Snow White costume

Yep, I'm still here.

I know I haven't posted in over a month. I've spent the last month 1) moving houses and 2) sewing Littles' Halloween costume. I think the first was more time consuming, but it's really a close call :)

Anyway, we're in the new house now, and good news! I now have a dedicated space for sewing :) (In the old house, my sewing area was in our guest room -- and we have guests frequently, so I had to take a sewing break or move my sewing stuff elsewhere on a regular basis. Not to mention the fact that guests had to find someplace to squeeze there stuff amidst all my fabric.) Bad news, I haven't had any time to set it up yet, so I'm still not sewing again. One of these days.

As for the Halloween costume, that did get finished, in time for the big day.

For those of you who aren't intimately familiar with the Disney Princesses (lucky!), this is Snow White. The pattern is Simplicity 2817, which is the official licensed one. I made a size 5 for Littles, who normally wears a 4T, and it fits fine with some room to grow.

The fabric is all Symphony broadcloth from Joann's. This is the cheapest kind of broadcloth that Joann's carries, and if I were to do this again, I think I'd use the next "step up." The Symphony stuff really does feel kinda thin and cheap. Because it is, I guess :)

Despite using the cheapie broadcloth, all the fabric cost about $20, which is about as much as a ready-to-wear Snow White dress! But this does include some nice extras, like the cape. (Which Littles has started wearing independently of the Snow White dress -- for example, she'll put it over her Silvermist costume and call herself "Super Silvermist!") Besides, those stupid store-bought dresses always start falling apart within days. Even with the cheapie broadcloth, this one is holding up much better.

Good thing, because as I implied earlier, I'm not 100% sure which was more time consuming, moving houses or sewing this costume :) That's a bit of an exaggeration, but really, this did take a while to sew. It wasn't particularly hard, there are just a lot of pieces to cut out and put together. Still, I think the end result was worth it.

I followed the pattern pretty closely, except:

• I used my serger on most seams, rather than my sewing machine. The pattern has a 5/8" seam allowance, so before sewing a seam, I'd draw a line 3/8" from the edge, and serge on that line. The serger adds another 1/4" seam allowance, so that's just right.
  There were only a few non-straight-line raw seams, mostly around the armholes. For those, I had to sew a basting line anyway to do the gathers, so I sewed the basting line at 3/8" in and then tried to serge along the basting line.
• I skipped the collar. I worked on it one night and couldn't figure it out, and I had way too much other stuff going on in my life to spend a ton of time messing with it.
• I used snaps, rather than velcro, to secure the cape to the dress (less likely to shift/come apart), and velcro, rather than a zipper, on the back opening (easier to get on/off independently).
• I goofed initially, and sewed the skirt onto the bodice the wrong way! So the seam was on the outside of the dress. Oops. I had to cut it off and re-serge it. In the process, I think the bodice lost a little of its "definition" -- if you look at a picture of Snow White, the bodice dips down further/more sharply at the front waistline. Also, at certain angles, the piping doesn't seem to match up quite right with the dip in the bodice. I might try to fix it up a bit, but it does look OK as-is, for the most part.

Here are a few more shots...

The headband has been a big hit as well. I don't love it -- I put glue all along the top of the headband to secure the fabric, and you can see the glue line even now that it's dried. I should have just put glue on the bottom of the headband. But anyway, I guess the important thing is that Littles loves it so much that she wants to wear it to school practically every day. And I have a few more of these headbands (I could only find a 3-pack of suitably sized headbands) and plenty more fabric to use to cover them, and these are super easy to make!

Another shot of the cape...

With Noob... I wanted to make him a Dopey costume to match, but simply ran out of time. And this might be the last year I could coerce him into wearing a costume to match his big sister's. Oh well.

So that's that! I'll see you again once my sewing room is set up :)

Chapel dress

I have been sewing lately, just working on a big order of diapers for my friend T, and waiting to post till I'm done with all of them. Almost there!

