DIY: A Candy Cane Christmas New Dress

Well, hello there, friends! Welcome back to my lil ole 10 Day Giveaway. Thank you to all y'all that have participated, the response was super great and I really appreciate those of you that took the time to become a follower of this here craziness. So, just who won that lovely Christmas-y fabric cache?!

 (Please pardon my still-painted-covered hands, we've been working on this wild -n- wacky 4th grade legacy mural [you'll find out more in an upcoming giveaway post!] and I'm finding paint everywhere). Congratulations, Charlotte! I'll pop the fabric in the post tomorrow in hopes that it reaches you before the holiday. 

So, what's up for grabs today...?

Two whole yards of this amazing Tammis Keefe vintage reproduction fabric by Michael Miller! This here is enough loveliness to really create something marvelous. If you aren't familiar with Tammis Keefe's designs (or my obsession with her), you really outta visit here. Since I had you jumping through a coupla hoops for yesterday's giveaway, I thought I'd make this giveaway a pinch simpler...

To enter to win these two yards of glorious fabric, simply leave a comment on what'd you'd make with the stuff and add your email address so I can contact you tomorrow afternoon. Thanks and good luck! By the way, non-fabric lovers: Don't fret! I'll be giving away all sorts of fabric-free goodness over the next coupla days as well so pop back by!And now...on to the dress!

 I've actually had this fabric for a while. Anytime I see Tammis Keefe repros, I scoop them up. She's simply one of my faves. The prob with buying fabric without a solid plan is that, if you're like me, you over-buy. Which is way better than under-buying cuz running out simply sux. When I was digging out some holiday fabrics this fall, I knew I wanted to work with this fabric and decided that candy cane striped stuff would make a perfect bodice for this dress. But what pattern to use?

 One of my fave stitching blogs is Roisin over at Dolly Clacket. She always stitches with the cutest prints and makes me feel better about always sewing with quilter's cottons (I know there are those out there that oppose sewing with quilter's cottons but I just find the prints are the cutest thing ever!). One pattern I've noticed that she and several other sewing bloggers use is Christine Haynes' Emery. So I decided to get outta my comfort zone, pick up this popular pattern and try something new!

By the way, it wasn't until I was deep into stitching that I noticed what was happening on the fabric...is Santa beating his reindeer?! DUDE, that's not cool. I definitely wouldn't challenge that deer wielding that candy cane. Cuz, Claus, it might end up somewheres that you might not like, ya feel me? Ho-ho-OH NO YOU DIDN'T. 

And I totally love the dress! It's not without it's issues which had nothing to do with the pattern, it was all me. My zipper install looks like some sorta botched plastic surgery which really ain't no thang if I wear the belt. AND I prolly shoulda made a muslin (haha, as if. My laziness knows no bounds, y'all) cuz the back is a lil gappy. Of course, who's gonna notice that when you're trimmed in faux fur, riiiiight? Speaking of, sewing that stuff was a barrel of (un)fun. That stuff was flying outta my sewing machine and goin' straight up mah nose. I've had furry boogers all day and I'm almost positive all my coughing is due to the early stages of fur-lung. 

 Oh, but the pockets. I do love them so. I used the striped fabric for those which is all kinds of cuteness, if I do say so. I also love the pocket placement way better than the sewing pattern I usually work with (which I've dubbed "piddlin' pockets"). AND the sleeves were actually a painless install! Hurray! 

To top off this Christmas-masterpiece, I wore these lovely kicks which I found on ebay (can you believe I was the ONLY bidder?! Wait, don't answer that). The kids thought they were the best thing ever even if I felt like Hooker Claus in 'em all day long. My feet are  not happy but, hey, it was worth it. 

And there you have it! A new Christmas dress just in time for the holidazzzze. 

Good luck on today's giveaway, friends! I'll announce the winner and what's up for grabbies tomorrow. Until then!

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DIY: Christmas Tablecloth to Skirt AND Gold Dotted Boots!

Is it really any wonder that all the poor Christmas trees in my house are sans skirts?! I've just about robbed all of 'em for my current skirt-making craze! Poor naked trees. 

Well {sniff}, I hate to say it but {wiping away tears}, this just might be the last of the Christmas outfits I create this season {uncontrollable sobbing, obnoxious nose blowing}. Which is probably a good thing because, let's be honest, I just...

 Can't-Stop-Christmas-izing-My-Wardrobe.

(we can't stop; we won't stop...you know that's what Miley was singin bout ya'll.)

 It's become a sickness, kids. And it's probably for the best that the Big Day is almost here so that the Christmas-ize-ing comes to an end (huh, Christmas-ize sounds a whole lot like Jazzercise which means that I'm probably burning calories and perfecting my jazz-hands all whilst crafting away. I knew there was a health benefit in there somewheres!)

