Pillowcase Dress for Emilie!

Well, my little Emilie turned 1 this week and that means it's time for her 1 year pictures! When Annalise turned 1 I made her a cute tutu for her pictures (I should post that one some day) and I wanted to do something different for Emilie. I've been seeing a lot about pillowcase dresses in my browsing of Pinterest and the internet in general. There are probably thousands of tutorials for these online. I picked one that I thought made the most sense and went with it. The lady who wrote it up doesn't always use actual pillowcases but I did with this dress in order to be true to its name. I picked up the pillowcase at Target. I also made a matching headband with the left over fabric that I cut off.

Supplies needed: 1 pillowcase, bias tape in a coordinating colour, thread in a coordinating colour, elastic, and a sewing machine (of course).

I totally forgot to take progress pictures and I apologize for that. I just got in the zone and kept going until it was done. :( I'll have to post reminders around me next time to take progress pictures. :)

I looked online for tutorials for the headband and ric rac rose but wasn't pleased with any of them so I sort of just did my own thing.

Here's the dress and headband together. The dress had already been tried on by Emilie so it's all ruffled up already - that's a good thing. :) I used bias tape at the arm holes as per the tutorial linked to above and am so glad I did! Bias tape is my new best friend in sewing. (Darran says that's not very objective and that I'm being biased ... but that's his sense of humour for you!) :)

Just the dress here. I LOVE this pattern on this pillowcase. Couldn't find anything that I was this happy with at any other store so hooray for Target!

Here's a close up of the headband with the ric rac rose. For the headband, I just cut out fabric on the fold to the width I wanted and a length that would fit around Emilie's head (or almost around as I was going to add a bit of elastic at the bottom). I hemmed the short ends with a very narrow hem then folded it in half the long way with the right sides facing. I sewed down the long side. Then I attached a safety pin to one short end and passed it through to the other end to turn the headband right side out. this takes time and you need to be patient. :) I cut a 3 inch length of elastic - I had a few different widths, just picked one that fit best in the end of the headband. I needed about 2.5 inches to make the headband fit on her head and then another half inch to allow for the ends to be sewn into the headband. This I did with a straight stitch. Very easy. :) The ric rac rose I did by braiding two contrasting colours of ric rac. I wrapped it around itself (does that sound like it makes sense?) adding a dot of hot glue every now and then to make sure it holds together (I did read this in one tutorial and that was a helpful tip). Then I pushed out some of the layers. I found they didn't like to stay flat so I hot glued them down together to the ones I wanted to stay open would actually stay open. I then hot glued the rose to the headband. I rather like how it turned out. However, Emilie hates anything on her head so I'm sure it won't stay on long. :)

My littlest princess modelling her dress. :) She saw the camera and decided she should sit down. :)

I convinced her to stand up so she decided to run to me - had to snap this picture quickly! :)

And here she's trying to decide if she should sit down or if she should go for a toy she just spotted. :)

I LOVE pillowcase dresses and how super easy they are to make (seriously, the headband probably took longer than the dress). I think I will be making more of these for my girls in the future. :)

Fawn the Fairy - Homemade by Me :)

Annalise's costume for her preschool Halloween party is Fawn the Fairy (from the Tinkerbell movies) She's pretty thrilled and I had tons of fun putting it together. I made the hair with a head band, ribbons and fake leaves, the belt from ribbon and fake leaves, the top from something I picked up at Value Village and the leggings from an old t-shirt. The wings are store-bought but absolutely perfect for the costume ... and since I made pretty much everything else, I think it's ok that I just bought the wings. :)

This is the jacket thing I picked up at Value Village. It had sequined type trim basically everywhere there was a hem of some sort. I took all that off and tossed it. The sleeves were way to long and I wanted it to be sleeveless (more realistic) so I chopped them off.

So here it is mostly complete. I chopped off the sleeves and took in the sides a bit (made a big mistake but covered it up alright ... but that's the reason for the lack of progress pictures). :) I put a snap button on where it comes together at the bottom of the v-neck so that it will stay closed. I hate working with satin and will probably not do it again for a long time.

So for the belt, I took some green ribbon, cut it to length (measured it around her waist), made 3 the same length, sewed them together at one end, braided them and sewed them at the other end. Then I sewed in 2 snap buttons to make it easier to close. :) After all that was done, I hot glued fake leaves all along the belt.

Here is the completed belt (excuse the knife and fork in the photo - apparently we had just had supper. :)                            

For the long braid, I used a plain brown headband that Annalise already had. I took a wide brown ribbon, measured it to be as long as Annalise is tall and cut 3 that length. I hot glued them at one end to the headband then braided them. I used a small length of the green ribbon to tie it off. I hot glued that in order to keep it more secure. Then I hot glued some fake leaves to that as well.  :) 

So here's the long braided ribbon hair. :)

And here's the completed belt.

I made these leggings out of an old t-shirt. I found this t-shirt at Value Village - men's, extra large. It is SO super easy and I think this is how I will be making leggings for the girls from now on. In order to make the "pattern" I just used a pair of capri leggings that currently fits Annalise. Then for the cuffs at the bottom, I cut out rounded/triangular shaped pieces from the t-shirt. I roughly sewed hems onto them and sewed them to the bottoms of the leggings. This picture was taken before I had the appropriate width of elastic to finish the leggings. :)

The completed outfit! For the rest of her hair, I took a brown crocheted cap she has and turned it inside out (because it had a pink flower and band crocheted onto the outside of it). :) Here she's a bit annoyed for a couple of reasons: 1. The wings are having a hard time staying open (I need to fix that somehow). and 2. There wasn't any pixie dust so she couldn't fly.

She has now realized how awesome the costume is and is super thrilled that I made it for her.

So happy ... even if she can't fly for real! :)