First off I made the dresses using instructions in the book MAKING CHILDREN'S CLOTHES The dress on the cover is the one that I made. Overall very easy to make (the major factor when I decided to sew), but I'm baffled as to why they call it a toddler dress. It's a one size pattern, and they basically say to hem it to the desired length. Well. My kids are small for their ages, and yet I had to lengthen the dresses quite a bit to get them to be actual dress length. for my 2 year old (definitely toddler age) I had to add 5 inches to the pattern to make it long enough. As printed it made an adorable tunic length shirt for her, but NOT a dress. For my 5 year old (who I will admit is the right height, just WAY SKINNY) I had to add 9 inches to get it long enough. Okay, so she's a bit older than a toddler officially, but still.
It's not a big deal really, but to say that it's a toddler dress and it not even be dress length on my little for her age 2 year old sort of bugs me. An easy fix though (really easy if I could do it).
I made several practice dresses before the real deals, to make sure the adjustments I was planning would work. For the final dresses aside from adding the length I also altered the lining slightly. The bodice is fully lined and you fold over the double layers of fabric to make the casing for the shoulder ties. I found that folding over both layers of fabric made the casing a bit bulky and didn't gather as well as I would have liked. So I cut an inch off the top of the lining so when I sewing the casing I was only folding over the single layer of fabric. I actually should have trimmed at least an inch and a half, but the result was still a less bulky casing, so it turned out all right.
I've yet to get a picture of the girls in just the dresses, or even of just the dresses themselves, but oh well.
I cardigans I made using the Bella Rebekah Cardigan pattern by Elizabeth Alan. I happened across her patterns sometime before Christmas whilst looking for a good baby boot pattern and I must say I just want to be her. All of her patterns are adorable, not to mention well written and easy to understand and execute. The cardigans worked up super quick, the only reason it took me longer than an afternoon for each one was because life was happening and I had to do other things (like get over my first ever encounter with Strep Throat) for a few days. In general I like Lily's purple cardigan better....the yarn is lighter and I like the drape to it. When I made Arlen's pink cardigan I was thinking it was too bulky. It's a tad big (again, she's a skinny thing), but actually after I had to wash the Easter chocolate off of it it's softened up and the drape improved.
Lastly, I drove down to Dallas with the kiddos for Easter and surprised my parents. I *wanted* to either arrive while they were all at church (but that failed because we didn't make it to Vigil saturday night and still needed to get to Easter mass that morning) OR 'sneak' in with my kids and yell SURPRISE because I knew my family would all be hanging out in the kitchen.
That didn't work either because my 7 year old decided he didn't want to yell anything, and instead of just staying quiet and walking in with the rest of us he just sort of wandered into my parents house while I was getting everyone else out of the van and nonchalantly ruined the surprise. But whatever.
While we were there my mom and sisters helped me try out the super nifty technique of using old silk ties to dye eggs. I saw THIS on Pinterest and knew I had to try it. I hit up the Salvation Army store and got some old ugly ties for fifty cents each (actually 49 cents each) and we tried it out. We actually used a more in depth set of instructions (which really only adds that you put 1/4 cup of vinegar in the water) though.
The eggs turned out super nifty! We found by trial and error that we should have actually gone by the image I found on Pinterest. It shows wrapping the eggs in string after you wrap the silk tie around them. We did this on a few eggs (the top right one in the collage) and it provided better contact between the egg and the silk and the colors transferred much clearer. We also found that you can re-use the silk pieces. Nothing on either of the instructions we looked at said one way or the other, so I'm happy to report that you can get multiple uses out of the scraps.
To recap:
♪Get some old ugly ties for cheap (reds, purples, and dark blues seem to transfer better. Maybe it's just the darker the better)
♪Cut the ties apart and wrap the silk around the eggs, the right side of the fabric against the eggs.
♪Wrap string around the fabric covered eggs like a mummy. (the second set of instructions we used said to wrap the silk covered eggs in another piece of scrap cloth, like an old pillowcase. We aren't sure why, as it wasn't explained, but we think maybe just so the dyes didn't muddle together. My sister put silk, string, scrap cloth, and more string around her egg and it turned out the best).
♪Add 1/4 cup (ish) of vinegar to your water and boil the eggs for 15 minutes. We always blow our eggs out and we found we needed to weigh them down with a lid (I think that's what my sister used) to keep the eggs under water.
Ta-da!
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| So cool! |
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