rainbow lulu dress

January 25, 2016January 24, 201621 Comments

this is E’s “back to school” dress and i took these pictures last fall. i feel like i need to give you that disclaimer lest you think we’re all tan and wearing flip flops around here in january. no. the photos are seasonally out of date, but since this is E’s favorite dress of the moment, i couldn’t skip blogging it!

JoAnn Fabric has really upped their apparel fabric game lately. i’ve been finding a lot of great knits, in particular, and we all know how hard good knits are to come by. 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.

Continue reading →

baby geranium in spectacle

July 30, 2015July 29, 201529 Comments

i’ve been doing a lot of baby gift sewing lately. i have two pregnant sisters (one due with her fourth baby in August, one due with her first in October) and it’s been fun making some special little things for both of them.

unfortunately, due to my chronic procrastinator status, i’m usually sewing right up to the time i should be leaving for their baby showers, and haven’t had time for blog photos. i did get some for this little dress though!

i’ve been getting so much wear out of my double gauze nani IRO alder dress this summer, so i decided to use the scraps to make a baby dress for my sister Laura, who is baking a little girl (it’s her first baby). Continue reading →