Crowns

This is by no means the first of all that I should catch up on in the Land of Blogging, but I do think it's the simplest little thing, so it's a good place to start: I made the girls crowns. 

They have been absolutely loving going to Guides each week for a year now, and last Friday was Coronation themed. They were invited to dress as royalty and enjoy the night in their fancy wear. Their dresses is another story, but what they needed first and foremost was a crown. 

There are no rubbish plastic crowns in our dress ups, so I offered to make them one each out of felt. They were excited to design them. I think the end result is a little oversized, but meh. It's funny because what I envisioned was basic felt, maybe some cut outs, with loads of sequins. The girls had very different ideas. 

Sophie's crown represented wisdom, so she wanted an owl and olive tree leaves. It was all to be silver, greens and blues. We had some back and forth over the owl design, since she wanted it to be as realistic as possible, but in the end I think it works. 

Rachel was convinced by the sequins, but again, surprisingly few. She wanted her crown to be nature themed. While we were looking for something for the centre, I remembered that strange floral thing that she had kept from when her face was painted last December at the piano concert. It was perfect and now also, not loitering around in my kitchen. Double win. 

The girls had a great night, and you'll have to come back to see what they chose to wear. 

Dress Up Dress Gift

I'll say it now: Photo do not do this dress justice. At all. Maybe I should have gone outside to take them, but in my defense, it was really rainy.

Anyway, I've made my girls lots of dress up dresses in the past, which have been very well received, and used by lots of kids when they come over to play. So when our best friend's little girl had a birthday coming up, I knew it was time that I made one for her too.

I am again thankful for the donations of material I have received, because much, if not all, of this dress was sewn from those donations. It's the same standard dress up dress that I usually make. I used the last of the pink fabric from mum that I used to make the very first dress for the bodice and over skirt. That over skirt is gathered up a bit to show the blue and pink floral sheer material underneath, and trimmed with some blue floral trim that was given to me by a lady at my playgroup.

The underskirt is some more of the white gathered stuff that I used in the yellow dress variation, and I don't know if I'm getting better at gathering, or what, but it was surprisingly easy to gather all three layers of skirt and attach it to the bodice. Is all the practice finally paying off?

Even though the birthday wasn't until September, I made this dress in the June/July school holidays, because I had time on my hands, and I knew if I left it, it might not get made during the crazy chaos of term. So glad I did. Rachel tried it on for me and approved whole hardheartedly. Hopefully the birthday girl likes it just as much.

Red Dress Up Dress

We had a party on the weekend that required some princess dresses. Given that it's been two years since I've made a dress up dress for the girls, they've done some growing, and a new one was in order.

I started sewing it on Friday night, finished the hand sewing on Saturday, and it was worn to the party on Sunday. Talk about success!

It helps that I used exactly the same pattern as the previous dresses (Blue and Yellow ones, and the original Cinderella one) but just sized it up. I cut the bodice as a size 8 to allow room to grow and made sure the skirt would be floor length for the same reason. It was a little long, but I just tacked up the front a bit which looked cool and meant that Sophie could walk without tripping over. The back was still long.

I'm excited to say that part of the dress is made from curtains. The ones in our dining room were originally floor length, which was unnecessary, so I had cut them off and saved the excess. It proved to be exactly the right amount for the skirt. The bodice was leftover from my Mum making Christmas dresses, lined with some random lining fabric that was donated to me (I think). The skirt also has two layers of gauze with gold stars on it. So shiny!

Sophie was a little sad that it wasn't super spin-y (especially after I tacked the front up), but it's still pretty special, and look: she can still dig in the the sandpit in it.

Dressing Up

Have finally made the girls more dress up dresses. I love it. Even though gathering is pretty much the bane of any dress sewing, making fun costumes for the girls to put on is possibly the most therapeutic sewing there is. It's a dress up, so it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's pretty, and I know they will love it. Winning.

These ones are pretty stunning, if I do say so myself. I made them exactly the same way that I made the first Cinderella Dress for Sophie nearly a year ago now. They look a bit the same because of that fact, but I feel they are different enough. No need to get too fussy when it's a dress up for a three year old right?

