Birthday Fun

Our sweet little niece turned 4 this weekend so we've been busy making her gifts. Buggy was in charge of the customized wrapping paper. I cut a section off of our roll of blank newsprint, opened a new box of crayons and set her to work. I didn't take a picture because... well, lets just say she doesn't have a future in the wrapping paper industry. She kept getting side-tracked by absolutely everything except her project.


My contribution was a new outfit, and since the birthday girl likes dresses and ballet it was a tutu-ish skirt with this matching top (seen here modeled by the lovely Buggy):




It was pretty simple so I thought I'd share how I made this little embellishment:


1. I cut out a paper heart the size I liked and pinned it onto the wrong-side of the shirt using a four-year-old body as a placement guide. I also added a layer of light sew-in interfacing, I'm not sure that this step is necessary but I used it since this was my first time sewing on a tee (I did all this on the wrong-side so I could keep track of my interfacing, which wouldn't be necessary if you skipped it). Then I carefully stitched around the pattern with pink thread:


It occurs to me that this would be a great embellishment on its own, assuming your bobbin does not implode three times while trying to sew a tidy heart. This is how mine looks on the right-side after this step:


(My crummy sewing skills are only surpassed by my even crummier photo editing skills. Ah well, you get the idea)

2. I cut some 1-inch strips of tulle and stitched down the middle with a long stitch. Pull on one thread to ruffle it up so it matches the perimeter of the heart and pin it down using the stitching as a guide:

3. Then just carefully top-stitch along the heart. I left the ruffle thread in because I thought it added to the look nicely (and because separating it from the tulle is a pain in the kazoo). Here we see my model workin' the entire outfit:

The skirt was inspired by this tutorial on Pink Picket Fence. I made a basic three tiered-skirt and sewed on a couple rows of ruffled tulle per tier. I could do a little how-to for the skirt too if anyone is interested.