simple storage

Not being able to breastfeed means having a bajillion formula containers around the house.  They are perfect for storage, so I don't complain too much.  Tape a strip of paper around them and they are even decent looking.  I've used wrapping paper and scrapbook paper and both work great with a little bit of double-sided tape.  What can go inside of these things is absolutely endless - toys, food, sewing bits, etc.  I'm using one for my headbands and hair things. 

Headbands on the outside, everything else (ribbons, bows, flowers, clips, etc.) on the inside.  While I was organizing my hair stuff, I took a small canning jar and put all my ponytail holders around it (wouldn't work with little ones), and all my bobby pins inside of it.  Much happier with this than anything before. 

scrap tutu

The new year has brought a new energy into my home (which I hope sticks around throughout the entire year).  I've started making baby food for Cupcake - carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, and a mini-batch of asparagus so far, with a list of things to come.  Pumpkin, green beans, applesauce, butternut squash, banana, peaches.  Makes me feel productive, and happy to know exactly what I'm feeding my baby.  And it helps save money - which is the best.

I too have a list of crafty things I'd like to do this year, and I've already managed to cross one off. I found the idea on Pinterest (as everyone does these days), but figured I can do it since it required no actual sewing.

Yes, that is a small table lamp being my model.

A scrap tutu is made out of strips of fabric that are tied to a piece of elastic.  That's it.  I tore the strips, so it was super fast and easy.  I decided to add ribbons to the end of the elastic, instead of making it a full circle, so the size can be adjusted as Cupcake grows.  For now, she's too little for it, and is more interested in eating it than anything, but it will be fun for her to play in later.  If she's anything like I was, she'll dream of being a ballerina.

 

quilting class introduction

Okay, I did it. I signed up for the online curves quilting class on Stitched in Color. It starts tomorrow - that was a bit under the wire for me to get started in it, and it goes for 5 weeks through about Valentine's Day. This post is, I guess, my introduction to the class that I'm linking on the private class blog.

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I'm Trina. I just started sewing about 2 years ago and I'm still very new to the whole thing. I share this blog with one of my sisters and a couple of friends to compare notes about learning the whole Art of Homemaking, or whatever you want to call it, because I was totally NOT domestic in any way until I quit my office job when I had my first baby. My mother will probably find the idea that I'm taking a sewing class to be quite hilarious. She tried when I was a teenager to teach me to sew. And cook. She really did. It didn't connect for a loooooooooong time.

I became interested in quilting this past year for 2 reasons -

1. I read a lot of sewing blogs in general, and many of them have quilts on them. They're amazing! The fabric in general, the color combinations, the piecing work - I'm blown away every time.

2. I've been wanting to redo my bedroom for quite awhile but have never found bedding that I like at all, whether looking in a store or attempting to shop online. I was reading girl.inspired one day and saw this post with the quilt in the background ... scroll down to the 3rd photo ... and lightning struck. THAT is my quilt. I know what colors I want. I even know what to title it. It will be incredible. So when I saw this curves class, I had to take it because I need it for my quilt. Not that I can afford to get the fabric for it for another year or two, but still.

That said, my time spent on the actual class in real time over the next 5 weeks may or may not be minimal. My kids are 6, 5, 2 and 15 months, and I'm due with #5 at the beginning of March. (All girls.) My brain tends to freeze up in the last few weeks of pregnancy, which I'm getting into. Yay. I homeschool the two oldest while the baby climbs all over me and the 2-year-old does her level-best to destroy everything she gets into. (She's had a stellar week, let me tell you. I just now had to stop typing this to go sweep up an entire loaf of bread obliterated into crumbs.) I won't get into everything my husband has going on right now, but let's just say that I run a lot of interference in his behalf and manage the kids on my own quite a bit. He's usually a very involved husband and dad but he has his own ... stuff ... for the next few weeks.

Soooo, I mainly registered for the class to get the pdf and videos at the end since I don't know when or how much I'll actually get to SEW between now and March, and I'll continue to work on things later. I already know what fabric I want to use to make the pillow in the first week's projects as a commemorative piece for my girls and our recent trip to DisneyWorld, and I could use some new bibs for the new baby. I think the Rainbow Road would make an awesome kitchen rug. And the Oodalolly quilt is awesome. Love that.

