Easy-peasy Pirate Belt Tutorial

This one's awesome because 1) it's so simple and 2) it can instantly transform a regular white or black top into a pirate costume.  In fact, I may make one for myself, so I can dress up with the girls (with minimal effort! bonus!).  In these pics, the belt is over the Puffy Pirate Shirt.

You can use any kind of fabric, but I used felt and my striped pirate knit fabric.

Instructions:

Measure the waist of the wearer.  Subtract 2 inches from that and cut 2 rectangles of your main fabric that are that width by 5".  For this belt, my wearer's waist is 20", so my rectangles are cut 18"x5".

Round out the corners on both rectangles.

Cut a strip of your coordinating fabric that is roughly 4 times your waist measurement by 3".  This doesn't have to be exact, but you want it long enough to ruffle slightly.  You can sew two or more pieces together if need be.

Fold your strip in half and press.  Then run a gathering stitch down the raw edge.  Ruffle till it will go around your entire main rectangle with a little overlap.

Sandwich ruffle in between your two main pieces, lining up all the raw edges.  Pin.  Overlap the ends of the ruffle piece.  If you want to fold over the ends, so no raw edges are showing, do that.

Sew around the rectangle, leaving an opening to turn it through.

You'll have this.  See my pins in the top left?  Those are holding the opening closed.

Flatten that sucker out and topstitch around the edge.  

Attach your grommets at the corners of  both sides of the belt, following manufacturers instructions.

Lace ribbon or small rope through, and you're good! :)

P.S.  If you don't have grommets, you can EASILY just sew a ribbon horizontally down the center of the belt and tie the ends in the front.  That's even easier-peasier!! :)

Choo-Choo Re-Do

Brooks's room is sadly under-decorated.  Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that it is NOT decorated.  In the least.  After all, all it has is painted walls and furniture.  He doesn't even have curtains!  As you can see, there are blankets hung over the windows.  We do, though, have that awesome DaVinci navy dresser with changing table.  The navy looks so great against the walls.  I love it.

Overall, though, there's really only one word for this room: sad.


But the winds, they are a-changin'.  I'll be making his curtains soon, but I don't have the fabric yet.  I'm really (REALLY) excited about it, though.  It's this freaking phenomenal chevron fabric from Riley Blake:

It's amazing, right?!  And it gives me a nice color scheme to work with.


Brooks's bedding is the Ryder train bedding from PBK, so I'm throwing some trains into the mix.  First up, one of those classic stacking trains, made by Melissa & Doug.  I picked mine up from TJ Maxx because I knew that not only would it be a great addition to the room, but it would also be a toy that we could label-- exclusively-- as Brooksy-boy's.


However, the green and yellow didn't really fit with my colors.  No problem.  I busted out the (NON-TOXIC) paint and went to work, transforming green to grey and yellow to orange.  I love love love how it turned out!  Now we just need to get that train's shelf up, so he can look out on his kingdom!

By the way, I just discovered the fun that is Picnik!  Here's Mr. Choo-Choo, with a little '60s flair :)

**Make sure, if you paint your own toys, that you double-check that your paint is AP Certified non-toxic!**

White Photo Shoot

This past week, we got the six little cousins together for a photo shoot with super-talented photographer Christy Nieh.  It was a blast and the kids were pretty cooperative.  Noelle went through a little funk, but it was nothing that the promise of ice cream couldn't fix. :)  Here's one of the photos that Christy said I could share with you, so you can see the dresses I made for the girlies.

They're made from white cotton gauze, which is so breathable and beachy.  It was slightly temperamental to work with, I thought.  Since it's textured, it stretches quite a bit, so you have to 1) keep that in mind and 2) take it into account when cutting pieces.  We wanted a white/red/orange/grey color scheme, so the girls all got pops of color.  Riley's belt is red elastic with a shabby chic flower.  Hannah's is an orange rope trim, and Noelle got a dyed-grey doily accent.


Overall, I thought the dresses turned out pretty cute... but not nearly as cute as the kids. :)

Gather the Flower Belt Tutorial

I mentioned in my last post that Riley loves accessorizing.  If you read that one, you saw the gathered belt I made to match her Dress Up Day dress. 

It's so quick and easy and so cute.  Here's the how-to!  (See what I did in that pic?  Made an awesome caption with sidewalk chalk.  Boo-yah!)

Mayerials:
fabric
1/2-inch elastic
Sewing stuff

Instructions:
Cut your fabric 5 inches wide from selvage to selvage.

Fold right sides together and sew up the long side.  Turn right side out.  When you press, put the seam in the center of one side (more or less) and fold the ends in, so no more raw edges are exposed.

Stitch down one side, 5/8-inch from the edge.

Do the same down the other edge.

Cut your elastic to your desired waist size and start threading it through the center hole.

When the elastic gets to the edge, stop pulling and stitch it in place.  Then continue pulling it  through. 

