Happy Birthday To Me!

I celebrated my 34rd birthday last week. It was a very ordinary day for the most part. As Greg reminded me on our way out the door in the morning, "it is no longer about us!". So true. I did have a very nice lunch with the ladies at work and then at home Vivian's gift to me was going to bed really easily. I opened a few lovely gifts after dinner right before enjoying a slice of ice cream cake (my number one birthday request this year!).Thanks Carvel for making such tasty cakes!

For my birthday I made a gift suggestion to Greg and he totally hooked me up with this bad boy. My very own serger or overlock machine. I am super excited about it. I have gotten really into sewing these days, especially baby clothes. I have also wanted to delve more into knits and a serger is really great for that. So this weekend I set it up, learned how to thread it and started experimenting. I watched the enclosed videos as well as some instructional videos online. Then I cut a bunch of fabric swatches to do test stitches on. Then I was ready for an easy project. I decided to make another pair of ruffle pants for Vivian. They came together really quickly. I pretty much used the server for everything except the top stitching and the elastic waste band. I decided to do a rolled hem for the bottom ruffle. The coolest thing was that the server can make ruffles automatically. So much easier than the way I was doing them before. The pants turned out really cute.

Reversible Pinafore

Another pattern I found online at Romeo and Mae was for a reversible pinafore dress. If the nap dress was easy, this dress was super duper simple. It is made with just one pattern piece! You cut out two pieces from 2 different fabrics. Sew all around the outside with right sides together leaving a small opening to turn the whole thing. Turn and iron then do a finishing stitch around the whole outside. Lastly you join the shoulder straps and you are done. Really easy and super cute. I made two of these.
The first one was this cute brown fabric with big flowers on it. For the back I used a geometric fabric with brown lines. I love this photo of Vivi flashing us the underside of the dress. Such a cute expression on her face. The back of the dress criss crosses the body.The second dress was also a floral pattern but with soft browns, oranges, and blues. I backed that one with orange polka dots. So cute an easy. Could be worn alone with a diaper cover when it gets really hot or with a union suit in the winter.

Ruffle pants

The same people who made the nap dress pattern also made some really cute pants with ruffles at the ankles. I couldn't resist making a pair. They were a little trickier than the dress but still pretty easy.

I found this fun floral green fabric at Joann's that I was excited to use. It is almost like a Hawaiian print. They turned out really great but they were a little too big. Since the nap dress had run a little small I had started with 6-9 month size. Now that hasn't stopped me from putting them on her several times already but they do look almost like a skirt they are so big. Since they were so easy to make I figured I would just whip up a second smaller pair. This time I not only made them smaller I also had to make them shorter since I didn't have as much fabric to work with. These are more like cropped pants. They are from the same fabric I used in the first nap dress. She can wear them with the dress or on their own.

Sewing baby pants is fun!

Nap Dress

I could tell we finally hit our stride in month 3 when I had spare time to do crafts. That mostly came from some sleep training we have been doing over the past couple weeks to get Vivian onto a napping schedule for nursery school which starts next week (boo hoo). Now we have set naptimes and lengths that we strive for which means I can plan out time to do a project here and there. The first major project I did was to make this little dress which I like to call the "nap dress" because it is so simple you can make it during a long nap! I found the fabrics two years ago at an online store called Fabric Worm. I had purchased them for a bunch of projects around Christmas time that I never got to. I had only purchased fat quarters and half yard amounts but that was OK because this dress uses very little fabric. The pattern comes from Romeo&Mae, an Etsy pattern seller I like. This blue dress is made exactly like the pattern calls for. Here is Vivi modeling it for you. She has worn it several times. I pair it with a onsie and leggings for cool days and will let her wear it as a sun dress when the weather warms up. Here she wore it out to baby class with Sandy Jamrog who was also our birth class instructor. We had slipped off the leggings for some tactile exercises. I loved the dress so much I made another one right away. For this one I modified the pattern leaving out the inset in the front and instead adding a ruffle under the neck. Soooooo cute. Vivian wore this one to her baptism with little white tights and a white sweater (and white onsie). These dresses were both 3-6 month but unfortunately when I finally went to put them on her they were a very snug fit. She won't be able to wear them long so I have to say I think the pattern runs small (though I have a big baby). Did I mention that I love these dresses and they are soooo easy to make? Well I couldn't bear the thought that she would grow out of them right away so I made 2 more in the next size up! Now that I had the procedure down I was able to make both of these during one nap! If I had an over-lock machine I bet I could whip them up in about 30 min each. I also had fun modifying these dresses. For this green one I added extra fabric at the shoulders so they could tie on instead of being snapped. For the mermaid dress (the fabric has mermaids and little girls swimming!) I totally changed the look by cutting the body of the dress in half and adding a ruffle bottom and a ruffle to the neck. This was mainly because I only had quarter yards of fabric for this one which is not enough to make a full front and back piece out of the same fabric. Greg says this is his favorite. And this shot shows how each dress top is lined with a contrasting fabric. Sooooo cute! I ordered a couple more patterns to make pants and diaper covers out of more of my fabrics. I can't wait for them to arrive in my inbox. I have to say, sewing for a little girl is too much fun!

New Spring Bag

Another project I finished during my staycation was a long time coming. Over a year ago I picked up this fun orange floral print fabric from Joann's with the intention of making it into a spring/summer bag. I was going to attempt to produce my own pattern based on another bag I had that I liked a great deal. As you can imagine, that task is rather daunting so of course the project sat unfinished for over a year.

After making a bag recently for my friend Marcela's birthday, I found the pattern to be easy and cute so I decided to make another bag this time for me using my orange fabric.

As I mentioned in the previous post about this pattern, the bag is actually reversible. I however chose to sew in some reinforced pockets instead of making it reversible. That is the best part of sewing right, making things customized for you. I happen to love having pockets to hold my cell phone, lip gloss, keys, and subway pass so that I can find them quickly and easily. I included 4 brown pockets total in this bag.I also added a little reinforced (with fusible interfacing) brown fabric to the back of the handles to give them a little more strength.I love the way this bag turned out. Even better than last time (sorry Marcela) and it really benefitted from being made out of a heavier upholstery weight fabric. I purchased this bag pattern on Etsy from the seller I Think Sew for $8. Follow the link to buy your own copy. More from Etsy starting tomorrow!