Back to School!

by alwaysacraftylady

So, I’m just a little bit behind on sharing projects from late 2018. Moving forward I’ll be intermixing newer projects with older project until I get through the backlog. Today, back to school outfits!

Both of my children wear a uniform for school, but the dress code is not terribly strict. As long as their shirt has a collar and the colors are correct-ish neither school will complain. I usually buy most of their school clothes as polo dresses and leggings as both cheap and easy to acquire, but the first day of school is special and deserves something fun to wear!

For Charlie I went with separates.

This is the Oliver + S Music Class pattern. It’s a great little uniform pattern with a classic blouse and simple skirt. Great for wearing to school and pretty easy to sew as well.

Back when Lu went to preschool I bought all kinds of uniform fabric. I was definitely going to make all her uniforms. Ha! Nope. I had a Charlie a few months into Lu’s preschool years and that fabric has mostly sat in my stash. This fall I used most of the uniform stash to actually make more school uniforms including this adorable back to school outfit.

Charlie likes it pretty well, especially those cat buttons.

Charlie is very obsessed with cats, even though we don’t own one. When I saw these buttons at the Costume College marketplace, I just knew they would bring a smile to Charlie’s face…and they did!

The fabrics are both from Robert Kaufman, but after 3+ years my memory of the specifics is gone. I’m sure the shirt is lawn, but the skirt is…? Who knows. Something sturdy that took the pleats really well.

This little girl is not real fond of school, but wearing pretty clothes makes her happy and that makes momma happy too.

For Lu’s first day of first grade, I used a vintage pattern. I went on a little vintage pattern ebay spree over the summer and this little number called my name as something cute, uniform-ish, and practical. It’s Hollywood Pattern of Youth #1504.

I could not find it on any of the vintage pattern cataloging sites and was a bit hard to date, but I’d guess its from the 1930s. The starlet for this pattern is Virginia Weidler who was born right now the road from us and it best known from The Philadelphia Story and The Women.

Lu was a total ham in this dress. I think she liked it quite a lot, but she really loved those shoes! Too bad they broke on the third wearing and had to be returned 😦 The belt was also a huge hit. I had no idea such an accessory could bring so much joy to a child.

The fabric was nothing fancy. My stash was all really stiff skirting fabrics and so I journeyed to JoAnn’s to find something with a touch more drape. I returned with a rayon blend twill and some white rick rack. The twill was also a bit too stiff for the pattern, but I didn’t want something too delicate.

Neither of their first day of school outfits has made it into heavy rotation. Those polo dresses really so just so much easier to maintain and comfy to wear. That’s okay though. Special clothes don’t have to be worn all the time. Making them brought all of us such joy. They have served their purpose.

2Jan2018

Christmas 2017

by alwaysacraftylady

All year I was looking forward to making the girls their Christmas dresses. Lu will be turning 6 this coming spring and she’s getting more and more into big girl clothes. She still loves dresses, but not with the same intensity as her younger years. I felt like time was running out to make pinafore dresses and this Christmas was the perfect opportunity! It was a dream project for me. They were so so so darling.

Oh my stars! Such cuteness from my silly girls. Thankfully they both just loved their Christmas dresses. Whew!

The under dresses and pinafores were both drafted from the same pattern in Liesl Gisbon’s Building Block Dress book. The book comes with a pattern for a basic dress and the chapters are instructions on how to use that basic pattern to produce tons of different styles. It goes all the was from 6 month size to a child size 12 and I can tell I’m going to get a lot of use out of the book.

For this first try I used the basic dress which has a bodice, collar, long or short sleeves, and an a-line skirt. Charlie’s is a size 18-24 months with 2T length and Lu’s is a 3T lengthened to 5 in the bodice and 6 in the skirt. Both fit pretty well right away, but could have used a smidge more sleeve length. However I also added an elastic casing to the sleeves, so perhaps the length would have been fine with a plain hem.

I tried looking for more Christmas-y fabric online, but I never did find something that seemed right. So I went stash diving and found a remnant of the blue floral and a 4 yard cut of the green floral. It would have been nice to use the same fabric for both, but the scale of the green floral was too big for Charlie’s tiny bodice piece and I didn’t have enough of the blue for both. Oh well, similar is close enough for me! Lu wasn’t super thrilled with a dark green dress, but I sold her on the little pink and red flowers in the print.

