Skirt Week 2011 Prizes: More Reasons to Make Skirts

Skirts can be so simple. Or rather elaborate. Or somewhere in the middle. If you've never tried, now is THE time. And if you're an accomplished seamstress, then this is your push to try something new. Whichever you are, you're not only going for the pride of accomplishment, you might take home some seriously fun loot. All eight winners-- one judge's choice and one reader's choice for each of the four categories-- will receive:

$25 from Twill Tape Guy at TwillTape.com. We had such a fun time with Twill Tape Week last year and Twill Tape Guy was responsible for loading us up with the supplies to make it happen. Our four Reader's Choice and four Judge's Choice winners will each get $25 for the twill tape rolls or custom printed tape they choose.

The tutorial of your choice from Birdsongs & Bows. The shop is chock full of complete how-tos for all sorts of bows accessories and the lovely floofy number pictured above. I hope it comes with a guarantee that your kid will wink JUST like that. Check out her shop for the other photos of this tutu. Aaahdorable, all of 'em.

2 ebooks of your choice from Whimsy Couture. In addition to the Scrappy Twirl Skirt, Denise has bloomers, pants, dresses tops... plenty of things to keep you busy and outfitted.

The Sunny Day Dress & Skirt, from the talented Jamie Christina.  Two patterns for the price of one! (in this case, free)

The two newest patterns from Sew Liberated -- the Aurelia Cardigan and the Mariposa Tee. Perfect to complement the new skirts you'll be sporting.

$20 to spend on the fabric of your choice at Hawthorne Threads. With all of the patterns now at your disposal, and twill tape available for trim and embellishment-- you'll have a hard time choosing what to start with. May we suggest Coreopsis in Raspberry?

The pattern of your choice from Fishsticks Designs. Maybe the Sammi Grace Bag? It'd look great in just about any fabric. With or without embellishment. Perfect to carry all of your other loot around in?

The four Judge's Choice winners will also get a $20 gift certificate for Little Lizard King Patterns, where you'll have to choose between a whole lot of cuteness. We envy your decision-making opportunity. Perhaps an Apron-Front Skirt?

 

 The four Reader's Choice winners will receive $25 in credit to shop the treasures of Above All Fabric. Melanie has a bazillion fabrics and patterns to choose from. Maybe more than a bazillion. And Girl in a Tree - Pink Lemonade is the place to start, as far as we're concerned.

We're big fans of all of Rae's patterns, but especially of her Big Butt Baby Pants. Rae is offering the four Judge's Choice winners each the pattern of their choice. You might prefer the Charlie Tunic? Up to you, Judge's Choice Winner.

Each of the children's category winners will also receive three patterns from Patterns By Figgy's-- the Bubble Skirt, the Jane Dress and the Ofelia Dress. The kids pictured are not included. A shame, really. They all look like they'd get along swimmingly with our girls. The cuteness factor of the clothes themselves will help you get over it.

So there you have it. By our calculations, a total of over $1,000 in loot to be won with a needle and thread. Plenty o' prizes to give you that extra bit of motivation to get sewing and get your skirt entered. You can find the flickr pool links on the upper right sidebar of our homepage, and you can refer here for more information about Skirt Week. And then get back to work!

Long Sleeves to Short in Ten Minutes or Less

K has this shirt. It's just an Old Navy tee with long sleeves. She loves it and was set on wearing it outside one morning when the forecast was for sun and 90 degrees. I said "how about we make it short sleeved?" She blinked for a moment and smiled. "Oooooh-kaaaay!"

So here's what we started with. K doing the slow-exhalation-when-will-my-shirt-be-done thing.

I hacked the sleeves shorter. A little longer than I'll need in the finished product, but I needed something to hold on to as I pull this under the presser foot. Two strips of 1/4" elastic the length I want the new sleeves to be.

Turn the shirt inside-out. I ironed a crease into the shirt sleeves so that I'd have a line to follow while stitching. You could also use a water soluble pen to mark it. The machine part is kinda impossible to photograph without three hands. Start by tacking the elastic at the starting point and once it's securely attached to the shirt, pull the elastic out to meet the end of the shirt sleeve and hold those together firmly. Stretch stitch down the length of the elastic. You're basically pulling from both directions and also watching to make sure you're not catching any other parts of the shirt in the stitches.

Since K was quite literally breathing down my neck, I didn't bother trying to finish the edges.

I'd been thinking about doing this to a few boxy-sleeved tees of my own. Now I realllly want to do it. So quick to do! It makes winter clearance racks/thrift store winter stuff a little more interesting when it's 90 outside.

