Faux Under Shirt Tops....

I found this adorable tutorial over at Craftieness Is Not Optional and just had to share it with all of you! I love the layered look without all of the "bunchieness" from trying to get your kiddos to wear two shirts and a plus - they wont get too hot wearing them. :) Have a good week!

Spring Skirt Tutorial (Part 1)

Well, welcome back! It has taken much longer than I anticipated it would but I do finally have something for you! Raise your hand if, at some point, your life has been on an extremely crazy schedule..... Yep that's exactly what's going on over here haha. Though I promise you this skirt it's self doesn't take long at all, only the figuring out when to squeeze in time for it... Which I did from about eleven o' clock last night until about 12:15 and all I have left is to make / add pockets. If you're a more experienced sewer you could probably whip it out in half the time ;) I had to improvise a bit and that took some stopping and thinking and more stopping and thinking/revising original plans, not to mention I had no plans for this skirt- no tutorials - no sketches... etc. All completely out of my head at the last minute, which is pretty cool NOW that I think about it... Last night I found myself, asking myself, if I was nuts a few thousand times though.

Now to get started...

This is Baby Bella's skirt.

First of course you're going to need to pick out your fabric.... I knew I wanted to use a cute girly pattern and happened to have quite a bit of this sitting in one of the bunches of fabric my sister in law gave me a little while ago, perfect for the spring and I love the texture! **This tutorial is for about a 6-9 month skirt**

You will need-

Main fabric: cut at a slight angle (shown below)

24.5" long X 6.5" wide 

Top strip:

24.5" long X 2.5" wide (I had two 12.5" strips instead of one 24.5")

Bottom strip:

24.5" long X 4.5" wide(I had two 12.5" strips instead of one 24.5")

These measurements include 1/4 in. sewing allowance.

Elastic (1/2 inch) - I did not measure unfortunately, just kind of guessed... About 14.5 inches?

Iron - this is optional but does make it easier to keep things straight and lined up.

Getting started you will want to make sure you cut out all of your pieces so that they match up and you don't have to go back and do that later.

Take your "bottom strip" of fabric and fold it in half long ways....So that it is now 2 1/4" X 24.5". Iron it real quick for the best results - so you can keep it folded & straight. Now fold each of the edges of that (longways) toward the crease you just created. Kind of like this:

Once you have done that you can fold it back in half and start pinning it to the bottom of the "main fabric" and then sew.

**The seam you see in the picture is because my fabric was not long enough - I took two 12 1/2" long strips and sewed them together. If you need to do this also, I highly recommend doing it before you attach it to the skirt (like I have here) and line it up so that both seams will be on the sides of the skirt and not in the front and back.**

Once you have sewn the strip all the way across the bottom of the skirt its time to do the same for the top strip... When you are done with this your "skirt" should look like this (minus the pocket - that is a work in progress/idea at this point):

Take note, the sides are cut at an angle -
This is so the skirt flairs out slightly and doesn't fit too snugly around the legs.

Now you are ready to pull the elastic through the skirt. This is the fun part haha! Get a safety pin and attach it to the end of your elastic so you will have something to hold onto, then pull it through the "top strip"/ top white section. After this I sewed the ends of the elastic together *shown in the following image* - (you may have a better or easier way to do this - if you do PLEASE SHARE.... I am a total newbie to the sewing world haha.)

Again forgive my picture taking skills, :) this was taken before I trimmed the extra thread but you can see that I have sewn the elastic (ONLY) together.

Finally with the skirt inside out you will want to sew the edge of the skirt closed using a zig-zag stitch or a serger... I do not have a serger so I opted for a close zig-zag stitch. Now that I think about it I should have gotten a picture of that as well... Just make sure you do it really close to the edge - as close as possible without it going over the edge... If that makes sense? I will make sure to get a picture next time.

Now your skirt should look like this:

Now I just need to make and attach the pockets. I'm thinking something along the lines of the pocket shown above, I will post a mini tutorial on that too.

