Christmas Dresses (Thrifty & Recycled edition)

Reposting for Cardigan Empire!! Happy Thrifty sewing!

See the Bridesmaid dresses above? Watch what they came below. As far as dresses go, they weren't awful. But I no longer wore it.

Thrifty Recycled Christmas Dresses...which also happen to be stunning.

I have 3 daughters. This year, I did something I have yet to do - make Christmas dresses for all my girls. A few years back I made 2 flower girl dresses for my sister's wedding but this is the first time making 3 Christmas dresses. I adore each one of them. All simple and fit their personalities and they fit well too! Phew! Made headbands as well.

Now on these dresses. It is no secret that in the past year we both have become an even greater fan of thrifting and recycling clothes. In fact, it has been since August that I bought something brand new for myself to wear. Anyway, I made a decision a couple months ago that I would follow suit in making my girls Christmas dresses. Every component would be thrifted or something I already had in my stash of fabrics. For the girls, the red taffeta came from the skirt I wore for our other sister's wedding and the leftover fabric in my stash. The black fabric was in my stash of fabric too. I can't remember why I bought it. The white accents came from a goodwill $1 shirt that I bought knowing I would use it for the accents - it was the perfect fabric. (I have bought a few things like this on dollar day - a great way to buy buttons too.) It is the sash on L's dress and the fabric flower on her headband the tuxedo accent on C's dress. The black accent on K's is also from my stash. It was literally scraps. I then had all the interfacing, elastics, and buttons needed to complete the dresses. The only thing I purchased ($3) was the pattern for the black dress. The other two I either didn't use a pattern or modified one I already had. So not counting items from my supplies and stashes of fabric, I spent a grand total of $4 on 3 Christmas dresses for my girls. (And several hours of course...)

Now L knows how to pose - she is 8. All perfectly tied up from head to toe. We went thru 3 quick fittings to get this right and now she is in love! The first try on erupted in tears. The arms felt wrong. The neck was wrong. But I tweaked and altered the underarm seams and pinned, added a temporary sash, took her to the mirror and her face lit up like New Year's Eve. She loved it. The final verdict? "Mommy, I love it. It is so comfy!" Not something I expected from the first tears about weird armpits. I had a pattern Butterick B4910 which I made as a size 5 nightgown years ago. She is not a 5 anymore. I tweaked and altered to make a bigger version and cut the sleeves long, not knowing what she would want. We folded and pinned until we found the gathered puff sleeve you see here. It is elasticized around the bottom.

And C can pose too - she is 6. Once we found this tuxedo inspired dress, we knew it was the perfect dress for her and it fit right on the money - gotta love that. I made it with an fairly lightweight black taffeta I had in my fabric stash. If I could change anything it would be to a heavier weight fabric but I worked what I had. Sure, I could have gone and bought 1.5 yards of fabric but this worked. To make the white tuxedo bib, I cut the hem from the bottom of a white blouse and used the finished edge as the edge of the ruffle and gathered the cut edge. I had some lovely mother of pearl buttons that are just too sweet. I love this kid - her missing teeth might possibly be my favorite part of Christmas 2009.

Obviously K wasn't interested in modeling. K is 19 mo old. You can't see the matching 2" black band at the bottom. It looks like the sash. This was literally scraps that I had to back with another black cotton fabric to make the sash and hem substantial. This is basically a peasant top made longer and I made it without a pattern but it followed the basic instructions found in this tutorial. I had found one years back and wrote down notes but didn't have the website any longer. In this tutorial it suggests lightweight fabric but this taffeta is fairly heavy weight and I think it made a nice dress.

A Bathroom remodel...but not what you think!

So we are having trouble keeping up on our posting with all the nasties running through both of our families so I will borrow this post from Molly's personal blog to keep the momentum up a little bit! - Meredith
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Never, ever, in my wildest dreams would I have thought at 18 years old that this would excite me the way it has. You decide how excited you would be:

Together, Andy and I ripped out our Powder Bathroom and built a food storage room! It only took about 6 trips between 4 different hardware stores to get it done. Sealing off the toilet hole seemed to be the hardest thing. It was imperative that it be sealed off correctly so as to not leak sewage gasses into the room. This type of project is not something people do very often apparently. Start to finish, we were done in 6 days. That was with a 2 day break between finishing the construction and painting. I am pretty proud of what we did, we make a very good team!

A funny story... You'll notice in the above pictures that Andy is using a shop vac to drain the toilet. I, along with my oldest son, was standing behind the vacuum part when suddenly my son said poop water was coming out. Sure enough the vac was spraying our feet and legs and it stunk pretty bad too! Not sure what was up with that.