I took a break from that project a few nights ago to sew Littles' new chapel dress for school. As I've mentioned previously, these dresses cost about $50 if purchased in a store, so last fall, I got some fabric from Joann's to make one myself. They offered me the end of the bolt -- basically, if what you request to be cut leaves less than a yard or so on the bolt, the cutter will sometimes offer the remaining fabric to you at the remnant price (50% off the current price). The remaining fabric was nearly enough for another dress, so I got just a little bit more from a different bolt and figured I'd make another dress for her in the next size up.

I actually did all the cutting and everything last fall, and the cut fabric pieces have just been sitting around waiting to be sewn up. Of course, I waited till the night before the first chapel day to do it :) Luckily, it's an easy pattern that sews up quickly. I did find that the fabric frays very easily, so I ended up using my serger on a lot of it, to quickly finish the edges so they wouldn't fray. I love that thing!

Here's the end result. Simplicity 9854, in size 4 (the shirt is store bought):

It's a little big, but that's perfect. The size 3 was a little big on her last fall, and by the end of the school year, it was baaaaaaaaarely big enough.

Rainbow dress

I got the "tie dye" fabric that I used for the bottom part of this dress a few months ago, to top off a Fabric.com order so that I could get free shipping. I didn't even really know what I would use it for, but, well, it was cheap. And Fabric.com accidentally sent me two yards instead of one, and when I pointed this out to them, they said that I could keep the extra yard. (I highly recommend Fabric.com. Their customer service is excellent!) So, I have a lot of it...

Littles has been begging me to make a dress for her out of it since the moment she first saw it. She found it once again in my pile of fabric over the weekend, and begged me again. This time, with my experience making her tutu shirt fresh in my mind, I decided to tackle the project.

Believe it or not, the top part of the dress is one of my shirts. Ummm, no, it's not from my childhood... it's from my single-woman days :) In my defense, I did have to modify it so that it would fit Littles. I wasn't wearing a shirt small enough to fit a 4-year-old :) But yeah, it's a little too tight/skimpy for my current tastes, so it's been sitting in the back of my closet for years. Just waiting to be given a new life!

Here is what it looked like originally:

I altered it by 1) cutting off the spaghetti straps and serging the ends together, 2) making the body of the shirt narrower by re-serging both sides, and 3) cutting a few inches off the bottom.

Then I cut the "tie dye" fabric to the appropriate length. It's not really tie dyed; it's a printed 100% polyester knit. Anyway, the tutorials I found suggested making the fabric about 2.5 to 3 times as wide as the shirt you're attaching it to. The fabric was 60" wide, so that was just about perfect for this shirt, which was about 22" at the waist after my modifications.

I serged the top of the fabric using a 2x differential on my serger, which gathered it slightly, and then I was able to pull the threads to gather it even more. I like this method of gathering much more than doing a basting stitch on my sewing machine. It's a little harder to gather, but it feels more secure. It's also at the very top of the fabric (since the serger cuts off any excess) so it's easier to hide with the seam attaching the top of the fabric to the waist of the shirt.

Once I had the fabric gathered, I serged the two ends together to form a "tube." Then I serged the gathered edge of the tube onto the bottom of the shirt. I used my experience with the tutu shirt to sew this one on right! Shirt right side out, skirt "tube" inside out, right sides together.

Finally, I finished the hem with a rolled-edge stitch on my serger. This made for a nice, lightweight hem that allows the dress to "splat out" (as Littles calls it) when she twirls. An important feature for any dress!

So, this was my first major project completed entirely using my new serger! It could definitely be done on a regular sewing machine, especially with knit fabric like I used, since it doesn't fray, so finishing the seams is less important. But serging gave me a nice professional finish on all the seams. I'm still getting used to my serger and definitely spent some time cussing at it during the completion of this dress :) But I really love the results!

