Simplicity 4243 - Baby summer dress

The weather is getting warmer and I realized that my baby girl doesn't have enough summer clothes. So I went through my stash patterns and stash fabrics and found Simplicity 4243 and some remnants of a checkered fabric (I used the same fabric for my son`s shorts last year - he can still fit into right now...Yay!). After cutting and sewing 15 minutes here and there, I finally finished in 3 weeks. The pattern is actually not difficult to sew at all. It's just that I don't have much time these days. So the starting and stopping dragged the project out to 3 weeks.


I didn't read the instructions but just winged it by looking at the front and back pieces of the pattern. The pattern calls for a back zipper but I changed it to a buttoned back. I used stash denim double fold bias tape to finish the neckline and the armholes. I didn't curve them enough so they stand up a bit. I consider them 'features' of the dress! LOL~!

When my baby girl tried it on, she was not very impressed with it because she is not used to wearing dresses and she found that the dress impeded her crawling! I hope she will get used to it soon.

I like the pattern well enough. It's pretty simple to sew and it's easy to make design changes. I think I'll make the rompers in the same pattern next time. My baby girl is too busy crawling, standing, walking, and climbing to wear a dress. The rompers should be more practical for her.

Ecing a 11 month old baby....and toileting a toddler

My baby girl is 11 month old today! Wow! Soon she will be a year old. ECing this month has been.....nonexistent. She refused to sit on the potty or be held over the toilet bowl at home. She would scream, stretch and cry every time I try to put her on the potty or change her diaper. I tried different potties, different bathrooms in the house but no luck! However, I went to Ikea and Starbucks last week and she peed in both public bathrooms (with me holding her over the toilet) without any protestations. So I don't really know what I'm doing wrong at home. I've been cleaning up so many poopy diapers that it's getting really annoying. I read in other EC moms' blogs that the babies do rebel going to the potty once they can crawl or walk. Perhaps this is her time to rebel?? When will this go back to normal again? I miss my 'toilet-trained' baby.......

My toddler son on the other hand, is now fully trained for pees when he is awake. He will run to the bathroom or tell us when he needs to pee. He still wears a diaper when he naps or sleeps. And he doesn't like pooing in the toilet yet but we are working on it. We did an intense toilet training for him over March break. I knew he could do it a long time ago but he has to be forced to go to the toilet to pee the first few days. After that he found the diaper to be scratchy and was enjoying wearing underwear more and more. He still hates going to the washroom when he is playing hard or watching TV but we made him go anyways. He hasn't had any accidents at school at all and only had a couple of accidents at home in the last few weeks. I think the toileting has made him more confident and the teachers think so too.

Ugly Men's shirt to Ladies' top Refashion

Another men's shirt refashion. What to do with an ugly 80's short sleeves men's shirt?


Turn it into a unique ladies' top of course!

Summer is coming and I need something loose and breezy to wear. I drafted a loose tank top using the button front of the shirt as the top's back. I use the back of the shirt, cut out the top front that includes a few pleats in the centre. I used red bias tape in my stash to jazz up the neckline and the armholes slightly.

Another quick and dirty refashion!


A close up of the pleats and the neckline and armhole details.


I have more refashion ideas for the stash of men's shirts I have inherited in my sewing nook!

ECing a 10 month old baby

Well, my baby girl is already 10 months old...where did the time go? I guess she won't be a baby much longer. I have to keep reminding myself to treasure the last bit of time I have with her as a baby. She still loves to cuddle and be held. When she can walk on her own she might not be as cuddly anymore.

We were out of town for almost 2 weeks this past month and I was worried about her ECing in an unfamiliar environment. She proved me wrong. She diligently poo/pee in a regular toilet with me pulling her legs up at the same time each day. As soon as we got home, she started to refuse using the potty or using the toilet again. She had already pooed a few times in the diaper this week, which was frustrating for me. Why would she poo/pee with no problem in a strange place, and fussed so much at home? I guess that's what kids do. Sometimes we as parents just have no clue why they do certain things. I'm hoping she will go back to the routine soon if I keep taking her at the usual times each day.

