by Sherri Sylvester | May 6, 2013
I’ve been wanting to try dying something ombré for a while – ever since seeing this post on No Big Dill. Since ombré is big for pretty well anything right now (hair, tops, dresses, shoes…) I figured I could turn a dress that I don’t wear anymore into an ombré skirt for my oldest.
The Ombré “Feel Like a Princess” Skirt
When I was younger I always felt more grown up and “lady-like” in a long skirt or dress, so I decided, even though it is not very practical, to make this skirt as long as possible for my daughter. Then I dyed it pink – which makes it “100 million, thousand, billion times better” (to quote my daughter!). Of course you can make it any length you choose.
Just one word to the wise (meaning those who check my sewing technique!) – this is a quick and easy tutorial! I was not concerned with stitching a proper casing or overlapping my elastic, I just wanted it done – so, with that in mind… you can now forge ahead!
If you want to make one too, you might not have a long, white cotton dress like I did, so you can make a very simple skirt from scratch in 10 easy steps:
- Find a layer or two of white cotton fabric (cotton dyes the best)
- Measure the length you want to make the skirt and the waist size of your model
- Your length = the length measurement + twice the width of your elastic + 1/2″ for the seam allowance on your casing + 1/2″ for hem
- Your width = twice the waist size +1″ for seam allowance
- Cut your fabric into a rectangle that is your length (step 3) x your width (step 4)
- Fold your rectangle together so the two “length” sides are aligned
- Stitch down the “length” of the skirt with a 1/2″ seam allowance
- Zig-Zag or Serge over the edge of your seam allowance to finish the edge
- Hem the bottom of the skirt by folding the fabric up 1/4″ and then 1/4″ again to the wrong side of the fabric, now stitch close to the top edge of your fold
- Finish the raw edge at the top of the skirt by zig-zagging or serging over the edge
Perfect! Now grab your supplies (below) and you can join in on the tutorial at Step 3:
You will need:
- 1 old dress (or simple skirt beginnings from the directions above)
- fabric dye (I used RIT in the box)
- elastic for the waist (I use 3/4″ non-roll knit elastic)
- pins, scissors, ruler/measuring tape, matching thread
- bucket for dyeing (a stainable one!)
- rubber gloves
- a hanger/ribbon/safety pins
- extras for the dye (mine calls for salt and laundry detergent)
Measure first:
- Length = the length measurement + twice the width of your elastic + 1/2″ for the seam allowance on your casing (+ 1/2″ for hem if you don’t have one already on the dress)
- Width = at least twice your model’s waist size (this should easily be met with any adult dress when sizing it down for a child – just double check)
Here we go (the sewing):
Step 1: Measure up from the hem to your “Length” measurement and mark it and then cut the dress off at that point. You now have this:
Step 2: Zig-zag or serge the new raw top edge of the skirt. If your dress is not hemmed, hem it by folding the fabric up 1/4″ and then 1/4″ again to the wrong side of the fabric, now stitch close to the top edge of your fold.
Step 3: Calculate the casing width. Measure the width of your elastic and add 1/2″.
Step 4: Turn down the top edge of your skirt once by the number you calculated in Step 3. Pin in place. (1) Pin a small piece of ribbon at the back of the skirt so your small person can find the “back” of the skirt (2) Double pin (two pins in the same spot) a small section aprox. 2″ somewhere in the casing – this will be your opening to feed the elastic through.
Step 5: Stitch around the bottom of the casing 1/4″ away from the edge beginning and ending at a double pin and leaving the opening open (hee hee!)
Step 6: Cut the elastic to your waist measurement + 1″. Feed the elastic through the casing using a safety pin or other fun threading device. Match up the ends of the elastic and stitch with a 1/2″ seam allowance.
Step 7: Stitch up the opening making sure not to stitch over your elastic.
Step 8: Stitch “in the ditch” (on the seam line) where the seams are on either side of your casing. I know this is non-roll elastic, but this will help it to stay in place even better.
Here we go (the dying):
Step 9: Rig up a hanger above your bucket somewhere safe. If your dye happens to splatter you don’t want your carpet/brand new pants/hamster dyed as well. I have a clothes line above my laundry tub, so I hung the skirt there to dye. You could also hang it above a stainless steel sink if you have one in your kitchen.
Step 10: Attach two cast-off pieces of ribbon to the sides of your skirt with the safety pins.
Step 11: Wet your skirt with hot water until it is pretty wet – wring a bit, so it’s not dripping too much. Hang the skirt on the hanger with the ribbon pieces.