And so does Littles:

Tutu pajamas

In my diaper-sewing posts, I've mentioned a couple of times that I've also been working on non-diaper projects. This was one of them:

I finished this back in May, I think. It's a pair of pajama shorts for Littles. Pattern is Simplicity It's So Easy 2738. As I've done on similar projects, I did french seams on the legs and crotch to prevent raw edges. (This was pre-serger; I'm sure I'll end up making stuff like this again, and when I do, I'll use the serger to sew and finish the edges all at once!)

The flannel is from Joann's. It's the same stuff I used to make the pillow for Littles' nap mat.

I thought Littles would love them because of the ballerinas, but alas, like just about everything I sew for her, she had no interest in wearing them. To be fair, she refuses to wear shorts in general, not just the ones I make. But a month or so after sewing these shorts, I came across this tutorial for a "tutu t-shirt." Since Littles loves tutus, I thought it might be the perfect top to revive her interest in these shorts.

The end result:

I made one semi-major goof while sewing this. When it came time to sew the tulle onto the bottom of the shirt, I lost my mind for a minute and thought that you sew fabric with wrong sides together. So I turned the shirt inside out to sew the tutu on. Of course, that's not correct; you usually sew with right sides together. Oops! The result is that the hem of the shirt turns up slightly, and also, the basting seam I used to gather the tulle is slightly visible. Here's a close-up:

Of course, the seam looks much better from the inside (i.e. what was supposed to be the right side). Here, the seam you see above the tulle is just the original hem seam from the t-shirt, so that wouldn't be visible had I sewn it the right way. See how much smoother the seam looks in this picture?

I could have ripped out the seam and sewn it again, but that would've taken quite a bit of time -- and, well, these are pajamas, so who cares if the seam is less than perfect? I'll wait and see if Littles actually wears this before investing that kind of time into fixing it :)

The complete set:

Littles was super excited about the shirt, but not so excited about the shorts. Still, she humored me:

Ugh, that turned-up seam is driving me a little bit nuts, but I'm trying to quell my inner perfectionist.

Purple tutu

Ages ago, I got a bunch of pink and purple tulle to make tutus for Littles. I sewed a pink tutu way back in December, and it was enough of a pain that I wasn't exactly jumping to sew the purple one. But Littles found the purple tulle in my sewing room one day, and has been begging me to make her a purple tutu. And I can't turn down my little girl :)

I didn't love the way that the pink tutu turned out, so for this one, I used these instructions from fabric.com. The one slight modification I made was that rather than sewing the layers of tulle to a piece of scrap ribbon one at a time, I sewed them all together, using a basting stitch (long thread length/loose tension), and then gathered them together.

I also had Littles "help" me with this project, which she absolutely loved. Just simple stuff like holding the tulle while I cut it.

The end result is... better. But still not great. Since I suspect I'll be making a tutu again (Littles loves to dance), here are the modifications I would make:

1. Don't wait for your overeager preschooler to find the neatly folded tulle in your sewing room. She will unfold it all, making it much harder to cut later! The Joann's cutting counter gave me the tulle folded in half, so all I would have had to do is cut along the foldline... had Littles not gotten to it first :)
2. Possibly use just 3 layers of tulle for a child's tutu, rather than 4. It's pretty poofy.
3. You typically don't backstitch when doing a basting seam, but it's very helpful to backstitch one side of the basting seam holding the layers together. Then you can gather from the other side, without worrying about the gathered fabric slipping off the end.
4. Don't cut the waistband ribbon to length. Leave a lot of extra. You can cut it down to the right length when you fold it over. (With this one, I did cut it to length plus a little extra, and it ended up being way too short so I had to fold over part of the tutu itself. It looks a little funny.)
5. When sewing the waistband ribbon to the tulle, sew with the tulle up, the ribbon down. I didn't do this, and accidentally caught lower pieces of the tulle in my stitching a couple of times because I couldn't see it.

That said, I do like this method a lot. And Littles loves the results, which is all that really matters!