The t-shirt dress and the "mini skirt"

 My husband says I look Amish in this picture above.  Ha!  I totally do.  

I've never worked with knit so while my mother-in-law was in town she showed me how to work with knit on my sewing machine by making me this dress.  It's a dress I've been wanting to create.  It's t-shirt sewn to some jersey knit material.  My machine doesn't have a place for a double needle but she was able to make it work with basting stitches and zig zag stitches.  

 Tie in the back.

The T-Shirt Dress

  I looked weirder in my smiling pictures so I'm stuck with this one.  

 The mini skirt

After cutting the t-shirt I had the bottom half left-over.  Luckily I have a mini person in my household right now and I used the left-over t-shirt to make my first knit project.  The hem was already taken care of so it was really just doing a casing and I left some space at the top for the "paper bag" effect.

Pinwheel Skirt

The pinwheel skirt was not the easiest project I've ever come across. I found this project on U-create by a girl named Leanne who has a blog called Elle Apparel. When I saw this skirt I thought it was awesome! To think she just created this skirt without a pattern means she has some serious talent. So creative and different. I'd never seen a ruffle/pleat done like that. So I told my mom we should do it together in California. Well I'll fess up now and say my mom really did the majority of the sewing. It took us awhile to understand all the directions because some pieces of the construction were not part of the steps so we had to fill in the gaps. This is when sewing gets stressful. The material got rather thick and broke a couple needles as well. I could have never done this project alone. I definitely would recommend a more experienced seamstress (like my mom) to do this skirt.

In the end I'm happy with the final product. My mom rocks at sewing and she wasn't completely satisfied with her finished product because she wanted it more perfected. Ha, I could have never done this. I probably would have taken a baseball bat to my sewing machine before I had finished this project. Thanks mom again for your amazing talents. Maybe one day those skills will magically grace my being. Until than more mod podge, nic nacs, and simple sewing for me.

Check that off the wish list-Summer Scarf

I've created a wish list of crafts I would like to do and a summer scarf was one of them. Well I ended up being a side-kick with this project. My mom and I visited this huge fabric store in California. They had tons of cottons and other fabrics for under $2 a yard! This project required half a yard of fabric, regular thread and elastic thread. I've never used elastic thread so I let my mom work with the elastic since it was her sewing machine and lets face it she's much better at sewing than me!
I look sort of mad or concerned in this close-up pic so please ignore my funny face. For a tutorial go here. I got the tutorial from Made.

Anthropologie inspired

I saw this...

so I made this...

I made my skirt longer and went for a black elastic waist band. The hardest part was pulling the elastic band tight while sewing the skirt onto it. This required a second person to help pull the elastic. I also had to relearn how to do a blind hem stitch but I think I could whip up a second skirt fairly quickly now.