Flower Girl Bubble Dress (es)

A few months back, one of my good friends sent me a picture of a really cute Taffeta Flower Girl Dress. My first thought was, that's so cute. Followed by, I could totally make that. Well that's exactly the reaction she was looking for. And while I was making one, why not 2, since she has twins.

Sure!! I love this kind of stuff. Plus I was really excited to work with a new style (a bubble dress).

So, I began by analyzing the inspiration dress found here. My first concern was the straps, but the mom said it didn't really matter. Since the dress was for 2 year olds and it was going to be outside, I opted to make a little bit wider strap.

I wanted to work with a pattern I have used and felt comfortable with, you may recognize it as Eliza's Christmas Dress.  

 

I began by cutting out all the pieces in a basic white cotton. This was to be the "lining". Once I had the pieces cut out, I cut the straps a bit smaller then the pattern shows, and I dropped the neckline a little. If you need directions on cutting and assembling patterns, see my previous post entitled "The Christmas Dress".

The next step was to cut the pieces out of the taffeta. For the bodice, I used my lining pieces as the pattern, since I had made changes to the initial pattern. For the skirt pieces, I used the pattern, HOWEVER, for a bubble dress, the idea is that a part of the top layer folds under and attaches to the lining. Therefore, the top layer has to be longer then the bottom. How much longer is up to you, I chose 4 inches, so that there would be roughly a two inch bubble at the bottom. I think this was a good length, given the size of the dress (2T).

Once you have everything cut out, you can assemble the top/bodice as the directions note in the pattern. Begin by sewing the shoulder seams on the lining and then on the top piece. A side note, when you make small clothes like this, it can be difficult to assemble the tiny pieces. I had issue hemming the arm holes. I found on the second one that if you sew the arm holes together first, then sew the seam under the arm (attaching the back to the front) it was easier. I sadly, did not take a picture of this, so if you have questions, please comment on the post, and I will try to explain better. 

So, with the shoulders together, lay them right sides together and sew the neck hole, and the arm holes. Remember, since we didn't sew the underarm/side, the arm "hole" is more like a half circle.

Once these are sewn, flip it wrong sides together and press. I also sewed a top stitch, since the taffeta was slippery and I wanted it to stay. Once it is flipped, now sew the side seam, under the arm. Now you are done with the bodice. Below is a picture of the bodice completed, showing the two layers together.

 

The next step is to assemble the skirt. Begin by sewing the sides seams, and the back seam. Do this for the lining and the top layer separately. Then lay the two pieces together, right sides together and align the bottom edges. I know this sounds backwards, but trust me. Align the bottom edges and sew them. After you flip the wrong sides together, it should look like this. (in the photo, the bottom edge is actually at the top).

 

Now align the top edge and you will see your bubble form.If you did it the other way, and aligned the top edge first and attached it to the bodice, there would be no clean way to sew the bottom seam. Trust me, this is much easier. Here is a picture of the bubble after you flip the skirt. 

Don't sew the top edges together. You are going to work them onto the bodice separately. 

Begin by finding the middle of the bodice and the middle of the skirt. Pin them together. Then pin the side seams of the skirt to the side seams of the bodice. It will look like this. 

 

 You will note the massive amount of fabric between your pins. This is where you will pleat. You can, if you like, gather the material by basting a line and pulling the threads to gather. However, I prefer to pleat it.

So working with one layer at t time, pleat the skirt to the bodice. I would suggest pleating the lining, then sewing that to the bodice, then pleating the top layer and sewing that. Otherwise you will be trying to sew through a lot of layers, with pins, and pleats and there is a lot of room for errors.

Below is a picture of my pleats.

 

After you sew the skirt to the bodice its zipper time! I hate zippers. They are the bane of my sewing existence. But it had to be done. The best way to learn to sew on a zipper is to read the directions that come with it. 

Once the zipper is done, so are you! Here are the two dresses side by side.

  

And the back of one, front of the other. The last thing we will do is attack some silk flowers to the bodice to match the bride's dress. The great thing about that, is it will hide any imperfections in my sewing! 

 

 Total cost was $35 for both dresses. Total time was about 6 hours, although the second one went much faster then the first. Inspiration dresses $59 each, plus tax and shipping= approximately $160. Estimated savings to my friend, $120!

Butterfly Garden Collage

I was really excited when I turned the page and saw that projects 13-18 were a Butterfly Garden Collage. I am planning on taking the kids to the Tucson Botanical Garden's Butterfly Magic exhibit next week, and this is a great prep-project for them.

The idea is to cut out different butterflies, bugs and flowers, and make a giant collage. Since Riely is only 3, he's not so skilled with the cutting. So I used my Slice cutting machine and cut out a ton of different sized and shaped butterflies.

