spinning butterflies

I made Abby a spinning dress in April.  My sister-in-law and niece loved it so much that I made another one.


I used a green, black, and white butterfly fabric with matching ribbon from Hobby Lobby.  Every girl needs hairbows to match a special dress!


I love the halter style more than I thought I would.  It takes a lot of yardage to get the long straps, and the swirly skirt - but it is worth it when you see the twirl factor!

Happy Birthday, G!

turtle stuff for baby B

Besides the turtle quilt you saw yesterday, the new baby has a bunch of matching goodies coming his way.
This romper is a simple pattern with facing at the neckline.


The romper has snap tape at the crotch for ease with diapers.  This babe will be cloth diapered (I am told) and I don't quite know how that will affect the fit.  Hopefully it works out.


The romper buttons at the shoulder are a bright green.  They are not purely decorative, they can be used for ease of dressing as well.


I tried something new with this burp cloth - piping.  It feels a little silly to have such a fancy "puke rag" as they are sometimes called in our house, but I think it looks really nice and makes for a classy edging.  Who says you can't have a fancy puke rag? haha.


The lovey blanket is turtle fabric on one side and a light green minkee on the other side.  Even though there's not a lot of orange and yellow on the fabric, I included yellows and oranges in the grosgrain and satin ribbons to coordinate with the quilt and because I think they look great together!


This fuzzy cube has a few minkees, fleece, turtle fabric, and white dots mixed with a lot of grosgrain and satin ribbons.  It is full of textures for baby to enjoy and explore!


Here is the matching hat.  It is a fully lined bucket hat.  Now that it's done I kind of wish I'd tried to include some piping on it - maybe made out of the binding from the quilt.  Either way, I think their babe will look adorable in it!


So many goodies for Baby B to enjoy!

turtle quilt for baby B

This turtle quilt is for my cousin's baby, due in July.  My cousin and her husband have actually seen turtles headed to the ocean - pretty amazing, I'm sure.  Add that to my bucket list, please!  When she saw this quilt a few years ago, she told me then to keep it in mind for her someday.  I am so excited that I finally got to make it for her!!


The turtle tracks around the edge are actually three wavy lines meant to be the part where the turtle's body drags along, and the bumps on the edge are the "paddle" marks they make.


The turtle applique was zig-zagged around the edges, and then zig-zag quilted on the orange swirl.  The yellow "sand" underneath was tightly quilted for texture.


The squares around the turtle applique were quilted in wavy lines to imitate the ocean waves.  The "blue" squares turned out various shades of blue and teal because of variations in the fabric.  I lvoe how it looks!


The binding is so beautiful - I love how the greens, blues, and teals all change and evolve around the edge.  I just need to work on the corners.  They are not easy for me.


Best wishes to S&T on their new arrival...whenever he arrives!

crossover dress and knit pants

One of my three nieces had a birthday this month, and this was her special outfit.  The pants were originally going to be capris, but I am never a good judge of length for her and didn't have a chance to measure her - so they ended up being more like pedal pushers.  They are made out of a green ribbed knit.  The dress is made with coordinating fabrics from Hobby Lobby (which has matching ribbon too - bonus!).  The green ric rac I had in my stash.  To be honest, if I do this pattern again I will be really tempted to rethink the straps.  They are not finished nicely in my opinion - you are supposed to serge or zigzag the edge and put the ric rac over the top.  I don't see why you couldn't have made it a tube instead for a more finished edge, but didn't realize it until it was too late to change.



The back of the top has green heart buttons to hold the straps on and yellow buttons to open up the back.

wordle for boys

Have you ever heard of Wordle?  It's such a fun way to play with words.  When I taught, I used it a couple of times with kids.  I love how you can change fonts, colors, and the shape/design of the word layout.  Most importantly, you can change how big the words are according to how many times you use the words in the text.

The boys are going to share a bedroom, and I've been trying to incorporate a few touches for both of them, rather than just 7 year old boy stuff.  I wanted some wall art above the crib, so I decided to make my own Wordle.  I played around a little on the actual website, and then decided to just go for it myself with vinyl.  It's a little hard to tell, but I used light blue, dark blue, bright green, olive green and red.  The red is for "big" and "little" because I wanted them to stand out a little.  I asked Conner for a couple of words that meant boy and brother to him, and added some words that made me think of the boys too.  After giving my (sporty) brother a preview, I realized I forgot to cut one of my Silhouette files - so I'll be adding "sports" "baseball" and "soccer" another day.

I also added a little border above the yardstick chair rail on the crib side.  A few tools for the baby to dream of using when he gets older.  My Silhouette has been getting a workout!

I think the boy's room is officially done now - only seven more weeks until the due date.  Just in the nick of time!

oversized turquoise and bows

I love this dress.  So does my daughter.  Unfortunately, I can't measure.  The bodice was way too wide and she was unable to wear it for Easter.

The turquoise fabric itself is a little thicker weight than the typical cottons I usually use when I sew.  I don't remember what it's called, but I wish I could find more fabric in this weight.  It was a job to work with!  The straps and midriff contrast panel are a solid pink cotton.  The hairbows were made from a matching turquoise ribbon and some wavy edged bright pink ribbon...love Hobby Lobby's ribbons.

This dress has a zipper on the back.  I don't feel quite as comfortable with how it turned out.  The pink actually matched up pretty well but it took a lot of re-working.  The fabric below the pink doesn't really seem to lay as smoothly as it should either.  I still have a lot to learn about zipper insertion!

still love it...a few months later

This was Abby's Valentine's Day dress.  I picked out the fabric first just because I loved the buttons and wanted to make her a swirly corduroy dress.  She loved the hearts and named it her Valentine's dress.

Her cousins each got a matching style dress (made in different fabrics) for Christmas.  Unfortunately, no pictures of those.

I am still never sure how my zippers are going to turn out.  I was pretty happy with this one, but definitely wish I could get some consistency in my workmanship.