Niece's Gift

I told you all I was working on a skirt for my niece, so here it is, a mixture of a circle and circle square skirt- square over circle, with a rick rack trim because she's as girly as they come... when she wants to be. I think the rick rack on both layers brings them both together nicely and pulls out another color from the birds.

As you can see, I also made a few hair bows and a shirt to match.
I will say the colors in this photo don't quite do the pinks justice. You can see on the sleeve of the shirt how close the shirt and bird are; and you can see how the darker berry pink works with the birds on the skirt but for some reason all together it just doesn't look right in this picture.

When I make my family gifts I tend to buy something to match because I make it because I love it- and them, but I don't want it to be thought that I make it because I'm cheap (believe me, this skirt wasn't cheap). So I looked for a shirt to match this skirt, and I couldn't find ANYTHING!!! The cream base and autumn colors just aren't common for little girls. I did find one shirt that was a cute cream with a lace chest overlay, but it wasn't in her size (in any of the local stores, I checked). So as I was taking a piece of the fabric with me to every store to try and match, I finally found this plain pink at Hobby Lobby, but it was just that- plain!! So I used a little Heat N Bond to make it match!
(Here's a close up:)

And here's a close up of the bows:

A simple folded fabric flowers. She tends to prefer pig tails, so I thought I'd make one for each side.

That's all for now,
Jo!!

New Skirt, Again

Every time I finish with one skirt, another girl wants one.
The last one I did for KK was so "twirly" that KL wanted one too.

So, after some looking around I finally found a cute fabric (in the remnants mark down at Hobby Lobby- even better) and their tulle was on sale at the same time, so I decided why not tulle as the lower layer(s).

Here's the finished project:

 

Of course, she wore a dress today, so it looks a little silly, but she was so excited to try it on (not that you can tell from the photo.

One again, this is the same skirt I made for KK. It's just squares of fabric with a circle cut out for the waist, and thick elastic for the waist band. But for something so simple, it always turns out so cute!! And they love to just spin and spin and spin while wearing it.

Want proof? Here's a few more photos:

That's all for now,
Jo!

PS- I am making progress on other projects too, but I've had some sciatica acting up and nesting has been making me clean the whole house and toss a lot of garbage, which wears me out but I can't seem to stop. I've also made a few minor repairs that aren't worth blogging about. I promise I'm still crafting, just also busy with other things too.

New Skirt

This project has been done a while, it's just taken me some time to write it up, sorry.

Here's a new skirt I made for KK.

Look at that twirl!! Isn't it so fun!!

It's really a very simple skirt (and even easier if you use a jersey instead of cotton like I did).
The directions are here (sorry that it take you to page where you have to follow a link for the actual directions, but I wanted you to see the actual skirt instead of just the instructions).

I found the cute circle fabric at Goodwill for $.88- and it was 5 ft long!! That's almost two yards of fabric for less than a dollar!! Hello budget friendly!!

And the under layer of teal came from a mismatched set of pillowcases I was given from my aunt.

As you can see, I made my under level a little longer to show off more of the plain teal. (It's pretty much a perfect middle between the two teals on the circles.) Also, this was pre-hemming, so that's why it looks a little uneven- because it is.

After hemming, I attached the pieces together and then added a thick elastic waist band.

We decided on gold, it almost looks like natural turquoise, between the teals and brown circles with the gold glittery waist- I love it!! (And so does KK!!)

One last shot of the finished project:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Polka Dot Layered Skirt

I know most of the crafts have been mine recently but come summer there will be more kid involvement I promise. For now I have a cute skirt for you.

There's an even cuter girl there too, but you'll see her later.

I bought the gray and white polka dot fabric (and the pink too) on sale at Hobby Lobby as a remnant fabric. I used them together for one of the teacher's gifts and liked the combination. As I was working on the teacher's gift KL told me she wanted a skirt made with the polka dots.