Project List:
13- Basic Butterfly
14- Perching Butterfly
15- Dragonfly
16- Make A Bug
17- Bee
18- Flowers

I will start by showing you a picture of the book. The idea is to cute out the shapes of the butterflies, etc, color them, and then glue them together to make a scene.

Like I said, I used my cutting machine and cut out a bunch first.

 

Then I put a big piece of paper down on the table. I told Riely to start my coloring grass. (love that my kid does crafts in his underwear, just like mama).

 Next, I asked him where he wanted me to glue them down. I thought it best to keep the glue in my hands for this project. After they were placed, he decorated them with patterns, added leaves and stems to the flowers.

He really enjoyed decorating the wings on the butterflies (and the fact that he could sit on the table)

Here is our final project (I numbered them according to project number). 

I was really happy with this one, and I think Riely enjoyed it. I taped it to the wall a crawling height, and Eliza keeps crawling over and looking at them. And Riely is really proud showing off his art work!

Thanks for reading and have fun!

Decorating Eggs

Projects 5-12 were all about decorating eggs. Now this wasn't decorating eggs in the traditional sense. This was much messier, and crazier...but I think they came out cute. I am going to try this again around Easter, but get some bigger eggs.

Project List:
5- Covering an egg
6- Painted eggs
7- Paper Patterns
8- Rocking Eggs
9- Monster Eggs
10- Easter Bunny
11- Baby Eggs
12- Chick

So to get started, no matter which project you are making, you will need

Eggs, glue, tissue paper, and markers. Also, a large bowl to crack the eggs into.

Start by tapping the eggs lightly on the side of the bowl and cracking them open. Try to get a clean break. I, apparently, am really bad a cracking eggs cleanly, so it got a little tough in the next few steps. Since you don't need the egg whites or yolk, crack them into a bowl and you can make scrambled eggs later (or fried rice like we did!)

Once you have the egg out, rinse the egg shells and let them dry. Then CAREFULLY apply some glue to the cracked edges. Again, this was a hard task for me. So instead, I took a stripe of tissue paper, put some glue on it and wrapped it around the crack.

Then you can take more glue and fill in any cracks around the egg shell.

After the glue dries, comes the fun part! Rip up bits of tissue paper into small pieces. Then put glue on the egg and add the paper over top, until your entire egg is covered.

That is the extent of project 5, covering your egg with tissue. But did we stop there? No way....Here is our painted egg (6)- although we used markers for less mess. 

 

And our paper pattern (7). The book says to cut out shapes in the tissue paper and glue them on. Riely tried to make a bird, but in reality it is just wings on an egg. :)

 

 Next is our rocking egg (8). For this one, you put  a small rock or marble into the egg so that it rocks and rolls around.

Project 9 is a monster egg! The book suggests cutting horns out of paper and gluing them on, but Riely chose a more "jack-o-lantern" type monster.

Project 10 and 11 are to make a bunny and a baby bunny. But since I only had one size egg, we ended up with 2 same size bunnies. One which got in a fight with project 12, the chick egg, and therefore is not pictured.

 All in all, I think this was a fun project and a great way to re-purpose egg shells! Now, if only I were better at cracking them, I think it would have been a bit easier.

Have fun!

365 Things to Make and Do

Well, its 2012, and its time to make New Year's Resolutions, right?

The whole point of starting this blog was because a few months ago, I purchased a book called "365 Things to Make and Do" by Fiona Watt. I decided I was going to take the 365 challenge, and attempt to do an activity per day with my kids in 2012. And I decided to blog about it! If you want to follow along, you can get the book On Amazon for $16 ish.

So, full disclosure, I work part time, so my plan was not necessarily to do one activity each day, but I am going to make an effort to do at least 7 per week, and stay as close to the actual count as possible.

Luckily the book's activities are lumped together in groups of similar projects. So this post will show activities 1-4 which were completed on January 8th (I know, I'm already behind!)

 Activities 1-4: Drawing Castles

The idea is to use the pictures of the castles in the book as a basic guide, and draw 4 different castles:
1- Basic castle
2- Knight's castle
3- Princess castle
4- Spooky castle

Well, the fist 2 aren't bad, if I do say so myself. I think Riely and I did a great job of capturing the basic shapes and putting our own spin on them.  (Don't mind the giant crack in my scanner glass that lead to the marks on the pictures)

Now, Castle 3 was Riely's attempt on his own, and its not exactly the same as the book, but a valiant effort for a 3 year old. 

Then there is daddy's attempt at castle 4. It was supposed to be spooky, but for some reason its under water. I'm not sure he understood the point of the activity- that is to look at shapes and recreate them. But a nice castle non-the less. 

So, 4 down, 361 to go. Tonight we will attempt 5-12, decorating egg shells with tissue paper. Stay tuned!