Until then, feel free to share if you have easier / better ways of accomplishing any of the steps in this tutorial, or if you have any questions at all - I would LOVE to read them!

XOXO

A Little Something Extra...

Last week I had NO IDEA what to make for dinner because I completely forgot to thaw meat and desperately needed to go shopping... This happens quite often actually...The forgetting to thaw and plan dinner and in turn completely winging it- Nothing too new haha!

What do you do when you run into a situation like this??? OF COURSE! Breakfast for dinner! So, I was out of pancake mix, I usually use the blue bag/box, red writing.... Yeah that one... I'll remember what it's called I'm sure after I post this... Anyway, I really wanted to make breakfast because it's QUICK, EASY and always GOOD. So, I get on the internet and start looking for pancake recipes. Let me just tell you before we get any further here, the last two pancake recipes I tried were complete failures! As in, they made me decide the pancake mix from a box was the ONLY way to go.... Until this night.... It was getting later and later and again I was pretty desperate with not alot of options to choose from. Searching, searching, searching and DING! I found a pancake recipe and immediately pray that it turns out even a tinsy bit better than the last two.  (otherwise I'm SURE Dustin will never let me cook pancakes again haha!)

...cooking, cooking, cooking... and then comes the taste test.............. I believe I heard angels sing! Ok, ok, ok maybe not exactly but pretty darn close! This pancake recipe is not only BETTER than the last two, it is BETTER than the pancake mix in a box!!!! This will now be referred to as my very favorite pancake recipe EVER. Yes, it is THAT good.... Even better, the whole family loved it too!

Here is the new famous pancake recipe:

You will need:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 large eggs

1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups of milk

2 tablespoons of melted butter

2 teaspoons of cinnamon (or to your liking)

2 teaspoons of vanilla (or to your liking)

Instructions:

In one bowl mix (with a whisk) baking powder, sugar, cinnamon and salt. In a separate bowl whisk together the eggs and 1 1/2 cups of milk, then slowly mix this into the flour mixture until smooth. Blend in the melted butter and vanilla. Finally cook how you would normally cook regular pancakes... Cover in delicious maple syrup, or eat plain - both have been tested here and either way these pancakes ROCK!

**side note: if you have bacon - BAKE it instead of frying it - SOOO much better!** :)

Getting Caught Up

Totally got behind here, it has been one heck of a week! I will start with last week.... I got a call saying I was hired (as a temp. for now) for a great company out here entering bills - it's the night shift so that I am still able to be at home with my girls during the day... Not sure it gets any better than that! So I started this last Monday and unfortunately haven't had much time for crafting.... Or anything else aside from household chores for that matter haha. I am now getting caught up! That is a promise! ;)

So, that being said... I HOPE to have something knocked out and ready to post for you guys by Monday when I go back to work. :) For now here's one of my current favorite tutorials...

Becky from Ucreate has posted this wonderful notebook folder tutorial over at Riley Blake Designs:

All photos courtesy of Ucreate

Learning to crochet?

I have gotten a bit behind with everything happening all at once around here but I shal have a new project for you very soon! I received a few crochet hooks, yarn and tutorials on "how to crochet" this Christmas, so of course I had to remember a blog I stumbled upon a few moths ago.... :) I think THIS baby blanket is absolutely ADORABLE! So I decided it is going to be my first crocheting project.... I am getting the tutorial at Tales From Cuckoo Land.

Well, my very first crocheting "project" was when I was a kid - I would make "friendship bracelets" using just a basic chain stitch haha but that was as complicated as it got for me...

Hopefully in the next few days I will have SOMETHING to show you all. ;)

Until then, here are a few of my favorite crafty blogs:

Craftiness Is Not Optional

Centsational Girl

Make It And Love It

Ucreate

Check them out, have fun and most importantly... STAY TUNED ;)

* PS. If you have or plan to make this blanket as well, please do share!

