Out with the old, in with the new

It’s been a while now that the baby girl’s shirts and pants have been a little too short on her, but it’s gotten to the point where I can’t ignore it anymore.  Poor girl has been walking around in crop tops and high waters.  So, I’ve started putting away her 2T clothes to make room for larger sizes.  In the process, I found a bunch of 3T clothes that a friend had given me when baby girl was just born that I had forgotten about.  At the time, it seemed like forever until she’d be in 3T.  In reality, it happened in the blink of an eye.  It’s so cliché, but they do grow so fast.  I think it wasn’t until I had children that I became so acutely aware of the passage of time.  They mark it for me, every time they grow out of their clothes, go up in a shoe size, say something that makes me wonder, “How’d they know that?!”.

Putting away outgrown clothes is bittersweet.  I feel conflicted about them growing up.  I really miss that baby stage, because it was so brief.  What’s sweeter than that teeny tiny creature passed out on your chest?

But I also love seeing them grow into these precocious little beings who direct me to, “Take my picture, Mommy.”  And how could I not?

(It’s not quite her birthday yet, but she’s taken with this shirt.  :)

One of my sewing resolutions this year is to make more of her wardrobe, so I purposefully did not buy a lot of 3T clothes for her.  I was going to start with t-shirts, but the pile of hand-me-downs we got included a lot of t-shirts, so I could probably go directly to dresses.  They are more fun anyway.  My second sewing resolution is to blog within a week of completing a project.  Otherwise, I put it off even longer.  :(  I enjoy blogging and talking about sewing, but 2012 somehow just blew through like a tornado and carried me away and before I knew it, it was 2013.  Hoping for calmer weather this year.

Catching up!

I'm still here, I promise!  I was sewing this summer, but we were out and about a lot during the day, and I was exhausted by the evening.  I couldn't quite get motivated to sit down and blog.  We definitely made the most of the summer before the little guy started kindergarten.  Life is so different once they start school.  No more sitting in our pjs all morning if we want to.  :)  I was also busy this summer, because I was winding down at work.  Yes, I left my job in August to be at home with the kids full-time.  It was something I'd thought about for a while, and I finally took the plunge.  With kindergarten, preschool and the kids' various activities, I've been keeping busy, but maybe I'll have a little bit more time for creative pursuits.  Maybe...

I thought the best way to catch up on the blog was to do one big post about all my projects from the summer.  Some of these pictures Most of these pictures are from my phone, but hey, if I waited until I could get my good camera out and photograph them, I'd probably never get this post published.  :)

Something new

So, I decided it would be fun to make a dress for the baby girl for my friend’s upcoming wedding.  I figured if it didn’t work out, I still had a couple of nice dresses that would serve as back up.  Originally, I wanted to make the oliver+s bubble dress, the same dress I made for the baby girl’s first birthday.  I saw a number of bubble dresses in silk dupioni on flickr, and they were just beautiful and perfect for a wedding.  But I ended up changing my mind, because I had been thinking I wanted to try a pattern I had not made before, and then I saw this dress pattern.  I imagined it would be lovely in silk.

Two!

Baby girl was due in May, but she decided she wanted to be an April baby and came three weeks early.  As soon as she was born, she cried out to let the world know she was here, and then she started rooting around for food.  Two years later, she is proving to be just as feisty as ever.  She knows what she wants and has no problem letting us know, too.  She wants to do everything her brother does and loves to play with him in his room.  At one point, he drew a sign that said “no babies” to keep her out, but the next day he took it down, and she was back playing in his room.  I figure she must have charmed her way back in somehow.  And, oh, how she can charm you.  I mean, who could resist that face?

 
We didn’t have a party for her birthday, but since I made her a dress last year, I thought it’d be fun to make one for her second birthday.  She wore it for all of 30 minutes, but it was cute while she was wearing it.

 

More hopeful sewing..

We’ve had rain and stormy weather here lately, so I’m continuing my hopeful sewing series by sharing this little butterfly dress.  I made it a couple of weeks ago, so the baby girl could wear it to the butterfly exhibit.  (I actually got this butterfly fabric last year in hopes of making a dress for last year’s butterfly exhibit.  Hey, I’m only a year behind!)

