O' Fun For....a hurried and late entrance to stake conference (church)

I got ready for church today and realized that I had made a bunch of the things from my outfit, so I decided to add them to my fancy-schmancy new blog. Unfortunately, this meant taking pictures of me. Blah. All photos except bracelet courtesy of my easy-going husband, James.

So... here is my whole outfit:



The headband, shirt, skirt, and bracelet are made by me. The shoes were a super-kick-butt-awesome deal at $2, and matched my shirt and headband exactly, so of course I had to buy them! The earrings were provided by a persuasive Honduran while we were on our cruise this last spring. The headband is just the 3" of fabric I cut off the hem of my shirt when making it.

Here is the bracelet: (sorry about the scary hairy hand, but that's what the macro setting on the camera does for ya')



It is one of my first attempts of jewelry making, done with all the sparkly new beads I got from the gem fair. My friend Lauralee was nice enough to be bead-mom and tour-guide to a few of us newbies at the gem fair. "No, no, not those ones, follow me girls! Yes. Those are the right ones. Buy those." ; )


Here is a close-up of the shirt and the pattern I based it off:




The pattern is one of about a gazillion I rescued from my late Grama T.'s sewing room. Grama was a sewing queen, and being told by my Aunt Jill that I could take home what I wanted from her sewing room was like winning the crafty lottery. I used the basics of the pattern, but used elastic thread on the bobbin to gather the neck instead of casing with elastic. The sleeves were gathered using the handy "stretch the elastic really tight and sew the fabric onto it" method. (Patent pending...) I also lengthened it, added a few rows of shirring with elastic thread under the bust, and added some random buttons. Ta-da! You can tell it is one of my favorite shirts by how the jersey is pilling already! Blast! I'll have to make a bunch more for maternity shirts.

Here is a close-up of the skirt:



It is made from an old pair of white jeans that had gotten a bit too baggy in the bum and too short in the legs. Since I did not make a tutorial while sewing, here is my ever-so-lovely hand-drawn tutorial...



*STEP ONE: Cut off the legs right below the crotch, and the waisty-area right above the crotch, being careful not to cut off the bottom of the back pockets.

*STEP TWO: Cut the legs on each side seam and up the middle (front and back), and then cut them in half at the knee. Cut the hem off all pieces that have cuff hem. You should have 16 leg panely-things, like so:



They will not all be exactly the same shape, but oh-well.




*STEP THREE: Sew a bunch of the leg panels together lengthwise until it is long enough to comfortably wrap around your hip-area. (Sew with short ends of panels facing the same way, so the skirt kind of flares at the bottom.) I didn't use all 16 panels. Now sew the end shut, and you have the skirt-piece. Measure the opening at the bottom of the jean-waist piece, and add pleats to your skirt piece until the measurement at the top matches that measurement.

*STEP FOUR: Sew the skirt piece onto the bottom opening of the waist piece. You may want to pin it and try it on first to make sure the pleats don't sit funny anywhere.



*STEP FIVE: Zig-zag about half an inch from the bottom of the skirt, and then cut tiny slits in the hem about every 1/2 inch or so all the way around so that it will fray faster. Well, that's it! That is my first vaguely-helpful tutorial! I hope you enjoy!