jellyfish dress

I got this fabric from spoonflower over a year ago. 
Sadie has been admiring it, off and on since then.  I finally decided to make her something out of it... a winter "twirling dress" to replace the much-loved summer one she wore into rags. I kind of made up the pattern loosely based on a favorite t-shirt.  It's nothing fancy.  The rest of the fabric is organic cotton knit jersey from fabric.com, I think--It's been in the stash for quite a while.

If you've never checked out spoonflower, you should.  They have a pretty innovative business going on.  Their organic cotton jersey knit is some of the most lovely fabric I've ever run my fingers across, but it is not cheap.  And oh, does it fade.  The original fabric is pictured above, and the dress below is after only one wash.  I was kinda bummed on this one, it faded more than usual, or, probably because of the darker dyes the fading was more noticeable.

 I understand that this is the life of the water based inks they use to print, combined with the fact that the knit fabric stretches while it washes and allows the ink to escape more, or something along those lines.  They suggest hand washing in cold water and line drying, but I really can't commit to that when using the fabric in a child's garment.  Oh well.  Sadie loves her dress anyways.  Loves it.  And her new red up-cycled sweater mocs that I can NOT get her to take off her feet...day or night.

Faded fabric, faded petunias, already faded memories of summer on these cold fall mornings. Who can complain of a cozy jellyfish twirling dress to warm you up from neck to ankles right? It does go so perfect with my little water moon child at least.

These shoes were made for walkin'

I have a new obsession. It all started when I went to find a pair of shoes for my fledgling walker. I was digging through my hand-me-down box and found a couple of cute pairs of shoes, but they had big old clumpy soles (they were like mini grown- up shoes) and while they looked adorable when I put them on Sadie, all she did was trip all over them. Enter one very old beat up pair of Robeez. These ones worked good, but they were on their last leg (metaphorically and literally). A quick Internet search informed me that buying these shoes new is NOT CHEAP. So I decided to make my own. I made a pair for Sadie and they were so fun that I had to make another, then another...you get the picture.









The little moccasins are my fave...now I need to make another pair for miss Sadie.
I am working on a tutorial that I will post soon...just waiting to get our computer back. Posting lots of pics from the iPad isn't a very stream-lined process.

Here is Sadie in her shoes, drinking a blueberry smoothie to go. Sorry about the blurry- but it's hard to get my favorite photography subject to stand still these days!