Sunday Sunshine: Family Time & Early Spring

Practicing Contentment by remembering the graces in the week and practicing gratitude by giving.

This morning, while I am going to miss my after church quiet time at home, taking a moment this morning to write while rain pitter-patters outside and I can listen to HandyMan play with a happy GBaby - it's just as good!

This week we took a break from our normal and spent a week with family in Arizona.  This first taste of spring warmth will hopefully pull us through the last weeks of winter back home.  It was such fun watching GBaby grow closer to her grandparents, aunt and uncles.  She has explored the outdoors on her two little feet barefoot and now with sneakers and is getting the walking thing down pat! She continues to hold her record as a great traveler as she played happily throughout all our flights on Monday.

One of the biggest bright spots of last week came on Monday when we were traveling.  We placed the "amen" at the end of a a prayer for smooth travels and an on-time or miraculous early arrival.  It was almost like God was sitting up in heaven, scratching his beard saying, "yeah, ok".  Not 2 minutes later, my cell phone rang with an alert that our first flight was delayed by 2 hours.  A quick schedule review in my head told me that we would miss our connection which was the last flight of the day to our destination.

So I sent HandyMan and GBaby to drop the dog off with friends and I went inside to call the airline.  After navigating the goofy voice prompt system, I finally got a helpful reservations agent on the line.  I quickly explained the situation and no sooner did I finish explaining than he offered to re-route us on another airline which would have us arriving at our destination an hour earlier than scheduled.  He put me on hold to finalize the plan with the other airline.  Holding...holding...holding...holding.  Finally he came back, gave me a confirmation number and we were ready to go.  We made our connections with plenty of time and arrived an hour earlier than originally planned.  Direct answers to the small prayers are great!

It has been a good week, full of brightness and family.  May your week be blessed!

Sewing a Computer Sleeve

As I was preparing for a recent family vacation, I was lamenting the absence of a computer sleeve for my netbook.  I went searching online, but kept asking myself if I really needed to spend the money on it.  The more I thought about it, the answer was "no".  I remembered batting that I had leftover from the Memory Quilt with Photos.  I also knew that I had a yard of lightweight denim in my fabric stash as well as some striped fabric leftover from some curtains I had made.

I didn't have a pattern to work from - so this is a "freestyle" project.  I knew I wanted it to have the main pocket for the netbook, a pocket that would fall inside the front flap to hold accessories and a pocket on the back side, outside the flap to hold my calendar, notebook for shopping lists, etc.

When I made the Mommy Bag I had worked with a bag pattern that had a pocket that ran around the outside of the bag so I used the same theory here.

I cut a large rectangle of the denim, batting and striped fabric that was a bit wider than the width of the netbook, and long enough to make the main pocket of the sleeve and the flap.  Then I cut a smaller rectangle of the three materials that was 3 inches wider than the first rectangle and about 15" long so that it would make the two outside pockets of the sleeve.

I sewed one ends of the rectangles and  turned them.  Then I folded in the edges of the flap and sewed it with top stitching.  Finally I pinned the two rectangles together and sewed the side seams together.  If you want a totally finished product, you could put bias tape over these seams.  I just stitched and trimmed.  Here's the finished sleeve:





I had some buttons around, so I attached them as closures for the flap.  With about two hours of work and materials I had on hand, I had a computer sleeve that was ready to go.



This is part of the Sewing Show and Tell week.  Check the main post to link up your favorite sewing project or to get more ideas!

Toddler T-Shirt Dress: Reusing Your T for your Toddler

There are many different ways to make t-shirt dresses for your toddling little girl.  One way is to take a shirt that fits the little one add a skirt of matching fabric and voila!  Easy dress.  This is what I had in mind when I went surfing through cyber-space and found so many other creative ideas.  Like this super cute ruffles and roses dress. I also found these directions for taking an adult t-shirt and making a toddler dress.

In this picture GBaby is sporting the finished dress with a white long sleeve onesie and her gray T-shirt pants - we'll have directions for that easy project tomorrow!

For this project I invested in a Twin Needle and it was SO worth it.  It took some tweaking of my bobbin tension (little screw on my bobbin case) to get it right, but it made sewing this together so much easier!

The other trick I used for transforming T-shirts into other clothing pieces was to use as many of the edges that were already finished as possible.  It saved the hemming of the jersey knit which can be kind of a pain.

What You Need: Adult T-shirt, thread, T-shirt that fit's Little One for sizing.

This is the adult shirt I started with:

Here's how I did it:

1.  Cut out Pieces: Lay the toddler shirt over the large shirt and cut through both front and back of the adult shirt to get the front and back for the bodice piece.



Then line up the toddler sleeves with the sleeves of the adult shirt to cut out the sleeves.



Remove the neck from the adult shirt to use as the neck for the dress - either cut as close as you can to the stitching or use a seam ripper.  Then, measure up from the bottom finished edge of the adult shirt the length you want the skirt of the dress to be, and cut across.  You should have a front, back, two sleeves, neck pieces and skirt.



2. Sewing

Pin and sew the stretchy neck material to the neck lines of the dress. You may want to trim the front neck line of the dress a bit to better replicate the neckline of the toddler shirt that is your sizing pattern.





Sew the shoulder seams



Attach sleeves to the bodice



Sew seam along bottom of sleeves and the side of the bodice below the sleeve.



Turn right side out and admire your handiwork, you're almost done!



Hand baste the "skirt" piece and gather it so that it will attach to the bottom of the bodice.  Pin the skirt to the bodice, making sure right sides together and sew:



Here is the finished dress:



Do you have a good way to re-use extra t-shirts?  Link your sewing project up on the  Sewing Show and Tell main page.

*This post linked at It's A Blog Party and Life as Mom's Frugal Friday

Toddler Pants from Adult T-Shirts

I love finding projects that use items that I already have in the house.  This is one of those projects. Gather up some of your t-shirts that need a new use, match some thread, add some elastic and you're ready to make toddler pants. You'll also need a pair of pants that fit your Little One to use for sizing.

Rather than re-invent the wheel here, I'm going to send you over to RookieMoms for the full directions.  They have a great set of video and photo directions.

So far I finished two pair for GBaby: black and gray.  Each pair took 20 minutes-Ilove easy projects!  Tomorrow we're stepping up to a bit more challenging project and GBaby will be modeling her T-shirt pants tomorrow with her Adult T to Toddler T-Shirt Dress!

This is part of the Sewing Show and Tell week.  Check the main post to link up your favorite sewing project or to get more ideas!