I originally bought both prints to make myself dresses. It is from the Floratopia collection from Elizabeth Olwen for Cloud 9. I did make a dress from the blue floral, but I hated the dress and got rid of it. Now with the girl’s dresses complete I think I have enough to make myself a skirt from the green floral.

The pinafores are using the same pattern, but I split the bodice into 3 pieces and added width to the middle piece to achieve the gathered look I love many Victorian and Edwardian girls dresses. I have one saved that seems to have disappeared from the original site, but trust me that the seaming is pretty spot on. The drafting and sewing process was really tedious, but the finished pinafores were totally worth it.

The fabric was the same plain white lawn from Renaissance Fabrics that I used for my Lamplight outfit and it was just the perfect weight to float over the corduroy dresses. Sadly it looks like the fabric is sold out, but they usually get in more of it. Each pinafore is trimmed with candy cane embroidered cotton lace. I’d wanted to gather it to add fullness to the hem, but I’d only bought 4 yards last summer when I went shopping at Costume College and it wasn’t enough to gather and trim two skirts. So I used the little bit I had left over to add a shoulder flounce to each pinafore. I think it worked out just right!

And while I still have a couple things to share from 2017, my crafting was mostly cleaned up by the end of the year. The beauty of staying home for the holidays with no house guests is we’ve had ample time to sort and clean our house. A few more areas to manage, but still it feels good to start 2018 better organized. Frankly I’m happy to see 2017 gone from our lives. We had some really good times and my husband had more steady work than he’d had in a while, but on the other side we had a lot of anxiety over a potential medical issue for our older daughter. It turned out in the end, but that was a 6 month process of appointments and missing work and stress. Both girls moved up to new schools and that has been really good, but my work has become more and more stressful with each passing year. I still enjoy it, but gosh I miss the glory days when I didn’t have to say “no” so frequently. Most of all the holidays have brought a much needed break to refresh. Happy New Year.

6Jul2017

Flower Girls

by alwaysacraftylady

I can’t believe my sister’s wedding took place 2 months ago! Time moves so quickly and we’ve had many milestones in our family this summer as the girls move from on from their current schools to new programs.

I made the girls some pretty sweet dresses for the wedding and by now they’ve been worn on nearly a weekly basis. Gosh it is nice to see Lu and Charlie love something I’ve made them! So here is a little look at the unicorn and mermaid flower girl dresses.

For the actual wedding ceremony we all wore petticoats. The girls had poofy white versions and I added tie on gold glitter tulle overskirts. Hilariously Charlie’s petticoat was stiffer than Lu’s and Charlie’s petticoat actually stuck straight out when the over skirt wasn’t in place. Both girls had a marvelous time dancing and spinning and admiring the fluff.

Charlie is especially taken with twirly dresses right now. Everything must be pink and she declares “Mommy, I feel pretty!”. It is very sweet even if it makes dressing her each morning slightly more challenging. Lu was also a fan of dresses at 2 years old, but wasn’t quite so picky about sparkles and tulle and twirl factor.

Both girls’ dresses were made with Oliver + S’s Fairy Tale Dress pattern only with a circle skirt instead of a gathered skirt. It’s a pattern I’ve used with success twice before and suited the event perfectly. The only negative comment about the pattern is the sleeves are fiddly. Where the tulip sleeves overlap there is 4 layers of fabric in the sleeves plus gathers and that is a lot of fabric to fit into a size 18 month armscye.

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I used quilting cotton from Sarah Jane for both dresses. My sister prefers gold over silver and the Magic line of fabrics all have shiny gold over parts of the design. I picked the prints and colors based on what was available at the time. Buying fabric in the middle of Easter dress season was a big mistake. I should have thought ahead more, but I was stuck without an idea until too close to the wedding date. Oh well! It worked out.

And as I mentioned, the girls love these dresses and wear them really frequently. In fact Lu wore hers to camp and was the fanciest kid in the group. I’m just glad to see the dresses worn and loved. I really try not to make anything too precious for everyday wear.

