quite a workout!

I made a skirt for the Peanut and a smaller skirt for the Little Miss.  I can’t wait for the girls to wear them!

Stay tuned for more!

Sweet Little Polka-Dot Dress

Again inspired to make more variations of the same dress pattern, and driven by the fact that the Little Miss outgrew her only red dress before the summer even got started—and waay before the Fourth of July, I created a little dress.  I based the design off of this dress, but didn’t make it out of a knit.

Let’s also discuss how much fun I’ve had shirring with elastic thread in the bobbin!  It’s all I can do to not shirr everything.  

Mom Shirt to Kid Dress Refashion

So I had this shirt which, being from Old Navy, lasted almost an entire season.  In fairness, I was nursing a newborn when I wore it, so it got a lot more wear and tear than a shirt belonging to a non-nursing person, who doesn’t stretch shirts out as much.  Anyway, it’s made of a lightweight knit fabric. Besides being stretched out, though, the part near the stomach got several small holes in it:

But I liked the fun pattern and soft fabric, and have been inspired by refashions like this and remaking this dress pattern, so I used the basic idea of this dress and made a dress for The Peanut: The front of the dress is the back of the shirt (which, lacking a V-neck, had more material—and no holes).  I made it as long as the fabric allowed and shirred the bodice part.  The back of the dress is actually made from the two sleeves, seamed down the middle of the back and then shirred as well.  I had the front of the shirt left (minus the section with the holes), so I made the ruffle for the bottom (and to add length), and also made the straps.

Here it is in a rare moment of my model cooperating:

And one of her favorite things is how springy it is when she jumps:

Cover the Boppy

Since I had a lot of fabric left that matched Little Miss’s nursery, I decided to try to make a cover for the Bobby that resides in her room.  I found a tutorial/pattern and printed it out.  Before I finished cutting out the pieces to tape together, I got bored, so I decided to fetch an existing Boppy cover to see if I could just make a pattern off of that.  I could, and I did. 

 

I’m not so good at sewing curved items yet…and I imagined that I centered the zipper, but once I turned the cover right-side-out, it was clear that I did not.

Denim Bloomers

I needed to get some jean shorts for the Little Miss, but then there was some car trouble that required fixin’, and I was suddenly on a “spending freeze.”  I remembered that I had some lightweight, stretchy denim left over from making jeans for Bitty Baby, so I decided to try to make some bloomers.  I used the basic tutorial found here, and smocked the leg openings (which was as easy as the tutorial promisedso much fun!).  I didn’t have a bloomer pattern, so I freehanded one based on this picture and sized similarly to an existing pair of her shorts.

 

They turned out as well as can be expected, and I added some fun detailing of faux pockets and side seams.

Hedgehog Appliqué

I’m a little obsessed with Hedgies at the moment, and found this idea and tutorial here.   I had a shirt of The Peanut’s that was a hand-me-down.  It was a nice shirt, but had a boring picture of a strawberry on it.  (Not all strawberries are boring; this strawberry was boring.)  Anyway, it was the perfect candidate of something to cover with an appliqué.  It’s only the second I’ve made, but I’m content with the final product.

And since it’s a girl hedgie, I gave her a rhinestone eye and nose and a pink bow for her head.

Plastic Bag Storage

I’ve needed a couple of grocery bag holders, and have been looking online to purchase one.  I didn’t even realize I could just make one until I happened upon the tutorial.  After finding the directions, I didn’t actually use them—I just guessed on what it should be like, made casing for elastic, attached a ribbon for hanging, and went on with my plastic-bag-reusing life.

This bag holder is in the nursery, as I sometimes use plastic bags for diapers that are too full/gross to carry all the way to the diaper Genie.  I used to just stuff a handful of bags in one of the drawers (which is not particularly safe once Little Miss can open drawers), but I had a lot of fabric left from making her curtains and crib skirt (and lamp shade…and accent pillow…and this ball).

Three Tote Bags

It’s no secret that I love tote bags, and based on their shape (squareish) and their dimensions (variable), I figured I could make one fairly confidently.  I found this tote tutorial which uses a dishcloth but could use fabric, and intrigued me by having a lining and interfacing, and made some tote bags.  The only changes I made to the directions were that I added a squared bottom and interfaced the lining of the straps.

I made three sizes of totes, not for the three bears, but for me and the girls.

There’s the littlest tote for the littlest one:

A medium-sized tote for the older daughter:

 

And a large tote with long handles for me: