Red Rocker Girl Skirt!

Finally perfected the pleated skirt in the "new designs coming post," so love the wide pleats. Now this skirt has a exposed metal zipper with red tape (with placket), to give it a rocker feel. This skirt sits low on the hips and looks great with black or white tank tops or t-shirts. The fabric is mock dupini silk and has a great sheen to it. It's a perfect skirt to go dancing at the school  dance in. The prefect rocker girl outfit.



Side view with zipper

It also has a Monster High feel for the more "grown-up" girl, which

is my duaghter's new fave.



Front View

                                                                                                                       

 

6 pocket pants in Cameo

So sorry about not posting for the entire month of December, but I do have a few things to show off. Lets see the holidays were good, but I'm glad they are over and now the rest of life can go on. After telling about my 2014 new year resolutions, may have stated this before, it is to use every pattern I have collected at least once. This means that things will be up for sale do to sizing. First one is a pair of sweet pants that I made for my son. It is a variation of the 1980's pattern I found and blogged about in November. To my mistake she had no more sweatpants so my daughter got fleece lounge pants in December because we had really cold days. I also made them from the patterns I got in November. (Need to take pictures of her pants once they are out of laundry) Also made myself a t-shirt pattern, will photograph when the neckline is put in from a 1970's pattern. The second resolution is to make more of my own patterns, instead of manipulating store brought patterns. I think these are do able goals and can't wait to blog about them. Here are the new 6 pocket pants in cameo blue. These are not great pictures of the pants, so will take more tomorrow.

Love the skinny legs with the cameo print. Once the pictures send from my email I will get them up here. 

Halloween Costume pieces

So it's been busy around here, we have had health issues to deal with and birthday parties to plan.
Now that its calmed down around here...... I have been working on Halloween costume pieces for the kids. My daughter is going to be a princess, but all the dresses we found at resale shops are sleeveless. That doesn't work well for the weather here in Colorado, so I came up with a crop jacket with bell sleeves and "gloves." The gloves are glove less and come up to mid-arm, I currently don't have a picture of these. They are still getting gold glitter designs for a more detailed look. Here is the jacket to go with the pink princess dress. The gold glitter really adds the finishing touches to the jacket. It looks like I bought them together, so happy with it.

The next piece is a Spiderman cape for my son. We are doing recycled/handmade holidays  this year, so his Spiderman costume is getting make over with a spider web cape and hat with the same design as his costume.  We found the mask to his costume this week. It was in a box still unpacked from a trip back in February. I'm still working on the hat.

 So I think the cape needs a backing fabric like red or blue, something that matches the color of his costume. My husband thinks it looks okay like it is.

 

Costume change for Batman dress!

The Batman dress gets a costume change! I love the red tulle so much more then the pink and I added a tulle flower. Plus I found another sweet character shirt that can't wait to be something new!   This dress is going in the Just Between Friends Sale next week (much to my daughter's disappointment.) She loves the dress and wants to buy it with her allowance. I'm torn about giving it to her or selling it, the shirt was bought to make and sell but she wants it. Anyone have any thoughts on my issue?

 The first dress with pink tulle, the red is so much better!

Up-cycled Batman Dress for sale on eBay

This dress is made from a t-shirt I found at Good Will, its too small for me and too big for a kid. So I down sized it with the serger to be a size 8/9. I love the tulle on this design, it makes the shirt so much cuter. The tulle is so much brighter in person then with my camera phone. I have it posted for sale on eBay it has one day and 17 hours left on this auction. The cost of the dress is $10.00. It is such a great dress.  Look up the name Up-cycled t-shirt dress size 8 girls! or my seller name, helping2pay4school. Please check out what I am selling.

Capri pants for Fall 2013

With Fall around the corner, what does one make for the new season? I think Capri pants are perfect for the hot days and then warm evenings. So going through my fabric stash I found a gorgeous gingham and a denim looking stretch cotton. The gingham is a soft teal with petite squares, that looks adorable on my model. I just didn't getting pictures of her with the pants on :(. The denim is dark blue with orange on the inside. The third pair is sparkly purple plaid with teal lines.

 This is a bad picture for the stretch denim, but they are still cute! I used a contrasting material for the inside waistband which really goes with the orange. I so need to get pictures of these on my model. Here is a better picture with a third pair of Capri.

