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!

The tutu fix

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a tutu that I made for Littles' dance class, and mentioned that the waist was a little too big. Well, I fixed it! I simply added some snaps on the waistband. This makes the tutu much more adjustable, and more secure, too:

It's hard to see in this picture, but I placed the snaps right above the seamline going through the middle of the ribbon. They only go through the ribbon, not through the tulle, so they are hidden by the gathered tulle above the seamline and aren't very visible when the tutu is on.

This also addressed the problem with the old ribbon waistband where it was hard to tie it tight enough to prevent a gaping hole where the two edges of the tutu didn't quite come together. With the snaps, the two edges naturally overlap, creating a nice smooth look:

Littles approves of the fix :)

I love those snap pliers! They come in handy for so many projects.

Tutu

Littles has been taking dance classes once a week for the past year. She loves them! She does ballet and just started tap last month. When Hubby took her to the dance store to get tap shoes, she spied some tutus... and has been asking for one ever since. So I decided to sew one up for her as an early Christmas present.

I had found some tutu sewing directions at Joann's a while back -- they have little sheets in the store with interesting project suggestions on them. I used that as a starting point, but ended up modifying it slightly to suit my preferences. I should have taken pictures as I went to do this post tutorial-style, but, well, I didn't. So I'll try to describe in words instead.

I used shiny tulle from Joann's in two different shades of pink. I cut strips lengthwise, from selvage to selvage, that were 12", 14", 20", and 24". (The original directions called for another strip 28" wide, but I thought that might make it a little long for Littles.) So, with the two different colors, I ended up with eight pieces of tulle.

I folded them in half, so now I had pieces that were 6", 7", 10", and 12" in height. Then I layered them from tallest to shortest, alternating the two colors. This was a huge pain! Tulle is not the easiest material to work with. I ended up taking one of the 12" tall folded pieces and laying it down and pinning it. Then I took the other 12" tall folded piece, laid it carefully on top, and made sure that the fold was reasonably straight. Then I took out the pins on the first piece to pin through both pieces. And so on, until I had all the pieces layered.

I put in some more pins to hold the layers together and did a basting seam about an inch from the fold. A basting seam is just a very loose seam that is designed to hold the pieces together temporarily. On my machine, I set the thread tension to 0 (as loose as possible) and the stitch length to 4 (as long as possible) to baste. It was a little hard to sew and so my basting seam ended up kinda crooked, but that was fine, since it was only temporary.

Then I gathered the tulle pieces to match Littles' waist. This was easy to do with the basting seam. I just pulled on one of the pieces of thread and that gathered the fabric right up. I kept pulling until it was the right length, then redistributed the tulle evenly along the basting seam.

At that point, it was time to add a ribbon for the waist. I used 2 yards of 1.5" grosgrain ribbon. I centered the tulle on the ribbon (since the ribbon was much longer than the gathered tulle) and pinned down the edges of the tulle. Then I added a bunch more pins in between to keep it in the right place. Finally, I sewed a seam down the middle of the ribbon. The original instructions called for folding the ribbon over the gathered tulle and sewing it again, but I liked the way it looked with the ribbon at the back. To finish it off, I removed the original basting seam.

It might sound complicated, but it was pretty easy, aside from working with the tulle! Here's the finished product...

From the back:

Close up showing the gathered tulle and how it is sewed to the ribbon:

Littles doesn't usually have dance class during school breaks, but she had a special make-up class this Thursday, so I gave her the tutu in time to wear it for class. She didn't take it off the rest of the day :)

I don't love the way it turned out. I made the waist a little too big. And it's very hard to tie the ribbon tight enough so that there isn't a big gaping hole on the back. I may experiment with adding some elastic on the waist to see if I can help with both problems. But certainly, it works well enough for now!