this post brought to you by: gravity.

good morning, boys and girls. i’m writing this post with the last vestiges of the 3am adrenaline rush that comes with being woken by the sounds of crashing and glass shattering.

i was out of bed and flying down the hallway before i was even really awake, i think. and just as i rounded the corner to the kitchen i had a brief moment of maybe running out here like a maniac isn’t the brightest idea followed quickly by a glance at the clock (3:12) and well, jeremy’s still home so he’ll back me up if it’s a masked murderer.

spoiler alert: it wasn’t. turns out the old “glue a soda tab top to the back of xxxx and hang it on the wall” idea doesn’t work so well for plates. one of the three i had above the kitchen counter fell to it’s splintery death, taking my little glass straw dispenser along for the grisly ride. :(

you know what’s not awesome?  teeny, tiny shards of glass covering your kitchen counter, sink and floor at 3 in the morning.

but at least we get to spend some time together, because there’s no way i’m going back to sleep anytime soon. although i certainly hope this isn’t what it takes for me to get a blog post up nowadays, because i just don’t have that many plates to spare.

moving on--this dress was one of the last things we photographed on our Massive Handmade Fashion Show, so probably we were a little punch drunk. we were having great fun coming up with some of the typical “fashion blogger” poses for guinevere to copy, e.g.:

‘carefree and fun’ aka ‘hey look i have pockets’

‘bashful’ aka ‘did i step in something?’

my personal favorite: the ‘bashful’ combined with the ‘pigeon toe stance’

we thought we were very funny. what can i say? it was a lot of dress modeling all at once.

anyway, about the dress. this bad boy was a straight up mess. guinevere wanted a dress she’d seen on e-shakti, and while i love their stuff i simply won’t spend that kind of money on a still growing girl. so we came up with a design together using a couple yards of this dark blue fabric i was gifted from someone’s stash cleansing. the only thing i bought for this dress was 2 packages of white piping, because i was too lazy to make my own. and at only $1.47/package at walmart i consider it good time management plus still thrifty—basically the dress cost less than $3. #winning

the only problem is it turned into sort of a hot mess. the first bodice i drafted turned out terribly. it didn’t fit at all and wasn’t even salvageable. katy posted a pic today on instagram of her mess of fabric clippings and remarked that she sometimes wished she could gather it up and roll it out again like dough. yeah. it was like that. i had one more shot to get it right, otherwise i wouldn’t have enough fabric. and the second bodice was giving me fits too.

this bodice is made of four separate pieces (not counting the collar). each piece has white piping sewn into the seam. it’s not quite princess seaming (i still had to put some darts in the sides which are too high grrrr), but there is a definite curve to the pieces to allow the piping to remain fairly straight. i think my issue was somewhere in the additional seam allowance needed for all three pieces going across, plus extra for piping, plus extra for the waistband portion…the first time i shorted myself (this piece can’t possibly need to be that big! uhhh…yeah, it is.) and the second time i overcompensated. but it worked because i ended up draping and pinning the thing right on her. she’s a good kid—quite patient. she earns her dresses.

i also shirred the back of the dress to keep it snug and eliminate the need for a zipper.

a full skirt (with pockets!), white collar and some buttons completed the look.

she was happy, i was happy, we were all happy happy. it’s a sweet dress—vintage and cute and modest and trendy in all the right ways. so despite the trouble it gave me i’m glad it worked out in the end. it was worth the $3.

now if you’ll excuse me…i’m off to 1) find that dress and clip that infuriating stray thread on the second button from the bottom and then 2) go to bed. night night.

starting easy: circle skirts

these skirts.

these skirts should have been blogged a loooonnnnng time ago.  BUT, i’ve figured out a good way of justifying the fact that i made these for guinevere ummm…two years ago.

ready? here it is: THEY STILL FIT HER. two years later—and the girl has grown substantially, but because of the elastic waist and the length she is still wearing them. when i first made them they were closer to mid-calf length, now they’re still below-knee length.

add in the fact that both fabrics were bought at walmart for $1.50/yard, and well…i’d say we certainly got our money’s worth out of em.

i bought 2 yards of each fabric (that’s $3 per skirt, for those following along at home), and followed dana’s awesome circle skirt tutorial—which, EVEN THOUGH IT INVOLVES MATH, is really really REALLY easy to follow.

honestly—neither of these prints are my absolute favorite. but the gal needed some skirts at the time, they’re a super quick sew, and they’re comfy and easy to wear. and they were $3. did i mention that?

that probably explains why she’s still wearing them coughcough 2 years later.

because of her height i couldn’t get the full cut out of my material, and i solved this in a different way for each skirt.

