Mini-skirt? Say WHAT? Or Double Trouble Polka Dots

Right after school started, Grace asked for what I thought was a "mini skirt"...  to which my reaction was "over my dead and lifeless body!"  She's four.  She should look four, not twenty-four!  Two days later, I realized that what she'd been asking for was a "Minnie Skirt"  as in, Minnie Mouse.  Fine.  But because we're Georgia Tech fans, red is in short supply in her closet, so she had absolutely nothing to wear with it, so I decided she needed a shirt to go with it, preferably long sleeved because winter was on the way.

Simplicity 1785 was my choice, primarily because it came in the sizes I needed and had the double sleeve that both Joanna and Grace love.  The skirt needed no pattern--it's a simple, gathered skirt with a tulle ruffle on the bottom.

I dug around etsy and found a Minnie Mouse patch, ordered the skirt fabric, and then started looking for polka dot knit.  By the time I found it, Christmas sewing was upon me, so it got put off.... until now.  All things being equal, if I make something for one child, I have to make something for the other, so I found a different Minnie patch with Nikki's name on it.  I realized that Gracie's Minnie outfit was perfect for this week's challenge and doable considering my technical difficulties.  Knits and I are still on a learning curve, and the white that was in my stash was kinda shifty, so I used some knit stay tape to stabilize the seams, including the back.

 I'd admired some "boutique" shirts on etsy with ribbon appliqued on them, but the asking prices were ridiculous.  Since red ribbon with white polka dots is easy enough to come by, I decided that I'd duplicate one on this project! If you're wondering about the "E", well, the world is a scary place, and after a friend of my brother's baby (he was literally, about four months old!) got his identity stolen, I got a tad paranoid and I try not to use the girls real names on the internet.  I've erased the name from the Minnie patch on Nikki's shirt, too, for my paranoia's sake.  The original plan didn't call for the plain, felt Minnie head on the skirt, but it just needed something on the skirt, and what's a Minnie Mouse skirt without Minnie?

And, of course, since they don't have any everyday bows that would go with this outfit, I had to make those, too.  The Minnie head is plain old craft felt and the bows are scraps of 1/8" ribbon.  I finished the whole thing at about 6:45 this morning, and Joanna was running late, so I don't have pictures of Gracie wearing hers yet...  But I've got pictures of Nikki, sans bows.

Despite her usual enthusiasm for hair bows (she doesn't keep them in, but wants to wear 'em!) she refused this morning with all the stubbornness a toddler in the terrible twos can muster. (And Heaven help us, she won't be two for months!)

She threw a bit of a fit when I wanted to take it off so she could take it home not covered in her breakfast yogurt and cheerios.

I like the different mix of textures and dot sizes on this, and hopefully, I'll be able to post pictures of Grace in her big girl version tonight!

Two-Tone Polka Dot bliss! (Or. the magic invisible dress)

We love pink and brown here on Granny Lane, and because I'm fairly lazy when it comes to matching up stripes, polka dots are a favorite!  (I have and do match up stripes... just not on a deadline!)  Last year, Bit asked for a "corduroy dress" when winter rolled around.  But life with a colicky baby didn't include much in the way of sewing time--regular sewing time was collapse-in-exhaustion-and-fall-asleep time!  My starting point was McCall's 3333 from 1987.  How surreal is it that "vintage" is clothing that I could have worn has a child?!

I fell in love with the asymmetrical bodice and just had to make it.  Most vintage patterns run short--dresses started being exceedingly short for little girls in the 20s and didn't start getting long until the 90s.  Knee length or a little longer is my preferred because they grow and then the dresses last longer.  Just to put this in perspective, though, the finished length is 18 inches... and tunic length on Gracie is 17.  Talk about micro mini! 

Because I planned this for last year, the materials came out of my stash, because, well, I bought 'em last year intending to make this.

