Sophie’s Slit-and-Panel Skirt

The studio is still the least finished room in the house, but I did manage to work around all the boxes to make one thing – a skirt for Sophie.

Not sure how it started – we were at the local thrift store and next thing I know, Sophie has picked out two skirts and I’ve promised to make them fit her. (She has a thing for full ankle-length skirts right now. And they are practically impossible to find in any store!!!)

Picking the easier, navy one to work on first, I knew I could just fold over the wide waistband to make a casing for some elastic so it would fit Sophie’s waist, not an XS adult’s one. But then Sophie said how excited she was about soon twirling in her new skirt.

Uh oh.

The skirt, as it was, had NO fullness and would NOT twirl well, unless I made some more changes to it…

I let Sophie go through my box of Clothes-To-Be-Used-As-Scraps to find another knit I could work with and she picked this stripey number.

First, I changed the waist to fit my peanut, according to my plan mentioned earlier.

Then I folded the skirt and the shirt in half. One cut up the middle of the folded skirt gave me four tall evenly-spaced slits. And two slanted cuts up the sides of the shirt gave me four tall triangular panels.

Pulling each slit apart (like in the photo above), I put a triangle behind it, with the bottom already-finished hems lining up. Then I top-stitched close to the edge of the slit, catching the triangle underneath. Sort of a messy-edge, reverse applique.

Four easy panels added, and the skirt was done. When she stands still, the striped sections often disappear into the folds and it looks like a plain blue skirt….

…but when she moves and jumps and twirls and twirls and twirls some more, the green and white part peeks out.

So glad you love it, Sophie. Not too long and you’ll be making stuff like this yourself. Seems like every paper I pick up has your fashion sketches on it. Project Runway, Season 59, look out!

New Door, Blue Door

I don’t know how some bloggers do it – pack up and move to a new home without skipping a blogging beat. Not me. Managed to put up 5 posts during the month we found out we were moving (May), 3 posts during the month we put our old house on the market and bought our new one (June), and NO posts during the months we cleaned and caulked and trimmed and tossed and unpacked and updated and and and (July, August, and September). Now it’s already October!

But I’ve missed this place. And Heidi—madebyk’s biggest fan and most avid reader!— has too. And I’ve got lots to share, stuff from before the move, and during, and after. High time to jump back in.

Let’s start with my door. This was the new door. Or rather, the old, rust-colored door on my new-to-me house. Framed by the faded brown storm door that was hanging too crooked to actually latch. Yuck!

        

And while I thought we’d paint it white, to match the white framing on the new windows…

…it wanted to be blue. Perhaps to match the amazing blue skies we’ve had every day for the past two weeks. Oh, Indian Summer, please stay!

So this is now my blue door. And I love it so!

How I Transferred Artwork to Cake

To make Lucy’s birthday cake, I first gave her a piece of paper that was the same size as the top of the cake, then let her fill it up with her artwork. But how to then get that design onto the cake? Here’s what I did…

NOTE: This method will only work on “crusting” buttercream, i.e. frosting that doesn’t stay soft.

1) Put paper on something soft, like a towel.

2) Poke holes into the paper, on the lines. I used a pen tip. A toothpick might work well too.

Now your paper has lots of little tear-outs on the backside, like reverse Braille.

3) Lay the paper on the cake and gently press tear-outs into frosting. Ta da! Lots of dots to guide you!

4) Pipe frosting over the dots.

A few other thoughts:

I was trying this method for the first time and wasn’t sure how well it would work so didn’t want to waste my time doing the whole design right away. And if it did work, I was afraid all the dots from the whole design would be too confusing to follow. Hence, I started with just the “fairy.”

To do the rest of the image, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to perfectly line up the previous tear-outs with the dots already in the cake, I cut away smaller still-smooth sections from the paper, punched them, and pressed them into the cake one by one. (That also allowed me to pipe the dots that were there before adding more dots and confusing myself.)

