Birthday Ice Cream Outfit And Apron

  In addition to the party I threw for Booper's 6th birthday, I made her an outfit.

  I used Jalie 2805 as the basis for the shirt, lengthening it slightly. 

  I altered the short sleeve into a slightly longer puffed sleeve, with shirring and a bright pink lettuce-edged hem. I used regular sewing machine thread rather than serger cones for the loopers when I did the lettuce-edging, and it was interesting to see how much stiffer the edging is this way!

  The hem was lettuce-edged the same way:

  I used a strip of pink for the neckband:

  And I added a layered vinyl ice cream cone to the front! This was my first time layering vinyl, and it was pretty simple! I used Siser Easyweed Heat transfer vinyl for the brown, pink, dark pink, and green, but the tan is Firefly Craft, which seems to be pretty good quality, and the red was bought at a daily deal site some time ago, and is unfortunately see-through! It turned out cute though!

  The skirt is a simple circle skirt with an elastic waistband (which sadly doesn't quite match).

  I lettuce-edged the hem of the skirt too, with baby pink thread:

  All of the fabrics for this were from Girl Charlee... the skirt fabric is this one.

  I used this pink for the neckband.

  And the shirt was made from this blue.

  I'm pretty happy with this outfit, although I'm not particularly pleased with the fit of the shirt on Booper. This is the same size I've made her previously, so I'm not sure if the knit exacerbated the armscye wrinkling or if her shoulder slope has increased. Looks like I'll need to do a sloped shoulder adjustment next time!

  For Booper's actual gift, I made her something she's been requesting for months- an apron.

  There are a ton of cute free apron patterns out there, but I just made this pattern up myself, and other than the shoulder straps needing to be moved outward a bit, it's exactly what I was envisioning.

  It's long, because Booper wanted it long. It's flared, so it can easily fit over her dresses. And it has ruffles, because Lindsay's adorable ruffled apron (and free pattern!) made me realize how much better ruffled aprons are than unruffled ones. ;-)

  I used this fabric for the body of the apron, and searched through my collection for coordinates. I've used the brown before for the inner ears of this elephant, and Booper and I have also made an elastic-waisted skirt from it before.

  The pink is, I think, leftover from this skirt I made several years ago. 

  To finish off the apron, I sewed up this paper-pieced block (I got this free for signing up to the Sewing Loft newsletter some time ago, but I do think it's worth the $4 it costs now.) I'm not sure quite what was going on with some of the corners (possibly an attempt to prevent dog-ears?) but that was my only complaint.

  The tan for the cone is actually the reverse of a brown-printed fabric... I couldn't find anything else that was close to what I wanted! And that absolutely perfect sprinkles fabric was sent to me by Karen a while back. =) The pink is quite a bit thinner than the other fabrics and wrinkled when I pressed it, and I didn't line things up perfectly when sewing the cone, but otherwise I love how this turned out! I added panels to either side of the finished ice cream, then rounded the edges. I lined the pocket with more of the pink before top-stitching it on to the apron.

  The final thing of note in this apron is the straps. Booper, like me, dislikes things pulling on her neck, so I took inspiration from an apron in a magazine also sent to me by Karen, and made the neck straps cross the back, go through some loops, and become the waist ties. I love this, and want to try it on an apron for myself too!

  I had a lot of sewing-machine difficulties while making this, especially on the pocket and ruffles, but I really love how it turned out. 

And so does Booper!

  Thanks for stopping by,