Dino Dress Up

 

I fell in love with these pins last year: Dino Tail and Dino Hoodie

I really wanted to make these for Cooper last year for Halloween and after reading the Tail Tutorial it seemed doable. It is always interesting when I pull out the sewing machine but once the spikes were sewn it really wasn't too bad. Mine definitely don't look as nice but it works. I made a few changes in mine. For the tail I used an elastic waist band and made it scrunchy style (I became somewhat of an expert scrunchy maker during my high school sewing classes). I attached the kind of clasp they use on dress pants, I don't know what it is called but I used a couple different hooks to clasp it to so that he can wear it for a few years. For the Hoodie I was not very confident in my patience for hand stitching so I make a set of spikes like I did for the tail, I cut the hoodie in half and I just sewed it all together, it doesn't look near as nice but it worked. Maybe in the future I will make a better one and when I do I am going to use a stiffer felt or fabric for the spikes or I am going to stuff them with batting so they stand up more.

 I hot glued on some eyes for Halloween but I peeled them off afterwards so that he could wear the hoodie on a more day to day basis because I thought it was so cute and call me crazy but I like to see kids dressed up as part animals on a day to day basis, it adorable.

 This is nearly a year later and Cooper still loves the dino outfit, maybe I can starch the spikes...

 

This is how it looked after I cut it in half and sewed it back together, my sewing skills are embarrassing but no one really sees this part anyways...

On a difficulty scale of 1-10 I would give it a 7. Anytime I have to pull out the sewing machine it automatically  adds a few difficulty points because I just don't sew very well, however the tutorial are amazing and made it fairly easy, especially if you love to sew (I'm guessing).



Ruffle Curtains

The pin that inspired these curtains is here- Ruffle Curtain

I thought these curtains were so cute, but I don't sew very well unless its a straight line, and even then my machine often gets possessed. But I really wanted to try these and after reading the tutorial it seemed like sewing straight lines is all I needed to do for the most part. This blog has a great tutorial but I did mine a little differently because I sewed the ruffles onto some curtains that I already had so that they would block out more light for the nursery. I used twin sheets and cut them into 8 11inch strips just like the tutorial said, but I needed one more ruffle for each panel so I needed to get a 3rd sheet. It was hard to line up the ruffles at first so I started at the top, measured for a one inch overlap and drew a line on the back curtain so I knew just where to pin the next ruffle. I LOOOVVEE how they turned out but man they were a big project. The actual sewing was not tricky as long as the sewing machine behaved, but I am not very good with sewing. I do not understand how in 2 seconds the entire bobbin of thread can be knotted up on the bottom of the curtain. Sometimes I turn into a sailor mouth when I sew. But it was worth it. I will say the trickiest part was lining up the ruffles on the second panel. Also when I was all done the ruffles sometimes they flipped up and revealed the grey curtain underneath so I sewed all the ruffled down on the outer edges and I am happy I did that.

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On a tricky scale of 1-10 I give these a 9.5 for uber tricky if you find that you and your sewing machine are often enemies. BUT if you know how to sweet talk your machine they will probably end up being a a fairly easy, yet tedious, project.