Painting in progress

The finished product, not perfectly organized yet, but it's a start. I didn't take a picture of it, but we put our freezer where the sink used to be.

This is my kitchen pantry which now has a lot more space than it did before. (Although I just realized this picture was taken during the reorganization so it doesn't actually have that much bare room but it is very organized now) I am so excited to have so much storage room. My master bedroom closet no longer has to serve as my second pantry as it did in my old house! It's a good thing too because our current master closet is quite a bit smaller.

Don't worry... we have another bathroom just down the hall, this one was a little pointless.

So... Next time you need a bathroom turned into a storage room, we're now experts!

What space do you have in your home that should be turned into something else so you are getting every penny out of your square footage?

Charging station for gadgets

No big Tuesday post this week - Molly's kiddos have been sick with strep so here is a project from my house I thought I would share!

I have no real place to keep cell phones, camera batteries, etc. charging. I had it on a counter, a desk...it was always a nightmare!! So, here is what I came up with after seeing so many cool charging stations at PB or online. I decided to convert the drawer in my front all hutch into a charging station. It is our junk/key/wallet/coin drawer anyway so I figured it would work out well.

Here is the hutch in my front hallway. It is Ethan Allen, was my Grandmother's and I inherited it about 7 years ago. I don't have a dining room so here it sits and I make the best of it. (Still has my Valentine Pennant Banner on it - I love it - it makes me happy!)

The drawer on the left usually looks like this.

It's a nice piece of furniture - dove tailed and everything. :)

Pulled out hutch to make sure there is indeed an outlet behind it so said brilliant plan will work. Why do I find purple feathers from feather boas EVERYWHERE?

Use a paddle bit, drill a hole through the back of the hutch that will fit the cord of a power strip. My bit wasn't quite big enough, that is why the hole is ugly.

Drill a hole in the back of the drawer as well and thread power strip power cord thru.

Run the power cord out the back and plug into wall outlet. I acutally needed to use an extension cord for the power strip because the existing cord wasn't long enough for what I needed. I did this all without going out to buy anything new and used what I had.

Plug in cell phones, battery chargers, MP3 players, whatever. Don't look too closely to see what kind of cool phone we have - they are both about to die and need to be replaced and it has not been a huge priority. The only thing we have that doesn't charge here is an iPod because that plugs into the computer, right? (Note the vacuum - I made a big sawdust mess.)

Custom Covered Mattes

Project #8 Covered Matte Boards
First we bought mattes to fit in an 11x14 frame at the dollar store.

We then purchased 11x14 frames from the thrift store since we would be spray painting them anyway. Spray paint frames the color that works for you, we chose white.

Next, we gathered scrapbook papers to match our girl's bedrooms. Meredith went for the colorful look since her girls have a colorful room and I went with the Shabby Chic look for Brynley's room.

Cut/tear scrapbook papers to various sizes and piece together on matte board using Mod Podge. You can also paint the Mod Podge over the paper if you would like a slightly shiny texture.

Finished mattes before frames are added.

Finally, put mattes in frames and you're ready to add your favorite pictures. We will be using black and white photos in ours.

Tuesday, September 23rd

Project #1. Canned Tomatoes. We didn't do a ton. Enough for a first try.

Two 20 lb cases of tomatoes. Courtesy of Bountiful Baskets.

Blanch tomatoes in boiling water to loosen skin.

Remove skins. It slips off easily.

Remove stem and any hard, fibrous areas from the stem end.

Tightly pack quartered tomatoes into quart jars, add additional water and lemon juice (to preserve color and add acid) leaving 1/2 inch head space.

Process for 45 minutes water bath or steam canner. Or, process for 10 minutes at 10 lbs pressure in a pressure canner. (We have all varieties.) We used the steam canner today.

40 lbs tomatoes yield 22 quart jars of tomatoes for our pantry and food storage.
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Project #2 Message board with chicken wire and decoupaged clothes pins/clips. Project found HERE.

Two ugly thrift store pieces of artwork, spray paint, clothes pin (AKA chip clips at our homes) and a role of poultry wire Found in garden section at Lowe's.

Spray gray primer. Dry. Spray black paint. Dry. Sand to distress.

Decoupage scrapbook paper scraps to embellish clothes pins.

Use wire cutters to trim poultry wire to size and staple to back of frame using heavy duty stapler.

Molly's finished memo board in natural daylight.

Meredith's finished memo board in the evening.

These are so cute! Now we want to make more...


A preview of the "before" for next Tuesday.