Dresses for Summer

I made matching maxi dresses for the girls.  These are for the spring and summer, obviously.  I got the idea and tutorial on The Polkadot Chair.  They were super easy, especially with my new attachments for my sewing machine.  I have my mom's old Kenmore because I think it is the best sewing machine in the world next to the super fancy, crazy expensive ones.  To find the hemmer foot was a bit tricky since my machine is older than I am, but I did some research online and found a whole slew of Greist antique attachments in a set and some evidence that it would fit my machine.  So I received, not only the hemmer foot, but also a ruffler (along with many others I have yet to explore) which came in handy for this project also. 

This is the dress minus the sash.  It is not half as cute this way, so I am planning to do a few stitches to secure the sash to the dress.

I bought the shirts at Old Navy because I couldn't find any that I was willing to cut up in their drawers, but they were only $5 or something each.  Then I could not find any fabric that was 50' long in my stash of remnants, so I bought this yellow fabric off the clearance rack at Joann's for about $15 since it was the end and I got the last half yard at a 50% additional discount.  The sash was just $5 or so worth of fabric (1/2 yd).  The total for each dress ran me about $15 which is higher than I was expecting, but I love the dresses.  I think for the next ones, if I make time for more, I will go to Goodwill or a secondhand store and find an old kid shirt and a long woman's dress to make this cheaper.  To be honest I was too excited about this project and didn't have the patience to go hunting for the fabric like that.

 I cannot take full credit for these dresses since I had a little helper.  I can't believe I am even putting these awful pictures of me on the blog, but Drew is just so cute and it may be the only chance I get to mark this piece of history.  Just be warned that the following pictures of myself are me at my worst since this was in the middle of the vomiting extravaganza (which is still going on, by the way...more on that later).  I was taking a sanity break while the kids watched TV.

Drew loves to sit in my lap while I sew.

 My sewing cave is in the unfinished basement/laundry room and it is going to be majorly cleaned and overhauled this summer if it kills me, and it very well may do just that. 

He likes to try to push buttons which are too hard for him to push.  The only problem comes when he crawls under the table and accidentally sits on the pedal.  :)