2 Dresses...plus bonus miniskirts

You know when you are on top of the world and feeling all confident and competent that the other shoe must drop, right? Well those tights were just the bee’s knees – I had so much fun making them and just knew that if I could zig zag stitch me some sock material, I could do anything: knits, stretchy, what have you…

Hmmm, a little lofty are we?

I selected another pattern from the American Girl collection, this time I went with Josefina’s Christmas dress.

 

I think Josefina’s clothes are on the simple side, I looked through all the choices and kept coming back to her wardrobe because it looked the easiest. The ironic part is, when I save up to buy my American Girl doll, it’s actually Josefina I will be buying, so it’s funny that I’m making her clothes…J

I decided instead of doing long sleeves, I just wanted to do the upper portion of the sleeves. It turned out to make the sleeve “flutter”, which I really wasn’t expecting (but tells you how little I know about how clothes are put together) It makes sense to me now because the bottom of the sleeve is not gathered but for some reason I was thinking that if left off the long part of the sleeve, I would be left with a poufy cap sleeve. You live, you learn, right?

For this dress, I actually couldn’t decide between 2 fabrics – 2 very different fabrics, I might add. SO I decided to heed my mom’s advice: she told me it is just as quick and easy to make two garments as it is one because you do each part twice but at the same time, so both garments are made in nearly the same amount of time.

The first fabric is a great spring yellow with little butterflies, thin and textured, not stretchy. I’m not so good with fabrics yet, so I don’t know what kind it is, but it kind of was like seersucker (maybe it is seersucker, I don’t know – Aunt C will have to help me out on that one J)

The second fabric is…I don’t even want to say it…crushed panne in a dark green. Now this stuff is just as glorious and scrumptious as it comes, but I CANNOT sew with it. You must remember, my confidence was all high from making those tights though… I am...SUPER SEAMSTRESS!! Bwa ha ha ha!!

I started putting together these simple, simple dresses…I even understood enough to do the sleeve the way I wanted it instead of doing the full long sleeve. The problem came when I attempted to do the neckline. Now I’ve discovered that I’m not so good with tiny ruffles. When it comes to hemming and gathering tiny strips of fabric, mine kind of coil up and go funny on me, so I decided after this fiasco to either make bigger ruffles or stop hemming them until I get some more experience under my belt. The neck ruffle on this dress SUCKED. I didn’t understand the part in the directions about attaching the neckline (I do now, but at the time, I thought I was doing it right) The instructions seemed to say to attach it so that the raw edge was left visible and quite prominent. Obviously that wasn’t right, but I read and re read and re read and thought I was following it exactly. What I ended up with was 2 ugly dresses with unfinished necklines L

Now my rule is not to “waste” Velcro on bad outfits, so if you see pins in the back, it means I was not satisfied with my craftsmanship and did not deem it worthy of using Velcro. These dresses, unfortunately, fell into that category.

I had accidentally kept my stitch length on the longest setting for these dresses, so the yellow one is kind of sloppy looking (to me after using that short stitch on the nightgown) plus you can see in the picture above that the stitching is actually starting to come apart on the chest :( and the panne was soooo slippery and stretchy, I used the zig zag – I went with yellow for the thread and you can really see my lousy stitching on that green dress…I was not real happy with how they turned out. The sleeves turned out cute, but overall, I give both of these dresses the thumbs down L

 

On a positive note, because I needed a way to showcase my positively adorable tights, I made two miniskirts. (I took all the pics of the tights after I made the skirts but made the skirts after all the tights were done – that’s why most of the tights pictures show them with the skirts)

The skirts were sooo easy J I just cut out a rectangle of 7 inches by 5 ½ inches (I just eyeballed it to make them, but then measured afterwards) out of paper, put one of the short sides on the fold and cut out. Then I hemmed the bottom, “hemmed” the top (I don’t know what it’s called, but I put the pocket for the elastic in) then added the elastic, then stitched up the side seam. Super super easy. And the denim skirt I made out of a pant leg of pants that were too small for me. YAY!

 

FABULOUS tights!!

Well, I was pretty discouraged with the nightgown. I’d been surfing the internet looking for more free stuff and came across an amazing tutorial for making tights out of socks. I’d been back to it several times and was a little hesitant to try it because I’m not good at sewing knits and I didn’t want to ruin a perfectly serviceable pair of socks. I am hooked on great socks and try to wear as colorful and crazy socks as I can every day. So whenever I am out, I keep an eye for socks. Well, as the fates would have it, I was at the dollar store and found a cute pair of black socks with lavender flowers. I thought, you know, I can waste a dollar trying, right?

I finally just did it. I followed the tutorial exactly and was super impressed with how they came out. Basically, you sew, then cut an ‘L’ shape in the sock – see below

 

Then you cut the top edge (the green) then sew the top of the sock together to make the waistband.

They look great, they fit great, and I have a new hobby J I made tights out of every pair of socks I could get my hands on after that J

The flower tights

I did white tights out of a pair of thick knee socks

I did brown with pretty fall leaves

I did red and white stripes (these used to be toe socks J)

I did black and grey tights

Now you guys know by now that I can’t quite call a project mine until I’ve messed something up… so here’s that part: I got carried away doing tights and since its not really a “measured” piece, its just “eyeballed”, I ended up making some of the ‘L’s (the legs) too skinny and too short. Because of that, they don’t look quite right on the doll – they are obviously too “small”, so I cut the feet off and made them footless tights, or leggings J

If you look closely, you can see in the one with the hearts that on the lower left leg (on the right in the picture) the hearts are all stretched out compared to closer to the waistband. That’s because I cut them so badly. They look good as leggings though, and were great practice! The snowman socks were mine – holes in the heels and toes – gosh I loved those socks!

 



By far my 2 favorites are the black and grey ones and the brown fall leaves ones. Those were a taller sock, which gave me a little more room for error – knee socks are perfect, crew-length are just fine but ankle socks just don’t cut it.

I give the tights huge thumbs up – even the tights-turned leggings J