Tutorial: To Infinity And Beyond Bubble Tunic

Ok, I couldn't wait, so here it is! A super cute refashion with lots of potential. I always see lots of cute t-shirts on clearance (boys and girls styles, haha) and this is a simple way to give them a little shape and girlishness.




You can easily change the sizes to make a dress/tunic/shirt style, but I will tell you what I used. My daughter wears between a 2/3T so what I used was a boy's 3T t-shirt for the body of the tunic. The bubble hem needs to be smaller than the body of the shirt, so I used a 2T tank/shirt for the hem and the sleeves. The small shirt (or knit) needs to have a LOT of stretch.


I wanted to get as much length out of my t-shirt as I could, so I took out the bottom hem. Otherwise just cut off both hems, like I did with the tank top.


Decide how wide you want your bubble hem to be, double that number and add about an inch for seam allowance. Then measure and cut your second shirt that you have a tube.


Fold your tube of fabric in half, with the wrong sides facing. Pin at the side seams so that the ends of the fabric meet. Then fold in half the other way and pin it there so that you have pins dividing the hem into quarters. Now do the same to the bottom of the body of your shirt. Do you see how much smaller my hem is than my shirt?


Now pin your shirt and hem, right sides together (and cut ends of both fabrics meeting), at the quarters. You should expect to have extra fabric bunched because they are not the same size.


Now it is time to sew them together! You can use a zigzag stitch, but I just discovered another stitch that I have been really have with so far. It looks like a really small zigzag stitch, but then after a few stitches it does one really big zigzag. I'm really pleased with how well it stretches after it was sewn, far more than the experience I've had with a regular zigzag stitch. As you start sewing, be sure to back stitch so secure it and then as you sew gently stretch the bubble hem so that it matches the length of the shirt. Once you get to the next set of pins, make sure your needle is down and then continue stretching up to the following set of pins.


TADA! You now have a bubble hem!

I used the tutorial here for the sleeves of the dress. For the first blue t-shirt I used the hem I cut from the patterned tank top (just cut it in half). It didn't have as much stretch as I would have liked, I think I'll actually redo that one.


For the second one I cut strips from the purple shirt I used. The other change I made was to trim the "shoulder" of the shirt. I lined up my ruler and cut about an inch off just the top so that it would look less like a boy's "muscle" t-shirt.



I am much happier with how this one turned out. I think I'll end up doing the necklines the same way.


As my daughter would say, "tee ree YON!" (translated, To Infinity And Beyond!)!


I hope you enjoy and make lots of cute, unique bubble tunics for your little ones to enjoy!

Linking up here

To Infinity And Beyond! Bubble Tunic

I had a problem. My daughter LOVES Toy Story, it is really the first thing she has ever gotten excited about. I really wanted to get her some Toy Story apparel, but I'd estimate that about 90% of the Toy Story anything is very obviously for boys. Sigh. Of the (very) few girl's t-shirts I have seen have been pink (sorry, but not my fav) and had the cowgirl, Jessie, on them. Of course my daughter is in love with Buzz!

Solution. Stumbling across several boy's Toy Story t-shirts on clearance. And by stumbling of course I mean, stalk for weeks until they are cheap enough for me to consider buying. haha I bought several and wanted to try several different techniques with them.

Here are the first two. I am calling this the To Infinity And Beyond! Bubble Tunic (a tutorial is on the horizon). It was a little too short to be a dress, and a little too long to be a shirt so...tunic it is!

To Infinity And Beyond!




It was so simple that I made another one.



I actually like this one better, I think I'll redo the sleeves on the blue one and then probably do the same thing to both necklines. I think that will make it a little more girlie too.

So what do you think? My daughter loves it, and that makes me happy!

My computer caught another, eh, cold so I'm trying to catch up with pictures and such. Once I do that I will have a tutorial for the Bubble Tunic, so stay tuned!

favorite animal?

My daughter's favorite animal is a turtle. A little random, but we go with it. It is hard to find turtle things for her, it is not really the most common animal for kids. She was never really obsessed with or gotten attached to anything, until the turtle. It was the first animal she started identifying by name rather than sound (does a turtle make a sound?) and she started pointing out turtles wherever she saw them. Thus the random turtle paraphernalia around our house. I used this tutorial and just changed the shape of the animal. I used one of her turtle shaped puzzles to come up with my shape to trace. I don't think it turned out to be the most obvious turtle shape, but she still likes it.