Next time, I want to try just lightly tracing over the lines, again on something soft, instead of punching holes. Perhaps the indented lines would be enough to transfer the design. Would maybe be quicker and less confusing.

This might be great too for people who have trouble writing on cakes: write it on a piece of paper first—or even print it out! Then it’s just a matter of piping it accurately and neatly.  : )

Let’s Roll… (Crayons and Kids)

Yesterday, my parents rolled out with my kids in the car with them. They’re headed west – grandparents and grandchildren on a Grand Roadtrip. And tucked next to each girl is storage clipboard, filled with a few goodies to make the miles fly by a little faster.

The crayon rolls were an afterthought. I haven’t sat and made anything in weeks—the last three posts all showed things made prior to the strange exchange. I’ve just been too busy.

But the night before they were leaving, I decided the 24 new crayons we put into each girl’s clipboard should not just bang around in there. And fall out when a girl opened it. And get lost and stepped on and ground into the van carpet and ruined and so on.

And I decided I needed to make something!

There are loads of cute crayon rolls all over the internet and I’m assuming there are loads of great tutorials for them too. But it was already late and I had very little time, so figured I’d just make it up as I went along.

I’m glad I remember, for a change, to not use my “good” fabric (the one Middle Child picked out for her rolls) right away. Instead I grabbed one that would be cute enough for Youngest, but not so precious that I’d mind scrapping parts that didn’t work out. Like the 5” I ended up cutting off the top because my idea for a flap to cover up the crayon tips was a really bad one!

All the crayon rolls I’ve seen thus far use a ribbon tie to keep them shut, which I knew would be ridiculously useless in this case since two of my three children can’t tie a bow! Not wanting to fiddle with finding enough elastic at this last hour and then figuring out the best way for it to fit, I went the Hook-and-Loop-Tape route. (A.k.a. Velcro!)

My first attempt was just a plain rectangle, but I didn’t like how the corners flapped out when it was closed, so I made the next one tapered.

While making these, I included extra fabric between the last crayon and the closure. I thought that extra bit of fabric would help the velcro curve around the roll better so it would stick better. Plus the fabric would protect the last crayon a little more. But if I make more, I might experiment with having no extra fabric there…

And speaking of Velcro, clearly I have some things to learn about attaching it so it actually keeps things closed. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B (in which I attempted to streamline my process and ended up causing even more problems – not only was my velcro wrong, I couldn’t even turn the roll completely right side out!):

In the end, I made sets for Youngest and Middlest, whose clipboards are too slim to hold the crayon box, and a set for Oldest (in her favorite color), because by then, I knew what I was doing, and I knew my bit of extra time and effort would go far to make her feel included and loved. So here they are all rolled up…

…and here they are all laid out.

Enjoy your crayons, girls.

And enjoy your “kiddles,” Opa and Oma.

Lucy’s Artwork Birthday Cake

I LOVE Lucy’s drawings these days. They are just so… happy! But yowsers, is she prolific! At first I was carefully tucking them into her “keep” box. But then I realized I would soon run out of room. The girl just loves to draw.

So when I was thinking about what to put on her birthday cake, wanting something that would capture a piece of her life right now, I decided I should just let her design it herself!

She drew a “throne” (see that backwards L?), a “fairy” (in orange) and a “flying lion.” At 4, she does not yet know how to spell, but she loves letters, so I wrote out a “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” cheat sheet so she knew which letter to write next.

She doesn’t need a cheat sheet for her name – this version was a little more legible than usual though. Often, the four letters all end up looking like Cs, the last one with another tiny tilting C on top…

All limbs drawn by Lucy (whether people or animal, arms or legs) end with dots. And when the people/animals are flying, then the limbs extend off to the side, you know, trailing through the air after the body! They’re just too cute in these mama’s eyes! So that’s what I put all around the sides. Body-less limbs, flying through the air.

After a fun morning of bouncing with her best friends (her sisters)…

…it was finally time for cake. Happy Birthday, sweet Lucy!