Girls are so much fun!

In case you didn't gather from the title of my blog- I have 4 boys and 2 girls.  B,B,B,G,B,G- I never was an overwhelming girly, girl until my first daughter was born.  Now my girls and myself are usually in skirts and dresses and tons of PINK.  I've really gotten back into sewing this year and I found some absolutely adorable pink cupcake fabric and I had enough for two dresses for the girls and enough for a pleated skirt for myself.  So that's what we wore for Mother's Day this year.   I figure they certainly won't want to dress like mommy for long so I better  take advantage of every minute! 

Christmas Jammies

Every year the kids get new jammies from the "elves" on Christmas Eve morning so everyone looks nice and neat on Christmas morning.  Most years I make them- the past two I've even made ones for me and my husband.  That's EIGHT pair of jammies on the sly (since some are young- keeping the magic alive)  I found some cute Grinch fleece at fabric.com, but at $8- I'd need 15 yards- that is some pretty pricy jammies!  Plus I'd still need to buy the shirts- I only make the pants!  So I'm debating, but probably won't get it.  Here's last years jammies.  Yes our tree is ginormous!  I don't know what we were thinking, usually my husband or I is the voice of reason.  But not last year!!  We couldn't even get it on our van  to take it home!  Thankfully some kind firefighters were there getting a tree for their firehouse and took pity on us and drove it home on their utility truck!  Gotta love Smalltown, USA.

My eldest- so enthused by matching jammies!

 

EVERYBODY!

 

Baby girl is not a fan of picture taking

I LOVE this picture of me being in the middle of the kids.

 And yes we DO look normal some of the time!

Yoga pants

I love yoga pants, both for exercise and sleeping.  They don't make them like they used to anymore- my brand new pair of capri ones from Old Navy (that I LOVED) are so faded and worn out after a few months.  So I bought some stretch cotton lycra twill from Fabric.com and went to work.  I bought from the clearance section so I ended up with three very vivid prints.  I started with a black and pink squares with pink flowers thrown around.  Looks cute up close- looks like a clown from a distance.  These will be strictly indoor pants for me, but my girlies are so cute they can get away with wearing them out in public.  I used an existing pair of yoga pants as a pattern.  Mine are plain, I added a foldover waist and lettuce edging at the hem for the girls.  I'm pleased with them.  For $6 I made three pairs and have some fabric left over.  Can't beat that anywhere!  Plus they were super quick- took less than an hour to do everything.  Here's the final results.  My 10 year old took the pictures so I'm trying to explain he has to PUSH the button to take the picture so I look odd in the pics, but that's ok.

Pink Zebra

Every now and then I let my daughter pick out fabric.  And then I remember why I only let her do it every now and then!!  She saw pj's for her American girl doll at the Farmer's market the other week, but I didn't really want to pay $12 for something I could make for less.  So I told her I'd make HER and Josephina a pair of matching pj's.  She bartered for a bit and the deal was struck.  So off we went to Walmart (since we live in the sticks and are thankful for Walmart which only opened up 3-4 years ago!)  She looked at the fleece and didn't find anything so we went over to the flannel, which I prefer over fleece for pj's anyway.  And what did she pick out- pink zebra print flannel!  I immediately thought it was hideous and tried to sway her, but she would not be swayed.  So pink zebra flannel it would be!  I finished Josephina's pj's with a cute little ruffle at the bottom and began working on Big Sister's.  I must admit pink zebra print looks quite cute on a 6 year old and her doll! 

                                                       Not enough zebra left for Little sis

                                          They are too long so I had to take them up.  They'll fit for years!

 Except now she wants a matching top for her.  It's cut out, but may be a while to be sewn.  Shirts are a pain to sew!

Matching PJ's

I LOVE making pajamas and nightgowns.  My kids are all outfitted in plenty of them.  This summer I noticed that big sister had a huge growth-spurt and her nightgowns were creeping up to mid-thigh!  So I found THIS blog that used stretch elastic to make a new and improved pillowcase  nightgown.  I didn't have any pillowcases I wanted to use, but I did have this fabric I ordered online and was  horribly disappointed in. (It was labeled as eyelet, but was just an eyelet design (POORLY) stamped on a washed out peachy/pink fabric)  It wasn't what I wanted but would be great for a nightgown.  Turned out wonderful!  I made big sister two and little sister one with a cute little ruffle at the bottom.  This will be my go to nightgown pattern from now on.

                                                                      Silly Girl!

                                                              Pretty little sis!

 

Clowning Around!

Ruffle Skirts

I've been sewing a bunch of dresses for the girls this summer (I'll slowly make my way through posting them in the next few weeks)  I've always loved the look of tiered ruffle skirts and my neighbor made adorable ones for her girls just by winging it a few years back, but I've never been brave enough.  So I came across THIS tutorial and it has a handy dandy calculator about half way down the page!  It took all the guess work out of how long and wide to cut the strips.  You type in the waist and how long you want the skirt and how many tiers you want it to have and it tells you how long/wide to cut each tier.  Love it!  I prefer fuller ruffles (with four boys I like my girls  to be SUPER girly!) so I'll probably fool around with the length of  the tiers to get fuller ruffles next time.  But the skirts turned out super cute.

                                                   Big Sister's skirt is ALL done.  Time for little sister!

                                             Big Brothers had to try to sneak in the pictures too!

                                           Little Sister is a HUGE ham lately.  she makes me laugh

Patchwork Fun!

There are literally hundreds of patchwork skirt patterns and tutorials on the web.  Here is one I created today for my 18 month old daughter using 6" squares from the Taza charm pack.  I wanted to be sure I had enough squares left to make one for my 6 year old daughter so I improvised a bit by cutting them in half (and cutting two more squares from yardage)  I had thought a long waistband would look cute, but it's too long on such a little girl so I'll redo it and save the idea for my oldest.  Not bad for a few hours work.  Now I need to find a plain white T-shirt to applique on and be all etsy.  =)

Isn't she the cutest thing??

Love hanging things on trees for photo shoots.

Look at those colors-GORGEOUS!