Old News

I’m late, I know. Halloween is so last month. We’re less than 10 days from Thanksgiving. Everyone else has already posted their Halloween Costume Posts and moved on. It’d be neat if I had some sort of reasonable excuse, but I don’t. And now, it sounds like Caitlyn’s Halloween costume was some amazing, intricate thing. She had been asking for a mermaid costume “with a real tail.” She was apparently fully aware that this would prevent walking, since requests for such a costume would move on to descriptions of locomoting in roughly the style of an elephant seal. How this …

Adding inches

It seems Caitlyn’s pants are always too short. Sometimes this condition coincides with wear and tear, and then we call the pants “grubby” and she wears them for things that involve dirt and mud (p-patch work parties, walking in the woods, puddle stomping, etc). And sometimes the pants are in perfectly serviceable shape. They are just too short. I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me before to just make the pants longer.  I’ve had this blue floral fabric in the stash for ages.  I’ve also got a red and white print that makes me think of red bandanas …

Prewash for shrinkage

Despite my best intentions, it seems that as the seasons tip into fall, I start feeling generally dissatisfied with the contents of my closet. It’s not that there’s a shortage of clothes in there (although I’m wearing holes in nearly all my jeans). It’s not that I’ve grown out of anything (unlike Caitlyn). It’s not that I have new places to go or people to impress with an up-to-date wardrobe. It’s not like I need to be fabulous when I spend the day at home, banging away at the computer and stirring up messes in the kitchen. I mentioned this …

Kids Clothing Week Challenge, Fall 2011

It’s time for the Kids Clothing Week Challenge, Fall edition over at Elsie Marley! Pretty please, can I play too? It’s only two days in and already there’s cool stuff in the Flickr pool, like this skirt and this dress. But Caitlyn doesn’t really need anything in the clothes department this month. I’ll probably need my own version of KCWC come December or January when she suddenly puts on another inch or two, but right now she’s got dresses and skirts aplenty. I’ve got ideas about making some shirts someday, but that’s a project that’s a bit down the road …

Birthday Skirts and Making Do

I didn’t finish them in time for Caitlyn’s birthday, but I did eventually finish the thrift store experiments, or at least part one of said experiments. I had started out thinking I would make the dress version of Patterns by Figgy’s Tee for Two. But, as previously noted, there isn’t enough fabric lengthwise in an 5x large shirt to make a dress that wouldn’t be horribly indecent on my tall offspring. I’d run into this t-shirt dress pattern a few times and almost made the Figgy’s dress as much as I could have and then added in tiers of contrasting …