weekend wrap-up aka HELP ME!!

How's everyone's weekend going?
Did you hit any yard sales?!  
I have noticed it is prime yard sale season!  
Just this weekend, I went to 5 of them just in my small town.
One of them was the best one I ever went to.
This lady owns a booth in the local antique mall and she was cleaning out her booth.  So she had some awesome stuff!
I went yesterday and then today.  I then went back right before she closed the yard sale and had everything FREE.  SO Excited!
I'll show you what I got on Thursday!  Wahoo!



In other news, remember me writing this post about this:





Well the linky party is closing tonight at midnight and voting immediately starts!
I need your help!!
I'm #10.
Just go HERE
Click on that star under my link, #10 and I will love  you forever ;)
Voting goes for 3 days.
Please help me get a chance to have Mandi over here to help me with my home!
I know there are big dogs out there trying their hands at this contest.  So let's have an Underdog win this time, eh? ;)

thrifty thursdays #9.


I can't believe it's been 9 weeks since starting thrifty thursdays!
Lots of treasures that have been found in those 9 weeks...sigh...love it.

Thanks for everyone partying last week!  Let's see a few, shall we?

Always Come Home found some vintage aprons and some VINTAGE SHEETS!!

Faith Hope & Charity Shopping took things she already had and made them into something else!

Joyful Treasure Hunting spruced up this $6 mailbox she found!

Maybe Matilda refashioned a $1 floral walmart shirt into this!


Thanks ladies for linking up and playing along! 
I love your style!
Grab yourself a button :)

So for me this week, I slacked.  I told you I was going to take a picture of what I found and I didn't.  And for good reason!
I have been busy making this:


My daughter's new Easter dress!

And just guess what I used...just guess!

VINTAGE SHEETS!  ha haa, i'm a sucker for the stuff. 

I even posted a tutorial on how to make it.  
So if you are curious, go HERE.
And for the record, this dress costed me $0.00...well maybe like .10 cents for the sheet that I got for like $.99. but who's counting?!

I'm linking to THESE parties!







vintage sheet bubble dress.

This is what I have been working on over the weekend: The Vintage Sheet Bubble Dress.

What to see what it looks like on my lil' girl?  She was very excited because she pretty much designed it herself...and i'm not kidding...she's not even 6 and she's designing..oh boy...

So our inspiration?  This number right here from Shabby Apple.  I wanted to make her a new Easter dress so I had her look at dresses from the site as ideas of what she wanted. And of course she chooses the more difficult and expensive one!

It took me a while to figure out how to do this easily.  After arguing discussing fabric choices, I persuaded her to use this: a vintage sheet...which is perfect for Spring, if you ask me.

Initially I was going to make the whole thing out of this material but after multiple attempts at the top part, I looked for easier ways.
Then Emma, my daugher, brought me this shirt:
and the whole dress clicked in my mind!  Plus, this shirt was getting a bit too small for her anyways so what perfect way to use it than to make it into a dress ;)

So I measured from her waist to her knee for the skirt.  I wanted space for her to walk/run so my first cut was 12 x 44.

Next I cut out 3 strips of fabric for the bubble parts.  They were 12 x 48 inches.
I took the strips, put wrong sides together and did a basting stitch.

Then came the the task of ruffling...sigh, took so long but was worth it ;)

Then when it's all ruffled, sew the ends together.  Do that with all three strips.

Ok so back to the shirt...

Take the skirt piece and sew the ends together.  You'll have a tube that somewhat resembles a skirt.
Next, stick it on the shirt so that the right sides of the skirt and shirt are touching.
I lined up the stitch on the skirt to the middle of the back of the shirt:

Then use LOTS of pins to space the skirt equally around the shirt and sew in place the ruffled skirt.

 After you do that, you place your ruffles onto the skirt.  The top one, I place right on the stitch where the shirt and skirt met.  This part is tricky because you also have to make sure the ruffles of skirt pieces are the same circumference as where it'll be placed on the skirt. 
You also need to pin the ruffled pieces upside down and right sides together with the shirt because the piece is going to be folded over when it's done...see in the picture below, the ruffled piece is up or upside down.  After I sew it, I will fold it over the stitch so it will be right side up.

***which after making it, I should have had the 3 strips of fabric for the "bubble" part different lengths so that they would have held the same ruffleness..does that make sense?***

I then added the middle ruffle about 4-5 inches down, making sure the seam would be covered by the ruffle on top.  Do the same things I said above for this and the third ruffle.

Another tip is lining all the stitches together in the back.  Thats where I started each one so I made sure they lined up.



After I sewed them all on, I trimmed some fabric underneath because it was TOO poofy. 

Wha-la!  Main part done...but not done done.  If you look closely, there are a few stains around the chest.  Not on this dress, you don't!

But this is how it looked so far on my model.  She was excited about the progress ;)


After much back&forth, Emma was set to have a yellow rose on the shirt to cover stains.  She even picked the fabric.  So I went to work to figure out how to do that.

First, I took a strip of fabric, 5 x 44

Put wrong sides together...

Did a basting stitch...

and started ruffling...hmm sound familiar?

After ruffling, I sewed the ends all nice and shut.

Then I started playing around on the shirt.  I started with a circle and slowly slowly slowly sewed it on the shirt.  I would sew a bit, then work some more around.  It was hard to move fast anyways with all that fabric!

Finally at the middle where I just made sure everything was sewed down!

And there you go!  All done.  Emma was very excited for the BIG flower on the shirt ;)










I LOVED how it turned out.  Much better than I thought it would.  And this being my first "bubble" dress, I am happy with it.
And I also love that this dress cost me NOTHING.

I'm linking up to THESE parties and 







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scrapbook sundays features

Since Easter was Sunday, I took a small break but I still wanted to feature those who played along in Scrapbook Sundays!

Something From Cassie shared this ADORABLE diaper cake and banner.  She is so talented.  You must check out her stuff!

Handy Man, Crafty Woman made these fun borders for upcoming Holidays!

Gretchen at Simply Soares made this adorable thank you card.  I love the colors!

Paper Bagley adds to her project with another lovely 2-pager!


Thanks ladies for playing!  
Grab a button for being featured!

I am trying to get the word out about scrapbook sundays and would love all your help!
I'll have it up and running next Sunday.  I hope everyone had a great sunday!

A
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