Warhol Dresses

 

I really love how these Warhol Dresses turned out!  They were made using another wonderful tutorial from Dana at MADE. 

 

The girls really like how soft and cozy they are.  Another plus is that I was able to make both of these dresses from old pieces of clothing of mine.

I used a navy blue maternity shirt (which I don’t plan to ever need again) and this “lovely” pink dress.  (Does it make it any better if I tell you that I used to wear it when I was  a Kindergarten teacher?  No?  O.K.)

 

The Warhol Dress pattern only goes up to a size 4 and my girls wear an 8.  I used the Pillowcase Dress pattern from Little Big Girl Studio to help me get the right size.  The Warhol Dress pattern is on the left and the pillowcase dress pattern is on the right.

 

I laid both patterns on top of each other so that I could get the size from the pillowcase dress pattern but have the shape of the top of the Warhol Dress pattern.  I then traced it out on freezer paper to make my own pattern.

 

 

I was trying to eek out two dresses for my girls out of this one dress of mine so I copied the pattern twice so that I could get a better visual of the layout.  I folded the dress in half to see if it would fit.  As you can see in this photo, the pattern overlaps by about 3” in the center. 

   

I decided to add a strip of the navy blue fabric from the shirt to make it work.  Then I got the idea to add some ruffle.  It was super easy!  You don’t have to finish the edges because knit doesn’t fray.  I just cut a long strip of fabric ( It should be around 2 times as long as the length of the dress. 

 

Then I set my stitch length to the longest setting and increased the tension to the maximum setting.  I sewed right up the center of the strip and it pretty much gathered up on it’s own.  I just gave the threads a little extra pull and it was perfect.  Then I put all of the settings back to normal on my machine and sewed the ruffle to the center of the dress.

 

 

 

Now I did have a little setback with the next step.  Do you ever have that experience while sewing that something isn’t going to work out but you don’t listen to that little voice and you do it anyway and yep, you were right big disaster?  Maybe this is just me.

 

Here is what happened.  I wanted to use the blue fabric to make the ties but because it was a maternity shirt, the fabric was super stretchy.  I figured that the weight of the dress would pull too much on it but I went right ahead and sewed it on anyway.

 

All of the gathers came out because the blue fabric was so stretchy.  It also didn’t hold up the dress at all.  I tried it on my girls and it was beyond huge!

So I had a little 3 HOUR date with my seam ripper!  It took this long because when I sew with knits I always use a triple stitch.  It wasn’t a total waist of time though because I got to sit back and listen to some classical music.  Oh who am I kidding I watched the season finale of Biggest Loser!   :)

Once I finally got the blue ties off, I gathered the top of the dress again and then sewed the begeez out of the gathers so that they wouldn’t shift.

 

Next I cut out ties from the pink fabric.  I made the ties a bit wider and I sprayed the fabric with some spray starch to make it easier to work with.  

 

Then I pinned it really well before I started sewing.

 

 

Guess what?  I like the pink ties better.

 

   

 

I really liked this pattern and I love the end results even more!

         

 

Happy Sewing!

Happy Memorial Day!

 

O.K. so I’m a day late.  I hope that all of you had an enjoyable holiday weekend.  We had some great weather and lots of fun!

 

 

A little bit of relaxing

 

 

What’s better than finally getting to run barefoot in the grass?!

 

Hmmm… how about getting to burry your cousin in the sand!

 

And then getting to do this afterwards!

 

 

You may have noticed the matching shorts and skirts in the first photo.  I have been eyeing this madras fabric at Joann’s and it was 40% off last week so I had to buy some.

I used two tutorials from Dana at MADE.

 

  

The Simple Skirt

 

 

The Kid Shorts

Both tutorials were really simple and easy to follow.  I would recommend both for the beginning sewer. 

 

  

Hope you had a great weekend!

Using Your Silhouette to Make Freezer Paper Stencils

I love making freezer paper stencils.  Have you tried it yet?  In the past, I did it the “old fashioned” way by cutting out images with an exacto knife.  This method actually works very well.  See my previous posts HERE and HERE.  However, the Silhouette machine does speed up this process quite a bit. 

The girls wanted to do a “project” so I let them pick out which Silhouette shapes they wanted.  We cut the shapes out of freezer paper using the Silhouette.  Next iron the freezer paper to some shirts to make your own stencils.

 

 

The girls did all of their own painting.  They were very excited about being able to make all of the decisions about how the shirts would look.  (paint color, shapes, layout, etc.)

 

Next comes the fun part!  After the paint dries, peel off the freezer paper to revel your finished artwork.

 

Viola!!!

 

Lastly, model your new shirts!

 

View Full Album

 

Happy Crafting!

 

Go Vote For Your Favorite Spring Top

 

 

I just wanted to remind everyone that this week is Spring Top Voting Week over at Made by Rae.  I just voted and man was it hard to decide!  There are so many lovely tops to choose from.  Go have a peek!

Happy Voting!

Tooth Fairy Pillow Giveaway Winner!

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!  Oh wait, my last post was about chicken dinner.  O.K. so just the winner part then.