(A month later) I measured her waist and down to her knee (even though she wanted it longer but I knew the layered plan she didn't). She's a tiny thing!! Seriously! Her waist is just 21" (she just turned 6 - 21" is usually a toddler's measurement not a kindergartner's).

Anyway, I looked for an online tutorial but didn't really find what I was looking for so I picked what I wanted from a few different and here's how it turned out.

I took my fabric (which was just shy of double her waist so 40" was my width measurement). I started with the 11" (from waist to knee) and added 1" for bottom hem and 1/2" for top hem. Then, since she wanted it long went ahead and rounded up to 14" (so the first layer is 14"x40"). The in-between layer is a netting with a striped ribbon hem, since I didn't have to fold up I took away the extra inch to hem but made it 2" longer, so it was 15" long (15"x40"). The third layer, the pink, was another 2 inches longer with the added hem so it was 18" wide (18"x40").

After making the pattern I cut the pieces.

I measured the ribbon to 40" but forgot that there's a little stretch in the netting so it  was easier just to leave it on the roll as I pinned it on.

I then attached it by sewing a double layer hem (sewn individually, I tried using my double needle but because of the stretch it just caused a mess), with a short stitch length, I used a 2 on my machine. (I apparently don't have a picture of just this but you will see it later in the layers.
Next I needed to stitch up the sides. Since I have never worked with a netting before I looked for tips online, and didn't find much, but I saw a tip for working with tulle to tape the edges together. Since I had painters tape (low tacky) nearby I thought I'd go for that.

All it did was gunk up my needle, so I wouldn't recommend this :( I tried pinning the edge together but the pins were more in the way than anything else. I decided it would probably be easiest to just take it slow and zigzag stitch up the side- that did work!! :) Yay!

Next I pinned the sides and of the other fabrics.

Then I stitched them up and ironed the seams. I used a pretty thin edge knowing KL would want as much fullness as possible. 

Next I layered them to attach at the top. (In case you're curious I didn't do the bottom hems until the end so I could make sure the layers laid how I wanted the to.) 

Here's how to layer them. Start with the bottom and put it inside the middle layer, facing the correct way (so right sides up, also if adding more layers just keep the in the right order). The top layer, however, goes on the inside, still right side up (so it will fold over the other layers, tucking the hem underneath. 

Here it is in a picture: 

Then I went ahead and lined them up and pinned them together and stitched them together. 

Next I ironed the hem, in several different directions until I was happy with the way the skirt folded over. 

I threw some pins in to makes sure the layers didn't shift and then top stitched as close to the top as possible. (At this point you should be working with the skirt with all layers in proper places. After sewing it, all you had to do was flip the top layer from the inside to the outside.) 

(I use tape, I've seen others use rubber bands, to lengthen the guidelines.) Like I said, as tight as possible, just to keep the layers from slipping. 

Next I went to working on the bottom hems. I started by measuring from the top of the skirt so my length would be pretty even. My net layer turned out to be 14.5" (right where I wanted it to be- score!!) so I decided on 12.5" for my top and 15.5 for the bottom, I know this was a change in plan but it just looked like too much at 16.5". 

Anyway, like I said, I measured 12.5" down from the top of the skirt and put pins in the skirt in about 8-10 places, and then folded at those marks and pinned (I wish I took a picture of this, I didn't, I'm sorry!! But here's a photo of how I measured). 

I ironed my first fold ( you can see it at the 12.5" mark above). Then I pinned the second fold by folding the the first section in half and ironing that edge down. 

Then I folded up the ironed lines and ran them through the sewing machine to complete the hems. (I made the pink a little higher since I had the extra fabric to play with). 

Next I made a casing and ran the elastic under the top hem. 

Finally to finish it off, I ran a zigzag stitch across the very top hem to help hold the elastic in place and keep it from rolling. (It could probably be a little wider but I still caught the elastic so it's good.) 

Here's the picture of KL wearing it. 

She seems to like it pretty well, and I think it turned out pretty cute too, 

That's all for now,
Jo!