Step 12: Hang the whole thing over your empty bucket. Make sure the bottom 1/4 of the skirt length hangs to the bottom of your bucket. You want the skirt to hang into the dye.
Step 13: Mix up your dye in the bucket as per the directions using HOT water. Dip the whole skirt once (quickly) and then hang it up, making sure the bottom 1/4 of the length of the skirt is in the dye as per Step 12.
Step 14: Wait… and wait… and check on it… and wait… (1/2 hour later…) Then dunk the skirt length 3/4 of the way into the bucket for about 20 seconds and hang it up again. Wait about 1/2 hour and then dunk the skirt length 1/2 way into the dye (same as before) and hang it up again. Now leave the skirt as is for as long as you can stand it. I think I lasted about 3 hours in total.
Step 15: Wash your skirt in warm or cold – as per the directions on your dye – until the water runs clear. I machine washed mine on a warm small load setting.
Step 16: Dry it and you are done.
Take your ombré princess out for a walk!
Now, on to current happenings! Due to the extra warm weather here I think it is finally time to stitch up some summer clothes for my youngest. I’ll be posting tutorials all next week – come back later this week to find out what we’ll be making!
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 29, 2013
I love my daughter very much, and she loves rainbows – so, when I decided to make some (badly needed) reusable snack bags this weekend, it turned into a rainbow project. I think it started with a fat quarter of Anne Kelle Remix that I bought at the Creativ Festival on Friday last week. Somewhere between Anne Kelle and a random pile of scraps I dug out yesterday a tidy stack of snack bags (in rainbow order) ended up in front of my camera.
We Wilsons: the Reusable Snack Bag Tutorial
I made some snack bags a few years ago, and after searching high and low through snack bag tutorials I came upon this one by Laura from We Wilsons. It is the fastest and best tutorial I have come upon as yet. Laura has obviously put a ton of time into thinking through each step to make the bags fast and easy to put together. Her tutorial is easy to follow and she even provides a pdf download for it, so you can save it to your computer, or print it out easily.
I did things a bit differently than she did – some things to speed up the process and some to make them more “scrap friendly”! So I’ve decided to document what I did here so you can decide how you’d like to make yours!
First thing I do is line the bags with ripstop nylon. If you go to buy this you can ask the friendly employees at your local fabric store which nylon is the “ripstop” type. If you can’t find anyone to help you – look for the tiny squares on the fabric. Ripstop nylon is reinforced with a crosshatch pattern that regular nylon does not have. It is considered food safe and is FDA approved for use with food, just make sure you use the shiny side of the nylon as the “wrong side” when you are sewing it into the snack bag.
There are two other things I do when making snack bags for kids. (1) I cut my regular 3/4″ velcro in half lengthwise. The velcro sticks just fine and it makes the bags easier to open. (2) I add in a grosgrain ribbon tab on the top of the bags, again, making them easier to open because you can pull on the ribbon tabs instead of fiddling with the flat top of the bag. I add a 3″ piece of ribbon (folded in half so the tab is 1.5″ long) to the centre of each end before following step 2 of Laura’s tutorial. When I am sewing I like to double-stitch over the spot where the ribbon is, for added strength. It also helps to cut the ends of the ribbon with pinking shears so it doesn’t fray.
When I sew step 4 on the We Wilsons snack bag, I use one line of wide zig-zag stitching to attach the velcro instead of stitching around all of the edges. Because the velcro is half the width it holds just fine and makes the whole process much faster. I also like to attach my velcro with a glue stick before I stitch it, so it stays in place without pins.
Since I wanted to use up some of my scraps I decided to have 3 different versions of the bags. All of my bags measure 6″ wide by almost 5″ high when finished. Here are the measurements for how I get there. The labels on the photos are CUTTING measurements for the height of the pieces. The width of the pieces should be 6.5″ and all measurements include a 1/4″ seam allowance. If you have “one way up” fabric, use the “OR 2 pieces” size to cut your largest pieces. Once they are cut, stitch them together, you should end up with a rectangle roughly 6.5″ by 10.5″-11″ long. Go ahead and follow Laura’s tutorial.
Now, take your stack of snack bags and fill them up – your kid will have the best dressed snack around! I’ll be posting a review of the Creativ Festival later this week so you can see some of my new stash!
