BTB - Christmas Dolly

It's before the blog - Christmas edition!  (Previous installment here.)

Every baby girl needs a look-alike dolly.  This past Christmas my baby girl got hers.

I pinned a few dolls I liked, drew up a plan/pattern, picked my fabrics and there you go.

The main dress was a fat quarter I got at Joanns a while back.  The underskirt and tights are a favorite polka dot print I also used here.  I used a double layer of knit fabric for the hair and shoes instead of felt (I was trying to avoid pilling).

A lovey for my lovey.

BTB - Grandma Jacket

I have a few things I made before I started blogging that I am proud of - and they deserve posts, too.  So here is the first edition of Before The Blog (aka BTB)!

I made this upcycled jacket/cardigan last spring...and was CRAZY excited to put it on her a couple of weeks ago and see that it still fits!

It has been established by now that I come from a family of enablers, constantly showing up with bags and boxes of fabric and clothing to feed my habits.  This particular fabric was a bathrobe from my grandmother.  The outside was the floral, and the reverse was the polka dot.  The safe choice would have been the dots, but I decided to challenge myself to make the grandma floral modern (or at least retro?) with shape and style.

I think I was pretty successful - obvious by my enthusiasm for the garment expressed at that top of this post. However, when my husband first saw it and I refused to tell him the source of the fabric...he said, and I quote, "I don't know what you made it out of but it looks like something your grandmother would wear."  Whatever.  He is literally a t-shirt and jeans guy.  Not primarily - (almost) EXCLUSIVELY.  His opinion can only count for so much, right?

 So here it is in action, and the annual boat parade a few weeks ago.

(Those sailboats weren't on parade - they're at the marina.  The parade happened after dark - boats decorated with crazy Christmas lights sail down to the mouth of the river and then back up.  Just for clarification.  I don't have any pictures of that because I was busy keeping my kids on the dock and out of the water!)