on the brown and peach one, i used a piece to fill it.

now you see it…

i made my quarter-circle pattern piece, then folded and laid my fabric underneath and marked where i needed extra length. then i sewed additional pieces on where needed, refolded and cut the pattern out.

because the skirt is so full and the pattern is so busy you can barely tell where this was done (especially when that part is on the side which is how i MEANT for her to wear it. sheesh)

now you don’t. kinda.

on the silver one i took a piece of tissue weight black knit and added a border to the bottom. because the bottom hem of the skirt is curved and the border is not there’s a bit of wonkiness right where the two meet.

but again, the fullness of the skirt covers a multitude of sins.

i hemmed it with a lettuce edge hem, which you can find a tutorial for HERE.

it truly doesn’t get much easier or more comfortable than this. and let’s face it—no matter how big you are a twirly, spinny skirt never gets old. ;)

one hour chevron maxi dress

i try, you know? i think to myself (actually it’s kind of jeremy’s voice in my head. he’s my jiminy cricket)…you have too much on your plate. you simply can NOT sew all the dresses your children need. in a week. and survive. and feed us. (jeremy’s voice, remember?) you have to accept that you are going to have to go to the store and buy some dresses.

eek.

okay. fine. guinevere needs a dress, and she wants a maxi. off to the store we go.

and then we return--frustrated, annoyed and dress-less. because it seems like everything is either waaaay to short for my leggy girl, or the maxi’s are those shear top layer over a mini underlayer pukeandnothankyou not appropriate and not cute anyway, and then when we finally find one that’s…okay…it’s $35. and in my head i’m tallying the cost of the yard and a half of fabric i’d need and the hour it would take me to make it…and, well.

dress-less we return. you know?

so i balance, carefully—a more involved project one day, a simple sew the next. and in that way i churn through my “to-sew” list, and my children do not have to wear paper bags out of the house, and everyone gets fed at least once a day. #winning

this was one of my simple sews—my answer to the overpriced maxi.

it’s based off of a design she found online here, which at a mere $209 is just a touch out of our league. <<insert giant shocked eye emoji here>> and okay well i’m just realizing now when looking up that link again that the waistband was striped…not a smaller chevron print. well. humph.

it certainly takes away a bit of the fist-pumping triumph i had in finding coordinating chevron prints: one large scale and one small scale. not that it was exceedingly difficult—both were ordered from girl charlee where they carry enough chevron prints to satisfy even the hardiest of the trend-watching fashionistas.. they really have the best selection of knits around.

i did have one teensy tiny issue. i was a Good Sewer and prewashed the fabrics. i’m learning. but--the smaller chevron print faded. a LOT. like enough that i was going to arrange to send it back. you can see in some of these pics how much less black the waistband is. but guinevere really liked the combo of small and large chevrons. so we kept it. (and take that vineyard vines and your $200 striped-waist-chevron-skirted maxi dress. she likes my mini chevrons.)

the technical stuff which non-sewers may skip: the top began it’s life as a $3 clearance strapless tube top from walmart. i cut off the bottom 5” and attached the shirred waistband and skirt. the waistband is made of two parts: a regular ungathered underlayer, and the shirred portion was attached over it. the skirt was literally a tube: one seam up the back, hem on bottom. the cut off portion of the top got cut in half and sewn into tubes to become the straps. done and done.

because the shirt was meant to be strapless there was elastic all around the top of it. it works nicely to keep the top flush against her chest. and that’s all i have to say about that. O.o

saying this dress took me an hour is probably being generous. i didn’t even measure (shocking, i know), just held up the fabric to guinevere’s body and eyeballed. spit-marked, if you will.

i need to invest in some more jersey knit. one hour dresses for everybody! ;)

and just for fun (and because i can’t think of a way to end this post), how about some outtakes? this is what happen when i tell neve to stop cocking her head to one side and giving me a half-smile for every shot.

whelp. that should keep the boys away for another few years. my work here is done.

better late than never

i was thoroughly inspired and intrigued by the weekly challenges on the last go-round of project run and play. i love that blogger challenge.

when all the themes were announced my head was spinning—i had so many ideas for each week! i was gonna do it! keep up and add my contribution to the flickr friends pool every week!

umm…no. whomp whomp.

i started the first week: a pattern remix of no big dills “very biased skirt”. the plan in my head came to fruition—but with a LOT more work than i expected.

a simple sheath, with bias cut strips grading from a deep rust to a salmony orange to bright orange to light orange to white.

i bought each color in two different fabrics: a satiny solid and a sheer chiffon, and alternated and overlapped two of each fabric weight on each color layer.

