mini kitty briar + virginia leggings

November 24, 2015November 23, 201511 Comments

there’s a new player in the kid clothes pattern game, and i’m very excited that she asked me to help get the word out! it’s Megan Nielsen – a previously adult-ladies-only designer who is known for her darling ranges dress, her briar tee, and her fantastic maternity patterns. but this week, she released three patterns for children, and i get to show you my take on two of them today!

or rather, my little rock star does…

this is E at her coolest. she just can’t help it when she puts this outfit on, she immediately grabs a mic and starts singing/posing. she and O even have a band name – “The Rockin’ Beatles” – and they’ve composed some original tunes. 🙂 Continue reading →

handmade halloween 2015: vampire bat

November 16, 2015November 15, 20154 Comments

back with O’s Halloween costume! for a long time he had told me he wanted to be a vampire this year, which i was pretty excited about. thought it’d be fun to have a classic Dracula little guy. but the week before halloween, AFTER i had already bought fabric for a cape and black trousers, he said no, he actually wanted to be a vampire BAT. like the animal. so i sort of went with a hybrid.

i started with his cape/wings, which i insisted on lining with the red nylon i had gotten at Mill End to look more “vampire” like. i drew the pattern out on a big sheet of easel paper, making the wingspan match his armspan and sort of echoing the style of last year’s Toothless costume. then i cut it out of some microsuede type fabric my mom had given me plus the red, sewed right sides together then turned, and quilted the lines in from the neck to each point of the wings. Continue reading →

handmade halloween 2015: kid catwoman

November 3, 201512 Comments

Halloween costume sewing seems to divide our kind into three camps: “i love sewing costumes!,” “i hate it, but do it anyway FOR THE KIDS,” and “nope, i’m going to Target.”

i fall in the first camp…within reason. costume sewing is a fun creative challenge for me, and my kids play dress up pretty much constantly, so these are not one-time use AT ALL. only the big kids got handmade costumes this year though; our little guy is suddenly a huge Curious George fan and borrowed a monkey costume from his cousins that he was thrilled about. so anyway, here’s handmade costume #1 – Kid Catwoman.

E settled pretty quickly on Catwoman once it was time to lock in the costume requests. O’s superhero love has rubbed off on her a bit, and i made a slapdash Wonderwoman costume one afternoon for dress up purposes, but for Halloween she wanted to be a villain. Continue reading →

big pocket butterfly skirt

October 9, 2015October 9, 201511 Comments

HI! how are you? i’m fine! after not blogging since july, i feel like i owe some sort of explanation why…and i have quite a few reasons, i guess, but the primary one is just that this whole time i’ve had a blog, i’ve also had a “day job.” i work at an office four days a week, and i started skirt as top when kid #2 was a little baby. so really, i’ve NEVER had the time to blog, but i made the time, because i loved the community and i was getting opportunities and it was fun. i have definitely lost a lot of sleep keeping it up over the years, though, simply because there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all.