 The pair on top is the stretch denim with the contrasting waistband. I love the rounded pockets on the teal gingham, and sparkly purple plaid has a contrasting waistband in teal green. What's great about these pants is their length! I love how they work for cool and hot days. 

Handmade BookBags for the new school year

This post is very late, due to my niece tossing a cup of soda on my computer. I had to wait until I could afford a new one or a cleaning. Which I went for the cleaning, here is my backpack post!

 My kids needed new book bags because their bags ripped by the end of the year. Which in itself is pretty good, due to the cheap quality of Wal-Mart products. So being as cheap as Wal-Mart, we dug through my fabric stash and found a bolt of bag fabric. Having found this at Good Will, over the summer, for $4.00 it was a steal. The original plan was to sell it on eBay, but I kind of got attached to it. I do that with all the fabric I buy or find. It's a bad habit, when you need to downsize your stash. The first bag is a messenger bag for my girl. It is a white base with pink, neon green, and brown polka dots. I had some quilted pink for the lining. The supplies for this bag came totally from my stash (yay!). The pattern for this bag came from another messenger bag, but I added way more pockets on the inside and one on the outside.

 The next bag is a backpack design, which I used his bag from last year as the pattern, however I know for next time, there needs to have at least 3 inches added to the pattern to make it big enough. I seem to have forgotten that little boys love to pack everything they can into it for school. (Even if it shouldn't go to school.) So this bag cost me about $8.00 to make because I needed 2 yards of black fabric, half yard of bright yard fabric and iron on letters. I would have made the letters however I could not find the interfacing when I needed it. We all know that kids like new book bags on the first day of school. So one of his shirts has a batman sign on it and I used it for the design pattern by free hand drawing the shapes. The straps came off of another bag that was beyond repair. The zipper is from my zipper box, you can find the best deals for zippers on eBay.

If you would like a yard of the Polka Dot bag fabric, just leave a note in the comments and I will get back to you details.

Box pleated skirt!

Here is my first box pleated skirt, I just like the way it fits my daughter and can't wait to make one for my niece. I found this pattern on the site called www.fleecefun.com and it is free if you want to give it a try. I was having a hard time getting my pleated design to work, so I went looking for one to make to figure out what I am doing wrong. For her pattern you have to cut each piece and sew them together to make the pleats. For my pattern I was not making my pleat uniform in size, so I kept messing it up. When you have an impatient daughter it can get a little stressful. ( This could be why I sew when they are asleep or not around me.)

 I love her pattern but not the waist band, so I changed it. Instead of a thin elastic waist band, I had a ex-large elastic skirt band laying around..... Well I loved that look. I will take better pictures when I get a chance tomorrow, after I finish with work. I have a temp job taking care of some really great kids. I'll miss spending time with them once school starts.

New designs in the works!

So I'm taking a short vacation from my day job and have come up with new designs. The first one is a tank dress with a box pleated skirt. I have the just the fabric for the skirt, it is a red and black plaid. Now to find the right material for the top and I am thinking a black jersey would be great. I have just enough for a girls size 8/10 top too. Here is my sketch for it.

I think a pattern print would work great with this too. However I'm on a no spend month in June and have to use up some of my stash. My stash has began to overrun my room and I can't really move around in there. So I will have pictures of fabric up soon. Long this line I'm thinking of drop waist dresses with feather fringe at the hem, still working out the design details on this one.

 

Here are some pics

Some I haven't had a chance to get on and  show off my new creations. So here they are;

lite jacket

The rest of the dress I showed in a perivsous post. Its such a cute dress on my duaghter.

 Sorry we have had a long few months since I last posted.

Just a quick note!

Since I haven't posted lately I thought I'd talk about a dress I am designing. This dress came about from one of my projects for fashion design class. The original design is for an adult, which I hope to make later down the line.  Okay I'll have to post a picture of both designs tonight after the kids are in bed, mainly because I need to find them (the pictures not the kids:)). Well the design is similar to a pinafore dress however this one has a built in bustle. The bustle allows the underskirt to push out from under the top skirt. With this design the under dress is only seen from the back. The original dress the over skirt attaches with a invisible zipper, so I am working to incorporate that feature in the child's dress. I have two sets of fabric picked out for this design. These fabrics are neon colors and very bright, just not in the pictures. The child's dress will have a full bodice without sleeves. I am still deciding on a sweetheart neckline or a rounded one. I will have a mock up done by this weekend  as long as every goes as planned.

The fabrics are brighter then in the picture.

The top fabric has neon colors in it.