Hopeful sewing...

As in hopeful that the weather will get warmer soon.  If you sew it, summer will come, right? 

We were recently teased with really warm weather, in the 80s, and when I pulled the kids’ summer hats out, I realized they’d gotten a tad too small.  So, I set out to remedy that.  I was determined to make the kids new summer hats.  Sure, I could have run out to Target and gotten them some hats for $10 each.  But it’s the principle.  I wanted to make them.

I wanted to try the bucket hat pattern from the Little Things to Sew book.  I had an idea in my mind of what fabrics I wanted to use, so we (my two little helpers and I) headed out to Joann Fabrics for a little fabric shopping.  I found two linen blend fabrics that fit the bill of what I wanted for one side of the hat.  Since the hat is supposed to be reversible, I browsed the store for something that I thought would work for the other side.  I normally spend a lot of time deciding on fabric.  Once I’ve picked something out, I start to second guess myself, so then I spend a lot of time in the fabric store, wandering the aisles and putting things side by side to see if they would work together.  But having my two little helpers helped to speed the process along, because they don’t always tolerate extensive browsing.  I did second guess the fabric choices, but by then, the fabric had already been cut and paid for and we were out of the store.  And because my two little helpers were so helpful and patient, they each got a $1 toy from the bins near the checkout line.  Of course, the $1 items were immediately wrecked and torn apart before we got home, but oh well.  That’s why they are only $1, I guess.

Even though the fabric purchase was slightly rushed, I really like the way the fabrics turned out on the hats.

This is the two sides of the boy hat.  I did a neutral linen-type fabric for one side, and for the other I tried to find something boyish but a little more interesting.  I wasn't sure how the stripes would sew up, but it turned out really nicely, I think.  I like the brown side a lot, and the little guy likes the blue side.

And the two sides of the girl hat.  I picked out the embroidered fabric totally on a whim, and I really like the way it looks as a hat.

A little birthday present!

One of our playgroup friends just turned one, and I made this little dress for her.  She’s a real girly-girl, so I can totally see her in this.

Upcycled Valentine’s Day Outfit

I saw a tutorial for making the ruffled heart on this Valentine’s Day dress recently and decided to check my stash of old t-shirts to see if I could make this.  Turns out I had a grey maternity cardigan and a grey t-shirt I could use for the dress.  And then I decided to make leggings to go with it from a pair of black maternity leggings.  I’m loving that this outfit is totally upcycled.  I like being able to reuse old clothes, and I get a kick out of knowing that baby girl is wearing my old maternity clothes.

My new love: baby bloomers

I was going to write about these in my previous post, but it got a little long, and I didn’t want these adorable bloomers to be lost in all the toy bag talk.  :) 

Asymmetry

I saw this tutorial a while ago and bookmarked it, because the dress was so cute.  I also loved the fabric, so I later got the same fabric that they used in the tutorial.  So, I was a total copy cat and decided to make the dress in the same fabric. 

The dress was really easy to sew together.  I used a pattern for an A-line dress and just cut a diagonal across the front to create the “asymmetric” look.  It turned out pretty cute.

There were just a couple of things that I would do differently next time.

From fail to fix

Remember the major fail here?  I decided I’d try to fix it.

Major fail!

One of the most frequent comments I get about my sewing is, “I can’t believe you’re a beginning sewer!”  I think sewing is very forgiving, though.  You can make a number of mistakes and still end up with a good looking product. 

Well, most of the time. 

I’m posting this so you all know I don’t always end up with good looking results.  I thought this Leah tunic from Craftiness is not Optional was so cute.  I love the little cap sleeves.  So, I decided to do the sew-along that Jess posted.  Of course, that was a month ago.  I’ve had the top cut out for a while, just had not gotten around to sewing it up.  I finally had the time this weekend.  The hubs took the kids out to the park for a couple of hours, and it was just the time I needed to finish this top up. 

