Baby Swing Redo

With baby #3 on the way I've been wanting to work on some baby projects, but we really have all the baby stuff we need... too much of it probably. I did pull out our baby swing we received as a gift when I was pregnant with #1. It has barely been used- my kids were not big swingers despite the claims of baby books I was reading at the time (babies HAVE to have swings to be happy- what?) The jungle animals on navy background doesn't really "go" with my house, so I whipped up a cover. It fits...okay. Well enough anyway. Of course NOW I can't keep my 2.5 and 4.5 year olds out of the swing. Ha!

A little blanket I crocheted with yarn hanging around. Maybe this means we are having a boy? Three more months until we find out...

Ruffle Corsage T-Shirt

I found some ideas at this blog here and various links to turn this shirt...

into this shirt...

I'm not crazy about how it turned out- it's TOO ruffly I think. I'm going to redo it, maybe make the ruffles more floppy looking like the J.Crew inspiration shirt. I love all these ruffles on things (have you seen J.Crew or Anthropologie lately??), but maybe I'm not girly enough to wear this stuff? I'm going to keep trying...

Paper Tile Picture Frame

I found this project here...Dress up a regular white frame with decorative paper "tiles." I glued them on with Modge Podge.

A close-up look...

Outdoor Swing Redo

The sun here in Colorado is a killer for all our outdoor furniture and toys. We bought this swing a couple of years ago and the fabric on the seat was already brittle and splitting this year. Everything else was in good shape, so I just sewed a fabric remnant on the top. It looks so bright in our backyard, but I'm sure it will fade quickly to match the rest of our outdoor decor (the pillows on the swing were black when we bought it.) Couple more projects to go and we'll be ready for summer entertaining. I can't wait!

Butterfly Ruffle Sleeve Dress

New dress for D... I could spend the whole summer making dresses for my daughter, but unfortunately she has plenty now. I'm going to try to make sure this is the last one. We had a couple of weddings happening in May so I made this one for all the festivities.I fell in love with this dress at Mini Boden and tried to recreate it...
I didn't want to use a pattern, so I kind of made it up along the way... the ruffles on the sleeves turned out bigger than I expected. They kind of look like flutter sleeves so I left them. The Boden dress is smocked in the back, something I can't do, so I put in a zipper to make it fit snugly on top. It is a bit of a mess- I'm sure I'll try to redo the zipper when I get motivated.D was actually excited to wear it last night to wedding number one! Often I will make something for her and then she refuses to wear it. I made a little knotted necklace out of glass beads and white ribbon- it looked really cute with the dress. I couldn't get pictures of the whole effect as we were running crazy late :( ... maybe next time she wears it.

Folklore Bag for Summer

Here is that Folklore Bag from One Yard Wonders in a lighter fabric for summer. Using a fabric with a lighter color showed ALL of my mistakes... I had to redo the yoke on the outside four times. That and the fact my sewing machine decided to go on strike made this a longer project than I was hoping. I added the fabric pinwheels to make it more fun, but I might lose them for everyday use. I just wanted to see what it would look like. Now I just need to Scotch Guard it, and it's ready to go!

Boxy Little Bag for Her

Here is another attempt at the boxy little bag, this time for my daughter. It came together faster the second time, the pattern was not so confusing. I used a fat quarter of batik from my local quilt store. I LOVE batik (maybe because I was born in Indonesia? There's a connection there I'm sure.) Someday I'd love to try to make batik fabric. I made the strap slightly longer this time so she could slip it onto her arm.Perfect for her little treasures. Her response? "Ooooooh! For me, Mommy? Bootifuw (beautiful)." Not bad.

Knit Shirt

I made a shirt... I am so proud of myself! Looking at the picture I'm sure it doesn't look too impressive, but I was expecting a bit of a disaster so this was a pleasant surprise. I haven't really worked with knits before and have read that they are hard... I thought it wasn't bad.

For the pattern I took apart a shirt from my closet that I love, but the fabric has pilled horribly. For my new shirt I used a $1 remnant of stripe knit from Walmart- I didn't want to spend too much money on this experiment. I made it extra long and to accommodate for my growing belly and long torso. I think it turned out cute! I'm definitely going to make another one to work out some kinks, maybe in a more flattering solid.