My First Dress - Tutorial

Last Wednesday I told you all a little about the first dress I made and promised to figure out where I found the tutorial... Just when I thought I had lost the tutorial for good and there was no hope in finding it ever again... Guess what?! Yep, I found it. Haha, nothing is impossible. ;)

I found this tutorial over at Craftiness Is Not Optional, and it was actually a guest post from Little Big Girl Studio. At the time I just wanted to finally MAKE something with my new sewing machine (that I so cleverly wrecked the tension on... hehe... My last post explains this.), and of course I wanted it to be somewhat simple, cute, not intimidating... This "peasant dress"/MiniBoden knock-off seemed to fit the bill, and would have been easy enough had I not messed up all of my tension settings before hand... So before we start... Fix your tension settings!... Or if you've never touched them before - DON'T touch them. ;)

Now, before we go much further, I want to make it clear that I used this tutorial MOSTLY just for the fabric cutouts/basic instruction and winged it from there. Being fairly new to the sewing world I wasn't comfortable using quite the same technique she did with the elastic thread and opted to use elastic in a casing instead - which I will try my best to explain.

Also, this is for a size 2T dress. If your child is smaller/bigger you may want to research how much bigger your fabric needs to be because I haven't quite mastered all of that...

Basically I followed all of her instructions only making these "tweaks":
I had no fabric marking pen - I used white chalk instead
I had no elastic thread - I used elastic instead
I had no Hem Gauge - I winged my hem :)
I added ribbon and buttons

If you use elastic like I did you may want to add about an inch to your skirt length so that you can fold that over *toward the "wrong side"* 1/4in and then again an inch to create a "tunnel", or whatever you want to call it, for your elastic to go through. Sew close to the edge you folded twice, leaving about an inch open to string the elastic through. AND THEN follow her instructions on how to attach the skirt to the top. *trying not to sew over the elastic*

Before I created the "tunnel" for the elastic I added two button holes to the front of the skirt so that I could attach ribbon to the ends of my elastic and tie them together (making it easier to adjust on her) instead of having just elastic on the inside of the dress... I also thought it would be a cute addition. If you also decide to do this - you don't have to worry about leaving an inch of the casing open because you will string your elastic through one button hole and out the other.

For the elastic I used enough to go around my daughters waist ONLY 2/3 of the way... then added the ribbon to each end (sewing it on with a zigzag stitch).

For the elastic in the neck area she explains pretty well how to make that happen in step 6 of this tutorial.


I hope I didn't make this sound too difficult, it really isn't. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section below and I will try to answer them as best as I can, if I don't know the answer I will find it for you. Sorry also for the lack of explanatory photos, I had no idea at the time that I would be blogging about it. :)

My First Dress

...Well the first dress I've ever made...

I don't remember where or how I got my hands on the tutorial for this dress - I just spent an hour searching my computer AND the internet for something close/something that looked familiar.... and NOTHING... So I will add that to my list of things to keep looking for (haha) or perhaps I will break down and bring the dress out to examine what exactly it was that I did and create a tutorial from there... But for now, here are some pictures:

Please do keep in mind, this was only my second project, so I couldn't sew a straight line for my life! And to top that off, I was having terrible issues with my threading tension *because as soon as I got my machine I had to touch every knob, button, switch on my machine - :( including the bobbin tension (what was I thinking?!!!) Though luckily you cant see all of the imperfections in these pictures (thanks to horrible lighting and all the gathering hehe). And it isn't the WORST second sewing project ever... Right?? LOL.

I was just happy she could actually wear it! Haha

Basically this dress is about three pieces of fabric. The top/back w/sleeves, the top/front, and the "skirt"... Wait plus the pockets - so that's really a couple more pieces isn't it? Ok, I PROMISE I will get a real tutorial up in the next month or so, let me just figure out where I put it. ;)