My daughter has never been much of a girly girl. There was a brief princess phase, but for the most part all the frilly and fussy girl things are of no interest to her.  Not that she is all for boy things, either. She just wants to like what she likes and not be told what that should be. A while back she said, totally exasperated, “Arg! why does my toothbrush have to be pink?!”

Exactly.  So what is the awesome dress that isn’t too girly, but still has a tiny bit of twirl? The Skater Dress pattern by Kitchy Coo.

Amanda has hit the nail on the head with this pattern. Even the name is perfect. The skater dress is comfy and stylish, just right for puddle jumping in the spring, throwing on over your suit in the summer, and of course going to the skate park.  She designed it to fit for a few years! And this dress will indeed fit my daughter through the fall–a lifetime in kid years.

The original pattern is a crew neck, but I couldn’t imagine it without a hood. Luckily for me, Rae recently posted a hoodie tutorial that was a perfect match for this dress. I made the placket a little shorter so I wouldn’t have to add buttons or snaps. She does have to wear something under it, but I expected that.

The fabric is from Joann’s if you can believe it. I couldn’t. It is a lovely knit: not to light, not to heavy, and so soft. The best bit is that one side is stripes, the other polka dots! The color could be less Primary! Blue! but I’ll take it.

The pattern is well written and Amanda guides you through the trickier parts of sewing with knits. She convinced me that I should use stretch needles when sewing with knits. And she introduced me to the stretch stitches on my machine, which I’m now in love with. Amanda also tried to get me to use a double needle for the hem. I did buy one, but then wimped out when it came time to using it. My hem is of course wavy and now I regret not listening to her.

The moral of this story is, listen to Amanda and buy her awesome pattern! Be sure to follow along with the Skater Dress blog tour to see everyone’s variation of this fantastic dress. See you at the skate park!

Jennifer Casa, from the fabulous blog Jcasa handmade, has written a very nice kid’s craft book called Teach Yourself VISUALLY Crafting with Kids and it is jam packed with projects for all your kids. I asked my daughter to look through the book and see which project she’d like to make. The answer turned out to be every single one.

So, I sat down with her and we leafed through the book together.  When we got to the Daily Docket project, I knew this was the one. Perpetual calendars are one of my very favorite things and as an added bonus we had almost all the materials on hand to make it.

Well, we didn’t have alphabet stamps, or rather we had L, Q, H, B and R, but we weren’t  playing Wheel of Fortune so it didn’t help us much. So instead of stamping the months and days on fabric I had my daughter write them on with a fabric pen. When she was finished we cut them out and glued them onto felt. I knew I was going to regret the glue I used and I did, because bleh, it shows through.  I should have sewed them or rustled up some fabric glue, but whatever.

For all the letters and numbers and clouds and things, I had my daughter draw them and then I made patterns from her drawings. This was a totally unnecessary step, but I think it made the project more hers than mine (which is was supposed to be, right?). The weather bit isn’t in the directions, but I had just seen Abby’s felt weather board and I thought it would be perfect with this project.

Because there were more little bits now with the weather forecast and because my children love to organize things, I sewed four pockets instead of making one big one. O.K. maybe I should stop, because wow, Meg, you sure are taking a lot of liberties with this project. I mean this is a review of a book, right?  I did make changes here and there while we were making the calendar, but that’s what is so great about this book. There are so many simple projects in this book that you can use them as jumping off points for your children’s crazy creativity. It’s nice to have tutorials and books that teach us to make something just so, but it’s also lovely to have open ended projects that your kids can enjoy over and over again, each time in a new way.

I made one more little change to Jennifer’s awesome project, one that I was kinda sad about. I used a stick (straight from the yard) to hang the calendar instead of grommets. The grommets are one of the coolest bits of this project, but sadly,  I am not cool enough to own a grommet setter. So a stick and some loops and ta da! a fantastically homemade perpetual calendar. So many good things rolled up into one!

Thank you Jennifer, for including me on your blog tour for your wonderful book! Would you like to own your very own copy? Jennifer has kindly offered a signed copy shipped to the door to one of my dear readers. Leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick a winner on Wednesday! Good Luck!

There are a few more stops on the bloggy book tour and some more chances to win a copy too:

• Wednesday, April 20 – Maya*Made
• Friday, April 22 – Stitches in Play
• Tuesday, April 26- Aesthetic Outburst
• Thursday, April 28 – Artsy Crafty Babe

THE GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED! KRISTA, #7 WON! YAY KRISTA!