I thought a lot about it and really - I will NEVER "have time" to take a class of any kind. I might as well jump in and take the class anyway, and fit things in when I can. If I want to do something (anything - not just this class), I either have to make it happen within the circumstances I have, or it will never happen. And this post from a homeschool blog just the other day was the kick in the head I needed to come to that conclusion. I especially like this part: "There are people who can work while being bombarded by family life. There are people who can shut out their worldly cares. But you're not one of them. You are a hothouse flower. You are a special snowflake. Oops, no you're not." HA! Here's to not being a special snowflake and working with what we've got, noisy kids and all.

2013 sewing targets

Here's the first run of my sewing and project list for this year:

CLOTHES FOR THE GIRLS
My general rule of thumb for matchy-matchy outfits for my girls is that they coordinate but I don't make the exact same thing for all of them. Like, for Easter last year, they all had different fabric and different outfits, but the fabric all came from the same designer and color line. Their Minnie Mouse outfits for Disney World did have all the same fabric, but they were all different. I like that better than everyone being identical because, well, they're not identical people. And we did hit on a glitch with similarity last year when I made 2 Independence Day skirts - JE won't wear her's because I made SM's first, and when I showed JE the second one, she was confused and said it belonged to her sister. It's just been sitting in her drawer since then.

- Dr. Seuss skirts for Read Across America Day on March 1. I ordered some Dr. Seuss fabric thinking it was flannel for a baby blanket. It was regular cotton, so it's good for clothes since I'm not up to making a full-on baby quilt yet. I think these will be really fun - it's a cute and silly print. I don't have enough fabric for dresses but I think there's enough to make 4 (or even 5) little skirts.

- Easter outfits for all the girls. When I was getting some Christmas fabric, I noticed that fabric.com had pastel colored eyelet marked down to $2.50 a yard - done! I got pink, lavender, cream, and white. The new baby will have her blessing (the Mormon version of christening) on Easter Sunday, so she gets the white. There's 2 yards of it which is WAY too much for a tiny baby, even with making one of those super-long christening dresses like my mom has done for all the others. The other four girls can have some combination of all four colors. I'm happy that the baby will be in her special blessing dress, but still coordinate with the other girls for the holiday. I was not even thinking about this when I ordered the white fabric - the idea occurred to me just a couple of weeks ago so I sent the white to my mom (she makes the blessing dresses by her own request).

- I have red/white and blue/white gingham to make something for all the girls for Independence Day.

- I'd like to make both Christmas dresses and Christmas pajamas for all the girls this year, but I haven't thought that far in advance. Oh, and I think I'm supposed to be making Halloween costumes for everyone as well. SM has decided that our entire family will be dressed from Alice in Wonderland. We'll see what happens with those when they get closer.

In general with sewing clothes for them, I want to start making dresses as well as skirts. And I want to use more of the tutorials that I have bookmarked and not keep making the same thing over and over. Dana's simple skirt has definitely gotten me started, but time to broaden my horizons.

STUFF FOR THE HOUSE
Most of my ideas so far are for the girls' room ...

- I already started before New Year's with painting the frame of their bulletin board. The pins to hang pictures and other random items are the collector pins from Disneyland and DisneyWorld. Before I got married, that type of pin was my collector item when I traveled. I have quite a stash from Disney that the girls think are fun so they have them now. (They do NOT get my pins from Australia. I'm keeping those.)

- Make more coat racks, like I did here, for behind their bedroom door to hang all their little tote bags that just get thrown everywhere. I'm doing 3 in green with flowers on them.

- Put ribbon on the lamp that's on their dresser.

- I've wanted for forever to redo their dressers - paint, new hardware, line the drawers, the whole thing. I don't know how much of that will happen right away. Maybe this summer? I could at least mod podge some fun craft paper to the bottoms of their drawers to start.

- THIS:

- The Sewing Loft - cover wire hangers with felt and edged by a blanket stitch. I have felt. I can do a blanket stitch. I can make little flowers. And we have ugly wire hangers in our girls' closet because SM can't remove a plastic hanger from the rod without snapping it in half. These are very girly.

For the kitchen ...

- Stitched in Color - I love love love this kitchen rug! It's quilted. What a fabulous idea! Those colors wouldn't really go well in my kitchen. I lean toward blues and greens. But the idea is definitely in my head. It would be nice for the floor to be a little less cold and hard when I'm doing dishes at 11 pm.

- my paper crane - hot pads! The ones we currently have are from when we got married almost 9 years ago and are looking pretty shabby. I could actually have a somewhat coordinating kitchen ... how would that be? Of course it's ADAM'S kitchen since he does most of the cooking, so I can't use super-girly fabrics. I'm fine with using more masculine fabrics (something geometric?), as long as the combination of this and that is not an eyesore.