Now you may recall that this is not my first time down Christmas Skirt lane. After transforming this tree skirt to a lady skirt, I decided to give this lovely table cloth a new life. I scored it on ebay (can you believe I was the only bidder?! Wait...don't answer that) after having fallen in love with all of it's felt-y cuteness.

I mean, can I get an "aww" here? When Dasher's not running out in front of our (now demolished) car, he's prancing through the woods (wait, would that make this deer Prancer? Because he looks just like Dasher, Dancer and/or Blitzen. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL 'EM APART?! At least Rudolph's got his red nose and Vixen's got her vixen-y ways. It's called bein' different, deers. Ya'll outta try it).

Okay, where was I?

Oh, yeah, I totes loved all of the woodland scenes on this table cloth. It's what made my finger twitch and hit the Click to Buy button.

However, what I WASN'T prepared for was creeper-face Santa Claus! Holy Candy Canes, ya'll! Looks like Super Paranoid Claus to me. Using my amazing felted-Santa-mind-reading-skillz, here's what I've deduced Santa is thinking:

I wonder if anyone will notice I stole Rudolph's nose?

That sales lady at JCPenny's said vertical stripes were slimming...but I'm not so sure.

Oh, Fruitcakes! My suspender just broke! If these pants fall down then EVERYONE will know I wear women's panties!

That sales lady was right, Mom Jeans aren't just for moms. I look HAWT...or do I?!

I wonder if anyone will notice I stole a baby polar bear and strapped it to my chin.

(Okay, I seriously think I could do this for hours. For your sake [and Santa's], I'll stop.)

I went about creating this skirt the exact same way I did the tree-skirt-to-lady-skirt. I simply placed my circle skirt pattern over the twice-folded table cloth and (loosely) followed the pattern directions. I'm not trying to be vague with my directions here...it's just that there's probably a much better way to go about doing this. I'm a crappy teacher. Just don't tell my students. Oh, wait, they know that already. Don't tell their parents.

You'll notice that Santa is no where to be found on the front of this skirt. I strategically placed that dude on my back side (he's on the other side of the log cabin taking a leak). 

Now! Let's chat about my other DIY in this here post: My Gold Dotted Boots!

Please don't look too closely, these babies are a hawt mess. And totally responsible for my two new gray hairs.

I began with these ankle boots I scored on Black Friday for a mere $10. I already have a black, brown and embroidered pair of ankle boots so I picked these up with the sole intent of DIY'ing them. By the way, this is off topic (like everything else here) but hubs seems to think that ankle boots are the ugliest thing known to man. It's his belief that instead of birth control, women could simply don a pair of these bad boys. I'm pretty sure he feels about these the way I feel about dudes in skinny shorts.

But! This post isn't about birth control and skinny shorts (...or is it?). Back to the DIY at hand. I started by sketching in my dots in chalk. I used the same Gold Leafing Kit that I used on this DIY. You simply paint on the adhesive and let it sit up and become tacky. "Sit up and become tacky"...that sounds like my morning routine!

Then you place the gold leafing sheet on top and rub. The deal is it's supposed to stick to the adhesive.

Which, as you can see, doesn't always work out that way. Now, I'm kinda of a mess but when it comes to my crafting, I like it to be pretty perfect-ish. And this here drove me absolutely nuts(-er). For many of the dots, I had to go back, add adhesive where the leafing didn't take and try again. In the end, I cheated a little by painting in some of the dots...and others, I just decided to let it go. From a distance, they look pretty good. Close up, I like to pretend they appear "antiqued".

I chatted in a blog post last year about my DIY Christmas decor. Read mo' here.

To finish the boots off, I'd been looking all over the place for boot toppers. Turns out you can simply turn your leg warmers inside out, fold 'em down a coupla times and, viola!, you have boot toppers!

A word about my ridiculous head piece. I found it at JoAnn's last year on the super duper after Christmas clearance rack. I added the two smaller green trees...but I still had several kids tell me, "You look like a Christmas Unicorn!" 

Kids, thank you so much for dropping by! PLEASE don't forget to click to vote for your favorite pick-up line on the right side of this post. I'll announce the winner by the end of this week!

I doubt I'll chat with you again until after the Christmas so I hope you have a merry one! Beware of the Creeper Santa and the Christmas Unicorn!

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DIY: Tree Skirt to Lady Skirt in 60 Minutes or Less

This year, we started a weekly sewing group at my school which is strictly Adults Only. As soon as the kids are piled onto the bus and sent on their merry way, we clear the tables of art-making shrapnel (because, let's face it, it always looks like a craft store exploded in my art room), bust out the ironing board and sewing machines, mix ourselves a coupla drinks (coffee, that is) and set to work. Most of the lovely ladies that attend have little sewing experience which makes me their (completely inadequate) leader. Frightening thought, no?

