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.

Orange Dress with Dinosaur(s)

My daughter might only be two, but she has some pretty strong opinions about some things.  A while back I asked her, "Dorothy, would you like me to make you a dress?"  There are a couple of patterns I have been wanting to test out, but I wasn't really expecting much of a reaction either way from her.  She answered me with an enthusiastic, "Yes!  Orange dress with dinosaurs!"   How could I say no to such a fantastic request?  Every few days she would remind me, "Orange dress with dinosaurs?"  like she wondered where it was and why I had not come up with it yet.  One day while Malcolm was at school, she and I went to the fabric store to pick out some orange fabric for her dress.  If I dared to stop and look at anything that was not orange or had dinosaurs on it, she would get very irritated and would remind me of our mission.  We found some cute orange fabric that was fairly plain, but that would look nice with a dinosaur appliqued on it.

I have been wanting to make a pillowcase dress for a while and decided that this would be a good project for it.  I looked at a bunch of patterns, then decided to wing it.  My first attempt was cute, but way too big.  When I tried it on her, Malcolm looked at her and asked, "Dorothy, why are you wearing an apron?"  Since the bottom had all the detailing and would be nearly impossible to change, I cut the top off to make it shorter and tried again.  It isn't my favorite style of dress, but it does seem like it will be very cool and comfy for hot summer days.

I love a lot of things about this dress, but my favorite is how it so ultimately girly while not having a speck of pink anywhere and having a ferocious dinosaur right on the front.  It is such a contradiction, and yet, so very Dorothy.  I love the bright colors and how the over sized ric-rac resembles the dinosaur's teeth. 

The pattern I used for the dinosaur is a bit more aggressive than I would normally choose for a two year old, but it was the only dinosaur I already had in my collection.  I thought about buying one of the more baby looking ones, but instead, I just made this one out of polka dot fabric.  It's hard to be too terrifying when one is covered in polka dots.  The polka dot fabric was left over from a set I made last year for a one year old's birthday.

Overall, I am happy with how this one came out, and I never would have picked these particular fabrics to go together if Dorothy hadn't insisted on an orange dress with dinosaurs.  Thanks for the creative push kiddo.

Birthday Gifts

Malcolm had two more birthdays recently, so I made two more beach towels with the kids' names on them. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the first one I did. I realized I hadn't taken a picture as I was curling the ribbon on the package. You will just have to believe me when I say that it was cute. It has the little boy's name and two pelicans on it. It was the first one I had done with pelicans and now I want o do more. I did remember to take pictures of the second one I did. I ran out of my stockpile of beach towels, except for two bright pink ones and I didn't think those would go over well with a five year old boy. Dorothy and I went to Target to see what we could find. They did have a couple of beach towels out, but they would not have worked well to be embroidered. We ended up choosing a regular bath towel, and they can choose if they want to use it at he pool or at home. Dorothy pick out a green towel for the birthday boy, and while she was a it, also picked out a yellow towel for herself and a red one for her brother. Malcolm wanted me to appliqué clown fish on the towel and they look great on the green. Hopefully it will get a lot of use this summer.

This was the best I could do for a spread out photo indoors.

I think the fish look uneven because of the bump in the couch.  They looked even when I held it up.

Now to see if I actually get the ones for my kids done before swimming lessons start in June.

Shirred Dress for School Raffle

Malcolm's school had a raffle fund raiser in March and I donated two custom made items as prizes.  One was a shirred dress for a girl in any size from 12 months to 6.  I asked the winner for color and theme ideas to find some fabric that they would love.  The little girl who won is very girly and like monkeys, rainbows, and blue, green, and purple.  I found lots of very cute fabric, but many of them were serious, and didn't seem quite right.  They would have been pretty, but would also have looked a lot like something that could have been bought at any store.  Once I saw this polka dot monkey fabric, I knew that it was the one.  I don't know the little girl very well, but it really seemed to "fit" her and I very much hope she likes it.

Since she prefers greens and blues, I used that as the main ribbon color.

Close up of one of the sassy, silly monkeys on the fabric.

More monkeys.  I tried to get an aqua ribbon for the trim, but couldn't find any that matched.

I think that it turned out really cute, and love that it is a casual, every day sort of dress.

Purdue Hoodie

I appliqued a block P on a grey zip sweatshirt for Malcolm to go with his Purdue shirt and pants.  It's cute, but not quite what I was hoping for.  I had some Purdue fabric left over from some long-alls I made him back when he was a toddler, so I used that for the P.  I wish that the print on the fabric was a little smaller so that it would have shown up better on the P.  The stitching around the P is a little wonky where it started and finished, and I think it has to do with how I hooped it.  The zipper and the sleeve made it difficult to get properly hooped, and I think it wasn't tight enough, then slipped at the start and finish, leaving the stitching not quite finished looking.  If I want to do more sweatshirts, I'm going to have to find a way to get them more stable for stitching.  Oh well, it is still great for layering in this Spring weather.

Close-up of the P

Yes, he's wearing his Purdue t-shirt under the sweatshirt.