Butterflies and Skorts

  I've completed the outfits I was sewing for the girls! They certainly took a while, I started working on these when I was in the middle of fabric frustrations.

  The skirts tiered, with a paper-bag style waist. All the seams are French-seamed for a nice clean finish.

  Remember a while back, when I was attempting to make a bloomer pattern? These skirts are the reason for that. I wanted something underneath so when these two act like the little girls they are:

   You don't see diapers and unders, just bloomers. =)

 
   The shirts are reverse-appliqued, but with finished edges, then embroidered.

  I love these outfits! Booper even has a matching bonnet. Back when I was helping sew bonnets, this was one of the fabrics we used. When there was some left, guess who got to bring it home! =) I liked it so much I bought some extra so I could make outfits for both girls. Then there ended up being one extra bonnet too! It's a little big, but Booper loves it. I'm going to see if I have enough scraps to make one for Gaiw too, and I'm going to try to draft a pattern for it, which should be fun.

  Interested in seeing how to attach the bloomers and skirt together? I made my own pattern for both, so I was able to ensure that the waist on each was the same width, but if one was slightly bigger it wouldn't hurt to gather it down to fit. It would look a bit different than what I have here, but depending on how you did the elastic, it might not be noticeable at all.

  So, you start with a skirt and bloomers that are completely finished except for the waistband. Put the skirt into the bloomers, with both right side out. You want to line the top of the skirt up with the top of the bloomers:

  Pin and sew, and when you pull the skirt out it should look like this:

  Fold the skirt down over the bloomers:

  Pin some more, and sew a line for your elastic casing. I actually sewed two lines, one 1/2 inch down from the top, and one 3/4 inch below that with a 1 inch gap in it, then added elastic through the gap in-between those two rows of stitching.

  By the way, taking pictures of two girls at once is much more difficult than taking pictures of just one. That is especially true if your camera runs out of batteries every 2 minutes (not exaggerating, I wish I was) You get a lot of this:

One crawling away, the other scowling

  And a good bit of this:

Hello Screamy

  Then the batteries run out and you have to find another set. After a while you put one in a chair and get a not-terrible picture:

  But you really wanted one where they were both in it, so you try again. And then you get some of this:

 And this:

  So you go back to the chair idea. And it works! You get one decent(ish) picture!

   And then, since you have a blog, you suffer through about 10 more pictures and 2 more battery changes to get two more nice pictures.

  If you are interested in learning how to do the reverse-applique with the finished edges I did on the shirts, I took pictures and should be able to show you how in the next few days
Update: Reverse-applique how-to HERE

Thanks for stopping by!

PS: Would any of you be interested in buying a set like this for your little girl?

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