P.S. Just in case you need more rainbow inspiration. Here are a few more things I love:
Rainbow Quilt (photo: Made By Rae) |
Arden’s Rainbow Dress (photo: A Jennuine Life) |
Rainbow Improv Quilt (quilt: Kelli P, photo: Lazy Gal Quilting) |
Pom Pom Tissue Flowers (photo: Design Dazzle) |
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 15, 2013
Ottobre Blouse Top + Skirt = The Hula Hoop Dress!
I have been planning to make this dress for about a month now. I am always looking for good ways to use clothing that I don’t wear anymore and re-purpose them for the kids. So… when I saw the skirt for a good deal, I also remembered that I had a perfect purple (too short, shrunk, ack) shirt of my own in the sewing box. And… tada… an idea was born!
It would be fun if that was the end of the story, but I have a much more random way that this dress finally came about….
A few weeks ago we bought a (standard Ikea) shelf on Craigslist. Nice shelf, nice people. While we were moving it into our vehicle my husband told me that the lady of the house liked to sew. This (of course) was very exciting to me, so I asked him to give her my Thread Riding Hood card and thought maybe she would like to come visit the blog (I know – shameless self promotion!)
A week or so later I got an email from her, she said she was moving out and selling off some of her fabric stash and would I like to come and see it? Turns out I was excited and so were 3 of my friends – so we all trooped down there on Wednesday night of last week to take a look.
Long story short she was selling A LOT of fabric! We got some really great deals and I scored some Ottobre magazines for FREE! If you have not heard of Ottobre, it is a sewing magazine designed in Finland. Each one of their issues has about 40 patterns in it, a clothing sewers dream!
I got home and immediately thought I should find a kids shirt pattern I could shorten to empire waist length and use above the skirt I had found. The pattern went together really well, and I am so excited to use another one! Once I had the dress bodice I took the skirt, opened the casing to shorten the elastic to fit my daughter and stitched it to the bottom of the bodice. Perfect!
Since the skirt has pockets, the dress does too – and my daughter loves them! The drawstring adds a cute detail to the front and I was able to use the extra length to add a ribbon detail to the neckline so the whole thing looks more matchy and put together.
Just a note for posterity! My daughter wanted to call this the “Sparkle Dress”.
So, my random fabric adventure turned out to be pretty useful! A bookcase led to some fabric which gave me some free magazines that had the pattern to the top of this dress in them! It also shows how you can “recycle” adult clothing into cute stuff for your kids. Seeing as how it is Earth Day next Monday maybe you want to try too?!
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 8, 2013
One little kitten lost her mittens and she began to cry,
“Oh Mama dear, I sadly fear, my mittens I have lost”
and Mama said,
“Don’t worry dear, there’s a great mitten pattern on ikat bag and some fleece that I’ve been trying to use up in the closet downstairs.
I’ll have new ones for you by tomorrow!”
The ikat bag Mittens
So, it is spring here – and has been for a few weeks now. Problem is, the weather is not cooperating! It keeps getting a bit warmer and then cools down again. And we’ve had wind… not a nice calm balmy wind – freezing cold angry wind. This leads me to this post. I found some great thin fall/spring mittens at our local Dollar Store, and I usually stock up with 5 or 6 pairs in the fall, but somehow, by spring they are usually mismatched and lost (maybe even in our house – how irritating!)
I don’t want to have to go back and buy more at this point. So I decided to make some myself. I remember using this pattern by ikat bag before (so I’m not sure why I still continue to buy mittens at the Dollar Store!) I’ve got one pair down and one more to go for my youngest. I might get them done tonight even, if I can clear the too small or “storeable-for-later” clothing out of the middle of our newly made playroom and get the dishes done with time to spare before bedtime! (Who am I kidding, it’s afer 10pm already. And “Yes” the dishes are still not finished!)
Anyhow, the pattern is great. It includes sizes 2, 4 and 6 – and is easily adaptable to other sizes as well. The way LiEr designed the pattern even makes it possible for the mittens to be reversible. I also got to use up some extra fleece from the lining of the “It’s a Hoot” coat I made for my oldest last fall. It’s nice to be able to get some more fabric out of the closet – especially seeing as how I have some more coming (this week I hope?!) for a project I’m super excited about!
The coat and mittens also look cute with the pink “Wrapped in Bows” scarf I made this winter after reading Disney’s tutorial from Ruffles and Stuff. (Which I think I found through Sew Can She – it’s a small world!) It is so much fun when you send your kid off to school in a (mostly) handmade outfit – even down to the coat – it’s very satisfying to say the least! I think tomorrow I will try to get a photograph of her with the whole thing on and put it on twitter.
