Happy Halloween! Costume review

I'm not sure I will ever buy a Halloween costume.  I mean, is there any other day of the year where you can just go nuts with creative sewing?  I think not.  Here's the lineup from this year.

Violet was a chicken.  My inspiration for her costume was her yellow, feathery hair.  I just sewed some felt feathers to a yellow onesie and stitched a feather boa around the neck.  The shiny pants were actually made by her dad.  He did a great job.

 And I was a cow.  I felt that it was an appropriate getup for a pregnant woman, and it went well with the chicken.  Plus, it was super easy.  I made an udder out of some pink fleece and sewed it onto a white shirt.  My husband made me a cute little ribbon that buttons in the back to hold my cow bell.  I also wore some devil horns that were spray-painted to make them look more like cow horns, even though they're not in this picture.

I suppose I could have painted black spots on my clothes, but I didn't want to ruin the shirt.  I would have done it if I had a cheaper shirt to do it on.

Oh well.

Maternity dress (sort of)

A couple of months ago, I inherited some clothes that my sister didn't want anymore.  Among those was this cute white dress, which at the time had no sleeves and a see-through-ish part that went a little too far down on the chest area.  All I had to do was make some sleeves for the arms and a bib for the chest and sew them in.  That's the great thing about white clothes; I always have fabric to match!  Anyways, I put a sash with it and it turns out that it fits me as a maternity dress.

 I did have "before" pictures, but I guess I deleted them before uploading them.  Oops.  And I know these pictures are cropped really weirdly, but it's because I am 7 months pregnant and having major body image issues.

My only question is, if this fits me NOW, when I'm 7 months pregnant, why did my size 00 sister ever buy it in the first place? 

Flower tee

This project consisted of a plain blue tee, purple fabric that had been ruffled up and sewn onto the tee in a circle, and gray fabric sewn on in the shape of a stem.  The only hard part about it: getting Violet so sit still for a picture.

Houndstooth skirt for fall

Last Christmas I made Violet a cute little pleated skirt.  Unfortunately she grew out of it before it was even washed.  So, I tried again with a new fabric.  I gave Violet a choice between brown and pink plaid and houndstooth.  I thought she would go for the more colorful one but when she saw this one, she literally gasped and yelled, "Blackwhite stars!"

It was pretty simple-- a pleat in the front, pleat in the back, a waistband, and some elastic.  I lined it so that it wouldn't be so itchy.

 It turned out pretty cute.  The fabric is really thick and I don't like the way it bunches in the back, but that's mainly due to the fact that I made it a little big so that she could grow into it.

Polo shirt to dress

My dad is so sweet. A few months ago he gave me this purple polo shirt that had gotten too short for him.  His idea was for me to wear it as a maternity shirt.  Instead, I got really excited and said, "I think I'm going to make Violet a dress out of this!" And he gave me a look that said, "You're crazy, but do whatever you want."  So I did.

I cut out a little dress pattern while trying to use as many of the existing  hems as I could. I couldn't decide if I wanted to do buttons or a zipper (I hate them both) so I just made the neck big enough for her head to fit through.  I made the sleeves out of the sleeves from the shirt and added some embellishments from fabric from another shirt I had.  It worked perfectly. 

DIY art

Last week we actually had a pintucksandruffles reunion.  I flew out to see Brittany and help her get her new place set up.  We didn't do anything too exciting besides paint and shop, but we did have a lot of time to think about home decor.

And I started thinking about art.  I love to paint, although I don't do it nearly as often as I should.  But when people find this out about me, I always get the same response: "How cool!  I wish I was aristic."  And I always want to say, "Well, you play the piano, don't you?  I bet your mom made you practice every day when you were little.  And you probably weren't good right away.  And I really bet that if you practiced painting every day, you'd be much better at it than I am."  But for some reason, not many people enroll their children in art lessons or make them participate in an art team that travels from school to school and competes.  That enthusiasm is saved for music and sports.

So, why not try it?  I put some pictures here that wouldn't require much skill.  Sunsets are always easy.  I did a sunset once and it took me three hours.  And I painted it with a knife.  The middle picture is a litle more complicated but when you look at it closely, it's just a bunch of vertical stripes and dots on a blue and brown background. And the last one-- seriously, anyone could do that.  If you don't have a lot of technical skill you can always call it abstract.  Don't have any good ideas?  Just copy something you like.  (I went to a lecture by an art critic once-- he said real artists do it all the time.)

by Wendy Puerto

by papermoth on etsy

Happy painting.  I promise, it feels awesome when you finish one.

Fabric dressing room

This summer I have been helping my mom decorate the "play room" for the grandkids.  We decided that we wanted a little screen for the kids to change behind when they play dress-up.  At first I envisioned a painted plywood wall, but I remembered how kids like to knock things over.  And then I envisioned a trip to the emergency room to suture a dressing-room-induced wound from it being pushed onto one of the kids.  Not such a good idea after all.

And then I remembered PVC pipe. It's light, easy to cut, has ready-made joints, and rarely injures people (unless you make a potato gun out of it, but that's entirely different.)  So I headed to Lowes and concocted this frame, using four 4' segments, two 2' segments, four 1' segments, four t-joints, four 45 degree joints, and four 90 degree joints.

 This was the only tricky part.  They didn't have a 45 degree t-joint, so I had to use a plain t-joint and attatch a tiny peice to connect it with a 45 degree elbow joint.  It worked out just fine.

 Then I sewed up some curtains that were easy enough that they don't even need an explanation.

It's going to look so cute in our lemon parfait-colored room.  Ahhh, PVC pipe.