Men's shirt to Ladies' shirt Refashion

A dear family member had passed away recently and I inherited many men's short sleeves and long sleeves shirts. I thought I would make a go at refashioning some of them. I started with a short sleeves men's shirt:


I wanted to do a very simple refashion. I cut off the collar, and then cut the body into the following shape with cap sleeves. I added a row of ruffles(made from the remnants of the shirt) to the left of the centre front and voila!


This is my first men's shirt refashion and a very basic one. I'm feeling a bit more confident after this project. I'm going to try to be more adventurous when I refashion the next men's shirt.

Homemade Organic Face/Body/Hand/Feet Butter

I started making homemade natural body butter for my kids when I read about all those scary things they put into commercially available kids' skin creams in the news. My kids and I all have very dry skin so it's essential that we get a rich body butter every day all year round.

I made my first batch last summer using equal parts of Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil and Extra Virgin Olive oil. Coconut oil is solid in room temperature but melts when in contact with the skin. I melt them in a double boiler, stir the mixture and then let it cool in a clean jar. I used it on my kids and myself and it was very effective with a faint hint of coconut. However the texture wasn't as consistent as I would like and I had been thinking about what to change in the 2nd batch of body butter.

I just made my 2nd batch this week. I decided to add some beeswax to the mixture to make it thicker. Again I used the double boiler to melt everything together, stired the mixture and then let it cool in a clean jar. Then I mashed up the cooled block and produced a thick body butter. It's much easier to apply this batch of mixture. I apply it on myself and my baby when we wake up in the morning and before we go to bed at night. The cream stays on all night long and I could feel that my skin is softer in the morning.

Recipe:
1. 1/3 Cup Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil
2. 2/3 Cup Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3. 1 Tablespoon Natural Beeswax

That's it! I like simple recipes like this. No unpronounceable chemicals, no unnatural preservatives. The only caution is that the cream is intensely rich. It works for me because I have very dry skin. If I were to give this to my friends as a gift I would probably label it 'Intensively Rich Hands and Feet Butter'.

For my next batch I think I will add some of my favourite essential oils (my batch only; not for my kids).

Too-short tees into a wearable tee refashion

I have a number of these long sleeves tees in various colours that I find too short to wear now. They have been sitting in my closet for a few years. I thought I could just combine them and make them into wearable tees.

This is the original tee in black (sorry I'm wearing PJ pants that I made). The purple one is identical and has already been cut up to make leggings for my baby girl.

Steps:
1. I wanted to have a cowl neck so I drew with chalk where I wanted the eventual neckline to be. I measured the whole circumference of the neckline.2. Cut the purple tee 3 inches from the hem to be attached to the black tee to lengthen it (bottom). Then cut out the cowl neck material (middle). 3. Measure the sleeve opening and cut out some material to length the sleeves.

4. Sew the purple hem material to the hem of the black tee.

5. Sew the purple cowl material into a round and then fold it in half. Sew it onto the marked neckline on the black tee using a zig-zag stitch.

6. Sew the purple sleeve band into a round and then fold it in half. Attached it to the bottom of the sleeves of the black tee.And here is the new tee! Another easy peasy refashion.

Long time no blog.....ECing a 9 month old baby

It's been a while since I have blogged. One of our dear elderly family members has fallen seriously ill since before X'mas and to make a long story short.....our lives had been turned upside down for a while. The patient's situation has not yet stabilized and thus I had very little time to go online lately, not to mention blogging.

I did some refashioning before the illness but I just have to get the photos sorted before I can post them. I am planning to do that in the next week or so.