I'm rather lucky with sewing, because most of the material for theses dresses was just given to me. I did pay 50 cents a metre for the yellow stary tulle (of which I used two metres so a grand total of $1), but that was it. The rest of the yellow material was a gift from a lady at church who I know through prayer.

The gorgeous blue is from my friend Ruth who's mum is a dress maker. I think it's from her sister's formal dress (which her mum made). It's simply beautiful fabric.

It was much harder to take good photos of the girls this time, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the best camera we have in the house now turns out to be my phone. Ugh - phone photos right? Secondly, the girls just wanted to play together, rather than pose for photos. Thirdly, there is loads more in our backyard now. Swing sets, sandpit, music wall, play wall, and shop front. Not to mention the ghastly plastic monstrosities I've acquired in the name of family day care. So very hard to get a decent background. Oh well.

Both girls loved running around in them (though I'm not sure why they needed their fairy wings on). Rachel spun and spun until she couldn't stand up and fell over. It was rather amusing.

I hand stitched up the top layer of sheer yellow on her dress in parts so you can see the stars on the underneath layers better. The white underneath was already pre-gathered by someone who possess an actual gathering foot for their sewing machine. I dream one day I'll have such a magical tool, but until then, I'll just continue to gather the old fashioned way. Badly that is.

During the week, the girls wanted to wear their dresses and Hugo was not to be left out. He was lucky enough to score the pink dress. Loved every minute of it, the cheeky monkey.

The Cinderella Dress

It's been a long time coming, but I'm excited to share this with you. Sophie finally loves dress ups! Hooray!

Yes, I know she's only two and a half, but as someone who loves costumes and dressing up as someone else for a while, I feel like it's taken ages for her to get to this stage. Now that she's here, I can have loads of fun sewing even more fun things for her! Yes!

That said, I know that my little girl is growing, and is going to keep growing pretty noticeably for the next few years. So I didn't want to make a dress up dress that would fit her now, and not in six months time. That just felt like a bit of a waste. 

To combat this problem, I thought about how to make a dress that would be able to grow with her, so she could wear it for at least a year or two. The best way to address this would be to make a wrap dress, that could expand with growth. I went to my basic Five and Ten Designs bodice and from the size four, I redrew the back pattern piece to make it cross over and wrap around.

I figured this way, while she's still a size two, the back pieces would just wrap tighter and have more overlap, and then as she grows, it will just be less and less. There is still overlap at the size four though, so it should be able to stretch out till at least size five, or maybe even a six if I'm lucky. Could be that this dress will last for four years! That'd be great.

I had a stack of gauzy fabric in my stash, and I asked Sophie which one she liked. I made the skirt pretty long (she nearly stands on it when she runs now) so it will be able to fit as she grows too. To me, one of the essential design features of any pretty dress up dress (especially a Cinderella ball gown type dress) is that the skirt be pretty big and poofy for fun spinning.

This fits the bill. I hate gathering more than ever, and did a lot of hand sewing to get everything in place before I finally stitched it together, but I'm glad I did. It was worth it to see her spin around in it. 

I also wanted the dress to be big because I knew she'd just be throwing it on over whatever she was already wearing. I mean - that's pretty standard for dress ups right? That means that this dress is going to get a lot of wear. Sophie was running around the yard in it when I was taking photos. Also checking the dirt and plants and splashing in water.

Here she is rescuing something from under the fridge the next day too. Quality Cinderella moment.

I did some fancy rolled hem stitch on Olivia the Overlocker for the sheer hem. Some of it worked, kinda. It was about twice the width that I wanted, but whatever I tried I couldn't make it smaller. Also, I had about thirty centimetres to go when something started to not work at all, so if you look closely, there is in fact a small amount of dress that isn't hemmed at all. And I was almost out of thread.

After seeing the way that she ran around the garden in it, I think this is an ok decision, because I can see myself re-doing the hem anyway. Also, the bit that isn't done is wrapped under the top layer when she puts it on, so you can't even see it. Win!

Not to be left out, here is Rachel, posing with our Cinderella book. Cinderella in this book wears a pink ball gown, so that's probably why Sophie's Cinderella dress ended up being pink, rather than the "traditional" Disney blue.