I think it would would shock some to see kids go straight from church to chocolate shake, but I can’t be fussed to make good clothes and play clothes when Lu is growing so tall and Charlie wants to be just like her big sister. Plus starting this fall they’ll both be in uniforms and I want their mom made pretties to get worn before they are too small.

19Apr2017

Easter 2017

by alwaysacraftylady

Yay Easter! A holiday with few expectations of gifts but lots of potential for adorable dresses. Less that 3 weeks ago I had zero plans to make new Easter dresses this year. Surely I could skip it and have the girls wear something from their drawer.

Wrong!

While looking for flower girl dress fabric at Michael Levine’s I spotted a lovely small scale floral lawn out of the corner of my eye and the next thing I knew I’d had 3 yards cut. I’m so so glad I impulse purchased this fabric. (No longer on the ML website, but available here.)

What a couple of silly sisters! Don’t they look adorable? In a total reversal of personalities Charlie ended up posing for all the pictures while Lu sulked, but thankfully I’d captured Lu’s dress the day before when she was in a more willing mood.

For Lu’s dress I used Olive + S’s Library dress pattern. I’d owned it for years and never made it. What a shame! It went together so beautifully and had plenty of potential for color combinations. I had some white lawn in my stash I almost used for the collar. White collars are such a classic choice for a little girl’s dress, but I went ahead and used the floral print so the only trim is the pink piping along the midriff.

I really love Oliver + S patterns, but the sizing it always a challenge. Lu is quite slim and tall so her measurements put her in a 6-12 months at the bust and a size 5 for length. I went with something in the middle, a size 3 with 2 inches of extra length on the skirt. This seems to have worked pretty well. A tad large through the shoulders, but not terribly so. The pattern I own stops at a size 4 so for now I might keep adding length to the smaller sizes until I really need to buy the next size grouping.

And Lu really liked her dress. “See my skirt!” She was super happy to wear it two days in a row, Saturday for the museum’s annual Fashion Show and Sunday for Easter.

Charlie got a haircut on Good Friday so now we can actually see her face instead of just a mess of hair. The cut also lets her curls really come out!

Charlie’s dress was also made with an Oliver + S pattern, this time the Family Reunion Pattern. I’ve actually made this one before when Lucy was not quite 2 and I made the 18-24 month size then.

Xmas 2013

As you can see both sisters have suffered the wide neckline of this dress, though Charlie is nearly 2 1/2 and wearing the 18-24 size. This one must just run wide because Charlie wasn’t that much smaller than the size chart. She usually wears a size 18 months or 2T depending on the cut of the clothing and I almost made the size 2 Family Reunion. Thankfully I did size down so it wasn’t enormous.

The pattern doesn’t call for trim around the yoke, but I adding pink piping just for fun and I’m so glad I did! Isn’t she a doll? This is the look she gets when she sees her dad. Such joy!

She also tested out her modeling skills to adorable results.

Being the second child means Charlie just doesn’t get as many new things, but I was so pleased to make her this new dress that she should be able to wear all summer long.

Lastly, not to be outdone by the girls John wore his new hand knit socks for Easter.

And I have no photographic evidence of my own outfit, but I wore the butterfly dress I made for Easter 2016 when I missed the festivities due to injury and illness.

With Easter complete I must go full speed into preparations for my sister’s wedding. 3 dresses to go!

11Mar2016

Birthday Girl!

by alwaysacraftylady

My older daughter Lu turned 4 years old last week! Hard to believe these past 4 years have gone my so quickly, but here she is all tall and gangly and full of opinions.

And of course the birthday girl needed a new dress!

I’d had my eye on this fabric from Sarah Jane for about 2 years, but this was the first time I really saw it becoming a dress. Oh yes, a Fairy Tale Dress from Oliver + S. So classic! And perfect to use with a border print. Then I topped it all off with some sweet pink voile and tulle I found at my local quilt shop. What girly girl has resist a poofy skirt?

My husband is so good at making bows! Clearly the birthday girl loved it.

But I couldn’t only make something for Lu. A few days before the party I decided to make the little one her own spring dress!

This is the trusty Geranium Dress pattern. At this point I can make one from printing the pattern to sewing on buttons in about a hour. I just don’t get sick of this pattern.