Completely unrelated to cute sleeves, we have an update about Skirt Week Prizes. First of all, as far as crafty prizes go, they're pretty awesome. Second of all, we're going to wait until Tuesday to post the sponsors as we still have a few that need to get images to us. Please don't spend all weekend moping. Enjoy your holiday! And when you need a pick-me-up to escape post-holiday-weekend-blues, we'll be all over it.

All Hail... Prince Phillip

A week or two ago I asked K what she'd like to be for her friend Alexa's upcoming princess party. She said "a turtle". I said "That's not a prince or a princess". Her next request? "A karate guy." Nope, K, that's not part of the assigned category. Please select a prince or princess. Expressing no desire at all for an Aurora costume, she chose Prince Phillip. And agreed that in order to receive said costume she'd stay in her own bed alllll night for four nights in a row. It's a negotiation. We each have the capacity to provide something that the other wants, right?

There aren't as many variations on Prince Phillip as there are of Aurora, but there are a few. I chose one without the complicated puffy sleeves, sorta like this:

We used basic knit pants we had on hand. The tunic was built around a thrifted blue adult tee and I added sleeves, a stand-up collar (using craft foam), a belt and belt buckle. As we've seen in all of the other princesswear on crafterhours, because there's nothing scratchy or itchy involved, she's as comfy as if she were wearing pajamas. And it can in fact become pajamas.

The cape is a heavier poly blend knit that didn't require finishing. I sewed snaps in at the neck and tacked on a band of stretchy gold lame to cover the closure.

To make the hat I traced the parts of a ballcap. I made the brim a bit wider, filled it with a piece of craft foam, folded it in on the sides and then rolled and tacked those sides together once I could put it on her head to adjust. I added buttonholes to one side of the hat to accommodate the long red feather that K insisted was critical. It's made from a red pipe cleaner and red crepe streamer that I stitched together and then cut a fringe into.

I feel like I can't fail to admit that it was a little strange to make a "boy" costume for my little girl. Obviously, I got over it. I know, rationally, it's all part of her finding what she likes in life. And if she was all-princess, all the time, that might feel strange to me too. Any hesitation I felt about it disappeared when I saw her face as she saw the finished product.

She liked it so much that negotiation was required. "Yes, you can wear it today, but not until we actually get to the party. Yes, you can wear it to bed but you have to put on clean clothes in the morning. No, you cannot wear it the following day to a train-themed party because that party is not your party to hijack. Yes, you can put it back on after the train party." 

During the party there was a search and rescue mission that she totally rocked, as you can tell.

Since making this costume, there's been discussion of making Prince Eric and/or Sebastian the crab. There's also been discussion of acquiring a horse for Prince Phillip to ride. More negotiations to come.

Unrelatedly, but another thing I can't fail to mention.... Skirt Week sponsors will be announced tomorrow!

All Hail Princess Aurora

If you were a reader around this time last year, you may remember Adrianna's foray into knit princess dresses. She's done Belle and Snow White. She's also done the blue version of Sleeping Beauty from the book but I'm told it'll never see the light of blogworld. Not everything makes the cut.

If you've made a knit princess dress, you know how very awesome it is to put your child in a "dress-up" that has none of the itch and discomfort of the store-bought polyester variety. The kid can run, jump, eat and sleep in it with no complaints whatsoever. No fabric-related heat rash. No swishy fabric sound that gets annoying after the first five minutes. (Umm, maybe I'm the only one that gets annoyed at that? Sometimes I can last about six minutes before I need it to stop.) 

One of K's friends was heading to Disneyworld for the first time earlier this month and had a breakfast date with the princesses. Her mom and I talked about making Sleeping Beauty dresses for both of our girls. Only my girl decided she wanted no part of that. She wanted to be another character-- and I'll post that one later this week.

So little R got her own Aurora dress. Made entirely of super-comfy cotton knit. This is still based on the same pattern that we use often by indietutes. We've used it so often that it's tagged "our favorite pattern" in each post that features it. 

To imitate the pieced bodice look of the original, I just added a bit of width to the bodice and then sewed seams down the center and diagonally on each side. So maybe you can tell which is which here, but R's dress looks waaaaaay comfier, right? There's no way the big girl Aurora could leave the fancy breakfast and head straight to Splash Mountain in HER version.

The shawl-y bit is just tacked at the center front and back and once at each side.

Despite 90 degree forecasts each day, she was ready to trek the parks.

