New item in the shop: Happy Dress ( Size 12 months)

Here's a new item in my etsy shop. Another take on happy dress. Its a shift dress made with bright and bold stripes. With an option to personalize ( For FREE) with a Denim initial.

Its a soft sweater knit which will be perfect for fall as well as winter. I can see it going well with Boots, inside a jacket, over a full sleeved tee. The possibilities are just endless with this dress.
Do you have a girl in mind who will be happy to have this?

Sew Easy - Part 9 - Rosita Layered Skirt

You can read the story behind this series and the first part here. Click here to read the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth edition of this series.
 

Here's a skirt that I made this week. I think its a great fit for Sew Easy series because it takes just 4 straight seams to finish the basic structure of the skirt, and the resulting garment looks really good. These are also a good staple for back to school wardrobe.

Supplies: 
2 Adult size Tshirts of co-ordinating colors
Elastic - 1 inch elastic
Embellishments:
Narrow satin Ribbon - 20 inches
Felt piece of matching color - 2X2 inches


Measurements:
Measure the length you want the skirt to be, add half inch. Lets call it L1
Measure the desired length of the smaller layer, a 3-5 inch smaller layer should work L2.
Measure a comfortable elastic length by tying it around the child's waist.If you can't measure the child,
a good rule of thumb is 3 inches less than waist measurement.


Instructions:


1.

Lay the Tshirt1 flat and cut length L1 from the bottom.
Lay Tshirt2 flat and cut length L2 from the bottom.


You will get two tubes, one of length L2 and another length L2.


Note: In most cases it would be ok to cut through the entire width of TShirt, A good rule of thumb is that
the Tshirt should be at least 7 inch wider and at most twice the waist of child. If it is too narrow, the skirt
would be tight at the butt and even though Tshirt material is stretchy and it will stretch, it wouldn't look good.
If it is too wide, it will gather too much at the waist and look odd. If your Tshirt width doesn't look right, consider cutting off a portion of it and sewing it on one side with right sides together, or piecing it with another Tshirt.

2.

Now place L2 tube inside L1 tube, with L2 right side together with L1 wrong side.


3.

Sew along the raw edge.


4.

Turn L2 out. Top-stitch as close to the edge as possible.


Now sew another seam 1.5 inches below the top-stitching, leave a 1.5 inch opening.


Now insert an elastic through this opening. Join both ends of elastic. Sew the opening shut.


5.

Make a fabric flower with Tshirt1 fabric. I made a rolled fabric rosette with a felt circle underneath. Hand-sew it to the skirt, near the elastic casing. If you need instructions on making flowers, this post has a bunch of pointers to make different kinds of flowers.
Cut  the ribbon into 2 strips of 10 inches. Fold the strips into two and hand-sew near the flower.


7.

While you're making the flowers, make a couple more with both Tshirt1 and Tshirt2. You can make a nifty coordinated hairband with them.

Your skirt is ready.

Sew Easy - Part 7: Carnival Dress

You can read the story behind this series and the first part here. Click here to read the second, third, fourth , fifth  and sixth edition of this series.

After having many tutorials with woven fabrics, I think its time we go back to knits and up-cycle some more T-shirts. With that in mind, I made this Carnival Dress. I named it so, because all the strips reminded me of the buntings and other festive decorations. I love how blue and yellow look so happy together. It is mostly a cut easy project, instead of sew easy. Interested in making one of your own? Lets do it.

Supplies:
2 T shirts in co-ordinating colors, same colors will also work
Basic sewing supplies - scissor, thread matching with the Tshirts

Measurements - Measure your child from shoulder to the desired length of the dress, lets call it L               Measure your child all around the chest and add 4 inches to it, then divide it all by 2. Lets call it W.
 


1. First cut one of the shirts to L length, measuring from hem upwards.  Basically we want to reuse the Tshirt hem as our dress hem. Ok?

2. Now place this on top of the other and decide how much overlap do you want between the two. And starting from bottom cut that much. So we can reuse the hem from second T as well.

3. Now insert one Tshirt into another such that their raw sides align. Look at the picture.

4 . Now start cutting 3 inches long slits, one inches apart from raw ends on all four layers.

Keep cutting until you reach W width from one end.

When you reach W, instead of cutting a slit, keep cutting upto the hem. To get a Four layered piece of length L and width W.


5.

Now start Knotting these slits with one strip from Tshirt 1 and one strip from Tshirt 2 right behind it. Pull the strips a bit while tying the knot, this will cause the fabric to bunch up a little, which will give us a little gathered look. Tie the knot one more time to secure. 

Just leave 4 sets of strips 2-3 inches apart in the center. Dont tie them, because they will become the shoulder straps of the dress.
 Keep tying the knots with the other strips at the back as well, when you reach near the center of the back, leave 2 sets of strips then tie the center strips and then again leave 2 sets of strips.




6.

This is how it will look after tying all the knots. I have knotted the front and back shoulder ties together, but I recommend doing it at the very end.




7.

Now lets sew together the side of the dress thats still open.


Pull apart both the layers, taking care not to stretch the knots too much. Now sew each layer, right sides together.
Settle them back in place.




8.

Now take a look at all the hanging strips and see if you like them as is. Maybe they need a haircut. Cut them to a length you like.
At the end, mine were about 1.5 - 2 inches long.

Neckline at the front...and the reason why I shouldn't cut my toddler's hair :D

This is how mine looked from the back, after cutting the strips to a smaller length.