And I had some sweet little vintage duck buttons that work perfectly with Ann Kelle’s cute fabrics.

So pleased to be able to make something springy for the girls! Next up, Easter Dresses!

19Nov2015

Kid Clothes – Fall Round Up

by alwaysacraftylady

I’ve been making lots of little things for my girls this fall. They are so quick to make and so satisfying. Kids just don’t have the same level of fit concern that an adult has!

So Charlie first!

She has lots of hand me downs from her big sister and she’s teeny so some of the things I made last fall still fit. So I only made a few things for her this fall. Such as this cute little cardigan she modeled on her first birthday.

This was part of a KAL on Raverly called the Child for All Seasons. The designers put out three patterns each quarter. One that is styled for girls, one styled for boys, and one accessory. This was the Fall girl sweater knit in two skeins of very poorly matched Madelinetosh merino dk in Truly, Madly, Deeply that had been sitting in my stash waiting for the right project. This is a great littler sweater that gets worn multiple times a week!

Next is my favorite thing I’ve knit all year, a baby dress I’ve named Rainbow Brite.

Gah! This one just kills me with the cute. I love it so very much. The pattern is the Baby Bubble Tunic and this 6-12 month size should last Charlie all winter. The yarn is something really special. Neighborhood Fiber Co. made kits called Shades of the Rainbow to celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling that same sex marriages are legal! Woot! So I snatched a kit in studio dk . Along with some leftovers I purchased from a knitting friend I have enough to make Lu something too. So more rainbows to come!

And now Halloween costumes! One of the things I just feel a deep desire to do is make homemade costumes. This year we had a baby Madeline and Frozen’s Elsa.

Charlie’s costume is a big 4 pattern. I can’t quite remember which one. I made it with some Robert Kaufman corduroy and essex with a little red ribbon tie. Super simple and this is most likely her Christmas dress too. Lu’s costume was way more involved. I started with the Geranium Dress and re-drafted the bodice so I could sew in the cape. The whole thing is built on kona cotton to give those cheap sparkle fabrics something to hold onto. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it totally did! This costume has been worn to school, and for a birthday party, and trick or treating, and around our house and it still looks perfect. Yes! Most importantly the picky preschooler loves it.

And now for Lu this fall I’ve been working on making her plenty of school clothes. She wears uniforms so I bought a mess of navy and red fabric have been making things as a palate cleanser between other projects.

First up is this Music Box Jumper from Oliver + S. This is how I learned I don’t need to go so overboard on upsizing. Lu is pretty petite just like her sister so cutting a 3 with 4 length turned out kind of crazy big. But she still wears and lives this jumper.

Next is another Oliver + S pattern, this time the Music Class skirt. It’s cute and very functional, but I will admit it is not Lu’s first choice to wear.

Last of the uniforms is this Flashback Skinny Tee turned dress! I actually made two of these at once because I figured something this soft and easy would be a hit. It is. I will definitely be making more of these those I want to pick up some fun fold over elastic to trim the necklines.

What uniform would be complete without a sweater for those chilly fall mornings? So now Lu has a Peachick Eyes Cardigan knit with Madelinetosh Dandelion in the Vintage Bandana color way. Another item she wears all the time. Sadly with the time change our mornings are much much cooler so another warmer sweater is already in progress.

Whew! So made kid things completed this fall with more to come, but also so much love put into clothing my girls.

23May2015

An Instant Favorite

by alwaysacraftylady

I’ll admit it. When I bought this fabric I bought it because I loved it. I had no idea Lu would latch onto it so firmly. I also had no idea she’d suddenly start asking to wear a skirt every day.

But this is easily the item of clothing she requests most often. Easily.

It’s a tad on the large side. Lu is hard to fit in that she is average height, but quite slim, so I made a size 2T with 3T length and cut the elastic to be 2 inches smaller than the pattern recommended. It’s still too big.

But that doesn’t stop Lu from picking it first every single time I do laundry. Sadly she wears uniforms Monday-Thursday, but come free dress Friday… only umbrellas will do.

I am preschooler and I will wear what I want!

(I also wanted to say that I still cannot tell if the fabric is printed ever so slightly off grain or if I am just exhausted.)

