Reworking Old Shirts

Ava has a couple of short sleeved t-shirts that are starting to get short and more fitted.  She can still wear them now, but come spring, they will probably need to be retired.  She also has some long sleeved shirts that are WAY too short and she can not wear them.  So I decided to combine the two and make her short sleeved shirts into long sleeved ones and get a little more use out of them since we are now in colder weather.

Here is her Hello Kitty shirt with the new sleeves & extra length.  I love when I buy long sleeved shirts for her and they look like layered shirts so this was a great project.

 And here is her Sleeping Beauty shirt updated.

I also did a third shirt (Minnie Mouse with white and silver striped sleeves) but she was kind of done with the clothing changes and photo shoots by this point.  Great way to get a little more use out of her clothes and very simple!

Latest Projects

I know I have not posted anything in awhile...guess that is what happens when you are pregnant and too lazy to upload the photos.  I have been working on a few projects and now that it is December, I am knee deep in Christmas projects (which will be posted in January since they are gifts!).  But here is what I did in October & November.

Here is Ava's Strawberry Shortcake outfit I made for Halloween (no, I wish I made the hat, but bought it off Etsy).  I previously posted the 1st version (top photo) of the dress but after she wore it out the day before Halloween to a Trick or Treat event, I decided it was too hard to get off and on and it was a bit short.  So Halloween morning, I did some minor alterations (ripped out lining, lengthened dress, changed full bubble skirt to modified bubble by making a casing to put elastic through) and it ended up looking like the 2nd photo.  Still cute and SO much easier to get on and off!

 Then I had a friend request some baby onesies and burp cloths (not pictured since they were the standard giraffe and dove I have done before) but she also wanted me to do a tote bag. I could not find the exact canvas bag that my mom made for a friend this past summer so instead I found a very plain one and decided to cover the entire thing in matching fabric.  Not a great photo but here's what it ended up looking like.

Finally, my best bud is having her first baby (a girl) sometime around Dec 28th and wanted some painted letters to hang in her little one's room.  She wanted to buy some and I told her she could easily make them. She told me "Maybe you could make them but I couldn't." So guess what? I did.  Merry Christmas/Welcome home baby!  I think she plans on hanging them with ribbon in the nursery so I can't wait to see what they look like in the room but here are 2 photos of the letters.

Close up:

 

In natural light:



Strawberry Shortcake

So for Halloween this year, Ava wanted to be Strawberry Shortcake (pretty funny to me since I loved SS as a child growing up in the 80's but apparently she has made a comeback).  I looked around online but could only either find frilly & country versions of the old Strawberry Shortcake or hideous satiny versions of the new Strawberry Shortcake.  And they were all expensive! 

So I did what I do these days...I decided to make her a dress myself.  Of course what I originally envisioned is not what I actually made but that's because 1) Ava really wanted Strawberry Shortcake fabric she saw at the store and 2) when you don't use a pattern, things don't always turn out quite like you want(i.e. it's not as bubbly as I imagined and it a bit shorter than I wanted --good thing there are tights!).  We went with the newer version of Strawberry since that fabric Ava chose was of her instead of Straberry circa 1980.

Anyways, Ava loves the final version (she actually hugged it to her chest and kissed it when I gave it to her) so that is all that matters.  I decided to make a bubble dress that she could actually wear more than just on Halloween, bought her a really cute strawberry crochet newsboy hat off Etsy & some green striped tights.  On Halloween I promised her we would spray her hair so it would be pink/red so she will really look like SS then.

Here is Ava modeling her new costume (which I can now not get off of her!)

 "I love my dress!"

P.S. Someone is excited.  Something tells me she may wear this a few times before Halloween!

Rosemary's Baby Gifts

This past weekend I headed down to Houston to throw my best friend Rosemary what I like to call a "non-shower" baby shower.  Basically, me & another friend of hers took her to lunch and spent a day shopping and having fun instead of having an actual shower.  We did bring gifts and I did want it to feel kind of like a  real baby shower so I made a diaper cake in addition to putting together a little gift basket.

 Close up of her gift basket which includes blankets, towels, washcloths, stuffed lamb, handmade onesies & burp cloths and a handmade dress.

My version of Dana's Warhol dress.  Since Rosemary is from Lewiston, ID, I decided to make her daughter a special little Idaho dress out of some old t-shirts we had saved.

And a close up of the diaper cake.  My friend Michelle made an awesome diaper cake for one of her friends and passed along this online tutorial to show me how it was done.  It really was SUPER easy and I highly recommend making one this way as opposed to the ones I've seen that use rubberbands.  It took around 15 minutes!

I was going to post all these photos last week since everything was done but thought that Rosemary might check out my blog and see them.  Sure enough she told me this weekend she was looking at my blog to see what I might have made her...sneaky girl!

Another Book

Sorry it's been awhile since I have posted anything.  I've actually not been doing too much crafty lately since I was sick for awhile.  But that is going to change as I have some projects coming up in the next few weeks including some baby shower stuff and a Halloween costume for Ava.

I did make another book a few weeks back for my brother-in-law's 40th birthday.  He loved the book I did for my niece Griffin last year at Xmas and said that he would love to have one.  Right then and there, I decided that I would make him one for his milestone birthday.  Of course I did not make it until days before but the end result turned out great and he, my sister and their kids loved it! 

Here are most of the pages (Please excuse poor photos...I was sick while taking these and did not have the patience to get the photos just right.)

Cover

 And inside!

Too bad the laminating causes such a glare.  But definitely needed to be laminated since small children look at it!

Baby Gift

One of my friends, who I have known since 1st grade, just had a baby boy this past weekend. So my mom and I sewed up some stuff to send her way.

Here is the whole set laid out: a baby quilt (sewn by mom), a tote bag (also mom), and 3 onesies a burp cloths (me!).
My friend and her husband are into animals so I decided to do all animal onesies this time around. My go to onesie for boys (and one of my faves anyways), the whale:

A zebra (this one does not actually match the quilt fabrics but I included it b/c the baby's room has zebra stripes on the wall and I just happened to have some fabric left over from the chest I refinished awhile back & from the dress I added fabric too--this is now one of my favorites):

And a duck (because my friend's husband gave her a pet duck years ago!):

And here is the beautiful quilt my mom sewed. I still need to attempt to do a quilt sometime soon but just have not found the time yet. I love that my mom uses a pre-quilted solid fabric for the back and just sews it together like a regular blanket. Much faster than doing the actually quilting and it looks great too!

This is on it's way so I hope she ends up liking it!

I Can't Stop!

Yep, you guessed it. I made yet another tank dress today. This time I chopped off the skirt part of this dress...

and attached it to a black tank top. I really did not wear this dress much before because I always found the top to be a bit awkward. Maybe because I wore it right after I had Ava and filled it out more. Or maybe because it was low cut and not good for everyday wear especially around my 3 year old. So since I bought it 3 years ago for my HS reunion, I decided it was worth it to cut it up and recyle it into my favorite style of dress.

Here is the after photos...I am dork. Did not like any of the photos I took (although I never really do) so thought I would give you all 4 dorky self portraits of me in the after version.

Still think I prefer the ones where you don't see my face. Ha!