9. Now sew a seam along the neckline ( and back) as close to the knots as you can get. This will help the strips stay in place.




10.

Now slip it on the child and tie the shoulder ties. This may take a couple minutes, so bribe with candy.

Enjoy your carnival dress!

Flamingo Knit Dress Tutorial: New and Improved

The Front:

                                        

And the back

I did this guest post over at Momma's Kinda Crafty a few months back. Re-posting it here in case you missed it back then.
This is a very cute ruffled dress and super easy to sew. The tutorial provides the step by step instructions on how to sew this knit dress for a toddler
So what do you need to make this dress? I have made it in one year old size but a bit shorter because it just looks so much better when it is short. I did try a longer look with my earlier version, but had to resort to scissors when my little one ended up looking like a Buddhist monk. No offense of Buddhists, it just wasn't quite the look I was going for :)


Jersey Knit:

Main body : 2 rectangle pieces of 11 inches ( Length) X 13 inches ( Width)
First ruffle:  5 inches( Length) X 26 inches ( wide)
For second and third ruffles:  2 pieces of 5 inches (L) X 13 inches (W)
Elastic: 1/4 inches wide: 24 inches

Shoulder straps: 20 inches X 4inches
Elastic thread: 1 spool ( you'll have plenty left)

Contrasting colored knit fabric: Bow: 5 inches X 6 inches
                                                  Rose: 4 inches X 5 inches

Now lets first make the shoulder straps:
Sew the strip into a tube by folding it into half lengthwise, right sides together. Turn it inside out. Now

Now fill the bobbin with elastic thread and sew 3 straight lines across the length of the tube to shir it.

 

Here's my shoulder strap all shirred up. Don't worry if your strap seems much smaller than mine.
I just see many more knit dresses in my future so I made a longer shoulder strap.

Now cut two 9 inches long shoulder straps from this strap and lets start assembling the dress.
First sew the two main dress pieces right sides together, about 2 inches from one end, joining them by a two inch stitch at their length.( Do not sew all the way just sew 2 inches from one end, on both sides)

See the parts where pens are overlapping with the fabric, that's the only part you have to sew.

Now pin your shoulder straps to the main body. Mark a 2 inches from each side of the center of the width on both front and back pieces.

Now pin your straps such that the the back of the strap touches the wrong side of the main fabric. Pin the shoulder straps on the front at the 4 inches( 2 inches either side of the shoulder) gap that you had marked earlier.

Now cross the straps and pin their free ends to the back fabric. Again pin the straps such that back of straps touches the wrong side of the main fabric. Now sew across the width to connect the straps to the fabric.

If you bring the front and back together, this is how it will look right now:

Attaching the top ruffle

Take the 5 inches strip for ruffle and pin it to across the width of the dress such that right side of the fabric touches wrong side of main piece. The shoulder straps will be sandwiched between the main piece and ruffle, which is what we want.

Sew across the width to attach the ruffle. It was very difficult to take pics of this step so you may not get this step visually, but all you have to do is pin the ruffle on the inside such that right side of the ruffle touches wrong side of the main fabric and it will go over the ruffle fabric

Turn the ruffle inside out.

Topstitch as close to the edge as you can. Go slow and steady here, as this seam will show on the top of the garment and if uneven it won't look good.

Topstitch the ruffle with about 3/8 inch from the edge to form a casing . Leave a 1 inch gap to insert elastic.

.Good. Now you'r done with the most complicated part of the dress, rest is easy.
Pin the bottom ruffle on the front of the dress such that the ruffle bottom aligns with bottom of the dress. sew it down.

Now pin the middle ruffle such that all the ruffles look parallel and equally wide.Also make sure all the ruffles have 1.5-2 inch overlap.Since we are going to leave the hems unfinished( because knits dont fray), a nice overlap will ensure that even if they curl a bit, the seams wont show.

Now turn the dress inside out and pin both sides. Make sure all the ruffles except the top one are getting caught in the side seam ans all the ruffles are lying flat. Sew both sides.

Now tun the dress inside out. Here you are. All ready to insert elastic:

Insert a 1/4 inch elastic in the casing you made earlier( between the main body and top ruffle). Keep the elastic length such that it is slightly lesser ( ~ 2 inches) than the chest measurement of the wearer. Sew the opening shut.

The dress is ready:

The elastics makes it very difficult to take good pics of final garment. Mine looks a bit wonky here, but it is parallel in real life.
The main dress is ready. Now you can embellish it as you like.
Maybe a bow:

Or a rossette ( tutorial here):

Maybe both.
Now go find the cute little one who napped long enough to let you finish this. Time to try it on.

Butterfly Dress Saga - Part 3 - Shirred version

And you thought I was done with Butterfly dresses. ( Read how it all started in Part 1 and Part 2 ). No way!
As I promised, I finally tried my hand at shirring around the neck and despite the picture looking like angel wings etc, it actually looks pretty good on the little one.
Here's the complete dress:

Get the original tutorial here ( Sewing in no mans land). Here're the changes I made to it:
1. Took a single fold of fabric for sleeves instead of double
2. Shirred 4 rows of elastic around the neck instead of gathering it.
3. Finished the sleeves with rolled hem. ( Here's a great tutorial for rolled hems )
4. Hand Embroidered some leaves around the front neck, just wanted to give the dress some pick-me-up.