Portabello Pixie Part 2 or Shirring Madness

After my good experience with Portabello Pixies' Apron Dress from their Claire pattern, I decided to try another view from the same pattern-- an innocent and simple looking peasant dress. Before I knew what I'd gotten my self into, I discovered the instructions called for SHIRRING and it was too late to turn back. I've NEVER done shirring before, but have seen posts about it on some of the blogs I follow. It always seemed a little intimidating and now I know why! The actual technique on paper is fairly straightforward, but putting it into action proved a little more tricky. Tutorials I found online were helpful, but my machine was... not so much. After days, that's right, days of fiddling around with bobbin tension and different elastic threads and thread tension and stitch length and my beloved ironing board dying, I finished the dress. Hooray! Even with the trouble I had getting the shirring to come out right on my Brother machine, I still really enjoyed the process and think the finished product is really neat.

I did alter the pattern a bit. It called for a ruffle along the bottom, which I left off and for multiple rows of shirring around the waist. I decided to just do one row partially because of the trouble I was having getting the shirring to work right and partially because I thought it would be over kill on that small bodice.
The fabric I used is from Amy Butler's Daisy Chain line.

Portabello Pixie Dress In Action

This is Lucy's favorite thing I've made her this summer. She begged to wear it to school. I love how well it washes and how easy it is for her to wear-- no buttons or zippers! I think this pattern is a winner all around.

Baby Shoez

These cloth baby shoes are constructed like "Robeez" leather shoes. It is fun to see what you can do with scraps of fabric in contrasting colors. My very pregnant daughter-in-law, Candice, and I had fun trying out this free pattern. The yellow lining is a bottom weight fabric and was too thick and hard to work with, so I will stick to lighter weight cotton fabrics next time.

Sugar Cookies with Henry

With Lucy away at school for most of the day, Henry and I have had some long over due alone time. We made cookies as an after school surprise for L. Even though Henry ate half the dough, we still had plenty of cookies to go around. This is a great sugar cookie recipe, a little different from Mom's. Hope you like it!

Henry's Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter (2 sticks), at room temp*
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, at room temp
3 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour, + more for rolling out the dough

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cream butter and sugar together in a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla. Slowly mix in baking soda, salt and flour on a low speed until combined. Turn out dough on floured surface. Roll out evenly with floured rolling pin until it is about 1/4"-1/8" thick. Cut into desired shapes. Place on cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until edges are golden. Cool cookies on a wired rack and frost to your liking. Makes approx. 4 dozen. *Note, if your butter is not a room temperature, place both sticks in the microwave for 45-60 seconds on the defrost setting.

cooling

tasting

sprinkling

voila!

1st Day of 2nd Grade

After my not so successful experiment making a t-shirt dress, I went to Target and found this one for only $3.74. SCORE! So, Lucy was excited to wear it for her first day.


It matched her back to school manicure perfectly-- an added a bonus! You can read more about there here, if you'd like. It's always nice when you can mooch off of a better writer's skills for you blog-- thanks K! :)

She found out that her best friend is in her class-- not only in her class but sitting next to her, lucky girl! Actually, there are three kids in Lucy's grade (including L) who go to our church and they are all in the same class. Kind of neat!