On a related note, I have probably half a dozen different links bookmarked for various designs on cloth napkins. We could use more of those too, so we don't go through so many paper towels at dinner. I have a vision of a small rectangular basket filled from one end to the other with cloth napkins. And now that I'm pondering a nice-looking kitchen ... some kind of window covering? I saw something a long time ago that you get a curtain rod with clips on it, and just hang up placemats as your valance. That would be cool, except I've never ever seen a placemat that I wanted hung over my window that I'd have to look at all the time. Might as well just make a valance/curtain/whatever, or even some placemats and hang them up. Ha!

HOLIDAYS

- icandy handmade - How cute is this for Valentine's Day? The link includes a full tutorial. I especially love the giant rick-rack. I need to find some. Walmart certainly doesn't carry anything that fun.

- I'll post a picture of my Halloween mini-quilt when I get it done. I already mentioned that I made one for my brother's family for Christmas and I have 3 more in the works because that's how much fabric there was. I'm keeping one of them and giving the other 2 away, but I'm not sure to whom yet.

- I'm going to attempt my 12 Months of Christmas project again - I'll put my string of inspiration photos and links for that in another post because this one is long enough as it is.

Homemade Christmas was a success (who knew)

Based off all the other inspirational and amazing things we've read about and heard, my husband and I decided last December (2011) that 2012 was to be all homemade.  And with that in mind, we set to work.  Didn't finish everything, but set to work.

For my daughters:
I made and designed for them journal jars as well as I made them there own journals that included pictures of them inside from growing up.  This is our new weekly activity.  They each select a prompt and write/draw the response to it.

My husband and I made them marshmallow guns.  This was a hit.  Who knew.  They are dirt cheap to make and ever so fun to play with.  Seriously cool.

My husband and I couldn't get enough of the PVC pipe so we made them both bows and arrows.  My kids thought Brave was, meh, but my oldest saves up her money to go to the local archery range as often as she can (which means once a year in the life of an almost 9 year old).  We also ended up making a set for some boisterous nephews of ours (with parental permission of course).

I did (and finished) my first sewing project ever.  I made skirts.  Simple ones.  Super easy ones.  But I did it. And if any of you have ever seen me bawling my eyes out over my daughters sewing machine just frustrated  you'd understand why this was a monumental feat for me.

I helped my youngest sculpt and Eiffle Tower vase for her sister.  We finished the vase but not the flowers we were making to go inside it.  We are working on this for a birthday in a few weeks.  Hopefully we finish, we really need to.

My daughters made:
Fleece blankets, table cloths, hair scrunchies (did I mention all of this is Hello Kitty themed since my youngest is obsessed, simple scarves, stories, coupon books, paper dolls, canvas bags, rice socks, garlands, ...

My husband made:
Lots of jewelry for my kids all inspired by owls and wolves and keys (which my kids love with a mania)
He was also working on a book for them.  He only got to 40k words and didn't have time to illustrate it.  So he is attempting to finish that for next year.

It was seriously awesome.  So awesome that they all unequivocally cannot wait to do it again and make this a staple.

here is a sample of what we want to do next year:
Lillian wants to learn how to use leather
Jason wants to stencil with bleach 
Coralie wants to make charms
I'm still on a hunt for more trucks so I can do this from recycled products
And of course something like this
My husband and I are also designing a board game and card game around these stories we all tell in our family about Princess Abigail and Princess Chloe ... long story short, but they are awesome.

Anyhow, thank you for your inspirations.  I know I can do it even though I am not a crafty person. Good with a camera, yes.  Great with movies, I'm your lady.  But crafty?  Nope.

this year's Christmas stuff

Well, I was going to try to have another year of handmade for everyone, but being pregnant has stomped out most of my motivation. I did make a couple of things for gifts but not nearly as much as I was hoping for. And, um, I took pictures of none of it. But here are some links if you want ideas for next year, or just stuff to do.

Adam made hammocks for the girls. Out of pink and purple nylon canvas. Heh. His hammocks are both green - a super dark olive, and a more regular green that is frequently used in camping gear. But he bit the bullet and made the girls' hammocks out of their favorite colors, instead of camping colors.

We had the girls make these felt star ornaments for my parents - SM sewed the whole thing herself, RG helped pull the needle, JE chose the color of edging floss and the button for the middle and I sewed it, and TA - well, she's still a baby so I did it in her behalf.

