My felicity for this week is: Frugality!
You don’t have to be a parent to know that children tend to have the rather expensive habit of growing out of things – mostly clothes and shoes. Mine is no exception. When I bought her some long-sleeved shirts last year, I purposely erred on the larger side with the size, hoping she could get two years out of them.
I was only half-successful. The sleeves and torso still fit, but the length was a problem because the shirts had shrunk up with repeated washings.
Luckily, however, I found this tutorial on Pinterest before I chucked the shirts into the hand-me-down pile! I changed it up a bit and stitched the ruffle right down on top of the shirt's hem so as to maximize the ruffly goodness which I knew would go over well with G.
Success! I ruffle-ized three shirts: I used scraps for one, cut strips from a repurposed t-shirt of mine for another, and for the third, I redeployed a WOF strip of jersey I’d tried (unsuccessfully) to make work as a scarf last year.
In other frugal news, I also made a pair of leggings for G. She doesn’t really like jeans or cords (see above-mentioned waistband management strategy) but leggings are A-OK.
new leggings and ruffled shirt
I love the look of them under dresses and skirts and I particularly enjoy her creative legging/skirt combos. I’ve tried to draft my own leggings patterns before but they never worked properly so I broke down and bought a pattern (Kwik Sew 3476). They took a grand total of 30 minutes to make from cutting out to stitching the hems on the legs, plus G put them on right away so I TOTALLY WIN AT LEGGINGS!
Okay, my dears, share your felicities this week!
Really cool idea. I'm always one for getting more use out of clothes. I'm betting though that my son wouldn't appreciate something like this. LOL
ReplyDeletewhat a great idea!!!! I used to make my daughter leggings too! And they are a snap to make! what a great model she is!
ReplyDeleteAwesome! Good for you. It works like this in our family: oldest son wears clothes until they don't fit him anymore, then youngest son gets them and destroys them!! Seriously, he is SO hard on clothes. I do not understand it. Sometimes I wonder what he all gets up to at school. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! You do rock at ruffles! I wonder if I could convince my guys to wear ruffles. LOL!
ReplyDeleteOne cool thing about girls is Ruffles! Now, if only that could work on boys clothes! ... LOL
ReplyDeleteHurrah for frugle-minded people! Clothes are so expensive! I was talking to a cousin the other day about a pair of Osh-Kosh jeans and the price tag was $60! Really? I don't even pay that much for jeans for me! So I have taken to turning our old holed clothes into stuff for little man, why not when you've already paid the money? :)
excellent! I miss the days that I could sew for my girls.... these days my olders has been maing her own skirts, scrounging through my stash to steal fabric.
ReplyDeletenevermind the clothes - SHE is SO CUTE!! : )))
ReplyDeleteNice sewing Felicity!
~Monika
yay! i'm so glad that the leggings worked out, and the ruffled shirt looks awesome!
ReplyDeleteyou can also do a non-ruffled one using another shirt that she's outgrown, cut off the hem with about 6 inches above it, then sew the raw edge behind the hem of the shirt you're fixing. it'll look like she's layering t shirts, without the added bulk of two shirts! (it also works well for boys who won't wear the ruffles!)
i'm glad you found a pattern that worked. does it include your size too? i lent my smaller tights pattern to a friend (that i drafted myself), but i'll try and get it back so that i can lend it to you if you want it. they're so quick and easy to make!!
Great idea! And G looks super-happy with the final product!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to forward this to my DIL to see if she would like me to ruffleize anything for charlotte. Oh, and make some leggings too.
ReplyDeleteGreat, great idea. My daughter is so tall we often run into the short shirt problem. I need to start ruffle-izing things!
ReplyDelete