Now what I love about this group is that they are fearless. When we first began, we all tackled the same project: A Reversible Waist Apron. Once that (first time for many) project was finished, these sewing rockstars were ready to tackle anything! So far they've created such sewing wonders as more aprons, a stocking, baby clothes, grown people clothes, etc. You name it, they're gonna make it. 

So when one of them shared a pinterest pic of a tree skirt gone lady skirt, there was a collective "Eeeee! Let's make one!"

The vintage pattern I used was Simplicity...and it might have been a little too simplistic for my taste. You see that wee gap at the back of the waistband? Totally not addressed in the pattern. No add a button, stitch in a hook and eye, staple together, none of that! I'm thinking of adding a hook and eye...but for now the prob was solved with a black belt-addage.

Since I'd be helping these ladies along (and because I was SUPER excited about this idea), I decided to get a jump start on my tree skirt makin' and trouble shoot the making of such. First step: Finding the Perfect Tree Skirt. I knew I wanted it cheap and vintage (exactly how I like my wine) and a quick trip down etsy/ebay lane lead to the click-to-buy purchases of this little lovely and that denim number a coupla photos down.

When I blabbed about it on Facebook, several buddies reminded me of this episode of Designing Women where Bernice dons a tree skirt and the following goes down:

Mary Jo: Bernice, why are you wearing your Christmas tree skirt?
Bernice: Well, this is the skirt you gave me for Christmas.
Mary Jo: Yes, I know. It's not to wear. It's a Christmas tree skirt. You're supposed to put it around the base of your Christmas tree.
Bernice: Oh! Well, no wonder. I like to never got this thing on. I finally just let the waist out and tied it with a belt.

And that's TOTALLY what I did! 

(P.S. Should Mary Jo REALLY be throwing stones when she's wearing shoulder pads AS BIG AS HER HEAD?! Me thinks not.)

But before we get into all that, lemme just tell you that this skirt is huge. Add a crinoline underneath and it's huge-er. So much so that one 2nd grader inquired, "What's under that thing that makes it so poofy!?" At one point my wide-poofy-ness totally swallowed one kindergartener and knocked down two others. AND at bus duty, the whole skirt decided to blow STRAIGHT UP in the air. Thankfully, nobody saw that happen...or so I thought until a dad walked up behind me and said, "Be careful of that wind!"

Doggone poofyness.

So, just how does one go about turning a tree skirt into a big a$$ poofy lady skirt in 60 minutes? Well, get yo'self a tree skirt. There are some cute ones at Kohl's, Marshall's, TJMaxx, yo mama's house, you name it. If you shop online, make sure that you check the diameter of the skirt. I chose ones that were between 45-50". 

STILL can't find one? Dang, you are picky. Use a cute round tablecloth! 

Then, if you can get your kitten mittens on a circle skirt pattern, that might make your life easier, but it's not necessary. Measure your waist (always a pleasure) and create a paper circle that has the same diameter. With that, simply open your skirt (or tablecloth), center the circle and cut it out. From the circle, decide where you want the back to be (or side if you want to have a side zip) and cut down 9". Then, try on the skirt and make sure your hips can fit comfortably through the opening. If so, let's move on! If not, cut a little more until they do.

Circle skirt pattern friends, you got it made. Add the pattern to your skirt and cut. Here I am cutting the waist of the skirt to size. You can see the original tree skirt opening above my pattern.

Now my skirt was not open at all, as some tree skirts are, it simply had a hole in the center. So I proceeded to cut all the way from the opening to the bottom of the skirt. Which was super stupid. I shoulda just cut that length of the zipper. Sometimes my brain is off. Since I had cut to the bottom, I followed the directions above. I trust you can read 'em cuz I'm too lazy to type. Been a long bossing-children-around kind of day.

When it comes to adding zippers, I ALWAYS use this Scotch Tape trick. You can read the details here (again, too lame to move fingers around the keyboard for you). Once that little detail was complete, I created and attached the waistband. 

To create the waistband patternless, you'll need to cut a piece of fabric (I used denim because it was thicker and stronger than cotton and could handle the weight of my skirt. Because she's a heavy b%tch). The fabric should be 4" longer than the waist of your skirt and about 4" in height. Attach that to your waistband with right sides together and stitch. Once attached, fold waistband up and iron. Now, fold waistband in half lengthwise, tuck a 1/2" under and sew a topstitch across the waist. Those extra 2" on each side? Tuck them on the inside of the skirt and topstitch the crap outta 'em. 

Wow. Awesome directions. Do you see why I kinda feel sorry for those ladies in the sewing group?

Yayness! One Tacky Tree Skirt complete, one to go! Which is after I said, "no more Christmas clothes!"...meanwhile there's a felted sweater in the works and a dress on my cuttin' table. I've got Christmas-itis in a bad bad way.

Later, kids!

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