20May2015

Almost an Easter Sweater

by alwaysacraftylady

Well, this was almost an Easter sweater if you think finishing something almost 3 weeks after the holiday counts. Ha!

It would have looked so cute with her Easter dress, but instead Lu will have to settle for wearing her new sparkly pink sweater over her new school dress. I think she’ll survive.

I used Brooklyn Tweed’s pattern Petal. The first minute I saw the pattern it was begging to be knit. So feminine and delicate a pattern. Something my girly girl would love. Then on a wet and soggy day I went shopping at The Yarnover Truck and spotted Anzula Nebula in Petals. Kismet? Yes, I think so.

Unfortunately Petal is kind of a pain to knit. So much patterning. Patterning on every single row. Twisted stitches. Lace. Small gauge. Almost everything I dislike in knitting, but yet the finished sweater is nothing short of perfection. Totally worth the nearly two months worth of knitting.

Her new dress is pretty cute too! I know you cannot see most of it in these pictures because Lu was too excited about her sweater to remove it, but trust me when I say it looks and fits nicely. There are (poor quality) pictures of the dress in this post.

For the dress I used Oliver + S’s pattern Hopscotch (same pattern as the skirt I posted recently). It is fantastic. Really I have yet to find anything bad about Oliver + S patterns in general. They are nothing but professional quality with clear directions.

Fabric is nothing fancy. I only recently started sewing with knits, so this is some inexpensive cotton/poly blend interlock I bought at JoAnn’s. I bought 3 yards and even after making a skort, a dress, and a skirt there is still more than a yard left!

Anyways, looking back I know realize I haven’t shared modeled photos of most of my Kids Clothes Week projects! Sorry about that! We’ve had a wee bit of drama at preschool and it has been a major distraction in my life, but hopefully I’ll have more brain space for writing very soon. I’ve been sewing up a storm as an outlet for the stress.

27Apr2015

Kids Clothes Week: Day 7!

by alwaysacraftylady

Ta-da! Last day! Here on the West Coast I suppose I still have 90 minutes, but I’m calling it done. Today I managed to fit in one last project. Another Geranium Dress for my younger daughter Charlie.

My friend Erica gave me a completely random package of fabric. It turned out to be maybe several eighth yards of the Moda Grunge collection as far as I can tell from what I could read from the selvedges. And I had lots of small pieces of fabric left over from the dress I made from Cotton + Steel double gauze. The little slip of Moda fabric was exactly as much as I needed to cut out the bodice of the dress.

It was also the perfect color match. I even had buttons to finish it off and a husband who took Charlie to run errands while Lu took a nap. I almost had it totally finished by the time he returned.

And I love that it is lined with double gauze. Nothing but softness for my pretty little baby.

So here is the full lineup of what I completed this week.

And everything even has buttons.

Happy Kids Clothes Week!

26Apr2015

Kids Clothes Week: Day 5 and 6!

by alwaysacraftylady

Okay so late night I was all set up to make a new school dress for my older daughter Lu. And there I am tucking her into bed and telling her I’m going to start a new dress for her when she starts talking about how she doesn’t like dresses and wants a skirt. Kids. She’s slowly becoming more interested in wearing skirts and that is difficult because I started putting her in dresses because I couldn’t find pants or skirts small enough to stay on her waist. Anyways, now she likes to wear skirts more only I have all these dress patterns ready to sew for her.

Last night I didn’t sew. I knit instead. At least I was knitting for Lu so I think it still counts for Kids Clothes Week. I was able to bind off the sweater and now is only needs ends woven, buttons sewn on, and a good bath.

This is Petal from Brooklyn Tweed in Anzula Nebula. The color way is Petals so I figured the combination was meant to be.

Anyways today I decided that I’m the parent and I know Lu has to wear navy and red to school so I made the dress.

This is from the same pattern as the umbrella skirt Olive + S’s Hopscotch. It is made with some awful poly blend interlock I bought at JoAnn’s. I hate this fabric. I still have half of what I bought left over.

But it will make a serviceable school dress and that’s the point. Now what do I make tomorrow for the last dat of Kids Clothes Week? I’ve made more things for my older daughter, but she was also more in need of clothes. Should I sew the baby some love tomorrow?