Bridesmaid Dress Tree Skirt

When my first son was 3 months old, one of my close friends got married. I was still carrying around a little extra baby weight. (Okay, it was probably more like an extra 50 lbs).

What a perfect time for me to have to buy a bridesmaid dress right? The bigger the dress, the more fabric to work with when I cut it up after the wedding :) There's a silver lining to everything!

I knew I would never wear the dress again, mainly because I was never planning on needing a size 16 again. (Wrong! I had my second child a month ago, and I am in a size 18. Mostly I'm still sticking with maternity clothes!)

Since the dresses were a beautiful shade of red, I figured I could make something Christmassy with it. And since my tree skirt was one of those small, el cheapo dollar store felt things, making a new tree skirt seemed like the obvious choice. I got the idea from Chica and Jo.

Basically, my friend and I cut out triangles, and then sewed them together into a circle. When we were done, it was not as big as I had pictured it, so we made it larger by adding a large ruffle to the circumference of the circle. We also cut out a small circle in the center so that it would fit around the tree trunk.


Voila! Happy Holidays!

Calendar Towel Onesies

Besides my little newborn, there was also another baby born on my street a week before mine, and another neighbor gave birth on November 2. Three babies born to three friends all within about one month of each other! Wowser!

After I saw this onesie on pinterest, I knew I would be making these for the three boys! Yes, that's right, they're all boys! AND, we all already have toddler boys about the same age. Crazy, huh?!

We're working on making an entire Buckeyes offensive line here on our street :)



Making one of these calendar towel onesies is really quick and easy to do. Here's how. Take an old calendar towel and cut out the appropriate month. Take some floss and back stitch around the date the baby was born. Next take some fusible web (mine was thrifted of course!) and adhere it to the wrong wide of your calendar applique with your iron. Iron it onto a plain onesie, and then use your machine to zig zag around the outside of the applique. You're done!

Kids in Thrifted Clothing!

The sweatshirt was a gift, but the jeans were thrifted :) ALL his jeans are thrifted, in fact. He has 8 pairs of jeans for a total of $3. And they're all in good condition with no holes or signs of obvious wear, and are good brands like Gymboree, Old Navy, Wrangler, etc!


Here Joel is wearing a totally thrifted outfit. I sewed down the skeleton tee from a thrifted adult tee, and the thrifted orange onesie underneath goes well with it to keep him warm.


The romper Jonas is wearing here was a bit of a thrifting splurge at $1 but it sure is cute :)


Jonas's romper was a gift, but Joel is wearing a thrifted outfit. At 40c, this shirt was a steal!

Cookie Monster Sleep Sack Costume and a Newborn!

I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the family.... Jonas Alexander!

At 9 lbs 4 oz, he was a hefty little newborn! He was born two weeks ago via c-section, and we're both doing quite well. I'm so glad he was born in time for Halloween... I do love Halloween :)

Proud big brother!




Now let's talk Halloween. To save money (hey, we are now diapering for two!), I decided to have my older son be Elmo because we already have an Elmo costume. My mom got Joel one for Christmas last year. And who goes great with Elmo? Cookie Monster, of course!

I started with a thrifted sleep sack pattern, and a bunch of other vintage stuff that I already had on hand. The fabric was from my great-grandmother's stash. When she passed away, I got her fabric. The zipper and bias tape were thrifted too.

The cookie is made of felt sandwiched together with batting in the middle, and attached to the sleep sack with velcro.

Then for his head, I decided to make a baby bonnet using Prudent Baby's awesome tutorial. I left off the ruffle for obvious reasons! I bought a six pack of ping pong balls for $1.29, hot glued two of them on top of the baby bonnet, and then drew some googly eyes with a permanent marker.

Is he not the cutest baby Cookie Monster you ever saw?

Long Sleeved Raglan Tee

Even though my son is only 2 1/2, I decided to go ahead and sew him a special long sleeved tee for his birthday. I don't have a lot of time to sew during the school year since I'm a teacher... and this year we'll have a newborn on our hands too!

The yellow fabric was a polo of my husband's that had some stains on it. The green fabric was thrifted tee that I scored for only a quarter. The number three iron-on applique was also thrifted... still new in the package for only 30c.

Awesome. But I don't really want my toddler wearing those words!

Before beginning this project, I should have checked around online for a raglan tee tutorial like this one over at Craftiness Is Not Optional. Lesson learned. Her tutorial looks great, and it would have saved me a lot of headaches rather than just winging it like I did.

By the way, the number 3 is supposed to look like that. It's the tattered look apparently!

I'm not very happy with the neckline (and hope it's big enough to fit my son's head!), and I completely messed up the sleeves. Twice. Ok, more than twice. The sleeves don't go all the way to the neckline like they're supposed to... *sigh* The sleeves also turned out pretty skinny, so I added a third strip of fabric to make them a little wider, which of course made the seams pretty strange. But I salvaged it the best I could, and I'm not too upset because after all, it was my first try at a raglan tee! Now I know what to do for next time :)

And anyway, I'm sure the only thing my son will notice is that it's green and yellow (John Deere colors). He's in love with all things John Deere. He even spotted a pair of green and yellow scissors at the thrift store the other day and exclaimed, "I want John Deere scissors!" They were actually children's pinking shears, and to tell you the truth, I should have just gotten them as they were only 50c.

Getting off my Duff and Sewing a Romper

I have just four days left of freedom before we go back to school. It has been a nice, long relaxing summer! This past month I've been pretty lazy as my nesting phase ended and ushered in the phase of laying around, doing nothing.

I decided that I would use my sewing machine today and whipped up a 12 month romper for Jonas for next summer. I haven't added the snaps around the bottom yet because I am still holding out until I find a thrifted snap-making tool.

Using Sugar Bee Crafts' tutorial as a guide, I turned this thrifted men's large Gap tee into a baby romper. I bought it originally for my first born son, because he LOVES hockey, and because my husband grew up on the south side. Whenever I see something that says "South Side" while I'm out thrifting, I pick it up if it's cheap. But seeing as how my son's closet is bursting at the seams with clothing, I decided that little baby Jonas could have this one!

If you make baby tees, basically you do the same thing to make a romper, except make it a little longer with two leg holes and reinforce the upside-down-U part in between the legs with a strip of "bias" tape (though since it's t-shirt material, you don't really have to cut it on the bias) before adding snaps. I used a 12 month romper of my first son's as a guide. It was really very easy!



I'll also show you a t-shirt and shorts set that I reconned for my older son awhile back. It's nice when kids are small; you can make multiple items of clothing from one men's tee! We usually use this outfit as PJs since t-shirt material is so soft, but sometimes he wears it outside too! Here he is playing with his cousin :)

A Precious Toddler Conversation about Sewing

Today on TV, Curious George was learning about spider webs. George decided he was going to build a monkey web and used thread to weave his web.

My 2 1/2 year old got very excited when he saw the thread and exclaimed, "Mommy uses fred on the sewing big 'chine!" and he ran over to the dining room table and pointed to my sewing machine.

And I said, "I do? What do I make with my thread?"

And he said, "Uh.... shirts!" :)