Shorts from Leggings

I remember when my daughter was little and most, if not all, of her little dresses came with little matching bloomers and even when one of the dresses didn't, I could always find a plain white or pink one from another dress and use that.

At a certain point, though, I guess dress makers decide enough is enough and moms are on their own.

I found this site that sells shorts specifically designed to be worn under dresses and thought that was a really neat idea, but wasn't ready to spend $16 a piece on them.

So I decided to put my sewing skills to good use and make my own.

I made the first pair this last winter out of a pair of black leggings and they worked so well that I just got finished making six more.

First, I gathered up leggings in her size. Some of the pairs were given to us as hand-me-downs and actually had a couple of holes in the knees so this was perfect. Others were worn this last winter and I decided to just go ahead and get maximum use out of them by cutting them up since she probably won't be in the same size next winter. The black and brown ones I actually went to a consignment store with the intent of buying cheap leggings to make into shorts because I have found that you can't have enough black or brown shorts.

Then I basically just cut the legs off of leggings and hemmed them. Except I don't really know how to hem so I just folded the bottoms, pinned, and sewed two lines. It works well enough for wearing under a dress.

And since every sewing project (at least for a beginner) should have a lesson learned, here's today's: Cheap thread. Not worth it.

So frustrating.

Oh, well, I made it through and we should be set for the summer into the fall.

And I did go ahead and keep the legs from the leggings and I'll let you know if I decide to make homemade babylegs and how that goes.

A Truly FIRST Sewing Project

My three year old daughter was bugging me to let her have a turn at the sewing machine, and I thought, "Why not?"

Then I thought, what in the world could she actually make?!?

So I sewed two pieces of felt together with two lines in the middle, like so:


She stepped on the pedal and made lines across and learned to stop when she got to the end of the fabric to let me reset it.

Which along with never, never, never, never touch the needle and you can only sew when mama's right here were her first lessons in sewing.


And then I cut the rectangle into two squares and viola, two mini quilts for her little bear family.

Taggie Square Craziness

I cannot express how busy I have been this last week with making Taggie Squares for my church's annual harvest fest.

I know I have already posted the link to the tutorial and some other taggie ideas, but here's my "How to Mass Produce the Taggie Square" post.

First of all, set up your area:

Notice how I have the cutting board, pin cushion, scissors, materials, laptop with the tutorial pulled up and a Bumbo chair for my assistant (very important).

I went ahead and did everything in stages each night. Night one was cutting... I cut the ribbons, fabric squares and cereal bags.

Night two I assembled all of the squares and pinned them.

Night three I sewed all of the squares with right sides together.

Night four I turned all of the squares.

Night five I did all of the top stitching.

Final product:

I made 23 squares all together. I sent twenty to the church for the craft fair and held on to the three that I considered "extra."

Another Crinkly Taggie Square and Some Landmarks

I have been enjoying the crinkly taggie square making so much! I promise to stop posting individual pictures of each and every square soon.

But in making this one, I reached two important seamstress landmarks and had to share.

Landmark #1
I did not go out an purchase this fabric. When you start sewing, or any other hobby, you have to spend a lot of time (and money) accumulating the stuff associated with the hobby. I finally have enough fabric that I was able to say, "I feel like making this" and then go through what I have at home rather than dashing out to Hobby Lobby or JoAnn's to buy fabric for the project specifically. I learned this from my husband's Nana who has a small craft store in her third bedroom. In fact, this particular piece of fabric came from Nana. A while back, she let me go through her fabric and take a bunch of odds and ends. Her only requirement what that I had to show her what I made.

So, look what I made, Nana!

Landmark #2
I am going to be making Crinkly Taggie Squares for my church's annual Harvest Fest this year. That's right. I'm crafty enough to make things for a craft sale. How 'bout that!

Of course, this particular one is staying at my house because I like that fabric a lot and it makes me happy that it came from Nana. But be on the look out for more squares, mass produced.

Baby Shower Gift for Elissa

Well, I didn't get to actually go to Elissa's shower since I came down bronchitis and everyone knows it's extremely tacky to get the pregnant lady sick at her own shower, but I was well enough to make coordinating giraffe and crinkly square taggies to send to the shower in my stead.

I was really pleased by how well they turned out.

Crinkly Taggie Squares

You know what Taggies are, right?

The idea is that babies like the tag on blankets and so why not have a whole blanket with tags all around it. You can find them all over the place and they are pretty pricey.

Another thing that babies like is crinkly things. That's why so many baby toys have a crinkly part.

Put the two together and you have crinkly taggie squares:


I found out about these from Melissa over at Chasing Cheerios and she found the original tutorial here.

And since both of those lovely ladies have excellent tutorials on their sites, I won't both to post my own.

I will say, though, when Melissa says she uses cereal bags for the crinkly part, she means cereal, not crackers, not goldfish, not anything other random bag you can find in your pantry. Fail, fail, fail.

Only cereal bags will work (well, some people say wipes packages and microwave popcorn wrappers, but only cereal bags worked for me).

Yes, this does mean that all five kinds of cereal in the house are now stored in ziplocks.

But my son loved the square:

And since the squares went so well, I thought I would try Melissa's taggie giraffe as well:


Once again, her tutorial is excellent, so I won't include much of one on mine. But I will say, as I was trying to sew all around this giraffe, with all of it's rounded edges, I kept thinking of Melissa's step 5: "I handed the giraffe over to my mom, and she sewed all around it leaving a small hole for turning."

I wish I had a mom who would do the hard parts. :)

Final giraffe... very cool, I think. And notice that it coordinates with the taggie crinkly square as well. I'm thinking baby shower gifts (and if you happen to be the friend of mine whose shower I'm going to this weekend and you happen to read this blog, act surprised).

Alterations from the 70's

A few months back, my mother-in-law brought over some old baby clothes... old as in 1979 old. They had been my husbands and she had held on to them for all this time.

Among the clothes were three outfits that all look something like this:

Each one has one shirt and two coordinating bottoms ('cause back in the day, with cloth diapers, a baby was way more likely to need an outfit change on the lower half, or so I was told). I thought the outfits were really neat and I loved the retro colors, but when I put them on the baby, the whole shirt tucked in look really bugged me. So I thought, hey, I can sew! I can alter this outfit and make it look more modern.

(I did opt to only alter one of the three outfits so that the other two kept the full retro look.)

The first step I took was removing the buttons so that the shirt could be on the outside of the pants. Then, without the buttons, the pants needed elastic added to help them stay on.

The elastic isn't the prettiest on the inside, but it works just fine.

Here's the outfit with those two alterations. It would be okay now, but the shirt was still too short (since it was originally made to come only halfway down the belly and the pants would meet it in the middle).

So I took the hem out of the shirt and then zigzagged over the edges to keep them from unraveling. I did also have to reclose the side of the side at the hem.

Unfortunately, in zigzagging, I stretched the fabric some and now the bottom edge has a little bit of a wave to it, and in pulling out some of the original stitches, the old fabric didn't hold up well and now there are three small holes in the back.

I also added the elastic waistband to the coordinating pair of shorts.

I'm not sure if you can see the holes or not, but there they are. I'm wishing now that I had taken a before picture of the baby with the outfit on... the shirt was so short! It barely comes to his natural waist now and I let out a two inch hem.

Here's the same outfit from the front.

Overall, I was really pleased with my first alteration. Some mistakes were made, but the outfit is fully functional and, I think from a 2009 perspective, a better looking outfit for my helping it along.