I found this fabric pumpkin tutorial just before Halloween and made a couple out of scrap fabric I had kicking around. I really liked them, so I ordered a charm pack (pre-cut 5 inch squares) of specific Halloween fabric from fabric.com to make more pumpkins for my sibling gift exchange - the theme was holiday decorations. When it arrived, I'd just seen this post for a mini-quilt ... and since I've been wanting to try out some quilting anyway ... it just went better. So I made a Halloween mini-quilt and sent it off to my brother and his family. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of it since it was my first one. But I have the makings from the charm pack for 3 more of them, so I'll take pictures of them when they're done. I got them started but nothing was finished before Christmas so their intended recipients will be surprised later.

And that was it for my homemade Christmas. Sigh. I started on a group present for the girls but it didn't get finished. I intended to make Christmas Eve pajamas but ended up buying them (about 3 hours before we gave them to the girls - talk about last minute shopping). Hopefully next year goes better.

Oh, and as a sidenote - 2 posts ago, I said the bobbin case was missing from the sewing machine. The next day after posting that, we cornered JE (age 2) and got her to tell us it was "hiding." She had poked it with her finger into the innards of the machine. Fortunately, Adam was able to shake it back out, but I was still ready with a screwdriver to take the machine apart if necessary.

some random thoughts to finish 2012 and start 2013

Thought 1: 
As I've been reading this or that sewing or crafting or home decor blog, I'm leaning more toward the blogs in which I know the author/creator has multiple children along with their creative pursuits and blogging (which always includes amazing photography of course). The holiday drama of "Oh, I'm sooooo busy! We should all SIMPLIFY!" from bloggers who have only one child does not impress me and is really becoming annoying. You think you're so busy with ONE kid who is in school all day while you do your creative thing? It's self-inflicted, Sister. Cry me a river. Try having four at home all the time because I homeschool the older two, the younger two are demanding toddlers, and I'm 7 months pregnant with #5. I can't keep up with the dishes and laundry, let alone have the time to spend half the day making stuff and taking pictures of it with a really expensive camera. Yes, these are the choices I've made for my family, but wow - spare me the whining about how busy you are with ONE child. And then I don't save those blogs to read again later. People who have lots of kids garner a lot more sympathy from me when they comment about their level of busy-ness.

Thought 2:
I have 224 things bookmarked just in my online sewing folder (yes, I counted). This does not include blogs in general and online fabric shops, or the 14 links to specific projects that I've completed in the past 2 years. Some are general tutorials, like "how to make ruffles" and tips on using knit fabrics. Most are individual specific projects. It is time to stop collecting bookmarks and start moving them into the "projects I've completed" file. And write more on my own blogs rather than reading other people's blogs. But for what it's worth, I'm in the middle of compiling a post of links to blogs that I have found good projects on, so maybe they can give you ideas as well. I'll try to get the list finished this weekend.

Thought 3:
On that note ... I don't know if it's nesting, or I've progressed to a certain level in my sewing, or what. But I really have this bug to MAKE STUFF right now - particularly, to make my home and living more beautiful. I can't do anything about the house itself. I'm not even allowed to paint. Meh. But I can make things more pretty, add details to things we already have (ribbon around a lampshade, for example), and work with things that can go with us wherever we end up. I thought about it a lot yesterday and I'm going back and forth between attempting an entire month where I work on something for at least an hour every single day, or shoot for 52 projects, one for every week of the year. Clothing counts in the MAKE PRETTY STUFF target. Clothes look much nicer when they fit the wearer properly, and heaven knows that straight-from-the-store stuff doesn't fit my girls very well. They prefer dresses and skirts, which are either way too short or a tent.

Most of the pretty things that I've thought of so far are for the girls' bedroom. So last night, I got the bulletin board out of the girls' room and started painting the frame to match their hairbow boards, just for the heck of it. It was just the boring wood - now it's lavender.

I have some vague ideas about the master bedroom, but nothing that I can quite put into words yet. I will say that I really really really want to find colors in the seaglass color scheme - blues and greens. They're relaxing for both Adam and me, and not overly feminine. In a house full of girls, poor Adam needs his space in the house to have nothing with pink or flowers (except maybe some real ones). And I wish we could find somewhere else to stash everything that we don't want the girls getting into - our room has had landfill status for as long as we've had kids, because that's the only room we can even attempt to keep them out of.

Thought 4:
It's time to make the jump from skirts to dresses for the girls, which probably means that I need to figure out how to put in zippers. Ummm ... yeah. Maybe I'll use dress patterns and tutorials with buttons for awhile to start. Zippers are still a little too scary for me right now.