ECing my 9 month old baby has been a challenge. All along she had been pretty compliant in terms of sitting on the potty at regular times to pee/poo. However in the last month she started to want to stand assisted all the time and even tried to pull herself up (and fell). So she had been crying/screaming every time I tried to put her on the potty and refused to sit down. Needless to say, she had pooed in her diaper a few times already and she cried afterwards because she didn't like sitting in her poo. I haven't had to clean up her poopy diaper for so long that I'm a bit annoyed by it as well. I have read in other moms' blog that this was likely to happen, as the baby becomes more mobile. I just have to keep trying and hope that she will eventually find something else to 'rebel' about! LOL.

ECing a 7 month old baby

It's been a while since I have posted. Sick kids, sick husband and getting sick myself.....I had been trying to sleep as much as possible to combat the colds/flus. My baby girl got a nasty cold last week and was crying a lot and nursed very frequently day and night. That certainly didn't help with my sleep. I'm glad that we are all finally recovering from our sickness.

When my baby girl was sick, she refused to sit on the potty. She would scream bloody murder if I tried to put her on it. She was not pooing much when she was sick then but I did have to clean up a few poopy diapers. This week, she is back to her old self and pooing/peeing in the potty again. Thank goodness! I'm trying to teach her baby sign language so that she can tell me (eventually) when she needs to go to the toilet.

My toddler son on the other hand, is refusing to be toilet trained. Everyone around me are saying that he is not ready. He knows very well what the toilet is for, and has on occasion peed in it. But I think he is too stressed out about going to the toilet so most of the times nothing comes out. He fidgets a lot on the toilet. I tried singing with him to calm him down but in vain. I don't really know what to do to help him relax. His baby sister may be toilet trained before he will! LOL!

My Refashion project was featured on Craft Gossip

I just found out that I was featured on Craft Gossip! Wow! I was googling something and found my swimsuit refashion featured on the Craft Gossip website. Wicked!

You can see the article here: http://sewing.craftgossip.com/tutorial-turn-a-too-long-swimsuit-into-a-faux-tankini/2011/07/08/

Saree fabric to Shirt refashion

This is a refashion project from before I joined Refashion Co-op I thrifted a piece of 'art silk' purple saree fabric a while back. I love the royal purple colour and the gold design. I made a button down shirt with this fabric using an old Simplicity shirt pattern from the 90's.

The saree fabric looked something like this (this is not the actual picture of my saree as I didn't take a picture before I cut it up. However this is very close to the real thing):
I used the gold designs to make the shirt's cuffs as well as the buttons. I loved it and wore it many times to the office and on weekends. I got lots of comments about it. Unfortunately, I underestimated how 'un-colourfast' the fabric is. I handwashed it and the purple dye just bled non-stop. Now there are slight blotches of discolouration here and there! Bummer! I really like this shirt. If anyone has any idea how to fix the blotches please please let me know!

I need to work on my ironing skill..... :-(

Pattern Review: Simplicity 5316

I had decided early this year to use only stash patterns and fabrics to make X'mas gifts. I have remnants of this yellow fleece and mauve microfleece. I thought they might make a good combo for a jacket for my baby girl. The only new thing I bought was the mauve zipper.

Here is my review of this pattern:

Pattern Description: Babies' overall, jacket or vest, pants, knit top and hat. I made the jacket.

Pattern Sizing: XXS to L. I used L.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Not really because of my design changes.

Were the instructions easy to follow? I didn't read the instructions. The pattern pieces seem simple enough.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? It's a basic baby hoodie pattern and one can easily add one's only design changes to it.

Fabric Used: Golden Yellow fleece and mauve microfleece. Both remnants in my stash.

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: I lined the hood and the body with the mauve microfleece. I also use the mauve microfleece to make cuffs for the jacket. I eliminated 4cm from the bottom of the sleeve pattern to accommodate the cuffs. I also added about 2.5cm to the length of the jacket.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? This is the not the first time I have used this pattern (See this review). But this is the first time I have made significant design changes to it. I will definitely use it again and would recommend it to others.

Conclusion: Simple baby hoodie pattern. Easy to make design changes to make it your own. Highly recommended.