By the way – if you need some mittens for yourself I have used this tutorial from The Purl Bee to make some from felted wool. They are the warmest, most amazing (and comfortable) mittens in the middle of winter! Because I can’t knit (and because I felted my own sweater to use for the mittens) I was able to use the felted ribbing on the bottom of the sweater to make the cuffs for the mittens instead of having to knit them myself. More on felting your own wool here.
Don’t forget – the Double Decker Fabric giveaway is still on, but this Friday is your last day to sign up! Don’t miss your chance to win 7 gorgeous fat quarters! You can also use the discount code included in the post to buy fabric from Double Decker until Friday. I’ll be posting and emailing the winner on Saturday morning – be sure to watch your email so I can get your address if you win!
Update: My husband just got home and says all of the mittens are in the backyard – ack!
by Sherri Sylvester | Apr 4, 2013
When I bought my pattern bundle a few months ago I was lucky enough to score a copy of the Goodship Dress by One Girl Circus.
Karen has created the cutest dress with a huge amazing bow on the front and somehow I convinced my “twirl-loving” oldest daughter to go for it! (I apologize ahead of time for the barrage of photos! I couldn’t decide which ones to post. This photo shoot was so much fun. The girls were high on sugar (Easter and cookies) and therefore a bit wiggly – amazingly everything worked out great!)
The pattern is amazing to work with. Everything is very clearly written and illustrated and VERY well though out. The inside of the dress looks as amazing as the outside. The side seams and hidden pockets are even put together with french seams!
The only thing I think I would change on when I make this again is that the neckline is a bit low for my girls – could be I made them a size too big. I think I am going to add in some hidden buttons under the collar to hold it up a bit higher. It is fine as long as it is tied – but the kids like to pull on the bows so they come undone pretty easily.
The fabrics I ended up with for this project were a dream to work with. The gray is a linen/polyester blend and it is so soft… I have about 1/2 meter left and I’m hoping to make something for myself from it! The pink is from the Fiesta line by Jennifer Sampou for Robert Kaufman. The green is my first stash of Amy Butler fabric. (Amazingly – I’ve never bought her fabric before!) It is the Gypsy Caravan line in Deco Dots from Amy Butler’s Stash. Apparently this is a reprint from her first fabric line.
Your Sewing Tip for Today: Ever have trouble turning a sash that has an angled sewn end? Here is a super easy way to do it (via one of my most favorite blogs: Made By Rae).
I’ll leave you with the one and only workable photo with both kids in it!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 27, 2013
So, on Sunday I was doing a little of this…
Which turned into a lot of this…
Which (when finally finished with the seam ripper, thankfully!) – turned into this…
I have finished the quilt top – hooray! I am so excited. All of the things I dreaded (mentioned here and here) haven’t happened and I am done! (Sorry for the super predictable “clothespin the quilt on the fence” photo. I’ll do better next time.)
I bought Denyse Schmidt’s Proverbial Quilt pattern a few years ago and have been waiting for a good quote so I could use it to make her pattern. Since you might be wondering why the quilt says what it says, I will tell you! When I was small my mom made myself and my siblings each a cross stitch wall hanging that said “Jesus Loves You” along with our name. That cross stitch hung on my wall for all of the years I lived in my parent’s house – as far as I can remember. I dug it out of our crawl space (quite a feat – trust me!) so I could show it to you.
Since my family’s faith is very important to us, and I am a bit sentimental (!) I decided to make the same quote into something for my girls. As each stitch goes into the quilt I hope my girls someday understand how much I care about them, and how I spent so many hours making it just for them. The same, I imagine, as my mom felt when she was making our cross stitch hangings. Hopefully they will keep their quilts as long as I will keep my mom’s handiwork.
Sentiment aside, (though a bit teary eyed), I’m excited to get the backing finished, since it is not quite as involved (thank goodness!). Then I can get to the really scary bits – like trying to machine quilt and bind it! Anyone have any tips I’d love it if you would leave a comment!
Now the old meets the new – and the legacy continues – wouldn’t it be great if my girls decided to love sewing and make something like this for their kids… hmmm… their kids?! What am I thinking!
I will be taking a bit of a break to spend some time with family over the weekend – but I’ll be back on Monday with another great project to show you! (And of course, you can follow me on Twitter to see what I’m up to even when I’m not here. Oh, and if you follow me on Twitter – put a comment on the giveaway post for an extra entry!)
Have a really great Easter! And, of course – take some time out to enter the giveaway! Enjoy spending time with your family! Sew something… maybe a shirt or two? I know a few good tutorials for that!
