Kinda Crafty, This Girl Is

So, a while back my sister came out to visit and we took her to this little Hippie town at the base of the mountains out here called Manitou Springs. We wandered around the town, looked at the creek that goes through town, shopped, hula-hooped on the sidewalk outside of a store, shopped, played on the old arcade rides, and shopped some more. It was a really good time, and that day the weather was great for Colorado in October. Well, we found this really great shop called Safron right at the edge of the shopping area that had a ton of purses that Molly just loved and some really super adorable dresses and aprons for little girls. They were pricey for kids cloths but so cute and Molly really wanted to buy one for Haley, I relented knowing that one pricey dress could equal many more if I had something to model it after. The super cool thing about the dress (aside from the awesome retro prints) was that it was reversible. Fast forward a few months to wearing this to like the third birthday party and my ever so careful three year old spills cake on her dress. No worries, we just flipped it and she had a clean outfit in pictures again. PERFECT!

The original "birdie" dress. The flip side of it has the trees on the pocket for the main print and the birds and eggs for the pocket. Stinkin' cute!

So Jeff is TDY for some training and I've been just kind of hanging around the house with a couple of kids. When a coupon for 50% off at JoAnns came through the Sunday ads, I knew this was the perfect time to start on my projects. For just more than $30 I was able to get all the supplies I would need to make three dresses, and have a bit of fabric left over for other projects. I started in the afternoon making and cutting patterns, transferring them onto fabric and cutting them out. About 6 hours later I still couldn't figure out this crazy dress. Our neighbor came over to help, and I probably ended up ripping out the seams on every edge at least twice (some places lots more). I finally gave up for a bit and put the kids to bed. A bit of Googling past bedtime and I found the answer here. Stupid easy, just like I suspected, and only took about 45 minutes of sewing. This is the first dress:

Just like the name it's kitties and flowers. I made a couple of modifications from the tutorial dress... I added the pocket just like her birdies dress, and instead of having the bows tie the shoulders together (which would drive my daughter nutso, resulting in her untying the bows causing her dress to fall down around her ankles), I put them in the back, you can see how in the pictures.

Dress number two is a pattern of adorable owls and a coordinating striped print. Very "her". In fact, after I took the pictures she didn't want to take the dress off so she's still wearing it (with pizza stains already, guess it's time to flip it).

Dress number three you'll have to wait a bit for. I picked up a couple of green damask prints (one dominantly green the other dominantly white) and will use them to make Haley's dress for an important bridal shower and rehearsal dinner coming up this summer.

So that's what I've been up to keeping myself busy... among a few other things, but we'll get there next.