When you get it out the other end, stitch in place there, too.   You'll have a piece like this.

Overlap the ends, about 1/2-inh.

Sew 2 lines down, securing edges together.  Belt part DONE!

For the flower, make a circle, using a 4" radius.

(You'll do this by folding fabric both horizontally and vertically then measuring out from the corner 4" till you can cut a decent quarter of a circle.)

Open it up...

With a needle and thread, gather along the edge all the way around.

Pull it together.

Smush!  Make sure your hole is centered then grab a button.  Make sure you use your thread to pull in all those raw edges under the button.

Stitch to your belt over your seam.  Try to grab just the bottom layer of the flower fabric, so you don't see your stitches.

Thar she is!

In case you're curious about Riley's dress, here's the back.  I didn't mean it to be so flowergirl (or maybe christening?)-y, but oh well.  It makes for a good accessorizing canvas. :)

Dress Up Days Dresses

I recently made a dress for my friend, Erin.  It will be revealed soon, but you have to wait for it.  It'll be worth it.  The reason I tell you this is that I had to order the fabric, and when you order over $35 worth of fabric at fabric.com, you get free shipping.  I figured that it would just be silly to NOT reach that $35 mark, so I had to throw a few extra yards in there.  Just being smart, y'know? :)  Anyway, I browsed around and immediately fell in love with Riley Blake's Dress Up Days line.  Oh, Riley Blake, you get me again!  You're so good.  I've included links to all the different fabrics, too.  You are oh-so-very welcome! :)  You'll probably fall in love, too.

Here are the details on Riley's dress.  (By the way, I only just really thought about the fact that the fabric is Riley Blake and my Riley is wearing it.  I'm, clearly, losing my mind.)  Her main fabric is the Clothesline Orange.  The collar, straps and belt are from the grape floral.  Her little flower is the grape damask.

I call this pose "I'm a '50's housewife.  Welcome to my party!  Would you care for some deviled eggs or cream cheese and celery?"

And this is her "model pose."  Pretty good.  I'd hire her.  

I recently discovered that Riley really likes two things, getting-dressed-wise: elastic and accessories.  Therefore, I had to give her this belt.  The dress can be worn on its own.  However, I wanted to throw in a cute gathered belt for her.  She loves pulling it off and on.  I'm sure it will, somehow, accessorize some other random outfit soon. :)

Noelle's dress has a pieces bodice. Her main fabric is the green bikes, but it also has adorable wagons with little teddy bears!  The coordinating fabrics, as you can see, are the same as the first dress.

The only vision I had for this dress, initially, was some kind of piecing.  I was going to do it all the way down the sides of the dress, but then I thought it would be fun to have a whole pieced center panel. 

 And I like how, since the skirt part is gathered, the panel flairs out at the bottom.  Plus, those pops of grape against the lighter hues are awesome.

My girlies liked dressing up.  Riley actually requested that she keep hers on (not always the case after our "photoshoots").  

I will happily post tutorials for both... Any takers??

No Machine Required Daisy Headband

I've gone through different stages in regard to my girls' head apparel.  It began with the tiny Target bows.  Cheap and easy.  Then I went through this flower phase:

From there, I majorly escalated to those all-out, feathery, huge bows.  

 Oh my word... how did poor Noelle even keep her head up with this big guy on it?!  

(though I must admit that I still think these bows are pretty amazing...)

Then I backed it down a notch to the slightly larger but simple bows.  That's basically where I'm at now.  I do like a statement piece, but I've decided that I want it to be relatively flat, so the little ladies don't have big bow goiters sticking out of their heads.  Mmmmm... love that imagery?

So here's an easy headband that makes a big splash but lies nicely against the hair... In the size I made it, it did start to stray into crazy big territory.  You can make it smaller.  Either way, it requires no sewing machine!

Here are all the materials it takes, actually:
2 pieces of different colored felt
button
headband (I made mine, but you can just buy it, too)
needle and thread
fabric glue (optional) 2 petal patterns (they don't need to be this size, but make them roughly the shape shown)

First, take your felt and cut out five petals in each color, keeping same colored petals the same size.

Now take your five smaller petals and your threaded needle.  Knot that thread really well at the end.  You're going to run the needle through each petal like this.

And you'll see when you pull it tight, the petal looks like this.  Ooooo!

Go through each petal.  Then go back through the first.  Pull tight and stitch through a couple times and tie to secure the flower.

The cute little guy will look like this:

Do the same thing for your larger flower.

Then place the smaller one on top.  Run your needle through both flowers a couple times to secure them together.

Grab a button and stitch it on, going through both flowers for added security.

If you don't have fabric glue, you can actually just stitch your headband and a backing piece of felt on, too.  It's up to you.  I just sandwiched the headband between the flower and a little strip of felt I cut.

And there you have it!  You can whip a bunch of these up during naptime, in all different colors and sizes.  So... they don't have to be this big.  But don't be afraid if they are! :)