First try

So for the past month or so I have been a secret fan of a blogger named Candace (Sparkle Power). She's a friend of Keri's (whose a friend of mine), found her website, and have been inspired to try my hand at sewing again. Before, all of my attempts at sewing have cost us more money than it ever would have been to buy -- AND it would look worse! Well, with her inspiration and love for all things vintage, I have been on the pursuit to create something cool and cheap. On her website I found a link to another website called My Half of the Brain. It's this great website where they try to find crafting tutorials on the web. A few peaked my interest:

1. Montessori by Hand -- Children's smock.
   
2. Making a child's dress out of a Men's button down shirt (can't seem to find the link)

I stayed up late last night to try and finish them both. Here's how they turned out:




















This was the children's smock. I found the fabric at a thrift store and got it for 25 cents. Normally I would never buy fabric that looked like that, but I thought "what would Candace buy" (nerdy and weird, I know) and thought "what the heck -- it's cheap." The pattern for the dress was not done very well and since my kids were already asleep, I couldn't have my daughter try it on to see if it was going to fit well. Fortunately for this one I will be able to adjust the dress with minimal stress to fit Kelly. When she tried it on today she just LOVED the colors.

Okay, here's the other one:

This one I was really disappointed with. I was so tired that I was having a hard time following the directions and there was NO pattern to use. Basically, you take an old Men's dress shirt and use the back of the shirt to create the dress front, and then use the front of the shirt to make the back of the dress. However, all measurements and such were basically a guessing game. Once again, since Isabelle was asleep I couldn't use her as a reference to see if I was making it big enough. The dress turned out really cute, but it's at least two sizes too small for her. Oh well.... the only thing I paid for was the pink lace, the shirt was a really old one of Shane's. I'm going to try again and this time not attempt it at 2:00 in the morning!