She's really into what she calls "flappy-uppy" skirts. This took some serious consideration to make sure the skirt was satisfactorily "flappy-uppy". Not a bad start to her Disneyworld experience, I think. 

UPDATE: Just for Jess. Here's the collar. Double-click the image to enlarge and make sure your printer is printing it at 100%-- not scaling it. Cut four on fold, sew two sets of two right sides together along the top and bottom, turn right-side-out, sew ends together, flip again. Gather middle a bit, tack in middle front and back and at top edge on each shoulder. Do happy dance. Or clap hands like seal. Your choice.

P.S. Not to be a nag, but have you started your Skirt Week skirt(s) yet? What's the holdup? Get movin'!

Announcing: Skirt Week 2011 with crafterhours!

Skirt Week is back! (Were you reading last year? If not, here's the review.)

Now that you may've had a chance to make some super tops for yourself, you may be ready for a few skirts to complement them. Or maybe you've been eyeing all of the tops wishing you'd thrown your hat into the ring. Or maybe you've not made much for yourself yet because tops look a little complicated (sleeves! yikes!) and you'd like to start with something simple. Skirts can be suuuuuper simple and still succeed brilliantly. Whether you fall into one of these categories or another entirely, here's your chance!

Have you made a skirt since last year's Skirt Week? Or are you ready to dive in now? As soon as you're ready, you can enter up to three skirts per category. Here are the links to enter your skirts. If you have a blog, link to your post about your skirt. If you don't have a blog, you can upload your photo to Flickr or another host and then enter it in the appropriate category. Here are the links to enter your skirts:

Full Skirts

A-line Skirts

Straight Skirts

Children's Skirts

If you're looking for some inspiration to get started, this might help. And starting the week of June 12, we have some fabulous tutorials, skirt ideas and skirt-celebrating articles to share.

During the following week beginning June 19 readers will be able to vote each day on a different category.

As if creating skirts that are you (or your kid) isn't exciting enough, should you be chosen as either the judge's favorite OR the reader's favorite in your category, you'll win PRIZES! Those will be announced later this week. Stay tuned.

Rules:

- Enter NOW! You'll just need to get your skirt (as many as 3 per category) in there by 8 PM Eastern on June 17, 2011.
- One photo submitted per skirt entry. We reserve the right to remove additional photos from the pool
- Skirts must be made for YOU for the straight, A-line or full categories
- Skirt must have been made since July 1, 2010
- Photo should be of the skirt on your body. (Borrow a neighbor! Use the timer!)
- Photo should show the skirt well. A full-body shot may make it difficult to really see your work
- Photo title should include your name and a description of the skirt
- Photo description should include pattern and fabric information as well as a link to your blog, if applicable, where you may show more photos if you like
- Majority of the effort in your skirt(s) must have been made by you, i.e. using thrifted or upcycled fabric is fine as long as you're cutting it apart to start with just fabric
- You are welcome to use any pattern, tutorial, or even knock-off a favorite skirt from a store.  Just give credit where it's due.

We'll update this post as needed as questions arise and we reserve the right to do our darndest to keep things fair and reasonable. Which means that if we've missed something and need to remedy it, it's our right to do that.

That's it for now, prizes will be announced later this week! (There's still time to contribute prizes if  you'd like-- e-mail us!)

P.S. We'd love for you to spread the word! Forward the link to a friend you think might like it, or grab a button! (Copy the html code below the photo and paste it into an "HTML Widget" on your blog)

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Internationally Famous Among Dozens

Crafterhours got the strangest e-mail a few months ago. We get lots of strange e-mails, and we're still waiting on the deposit from a West African bank for helping an heiress access her fortunes-- but this email was from an editor of Simply Homemade magazine, a publication in the UK. Would we answer a few questions so that they could feature us in the magazine? Ummm... YEAH!

So we answered our questions. Why is it that it's hardest to answer questions about yourself? Or in this case, ourselves.  Here we are on page 34. Not even on page 4,931! Not that we'd have really minded that either. ( <--- Please be sure to read that as AYE-thah, not eeeee-thur.)

What might be coolest about the printed product is that our words were edited into British English-- so now we sound fancy-fancy. We're mums with cosy homes!

Also cool-- "meeting" the other bloggers featured with us.  In particular, none other than the very talented (and Adrianna's current favorite) Annela Hoey of Comfort Stitching.  Being in print AND sitting adjacent to the designer whose fabric we've been anticipating since December?  Brilliant.

P.S. You don't really need a reminder to go and vote today, do you? You've probably already done it. Good job.