Thursday, July 29, 2010

Disney

We went on our Disney vacation a couple of weeks ago, and it was awesome. We had such a great time! I thought I'd share a couple of pictures of the girls in their Disney outfits:

The Goofy shirts for breakfast:
We had so much fun with Donald that morning! He was hilarious. :) And Goofy was quite pleased to see the himself on their shirts. (I also whipped up a quick Minnie shirt for myself, so the girls had fun pointing that out to Minnie.)

They decided to wear their princess dresses to the Magic Kingdom the first day. (A: "Can I wear my princess dress when we meet the princesses?") Here they are with Mary Poppins and Bert, who were super nice:

The bad part was that it was really super hot, so the dresses were probably a bit much. They wore less the rest of the week! Despite the heat we all had a wonderful time.

And now (amazingly) school is going to start very soon. Of course I have to make first day of school outfits, especially for M, who's starting kindergarten this year. I had ordered some dots from the new Michael Miller knits line to make the girls Minnie outfits, but it didn't end up making it to me in time for the trip. However, I had an idea for an outfit that M liked, so this is what she'll wear for the first day of school:

She's very into ruffles at the moment, so I made up a ruffle skort pattern for her, and then I made her a matching shirt with carousel horse. (They were totally obsessed with carousels on our trip. I'm not even sure how many times we rode the one at Disney!) I finally figured out how to use my serger to do a rolled hem for the ruffles, so I went ahead and lettuce edged the shirt edges. I think I need to work on my skillz a little more with that, but you can't really tell unless you're looking at the inside. I also think I should have made the t-shirt a wee bit shorter, but oh well. I'm not re-doing the lettuce edge now!

A hasn't picked out fabric for her outfit yet. I do have plans for a less ruffly dotty skirt for her (she's not a ruffle girl), but I don't think that's what she wants for the first day. She better pick soon, though - we don't have much time left!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Cinderella, Cinderella

This summer, M has taken to wearing her princess dress ups a fair bit. So she dressed up for the Renaissance Festival (which was adorable), and while we were there, she got ice cream all over the dress, which is of course satiny (and originally a Halloween costume), so a little hard to wash. Then she wore a different dress up somewhere else, and in the process, I had an inspiration. I thought the girls needed everyday princess dresses. Dresses they could just wear as clothing, made of soft fabrics and easily washed. So, after conversations with the girls and a couple of trips to the fabric store (with and without them), I had a plan....


I must admit, I got a bit carried away with the trims, so I'm not at all certain how easily washable these dresses are, but they're pretty!

I shirred the back of M's dress so she could easily get it off and on:
Today is the trial run of how comfy they are, but it seems that they're fine. Yay for comfy (yet beautiful ;) ) dresses!

I also made myself a not at all princess-y dress recently, which is super comfy, but I have no pictures of that at the moment. I had the same problem I always have in making the bodice (I really do need to learn how to change the pattern, rather than the dress, since it takes *forever*), but for once the actual dress turned out really well, and I think I'll get a lot of wear from it.

So all in all, I'm a bit less frustrated with my sewing at the moment. :)