Let me tell you a secret--I don't install sleeves in the round if I can help it.  Serging is easier, and installing the sleeve is easier, too!  I love the contrast in these colors, and the dots are opposite colors.  Grace actually picked out what color the piping and binding were.  I wanted hot pink so they'd pop, but she insisted on "pink-pink"

The skirt on this is shaped to match the shape of the bodice, and the right sleeve was installed before the left, because the arm hole is a four piece one--you have to sew on the skirt before you have a complete arm hole!

I admit, why I did this one had nothing to do with Project Run and Play sew alongs and everything to do with the fact that it was the only dress I had planned for Grace that zips up instead of buttons.  My machine is in the shop, and Mom's is refusing to do buttonholes! 

Gracie likes it, but she said that she wouldn't wear it where anyone can see her.  When asked why, she told me that it's a magic dress that turns her invisible!

I didn't know I could make magic dresses!

She did finally say that she'd wear it to church, which is great since we're having a cold snap right now.

Grace is just getting into 4s, so this is a bit loose still, and I made it a little long on purpose.  Mostly because she grew two inches in between Christmas and the three days before when I'd measured her and made her a Christmas night gown.

Happy Polka Dots and Stripes Challenge everybody!

First 2013 project

Baby sewing!  I've given these away several times, and they've always been a hit--extra large receiving blankets.  They're fast, easy, and best of all--cheap!  Most commercial blankets are just too small, and like most baby items, they're kinda expensive.  I usually give away four at a time, which ends up costing about $20 which isn't expensive for a baby present.  (I had major sticker shock when I went shopping for baby presents before Grace came along!)  Joanna asked for several for Nikki, and since that was what people were going to see of her, I made them all in pretty, girly colors like pink, purple, and turquoise.  Which just won't do for Baby Alex.  So I went shopping for fabric with Nicole and Grace online.

Fabric.com carries double-napped flannel.  My mom, who remembers the era before disposable diapers existed, calls it "diaper flannel."  Fleece or minky would also work for this if it's for a winter baby, but Alex is due in April, so flannel is just right! One yard cuts make excellent receiving blankets.

Grace picked out a cloud pattern, and Nikki picked out the busy robots. First step is to cut off the selvedge edges.  (My good shears have been sent in for sharpening, so I'm using my back up Fiskers that I sharpened myself.  *sigh*  Want my Ginghers back!)

I try and cut off as little as possible so the result is a fairly big blanket.

Now round off the corners.  You can do 'em square, but I like the round look.

Set the serger to rolled hem or picot edge.  You can do this with a rolled hem foot on your sewing machine, too.

Serge.  My serger and I used to have an agreement--I wouldn't attempt to serge curves, and it would live to sew another day.  I've gotten over the learning curve a bit now, and here's some tips for doing curves:

1) turn off your cutting blade.  Trust me.  then if you screw up, you don't have a huge hole in your fabric.

2) take it slow

3) line up your edge with the edge of the front of the needle plate.

Technically speaking, you're done now, and you have an extra-large receiving blanket.  But being me, I added one more step. 

I drew register lines with a pencil on my fabric and marked out "I love you" and then hand embroidered it. I decided that it would be less scratchy than a label, and it's a personal touch to them.

The lines washed out nicely, and if they were going to a baby shower, I'd probably iron 'em.  But they're not.  They're going in a drawer in the baby's room and I'm lazy.  So they're folded nicely and in a box for the trip home.

And it's true.  I already love the little guy, and I haven't met him yet.  His sisters are great kiddos... even Miss Imp.  Can't wait to meet you little one.  See you in April.

2012 retrospective

I've snatched the odd moment here and there thinking about what I did during 2012.  Half the year was devoted to moving everything out (and fulfilling last year's resolution to get organized), so I didn't do much sewing until right before the kids' birthdays.   I did Bit's requested "Tangled dress" for her "Tangled birthday party", a frog for Richard which I've been told has been dubbed "Mr. Jeremy Fisher", a clown for Lizzy, a doll for Nikki which as far as I know is still, "baby", and an Alice doll for Bit that she named "Tangled".

