Nothing like having a baby to get me sewing again, eh?

I love love love these fabrics and I'm so glad I splurged $6 at the fabric store and bought these cute fabrics. I love the gray and yellow color trend right now! I realize I don't have handles on this yet but it's because I'm hoping my sister may have a bag handle in her sewing stash that I can use rather than sewing on straps. Here is the tutorial I used. It's awesome and easy!!

http://bumblebeebliss.com/2011/09/23/gathered-bag-tutorial/

My latest inspirations

Before picture - cute but not quite the *pop* I'm looking for, also the sleeves were a little long and the waist was a little big

Finished, Aftyn's "princess" dress, I know, I need one of her in it

Aftyn's new Christmas skirt. Used to be the bottom part of a jumper that I found to be a little boring.

So I cut it up, added layers and put little layers of the mesh toole in various accenting places. I like it!

I actually ended up shortening the skirt so it hit more at her knee. Luckily, the way I shortened it allows me to let it out next year and the next and as long as it continues to fit! :) I love it when I can elongate the wearing of things!

What's a month?!?

Some bows I made today for 2 friends who have had baby girls in the last month. 

I've decided I am inspired to make cuter bows for other people and not for my kids and I have found this to be true on more than one occasion. 

It's very annoying.

 I decided if I took pictures, then I could easily recreate them for myself should I choose to. 

I think they turned out SUPER cute.

 If I say so myself, quite humbly. 

 :)

From Long Sleeve Sweater to Short Sleeve Update

Today I want to show you one of my favorite things to do currently: altering sleeve length.It's become one of my favorite things due to the fact that I have had to change a lot of sleeves in my short career as a seamstress and it's such a quick thing to change but it can make all the difference between a shirt looking dated or having current fashion trends.

This sweater came to me from my sweet sister-in-law again. When I saw it I instantly loved it. It is made from really soft yarn and I love little girls in soft sweaters. It makes you want to hug them just so you can squish their soft bodies and sweaters against your own face! :)

 It originally had a hood and even though I liked the hood, I wanted to try something I had never done before and I thought it would be a cute update, so I chopped off the hood. And turned the remaining fabric over and stitched it to become a cute little collar. I love it and you can see the new collar below.

        
                   If you have little kids, I'm sure your sweaters have plenty of holes too.
                  Kids and holes in clothing just go together. Just so you know, this
                sweater came with its hole. I knew when I got this sweater that it would
                      need a little adjustment.
                I started off by cutting off the ribbing on the ends of the sleeves so that
                        I could add them back onto my shorter sleeves.

             First things first, I'm going to cut my sleeve as close to the hole as I can so I can have as
                                 much sleeve to play with as possible.

                        Take your leftover sleeve from the first cut and match it up to the remaining sleeve,
                         that way both sleeves are even.

                              Just so you know my process, I can usually see what I want my final product to

                      look like before I get started on it. That gives me a goal to work towards. So                       after trying and playing with that straight sleeve, I decided that to get the look I wanted, I would need to cut my sleeve shorter and at an angle. So, that's what I did. I cut               my first sleeve, took the scrap I just cut off and matched it to the other side so I would cut the same amount and make the sleeves match.  I knew I wanted to do a gathering stitch, 

so I decided where I wanted the stitch to start and where I wanted it to stop. I put pins

in those places and sewed my sweater right up with that stitch. 

(A gathering stitch is just the longest stitch on your machine. Make sure when you start 

you have your thread pulled a little long and when you finish you cut your threads a little long 

so that you have lots of extra thread to do the next step.)

  

                     Pull whatever thread you need to to make the fabric pucker all up, creating the above
                      look on your garment.  Sweaters are a little tricky to gather and then sew up because
                     of the bulk that is created by all that gathering. I had to hang on pretty tight to my
                    gathering thread while sewing it up so that the pressure of the needle didn't push all
                    the gathering down.  Once you've sewn your gathering in place with a shorter stitch
                    on your machine, you're ready to sew the ribbing back into place at the end of your
                   sleeve. Make sure you have the cut end being sewn onto the sleeve and not the
                   finished end. You can thank me later for that reminder.  :)

                             Here you have it! Your cute new "just-poofy-enough" sleeve!
                              

It's Official!

Well folks, I've been thinking about a sewing blog and finally here it is.
Hi! My name is Alysa, in case you don't know me. I love to re-fashion things.
I started when my first daughter was not even a year old, and now she is 3!
I started re-fashioning out of necessity but also because it was creatively challenging to
take a piece of clothing and completely change its purpose by changing its shape.

I don't claim to be a great sewer. I'm certainly still learning but if you don't mind learning right
along with me then this is going to be a beautiful thing.

I got this pair of pants from my generous sister-in-law. She told me that since these pants weren't
exactly super cute, her daughter had just used them as "paint pants".

Sorry, I already chopped off the waistband, which explains why that part doesn't really match up.

After bringing these pants home, I looked at the print and fell in love. Polka dots are very popular right now, and I began envisioning what I could create with this cute print. Here's what I came up with!

To get a skirt from a pair of pants was a slightly long process. Only because I made my job hard from the beginning. You'll see how.

First:   Unpick both legs and turn them sideways, like this.

Next:  Find a skirt that already fits in the length and cut just longer than that. I was thinking at the time that I would need to hem this skirt, but in the end because of the fabric I didn't need to because it is knit. No hemming! :)  Also, the extra length came to be a blessing.

Okay so here's where my mistake can help you. Here's what I should have done instead of what I did. First, create the new waistband. I measured my daughters waist and made a casing that would fit with a little extra wiggle room. (Wiggle room is always good with skirts. Makes it easier to have the skirt grow with them for a little while until the length becomes too short.) If you wonder what i mean by casing, look at the picture below with the top and bottom of the skirt in two pieces. The top piece is what I mean by casing. It's the casing that will hold the elastic that will hold the skirt up.  From other sewing blogs I've learned the proper way to measure the elastic for your waistband is to take your waist measurement and substract 1.5 to 2 inches so that the elastic will stretch and hold up the skirt. If you don't have that stretch, the skirt would have no tension and would therefore fall down having nothing to hold on to.

  About 3 inches from the bottom of your finished waistband, cut all the way across. 

It should look like this. Except I didn't finish my waistband first. You can do it either way.

Now because these are pants, you will have holes where the legs came together since this is no longer pants and will now be a skirt. I would finish taking out all the leg seams through the crotch area of the pants and I would cut all that curved fabric straight up, creating straight sides that can be sewn together. Take all the extra leg fabric and keep sewing it into the skirt bottom until you reach the fullness you are looking for. I wanted a very full skirt, so I used almost all of it. I only saved a few strips to be sewn around the bottom to add a little length and fun detail. Sew the bottom to the waist in any manner you like. I sewed mine together taking the bottom of the skirt and actually making it my top so that the skirt would flare more. I took little folds and pinned them all the way around the skirt and then sewed.

At this point you can stop. I wanted more feminine touches. I took an old shirt with lace trim and cut as much lace as I needed and sewed it at the bottom of the skirt. I also sewed more lace where the bottom and top come together, just to add some more detail and continuity to the skirt.
And then just for the heck of it, I added 3 rosettes. Because who doesn't love rosettes on a skirt. :)

                                    Here it is again. Finished. The rosettes are a little hard to see.

                                                  I love to see my projects being used. :)
                                      Especially when they look like I could have bought them.