mermaid tails (-a work in progress)

Miss B decided that this year, she was to have a mermaid party for her 5th birthday. Not too hard, or so i thought.

I came across this tutorial for some mermaid tails costumes, and thought they would be perfect for little girls to frolic around in.

I'm always know for tweaking a pattern, and this is what i came up with.

 Lots and lots of cutting!

 Five down, three more to go!

 Close up of the shimmery overlay fabric.

These are not finished yet. I still have to put a waistband on each, make three more and then I'm done. Phew!

For the fabric, I used a cotton poplin as the main  fabric in various sea type colours ( no pink here!). I found this shimmery fabric, which reminded me of fish scales, and i overlaid this over the base colour. And to jazz it up a bit, I added some tulle on the fin section. Cute.

I'm so far very happy with the way they have turned out.

I'll update when all of the mermaid tails are completed for a finished photo.

kids pyjama pants

As previously mentioned, my 'Little Miss' is having a growth spurt- of epic proportions!
Realising just before bedtime that she had no clean PJs and those she had were w-a-y too small, i quickly trawled the net for some super quick pyjama pant tutorials. There were tons of tutorials out there, but these three listed below were pretty straight forward and easy to follow.

Pyjama pant tutorials:

 1.

 2.

3.

1. MADE, 2. Subtle Tee, 3. My Cotton Creations.

And here's my version.

These are a little more fitted than those shown above. Miss B likes ribbed ankles so they dont ride up at night. One small error due to rushing to make them, one of the cuff seams is inside out (see on the right hand side). No biggie though.
Super easy to make, and if you can score some cheap fabric like I did, these pj pants cost only about 45 cents to make. Perfect!

milkmaid skirt

Miss B has gone through a h-u-g-e growth spurt- nothing fits! And also, she's decided that girls dont wear pants, so our wardrobe attire is next to nil.

Skirts and dresses are on the 'to do list' this week. Special request from Miss B was for some of her favourite colours (pink & purple- of course) and not my 'boring' choice of colours (being navy, grey or red).

This bright number was finished today, and little Miss was delighted to see a multitude of colour.

Fabric: Amy Schimler 'Circle Toss in Pink ', and pink /white dot contrasting trim.

Tutorial for skirt came from here.

getting back on the bike

I'll be returning soon.

There's been a lot of speed bumps and wobbles along the way, but all looks good for a smooth ride now.

Stay tuned....