I did swimsuits for all four kids, too, as part of my learning to work with knits, which is still ongoing.  I made two apiece for Grace and Nicole--one each to take home, and one to keep here.  Right after that, I got started on summer wardrobes for them to take with them on vacation.  I've always made an outfit or two (It tends to make Joanna's sister jealous 'cause she can't buy the stuff for her kids that I make for our girls!) for them to take to the beach, but this year, I made count 'em--seven outfits each.  Some matched, some didn't.

Grace's had a few missteps this year.  I hadn' t yet figured out that to find out what will fit, you subtract two inches from the finished measurements. Thus the blue dress and playsuit was a titch tight.  And I forgot to make the neck wider on her last crisscross dress, which led her to tell me it was too tight... even though it wasn't!  For the most part, I stuck to purple and pink because they're "my favorite colors".

The colors on Nikki's were more varied, but I went for blues quite a bit, 'cause she looks great in blues.  After that, I started on dresses--three apeice, including Grace's first day of school dress.

I also made her a blanket, pillow, and pillowcase for school naptime with name patches on them.  (She refuses to leave her blanket at school because some of the other little girls seem to like it a bit too much!)









 In the midst of this, I took a break and made two skirts for Skirting the Issue.  My Uncle Jim was a foster child, so it's fairly close to home for me.  My grandparents couldn't afford to adopt him, so he earned the money himself so he would legally be part of the family.  (Emotionally, it was already the truth!)

I moved on to Halloween sewing, and made Nikki an owlet costume, and fixed the commercial hair so that Grace could use her Tangled dress for school.

Soon after that was finished, I started on the Christmas dresses, because unlike last year, I was determined to actually finish 'em this year.

I managed to finish, though not as early as I would have liked, and we got pictures taken.  Next year, we're going elsewhere, because Sears was horrifically expensive, and thus we only got one portrait with both girls.  Gave it to Jared and Joanna for Christmas, so I don't have a copy!  They looked cute, though, so all the work was worth it!  Then it was Christmas presents.  This year, I made two pairs of mustache pj bottoms, one pair of jungle jammies (I let the kids pick the fabric), one set of football jammies, one set of bear jammies, a pink dino, a railroad engineer's outfit, a giraffe, a pangolin, two fleece blankets, and two nightgowns.

With the family, Nikki learned to talk this year.  We're still on short sentences, but she's only 20 months old!  She's started identifying colors, too. She also learned to run, started getting into trouble and earned a new nickname that she actually answers to--Imp! Grace started preschool and was proposed to and kissed in the first week.  She's decided that boys are disgusting!  (Yay for us!) She's started stating more opinions on what she'll wear, and I've been informed that I'm not allowed to take pictures of her with food on her face anymore.  We're making progress on learning to read, and can count up to 40 without help.

We also got some fantastic news a few weeks ago--

Yep!  We're getting a baby boy!  Boy sewing!  Hooray!  (Richard, unfortunately, doesn't count, 'cause my sister is bad about measuring and I don't see him enough!)

As for last year's resolution, I made progress, but didn't totally conquer it.  I still have boxes to go through on top and I have yet to find an affordable, stackable solution for my pattern collection.  For this year, I want to continue to get organized, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to follow through on planned projects.  I have a load of fabric I bought for fall/winter wardrobes that I have yet to cut into.  It's been a busy year here on Granny Lane.  Goodbye 2012!  Hello 2013!

Christmas

I thought I'd share how our Christmas tree looks this year because it's weird.  Nicole has developed an penchant for undecorating the tree.  And, well, we knew it would be a draw, so all the more fragile ornaments are clustered at the top of the tree.  She also loves pulling bows off and moving presents from the back to the front of the tree.   Jared says that she's opened a few presents at home, too, for the sheer joy of ripping paper.

