Some very lovely people from the Tea Collection contacted me and asked if I’d like to sample some of their clothes.  I very readily and enthusiastically said yes! Years ago I found a blue and white striped shirt for my (then) baby girl at a thrift store.  She looked like an adorable little Parisian in it! It was simple and classic and very well made. My daughter wore it forever and then her brother wore it and then her baby brother wore it.

this is what happens when you tell the baby to smile!

The shirt was made by Tea and not only survived three toddlers, but is ready to be passed onto the next.  And is still as stylish as ever.  Well made children clothes are sadly rare, but clothes from Tea Collection are not only very well made, but soft and comfortable and beautiful too.  Is it obvious I’m a big fan? I am and I think you will be too: I’m happy to say that the people at Tea have offered one of my readers a $75 gift certificate to their store! Just leave a comment on this post and I will pick a winner on Wednedsay (Aug. 24th) at noon central time. Good Luck!

• my daughter is wearing the Marimba Mini Dress
• my son is wearing the Sailor Stripe Tank
• and the chicken obsessed baby is wearing the Gallo Graphic Tee

I fell in love with this little sleeper when I first saw it: it’s like those nightgowns for newborns, except stylish.  At 40 bucks, it was a little out of my price range, but looked simple enough to recreate. Well, mine doesn’t quite live up to the original, but I think I got close.

The pattern came from the book Growing Up Sew Liberated (which I reviewed here). The more I use this book the better it gets.  A rare thing among craft books! Normally they are all eye candy, but look a little deeper and it turns out they are mostly errata and confusing directions. To alter the pattern I just extended the bottom bit, so it looked like it would tie up nicely. The edge really needs a rolled finish, but I’m not that handy with the serger so I left it raw.  I might make this again and try to get the knot bit right.

a few weeks back my friends and I threw a baby shower for our dear friend who was about to pop. She has since popped (!) but I thought I’d share a few of the things I made for the party. The floofs [above], as my daughter called them, were by far my favorite thing to make. There are many tutorials floating around for them–and many names–but I found this method to be the easiest.

You might recognize these painted cups from a design sponge tutorial a while back. I did exactly what they told me to do and pretty much copied their color scheme to boot.

While I had the paint brushes out, I slapped a bit of paint on some cardstock. When the paint was dry I cut circles out of the painted paper. Then invited a friend of mine over for wine and projects, so she could write (with her beautiful handwriting) all the potential baby names our friend had come up with.  We glued them together with a bamboo skewer inside and called them cupcake toppers. I thought they turned out nicely–baby shower-y, but not goofy.  And don’t worry the baby is not named Moellendorf.

I made a few desserts too. They both were less than stellar because of the oppressive heat and humidity, but the lime curd cupcakes up there were very tasty–even if they did look a little worse for wear.  All in all, it was a very nice party. No horrible torture-the-pregnant-lady baby shower games, just a table full of delicious food and a house full of lovely ladies. Tomorrow maybe I’ll show you what I made for the baby..

I’m still here! We just returned from a little trip to grandma’s and now I’m nursing an awful cold. The children seem to take these horrible head colds in stride. I, on the other hand, look like I just got hit by a bus.

I made these two bracelets for a good friend’s birthday last week. Yes, I am a woman in my 30s making friendship bracelets for a woman in her 30s. And yes, my husband laughed at me. But whatever. Learning how to make them again made me a little teary about my camp days. Also they are, I believe, stylish–as ridiculous as that may be.

I went with the chevron style and the boring old stripey style. I tried for a more grown up color pallet, but really they are going to look like friendship bracelets no matter what colors you pick.

This was another pattern that got cut out a while back and then abandoned on the ironing board (and hidden by the heaps of shit piled on top of it). Patterns that use bias tape to finish necklines and armhole (armices whatever) usually look so simple, but then they always want you to make your own damn bias tape.  That is when this project stalled.

But making bias tape is really only difficult in my head. Once I got started, it only took a little bit of the afternoon to finish. I’ve been looking longingly at this dress since I got the Naomi Ito book years ago. So, it feels good to have it done…

…and the dress feels good on– I can tell, because she’s been wearing it at every opportunity. The fabric is this super lightweight cotton lawn I found at Joann’s of all places. Why I didn’t make myself something out of it, I don’t know.  There might be just enough left to make a super stylish shirt for me out of the book as well.

Speaking of books, I’m slowly updating my library page. By the end of the summer I hope to have all the projects I’ve done listed under all the books I’ve used. That of course means going through 4 years of posts, so have a little patience :)  (there are no projects listed…yet). I’ve also added some books to the elsie marley amazon shop. There aren’t an overwhelming number of books there, mostly because I try to recommend books that I would actually buy (being a bit of a cheapskate means it takes a lot to get me to shell out for a book) but that means there are some really, really good ones there!