Does it come in Purple?

When I made the orange dress with a dinosaur for Dorothy, My roommate from college showed it to her daughter, who asked the obvious question, "Does it come in purple?"  For you, Anna, it does.

I am really loving the light purple with medium and dark blue color combination.  My only minor complaint is that due to the pattern on the dinosaur, it is a little hard to see his eye.  Next time, I'll try to choose a pattern with a bit less contrast.  I was a bit limited though, because the ric-rac only comes in about 5 colors, so I had to find a complimentary fabric that also looked good with the ric-rac.  Luckily, there are ribbons to match all of the ric-rac colors, so I didn't have to worry about that.

While sewing the dress, I was about 4 inches from finishing the final hem when all of a sudden, my machine ate one of my straight pins.  I have never had that happen before and I had to take the plate completely off to dig the pin out.  When I did, I was shocked to see that it had been bent into a "2" shape.  So odd.  Sadly, this also poked a small hole in the fabric.  It was easy to patch up and will never be seen unless you get really close and know exactly where to look.  It is along the back neckline and is hidden in the gathers.  Oops!

Two Shirts for Malcolm

I'm still making things for Malcolm, and I finally got some photos of two of his newest shirts.

First, I made an elephant shirt to go with a pair of pants I bought last year.  There are four things I love in pants for little boys:

1.  seersucker stripes
2.  little all-over embroidered design
3.  roll-up style that can be buttoned at various lengths
4.  priced cheap on clearance

These adorable seersucker pants with embroidered elephants from Janie & Jack met all four criteria and I had to buy them.  Of course, without a shirt, the pants are useless, so I found a cute single color design where the elephant looked pretty similar to the ones on the pants.  He wore the outfit to the zoo and looked pretty sharp.

 

It was the end of the day and they were getting goofy.

I offered to make him a shirt for his birthday, and he and I spent an evening looking through designs.  He liked lots of designs, but finally settled on one that said "Birthday Boy" with a cupcake.  I searched through my scrap fabric and chose four colors that I thought would look nice together.  After I made the shirt, I showed it to him and he told me that, "Those aren't the colors I was thinking about."  Turns out that he wanted purple on it somewhere, but I didn't have any purple scrap fabric.  This was a couple of days before his birthday, and by the time the big day rolled around, he had decided that he liked it after all.

Ready to start opening presents.

New jump rope!

Shirt and Shorts Set

Kevin bought me two new hoops for Christmas, and I have been very bad and had not tried them out yet.  My machine isn't recognizing the giant giga hoop and I need to call the company and find out what is up with that.  In the meantime, I needed to try out my new free arm hoop which is tiny, only 2 inches square, and is for getting into small spaces like cuffs.  I knew what I wanted to do, but that meant that I also had to break out my editing software and actually use it.  I finally worked out how to get it done, and Dorothy has a new little set that is adorable!  It is so cute, that I can't wait to do some more, but she doesn't really need any more clothes.  After a bit more practice, I might add some sets to my Etsy shop, so keep an eye out.  Until then, I'm always open to taking custom orders, if you have an idea of something you would like, please let me know.

It was difficult to get decent pictures of the clothes, but she was too cute playing in yard.  I just let her do her thing while I tried to be ready with the camera.

The shirt has the full design on it, but I had to size it down a bit from the original to get it to fit on the shirt.  There are a couple of spots where I'm not happy with how it lined up, but overall, it is pretty cute.

For the shorts, I got rid of the mushrooms and only kept three of the flowers.  Then flipped the butterfly to face the other direction and moved all the piece a little closer together.  Then I sized the whole thing way down to get it small enough to fit in the hoop.  I was surprised at how well the shorts stitched out.  I changed so many things from the original that I was afraid it would go all wonky.

The original design called for a lot of colors and I simplified it a little by eliminated two of them and just having some of the other colors repeat.  The next time I stitch this one, I'm going to simplify it even more and make the main color of both mushrooms the same.  I don't like the lighter coral on the bigger mushroom as much and think it will look less busy if they are both the same color.

Overall, this is a great little play set and it was perfect for her gymnastics class this morning.  Cute and comfy.