It's been a weird year for decorating.  Usually, the day after Thanksgiving, the manger scenes go up, and stay up until New Year's.  The Christmas tree, well, it's up at least the week before Christmas.  This year, the tree went up first.  And I wish it had been the other way.  Those stockings piled up?  Well, they're usually hung with the 3M hooks.  I have burnished pewter colored ones to hang them from.. or I did.  This year, they're nowhere to be found.  The creché on the bottom is a Little People one, because Gracie kept trying to get her hands on the others.  Mom painted the wood one to the right, the one on the left is a glass one that was a gift (the face is missing off the sheep) and the middle was from a kit in the 70s.  My dad painted it, with "help" from my then three-year-old older brother.  The angel that hung from the front of the dowel and "plank" (more like thinner, square Popsicle sticks) got lost years ago, so I printed star fields with a central star from my computer and taped them to a backer board.  The rest of the set is battered, chipped, and broken in places and the stable is rickety.  But that creché has been with us for as long as I can remember.  The one thing I didn't take pictures of is the candles in the window--fake ones so we don't have to worry about burning the house down.  (We usually only have one, but, well, we found the one we lost two years ago)  It's to let Christ know that there's room in our inn and that He's welcome here. 

This is our Christmas.  It's not about the presents, though there will be presents aplenty, but about family, spending time together, and the birth of a special child millennia ago.  So Merry Christmas... or Happy Holidays if you celebrate something different.  And perhaps, for once, we'll have peace on earth for this one night a year.

Christmas presents, wrapping, and other seemingly endless things.

Christmas for 14.  This year.  Next year, it'll be Christmas for 16, because my sister-in-law is pregnant with little Alex and my sister is pregnant.  (I just hope it's not a girl, because she's said that she'd name it Liberty.  Poor kid.)  I spent 15 hours wrapping yesterday (arms hurt!) and we're almost done and cleaned up.  15 hours, might sound a bit excessive, but I'm chief wrapper here.  Which means that I'm not just wrapping up my give-away presents, but my mom's and grandmother's as well.  And, well, Christmas for 14!  That's only a little over an hour apiece, right?  And when you have huge presents, like a new travel system for Alex (Grandma is a big believer in useful gifts and Nikki and Grace wore out the old one) they take more than one person and almost a whole roll of wrapping paper to wrap!  I thought about taking a picture of my tree with the packages piled around it, but my house is a huge mess right now still!

Handmade gifts are king in my house.  Above is Ricky's present--he's into trains, and has been insisting on wearing his outgrown railroad stripey overalls, so I made him new ones.  The picture isn't exactly what the finished product looks like because I made an oops cutting.  See, McCalls 6592 is insanely short.  I made a child 4, but cut it to the length of 6.  And somewhere in there, I cut the back piece wrong.  Not only did I find out after it was all sewn together, but I didn't have more ticking to recut, so I fixed it, but made the fix into a design feature... which is a post for another day!

Gracie asked for a "pink dinosaur" so I raided my scrap bins and bought a copy of the Melly and Me Dilbert pattern because it was the cutest I could find.  And I'm telling you without my smallest tube turner, I never could've turned those spikes!

Lizzy's favorite animal is giraffes, so I bought Simplicity 2613 on a dollar sale and the gold fringe for it's mane.  The fabric was a donation.  It's some sort of upholstery fabric that came to me in a huge box of "I was cleaning out a sewing room and can you use this" fabric.  It's a velvety, heavy weight stuff that looks like it's backed in some sort of canvas.

For Nicole, well, her current favorite book is Anna Dewdney's Roly Poly Pangolin to the extent that I can easily recite it!  We bought her a copy of it to take home for Christmas, but there weren't any commercial pangolin toys, so I dug around the internet and found an anteater pattern.  See, pangolins look quite a bit like anteaters--the ears are different, and they have armor plating.  Rather than sew on individual scales, which I was pretty sure wouldn't be baby proof, I found some quilter's cotton with a scale pattern on it.  I wish I had taken a picture for you, but with everything going on, I forgot!    Joanna got new pjs--I let Grace choose fabric for it, as well as for Uncle Geoff's new jammies (Nikki chose one, too, because when he's at home, he practically lives in his jammies), as well as her Uncle Shane's and Dad's pj bottoms.  Mom got an IOU, because I was running short on time, and I also made fleece blankets for presents out of more donated fabric.  (Fleece blankets were made out of donated fabric, too which = free present)

To finish Geoff's and Grace's last Christmas request, I had to borrow a sewing machine.  (This was how I discovered that I don't like drop in bobbins!)  I knew my machine was overdue for servicing, but I didn't expect it to slow to a crawl.  It's happened before, so I know what it means--it's dirty and needs cleaned and oiled!  So I'll take it in sometime in the next couple weeks.