I also want to make quilts for everyone's beds - I've been seeing a lot of quilts this year on blogs and they're amazing. They're also not something you could buy in a store. That level of project is still at least a couple of years off, for the cost if nothing else (I want the good fabric so it's going to be expensive to make 6 quilts) but I've already added mini-quilts to my list of things to work on this year. I made one for my brother and his family for Christmas for my first time out of the blocks and I thought it went all right.

of course

I suppose I wouldn't be a real sewer (or seamstress or sewist or whatever "people who sew" are called these days) if my kids hadn't ruined something at some point. I was working on trick-or-treat bags yesterday as well as some fabric pumpkins (found here on PS I Quilt - aren't those cute? And totally easy!)

Tonight, Adam was going to sew something really quick on one of his hammocks and we discovered that the bobbin case for the machine has vanished, along with the bobbin spool I was last using ... And we did a lot of housecleaning today, so I have no idea where that thing could possibly be. The spool is easy to replace, but the bobbin case? Yeah. No sewing at all until that thing is either located or I find another one online to replace it because the machine doesn't work without it. My 2-year-old and 6-year-old absolutely will not leave my sewing stuff alone, and both are good at absconding with things - like small bobbin cases, possibly - that they decide to claim as their own. Sigh.

Good thing I'm not working on Halloween costumes - they're done. Christmas presents, on the other hand ... that's going to be a little more difficult to get started on.

Disney trip outfits

Adam decided a few weeks ago that we were going to Disney World for my 40th (gag) birthday - yay! He asked me for a budget (since I'm our financial manager), told me the dates we'd be gone, and assigned me to make outfits for the girls for every day we'd be in the DW parks. Other than that, I knew nothing, not even what hotel we were going to stay in. It was my birthday present!

We were there last week and it was a great trip - the biggest surprise was that my parents and sister were in the hotel room next door. Hooray hooray for family helping with small kids!

I made princess dresses, which I've already posted about ... and then the girls never wore them at Disney World. It was too hot and humid the whole time to even think about wearing satin. Well, I have Halloween outfits for all of them now.

I got stuff to make country flag shirts for Epcot - I ordered little 4x6 inch desk flags from countries in our family's heritage - England, Germany, Denmark, and Poland. I pulled them off the little sticks and was going to applique them to plain t-shirts and have them worn with jeans. That didn't happen either. With "cold weather" setting in for fall and winter, you can't find short sleeved shirts ANYWHERE in stores. And don't get me started about how much of a pain in the neck it is to find PLAIN shirts at all without garish and ugly pictures and words all over them. I ended up buying long-sleeved shirts and one of the baby's shirts was a turtleneck. It's 90 freaking degrees outside (even in October), and all I can find at the store is a turtleneck? Seriously? For Epcot, they just wore the US flag shirts I got at Walmart for Independence Day with shorts. SM wore her Pledge of Allegiance skirt.

They wore two of the things I made ... the first day at the Magic Kingdom, they all matched with pink Minnie Mouse fabric that I found on fabric.com and at Walmart. I ended up buying it at Walmart (even though I'm really hating on that store these days) so I could start sewing right away and not wait for the shipping. I got the accent fabrics from a local small fabric shop (Stitch-n-Frame) - the woman at the shop was fantastic in helping me pick stuff out that I never would have considered on my own. I was definitely willing to pay more for these fabrics just to have the help in choosing them, plus they're from the fancy shmancy fabric designers that I read about on sewing blogs but have never actually come across in a store until now - the floral print is from Riley Blake and the pink dots were from Michael Moore.

SM's dress was the same pillowcase style dress from the One Yard Wonders book that I made for JE at Easter. I embellished it with a ruffle around the waist, which idea I got from Sumo's Sweet Stuff (via Project Run and Play).

RG wanted a skirt. I was shooting for this ruffle from Flamingo Toes but I put the ruffle together without taking the taller bit into consideration. Oops. Need to read ahead better. So I just attached the ruffle I had to the bottom of the skirt and called it good. I do still want the Flamingo Toes skirt and even know which fabric combo I'm going to use for it. It's just a question of who will get the new skirt. Maybe me.

JE's outfit was from the One Yard Wonders book - a pinafore over a shirt and shorts. She's still in diapers so she needed something over her bum. I prefer her in shorts or leggings, not just a diaper cover. I like how it looked like a jumper - you couldn't really see the shorts, but when she got chocolate ice cream all over the pinafore in the afternoon, we just took it off and she was still fully dressed.