The cap sleeves didn’t turn out quite right, though.  A little too poofy and the armhole was a little too big.  I think maybe I needed to gather them more.

See the little pouf on the shoulders?  My husband says that she needs shoulder pads for her 80s style big shoulders.  (Don't you just love the peanut gallery?)

Posing is so blasé

Apparently, posing for pictures is so 11 months, totally incompatible with being 12 months old.  I tried the baby girl’s bubble dress on her so I could get some pictures of her in it, and she was not having any of that.  Lots of crawling, lots of moving in general and lots of blurry pictures.

A wee dress

for a wee girl who’s turning 1!

I know the lighting in this picture is horrible.  But it just epitomizes the experience of sewing late into the night, the excitement of seeing the little dress you’re making take shape, having no one to share it with, so you snap this picture in the dark. 

Recharged

 

Oh my gosh, this working full-time thing is totally exhausting!  I don’t know how I did it pre-kids.  Well, I guess that was exactly it.  It was pre-kids.  When I came home, I could just veg, not worry about getting kids fed and to bed.  And I could sleep soundly through the night, not worry about middle-of-the-night wake ups (nowadays if it’s not the 11 month old, then it’s the 3 year old because something is scary, or he can't find his blanket or his baby panda).

Anyway, I finished a huge project at work last week, and Thursday night, I was wiped out.  After putting the kids to bed, I fell asleep at 8pm, despite the 20,000 things on my to-do list.  The baby girl only got up once that night, so I got 11 hours of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep.  I had the next day off, so I took a nap when the baby girl was napping.  Basically, I slept at every opportunity.  And it was glorious.  I’d been running on empty, and my body just shut down and said, You need to refuel!

The funny thing is despite all the sleeping I did, I felt so productive last  weekend.  I guess I just had more energy to spend time with the kids AND get some cleaning and organizing done.  And I got some sewing in, too!

Lovely weekend!

Even though it involved very little sewing.

Working more these days makes me want to soak up the weekends with the kids as much as possible.  We had such wonderful weather this weekend.  We went out to the botanical gardens with some friends.  My son loved hanging out with his friends.  He’s at such a great age.  He loves exploring everything and wants to learn about everything around him.

Watching the bullfrog and fish at the frog pond.

Busy!

It’s been a busy week!  I started working full-time this week.  I miss the kids like crazy.  And this work thing is seriously cutting into my sewing time, which was already limited to begin with.  Boo.  But it’s only for the next few months, so hopefully, we’ll all survive. 

Ruffles, take two!

Attempt number two at this ruffle dress.  I think it turned out really cute.  Although, I’m still trying to decide if it’s too much ruffle.  Maybe the ruffle on the bottom was too much? 

Ruffles!

While blog surfing one day, I came upon this blog post with a tutorial for this totally cute ruffle dress.  It was supposed to be a Hanna Andersson “knock-off”.  I’d never seen the Hanna Andersson dress, but the dress she made was super-cute, and it looked pretty easy to do.  The dress requires a raglan sleeve t-shirt pattern.  I didn’t have such a pattern, but I thought it would be fairly easy to make one by tracing one of my son’s old t-shirts. 

As soon as I sewed on the first ruffle, I knew this dress would be cute.  There’s something about ruffles that makes any outfit so adorable. 

Sweet little romper

I think babies in rompers are so cute.  When my son was around 12 months, I had about a million of them for him.

While wandering around at the mall, I found this romper for the baby girl:

  
It’s super-cute in person, but the price tag is not so cute.  And it wasn’t even part of whatever sale was going on in the store.  I went back and forth on whether I should attempt to make it.  I kept looking at it, thinking, It’s just shorts and a top sewn together, but then it had all these details, and I’d have to figure out my own pattern.  I kept telling myself it would be more time-consuming than it was worth.  But, on the other hand, there are some intangibles about making it that might be worth the time, like what about the pride of having made something for my child to wear?  Or what about showing those big store chains that they don’t have the power over me, they can keep their $30 romper, thankyouverymuch.  For those reasons, along with my overachiever tendencies, I dove right in.