Grace's final Christmas wish was for "Aunt Laura, will you make me a warm nightgown for Christmas?"  With flannel 60% off and mom in tow for senior citizen discount day (which made it 80% off), how could I say no?  And if I'm making something for her, I have to make something for Nicole, too, so that's how they got matching nightgowns made from the Peekaboo Pattern Shop's (it's offline for maintenance, so don't worry if the link doesn't work) Sugarplum Nightgown pattern.  I made it in both girls' favorite colors--pink and purple!  So that's my gifts this year.  What are y'all making?

One Piece At A Time dresses!

Both hanging together with matching hairbows, including Nikki's

 "bow hat"

Well, they're done.  I thought I'd post the lyrics from the song from which these dresses are named!  Because they really are completely frankenpatterned.  The only patterns that matched were the late 60s-early 70s patterns that the sleeves came from.  The dress shells are from two different 50s patterns, Nikki's pinafore is modified from  40s pinafore dress pattern, and Gracie's is from a 30s Hollywood pattern.  The collars and cuffs are finished with Victorian faggoting stitching.

 The red and white ribbon is hand dyed, bias cut silk ribbon and a sort of a nod to candy canes. :) I wanted a bit of longevity, so I avoided things like Santa, Christmas trees, and the like.  Yeah. it's red, and it's covered with stars, but...  :)  Remind me to never do entredeux with a lined bodice again!

That was a biiiig mess and I ended up redoing the finishing on the inside of the pinafores.  Grace actually helped design the dresses--she wanted a dress with a big skirt (I have crinolines from last year to go underneath, and the hems are done with CRIN again because it helps them stand out.), no puffed sleeves, and an apron with ruffles and no itchy collars and cuffs.   I learned something about working with CRIN--use a 70 needle because the 80s and 90s are too big to sew through the mesh easily.

 ;) There went my half formed plans for using up some of the lace collars in my stash!  She did, however, consent to lace on the bodice, and the lace on the skirt conceals the fact that I, um, cut the skirts a titch too short.  More than a titch on Nikki's, actually!  I didn't have the fabric to recut the skirts, so I just used more lace and silk ribbon to cover the join.

 Grace informed me that she wants to wear Nikki's dress, because it's cuter.  And here I thought I'd made them match!  The collar looks a bit crooked here, but I swear it's not.  :)

 The sash is necessary, especially on Nikki's, because she's still a tiny bit smaller than a size 1/2 (like 1/8"), but on her way out of infant patterns.

 The lengthening was considerably more on this one!  I went for tea length on both simply because they'll last the winter that way.  I like knowing that if  they grow an inch or two, they won't be too short.  Surprisingly, in Nikki's case, with a ten minute alteration, her crinoline still fits and Gracie's does, too.  At the last minute, I added an extra line of lace on Nikki's bodice because it just needed it to my eyes.  Tomorrow, after school, we're going to the Sears portrait studio to take pictures.

White tights, the dresses, shiny black shoes, crinolines, and coordinating bows are the order of the day. 

 And speaking of bows...  Nikki has a "bow hat".  It's really just a bow attached to a stretchy headband because she doesn't have enough hair in front to hold one.  Predictably, Grace wants one, too, but I've only got one headband right now!  More silk ribbon here, with the red and white in the centers.  (I wouldn't really recommend doing silk ribbon bows.  They're just too limp.)  

We've tried things on, and they fit, so I'll iron them tonight and I'll post pictures when we get them back!