And baby TA - I went around and around with trying to figure out a dress or jumper for her, until a friend told me to just put her in a skirt with a onesie. I did this tiered skirt tutorial from Craftiness is not Optional and it's so teeny and cute! I really like the look of this skirt, so I'll be making more of them. I need to tweak the proportions a little bit next time - because my sewing is not total precision, I need at least one inch extra on the middle and bottom layers to accommodate for the gathering and hem.

This was the clearest shot I got of all 4 outfits. Hopefully my dad or sister got a better one at some point during the day! Some of our princess pictures didn't turn out (Rapunzel is completely out of focus, for one) so I'm glad we had multiple cameras going. This was taken within 10 minutes of getting past the front gate on our first day, and wow - the stars aligned for this. Leading up to the trip, every time we asked the girls who they wanted to meet, the first name was always Mary Poppins. And there she was as soon as we got there.

For Animal Kingdom, we had safari vests, of course! They were done mostly freehand - I measured and traced around t-shirts and made test versions out of an old sheet before I cut into my main fabric. I used cotton ticking (which is usually used for upholstery and frequently has stripes - I found some plain), got random fat quarters from the Walmart craft section to make the pockets, and colored flower buttons to coordinate.

I was winging it when I made the first test vest - I traced a shirt onto the sheet and sewed it all up and it didn't work really well. My mom found this tutorial on Couturier Mommy on how to make a vest pattern from a shirt tracing, which I mostly followed - I still eyeballed it for the armhole lines. I traced the shirt onto a piece of packing paper that we use for large art projects, then pinned that to the fabric ... that went much better. TA's vest ended up a bit too small - it fit around her, but was snug and it was too hot for her to wear anything fitted. So she didn't wear it very long. RG was also not being very cooperative that day so she didn't wear her's very long either. I have no pictures of all 4 of them at AK - I think my dad got one but I don't have it yet.  Here's one of SM and one of JE at Rafiki's petting zoo to give you an idea - bias tape around the armholes, buttons and buttonholes down the front, and patch pockets all over the front.

It was a lot of work getting ready for the trip with the sewing but it was fun, and I worked on my sewing skills. I learned that major projects like the princess dresses are still waaaaay beyond my reach and I'm really glad that I have friends like Kera to walk me through them (and/or do them for me). I got more practice on gathering stitches, buttonholes, and bias tape. I figured out, a little bit, how to make a pattern traced off a current article of clothing, and tried a couple of new tutorials that I hadn't done before. I'm branching out!

princess dress preview

Adam decided a few weeks ago that we're going to Disney World for my birthday and promptly assigned me to make new clothes for the girls, particularly princess dresses for when we're at the Magic Kingdom. I've been sewing like a madwoman for about a month now - all the princess dresses, a Minnie Mouse print, and now I'm working on safari vests for visiting Animal Kingdom.

Here's a sneak preview of the princess dresses (mainly for my mom and sisters). These are horrible pictures, but you can see the dresses. We'll get better ones in about 10 days in front of Cinderella's castle!

The catch is that these all began as adult sized formalwear, and has been cut down and restyled into princess dresses for little kids. My friend Kera (the one I keep mentioning) introduced me to this idea during the summer - you get formals from the thrift store or the back of your closet, and you've just scored a truckload of satin yardage for next to nothing.

SM's dress - blue with the sheer overlay and white ribbon - is a top and skirt because that was the best way to cut down the dress. It was originally a bridesmaid dress from my brother's wedding.

The other girls were outfitted from two formals that I got at a thrift store for 10 bucks total. Kera the Genius cut down RG's purple dress and it's darn near the original, only now sized for a 5-year-old. The big wrap-around looks a little odd here because she had her shoulders positioned weird. It looks like a big bow around her - really cute. Kera did the whole thing with her serger - I did a little bit of hand stitching on the top to get everything into place, but that was it.

JE's teal dress was actually a skirt to begin and we modified it using this dress from A Girl and a Glue Gun as the idea, minus the tulle over the top. Kera had lace that matched perfectly in her own stash which is around the bottom between the silver ribbons. It looks awesome. I've already made her a hairbow (just need to hot-glue it to the clip) out of the lace. Kera did about 95% of this dress in one night while I did TA's 3 times because I kept screwing it up.

TA's dress was copied directly from the same post as JE's - her main fabric was the bottom cut off RG's original dress, and I got the sheer overlay from Walmart. I wanted tulle but you apparently can't get it unless you go to Jackson. 60 miles one way for tulle is not happening.

Now to figure out shoes ...