Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Easy Peasy!

When Natalie and her cousin Jilli were just babies, Casey's mom picked up two of these vintage embroidered pillow cases at the Canton flea market in Texas and said she had seen some dresses made from cases like these. She asked if maybe when the girls grew a little, I could make some matching dresses for them. SO, since warm weather is here (yay!), the girls are plenty big enough and Jilli's third birthday party is on Saturday, I thought I'd go ahead and make them up. I found a great tutorial here. There are others floating around out there and although this one doesn't have pictures, the instructions are very clear and I liked the shoulder ties rather than the drawstring neck that most other tutorials for these feature. A few tips if you decide to give it a try: If you read a few of the comments after the tutorial, there are some more specific instructions on how to cut the arm holes. And, the instructions recommend using ready made bias tape, but I had this GREAT polka-dot fabric that I felt adding a lot to the dress so I made my own. Plus, I just don't like the feel of the poly/cotton bias tape for things like this. It takes more time this way, but totally worth it, in my opinion. In the end, I made both of these today in less than a couple of hours, so they are super fast and easy. I'll try to get a picture of one or both girls wearing them on Saturday.
P.S. I tried to get a scenic picture for this, but the big ugly electric box in the background ruins it a little. sigh. It seems our house just doesn't lend itself to good still-life pics. Maybe I should take all my stuff to a park for a nice photo session and see how many people point and stare :) Ah, what we'll do for the sake of blogging, huh?

3 comments:

  1. These are darling! What a good idea.

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  2. Nikki...that dress is amazing! How unbelievably beautiful!!! Man...am I glad to have you as a partner for CraftyGirlz!!!!!

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  3. GREAT job! They look so cool and summery. Glad you were able to make use of the pillow cases!

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