i cut a front and back out of muslin and sewed the bias strips on each separately, then sewed the dress up and put a facing in the neck and arms. the pattern doesn’t match up perfectly on the sides, but it’s definitely close enough.

i seriously underestimated the time it would take me to sew all.those.strips.on. like, by DAYS.

my room was flooded with strips of fabric in autumnal colors. they were everywhere. and in the end i had enough left to make another entire dress, but i couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore. shhh…i threw them all away (a first class sewer sin, i know)

in the end, as usual, it was worth it. a one-of-a-kind dress that my girl loves. it’s definitely eye-catching. paired with black tights and shoes, sometimes a black cardigan, and we’ve even added a simple black sash at the waist. love.

oh! and the back:

a big black exposed zipper. i’m a big fan of the exposed zip—edgy without being over-the-top.

so here it is: the one and only project i did for the last project run and play, a mere month or so after it ended. yippee.

night owls sleepover

what was it, two years ago that i first talked about the “night owls” sleepover party?
okay, so it was a year and a half ago…not too shabby. but believe me when i tell you that my girls did NOT forget about either the party details i talked about, or my off-the-cuff promise that we would do our own night owl party.
 
not only did they not forget, but in that year and a half that elapsed i managed to have another daughter grow to the age that she wanted in on the action, too.

even when i tried to convince them that owls are passé--foxes are the new owl--they wouldn’t bite. and as a last ditch effort i even threw out that maybe, just maybe they were too old for stuffed animals now? nope. it was night owl sleepover or bust.

all this to explain why i found myself on a saturday night a couple of weeks ago with 13—THIRTEEN—girls, ranging from 15 months (elliot) to 12 years, piled in my family room. and why for the three days prior i found myself attached to my sewing machine into the wee hours churning out stuffed owl after stuffed owl.

oh look, a pile ‘o owls.

party wise i really kept it fairly simple (besides all those dang owls). walmart had owl-themed paper goods (SCORE!) for 98 cents a pack. i had the girls make a banner from some scrapbook paper and owl stickers. i threw a yard of fabric down on the table as a runner.



if it was owl-y and under $2 then into the cart it went.
they made their own pizza, and i threw out some grapes and chips for snacking.



the fat little hanging owl lanterns were a pinterest find—$1 store paper lanterns + scrapbook paper wings, eyes & beak.




the cupcakes—another pinterest item—were easy. oreos split in half and topped with chocolate chips made eyes, an orange gumdrop cut in half made a beak. they were a hit.

there are an obscene number of owls in this one small photo.

i bought just about every “glow-in-the-dark” and/or light-up item i could find. between the party store, $1 store and walmart we had bracelets, necklaces, straws, and even glow in the dark balloons.
the only game i planned on was glow-in-the-dark freeze dance. but they were having so much fun just dancing that it ended up basically being a dark dance club.

which sounds kind of creepy now that i read it, like we hosted some sort of preschool rave. and then we 
played beer pong and did keg stands. oops.



but they couldn’t get enough of dancing to top 20 pop hits in the dark. even elliot wanted in.



then they all got their owls. i didn’t take a picture of this, of course. but i put each owl in a bag with a tag hanging that had a small clue as to the “personality” of the owl inside. my thinking being that i had such a range of ages—if it was random owl assigning i didn’t want a 12 year old to get a “princess” owl, while a 3 year old got the ipod wearing “music” owl. so they couldn’t see the actual owl, but had a clue as to what it was.



again—$1 store owl bags. SCORE. i collected all the bags after they got their owls and threw in a little notebook, some crayons and a pencil and some candy for them to take home.
to round out the night we got jammies on and snuggled in with popcorn to watch a movie on the big screen.



supervised by daddy ;)



gigi with her besties. of course we had to explain that sleepovers are only for girls, and her other bestie—uncle dan—couldn’t come. ;)

i put these three little girls in the bedroom to sleep, and left everyone over the age of 7 in the family room. then i spent the next hour and a half bouncing back and forth between the two trying to keep everyone settled and quiet. it may sound like i’m mean, but the next day was sunday. there were a couple of sleeping girlies in our congregation that day ;)

the next morning i made an easy breakfast casserole and some pancakes. they filled their bellies and then i threw out a little craft kit i got on clearance for them to play with as they got picked up one by one.
all in all it seemed like everyone had a blast. fortunately my girls are surrounded by lots of other sweet girls from good families, which makes doing things like this a joy.

as for those stuffed owls? well, you haven’t seen the last of them. tomorrow you can expect a nice big post with all the details on those guys. i’m sure you just can’t wait. ;)