 

The winner of the Tooth Fairy Pillow is……

 

Erin who said, “OH MY GOSH!!!  My daughter has 2 very wiggly teeth and no tooth fairy pillow yet.  I would love to win this for her!!!  I’m a new follower!”

 

Congratulations Erin!  I will be contacting you shortly.  I hope that your little girl loves it!

Friday Favorites: Perfect Roast Chicken

 

Don’t forget to enter the Tooth Fairy Pillow giveaway!  Click HERE to enter.  Giveaway closes May 14.

 

  

Look what I made!  I know, you’re probably thinking “O.K. it’s a chicken.  What’s the big deal?”  Well I have somehow managed to get to be 3# years old and have never cooked a whole chicken or turkey.  When it was just me and the hubby, I would just buy a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken at the market.  Now that we are a family of six those just don’t cut it.  Next I tried those whole Perdue chickens.  Ya know the ones that are pre-seasoned in the bag.  You don’t even have to actually touch the chicken.  Just cut a slit in the bag and pop it in the oven.  Now they are actually pretty good and are big enough to feed our family.  However, it is much more economical to make one from scratch so I finally took the plunge.

Now I wish that I had a camera rolling because we could have won some serious money on America’s Funniest Home Videos.  The first step in the recipe very simply states to remove the giblets.  No problem right?  Not unless you are a total spazz like me!  I kept reaching my hand into the chicken and then pulling it out at the last minute and squealing.  My little girls kept cheering me on.  “You can do it mommy!”  I finally reached in and pulled it out.  Oh, it’s in a bag!  Duh!  :)

Anyway, once we got past the giblet trauma, it was a really simple recipe.  The end result was soooo delicious and my kitchen smelled awesome!

Here is the recipe  or you can click HERE for the link.

Perfect Roast Chicken: Ina Garten

Ingredients

• 1 (5 to 6 pound) roasting chicken
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large bunch fresh thyme, plus 20 sprigs
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise
• 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter, melted
• 1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced
• 4 carrots cut into 2-inch chunks
• 1 bulb of fennel, tops removed, and cut into wedges
• Olive oil

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Remove the chicken giblets. Rinse the chicken inside and out. Remove any excess fat and leftover pin feathers and pat the outside dry. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the bunch of thyme, both halves of lemon, and all the garlic. Brush the outside of the chicken with the butter and sprinkle again with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken. Place the onions, carrots, and fennel in a roasting pan. Toss with salt, pepper, 20 sprigs of thyme, and olive oil. Spread around the bottom of the roasting pan and place the chicken on top.

Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh. Remove the chicken and vegetables to a platter and cover with aluminum foil for about 20 minutes. Slice the chicken onto a platter and serve it with the vegetables.

 

That’s it!  Serve up your yummy dinner!

 

 

 

 

Take in all of the happy faces of your cute little family members enjoying their chicken dinner!

 

We’ll except for maybe your husband who’s thinking, “Really, now we’re taking blog pictures at the dinner table?”  Sorry honey!

 

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to enter the Tooth Fairy Pillow giveaway!  Click HERE to enter.  Giveaway closes May 14.

Thrifty Sewing

Don’t forget to enter the Tooth Fairy Pillow giveaway!  Click HERE to enter.  Giveaway closes May 14.

 

I love my boys.  They often get left out when it comes to my sewing projects so I really love Celebrate The Boy month over at Made and Made by Rae.  However, sewing for girls is just so much fun!  As I mentioned yesterday, my friend Caryn and I sewed up a couple of T-shirt dresses for her little girl.  Basically you cut off the bottom of a store bought shirt and sew on a skirt.  It is super easy and cuts out a lot of tricky steps for a beginning sewer. 

When we cut off the bottom of the shirts, we were left with these already hemmed and sewn together scraps.  Well I just couldn’t waste those. 

 

I decided to pin them together and make a skirt for my friend’s daughter.  I sewed the white piece to the top of the pink piece to give enough length to the skirt.  Then I folded the top of the white piece down 1/4” two times to make a casing for the elastic.

 

I inserted the elastic into the casing with a safety pin and added a cute little appliqué flower from the scraps of fabric we used to make the original dresses.  Cute and simple.

 

 

I also had a bottom of a shirt from a t-shirt dress that I had made for my girls a while back.  I made the elastic casing in the same way.  Even though the bottom was already hemmed, I sewed over it again with some green thread and used a fancy stitch.  Lastly, I used some flocked heat transfer and cut out her initial on my Silhouette. 

 

 

This was my favorite thrifty project of the night.  I was able to make a reversible top out of the scraps from the skirt fabric.  I needed to add a little extra length and I had just enough fabric to sew to the bottom of the shirt.  This reversible shirt comes from a free tutorial on From an Igloo.  Click HERE for the tutorial.  Click HERE for my previous post were I used this tutorial to make reversible dresses for my girls.

 

Here it the little sweet cakes modeling her new shirt.

 

 

She is also going on her first trip to Disney World so I had to make her this Amelia top like the one that I made for my girls.  You can read my post about it HERE.

 

Happy Sewing!

Don’t forget to enter the Tooth Fairy Pillow giveaway!  Click HERE to enter.  Giveaway closes May 14.