Twinkle toes

Look at my girls new slippers that I made from 'Precious booties with ribbon ties' by Precious Patterns! This is one that I know I want to make again, but I can't help but want to try new things with it. Like changing the shape and somehow including elastic around the heel so they stay on without ribbon... Chloe's size wasn't even included, actually. Thank goodness for printers that can enlarge stuff. Her ribbon ties don't really match, either, but she picked the ribbon out and that was that.

And here's Chloe's halloween costume. She is a princess fairy. That little dress is actually the bottom half of this tiered maternity dress that I found at a yard sale for 50 cents. I cut off the tiered part, put elastic around the top to hold it up. Then some more elastic half-way down to make it blousy, and then I cut up the dress's belt to make straps.

The wings are made out of some wire hangers and girl’s tights. We kind of half followed a youtube video by Threadbanger about making fairy wings. By that I mean, I watched it once about a month ago and then I just messed around with the hangers and tights until Chloe was happy with the look of them. The paint job is all her own. She didn’t want my help at all.

And that funny little fabric scrap hanging from the doorknob… That’s Chloe’s decorating, of course!

Passing it on...

Is age 4 too early? This was Chloe's first sewing lesson. I remember when my mom taught me to sew on buttons. I think it was my first sewing lesson too.

Chloe was so funny. She wanted to make silly socks for a "funny foot parade" to be held at her preschool last friday. I helped her brainstorm about how we could decorate them, and when I suggested she sew buttons all over a pair of socks her eyes grew wide with amazement. "I can do that?" Then she ran and sat at my sewing machine, all ready.

I then explained that she must learn hand-sewing first, and buttons had to be sewn on by hand anyway. She was okay with that. The pictures tell the rest...

Don't laugh! She will learn more with time. All in all, I am so proud of her. She picked it up pretty easily and didn't injure herself with the needle. And only one button fell off!

Cadie's Dress

This is a little design that I messed around with to make a top for Chloe a few weeks ago. Now it turned out this sweet dress for Cadie. It was fun because the whole dress is just one piece. All I had to do was cut and embellish (if you count sewing on bias trim and tiny lace as embellishing). I even made my own bias trim because that was preferable to another trip to Joann's with 4 kids. I'm thinking of writing down the pattern in all my spare time...

Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

The giant lima bean bag

I got this pattern off of YCMT and decided to enlarge it because any purse of mine has to double as a diaper bag (sigh...). I messed around a bit with acrobat and inkscape and I thought I was only enlarging the pattern to 110%, but it turned out huge. Either I made a mistake somewhere or it would have been big enough without the changes. Oh well. Big bags are in right now, don't ya think?

My husband called it a big lima bean.