Here is the front and back. Oh, and I forgot to add the "eye" so I just stitched in that spot.



Here she is, snuggling with her new turtle, laying on her turtle Hugga Pet and watching a movie.


I love my girl.

*Warning*

Anybody else have one of these to watch out for? lol




A cute new summer tank for my very own toddler. The plain tank was $0.97 last summer at Old Navy, add a $1 iron on transfer from AC Moore and the ruffle from my fabric stash. $2 of awesomeness.

snow, snow go away...

Well, 12 days without internet and more than a week of not being able to get out in my car did get me one thing...a little more craft time. (= There is still LOTS of snow on the ground, but at least Jocie and I are able to get out and around now.

I managed a couple new refashions, this time for Jocie. She had a couple holiday shirts that still fit, but the holiday was long past. Have I mentioned that I LOVE holiday shirt refashions?!? Here is what I came up with...

Halloween then:


Any day cutie shirt now:



Christmas shirt then:


Just the shirt to go with her red Valentine heart pants:

I'm back! Here's a new FL outfit for Jocie

We made it back alive! It has been a whirlwind since we got back. Thought I'd take a break from projects and update the few followers I might have left. I wanted a new outfit or two for Jocie for FL, the weather was rather unpredictable (much chillier than "normal") so I dug up a few things to work with.

I found these adorable little shorts at Gap (for about $2.50), brown corduroy with little red polka dots. They were too cheap to pass up and I thought they looked wintry. I had an old onsie and scraps from the pants I used for the turtle cut-out lounge pants. I had seen a tutorial for using outgrown tights into knee socks.



Here is what I came up with! We certainly can't go to the playground in MD wearing shorts.






I LOVE these little knee socks


the little ruffly flowers and bow I added to the shirt

Tutorial: use old socks to lengthen sleeves

This idea has been floating around in my head for a while, as I mentioned in my post before, I seem to have longer than average arms and have a hard time finding long sleeve shirts in the correct length. I fear that I may have passed this along to my daughter. She's kind of thin and her little wrists (and tummy) tend to stick out of her sleeves WAY before the shirt is too tight. I just had to buy her all new socks because her feet are growing and I've procrastinated far too long. Now I have all these little socks where the soles are either holey or so dirty that I have a hard time justifying keeping them.

I found this super thick and soft sweat shirt on the clearance rack (see the soft pink fuzzies on the inside). It was a little boring, and it was an 18-24 month, but Jocie is really closer to a 2T. It actually fit ok, but I knew the sleeves wouldn't last too long. I happened to have a little pair of ribbed, fold over socks (triple roll would be even better though!) in the same pale pink in my stash. I figured the ribbing would mimic what was already on the sleeve, so here is what I did!



I cut the top off the sock, straight across right before the heel.


I turned the sleeves of the sweat shirt inside out and then stretched the top (ribbed) part of the sock so that it would fit over top of the sleeve.


There really wasn't a right/wrong side of the sock so it didn't matter which side I paired with the inside of the sleeve. Figure out how far you want the ribbed part of the sock to stick out of the sleeve and pin it securely to the sleeve. Be sure that it is not crooked (you can line it up with the seam on the sleeve) and that both sleeves are even. Because the sleeve was so small it was easier to simply hand stitch it on. I didn't want the stitches to show on the outside so I simply felt as I went and only stitched through the sock and the first layer of the sleeve.


Once you turn the sleeves right side out, you can either use the sock as a cuff or pull it all the way out to lengthen the sleeve. If I do this for myself I will likely snip a small whole for my thumb, but I knew my 2 year old wouldn't go for that.


Now to fix the "boring" part of the sweat shirt, it now had pink cuffs to match the inside fuzzies, but I wanted something else. I cut the top foot part of the sock, as much as I could use that wasn't dirty. I cut as many flower shapes as I could, in a range of sizes. I stacked them, largest on the bottom to the smallest on top. I had some "bling" in my stash and I just stitched it all together on the shirt. Tada! A much cuter sweat shirt that should now last her through the rest of the winter.


I LOVE being able to make use of things that would otherwise have been thrown away!