DIY girls skirt

A few years ago, I made my oldest daughter a 4th of July pillowcase dress. The pillowcase dress now fits my youngest so I wanted to make my oldest a simple 4th of July skirt. I still had fabric left over from the pillowcase dress and I knew both my girls would love to match. Here is the tutorial I used as an outline on how to sew this super easy skirt. Dana Made it:  DIY girls skirt Tutorial 

           

    

First you need to take your measurements.

 

Measure the waist

Measure your child’s waist. My child’s waist measured about 24.5 so I rounded up to 25. Take that number and multiply it by 1.5. If you want a fuller skirt, multiply it by 2.

Your measurements : (Child’s waist )X (1.5) = Width of material

My Measurements: (25) X (1.5)=37.5

 

Measure the Length

Measure the length you want the skirt to be. I measured from waist to knees.  Then add 2 inches.

Your Measurements: (Length of skirt) + 2 = Length of material

My Measurements: (12)+ (2)= 14

 

Elastic

The length of the elastic should be about 1/2 shorter that the measurement for the waist. When you overlap the elastic and sew it, the elastic will be about 1 in- 1.5 in. This will all depend on how much you overlap. You want the elastic to be smaller than their waist so it stay up. I originally cut the elastic 1 inch more than the waist measurement. I sewed the elastic together and before closing up the waist, I had my daughter try on the skirt. It was too loose. So I had to rip the seam, cut off some of the elastic, and sew back together.

Your Measurement: (Child’s Waist) – (0.5)= Length of Elastic

My Measurement: (25)-(0.5)=24.5 inches

 

Cut Fabric

Using the measurements, cut out your fabric of choice.

Iron waist and hem

Ironing Waist

From the top of the fabric where the waist will be, fold the fabric in 0.5 in. Make sure you are folding the fabric from the outside (the part of the fabric you want to show) to the inside of the skirt (part of the fabric that will not show). Now iron.

Now fold the fabric  over 1 in again. Make sure to keep the first fold inside the second as you iron. If you were to completely unfold both folds it should total to 1.5 inches.

 

Ironing Hem

The method for the hem is the same concept as ironing the waist. Fold the raw edge from the outside to inside. The first fold will measure 0.25 in. Iron.

Fold fabric over 0.25 in making sure to keep the first fold inside the 2nd fold. Iron. If you completely unfold both folds, it should total 0.5 in.

 

Begin sewing

Sew Inseam

Take your fabric and fold it in half  with the outside facing in. Match the two inseams up. This seam will run the length of the skirt (from waist to hem). Unfold where you ironed the waist and the hem before you sew. You can use pins to hold the fabric in place while you sew. Before you begin sewing, Sew about 0.5 inch into the fabric. I used the guidelines on my sewing machine to sew. *** At the beginning and end of each straight stitch, you will need to back stitch. This will keep the thread from coming undone.

 

Sew Hem

Take the fabric and fold the bottom (hem) to the inside of the skirt. This is where you previously ironed the hem. You should be able to clearly see the crease from where you ironed. The fabric will probably want to turn inside. Make sure you have both creases in. You do not want the raw edge to show. Now sew a straight stitch making sure to keep the raw fabric on the inside of the crease.

 

Sew Waist

Fold the fabric in using the creases as a guideline. Measure approximately 2 in (this doesn’t have to be exact) and mark them with pins. The pins will tell you when to start and stop sewing. You will need to leave a gap so you can feed your elastic into the waist. Make sure not to sew over the pins. I have been told you can sew over them but I have bent my pins doing this and my sewing machine didn’t seem to like it either.

Feed elastic and sew the elastic

Place large safety pins on each end of the elastic. The safety pins will help you feed the elastic into the waist. I just recently learned the tip to use one on each end. I was glad I tried it because as I was trying to adjust the elastic, the back end slipped in the fabric. Normally, I would have to re-feed the elastic back through.

Pull both ends of the  elastic out of the waist so you can get them under your pressure foot.  Remove the safety pins. Overlap the ends about 3/4 in and place under pressure foot. I used a zig zag stitch to hold the elastic. Sew forward and then backwards a couple of times. Now, pull on the waist so that the elastic disappears in the waist.

Now you can close up the gap. Sew the gap that you left open for the elastic.

Hope you find this helpful! If you use this tutorial, please share your creations!

 

 

Church Busy Bag

Church Busy Bag- How to keep your toddler busy in church

 

Keeping a toddler quiet in church can often be a challenge to the new mom or the experienced mom. The best way that I have to keep my toddler quiet in church is by having a “busy bag.” I use the diaper bag as the “busy bag.” One thing to always keep in mind is sometimes, you will have to pull them back to the nursery. Even the most well behaved children will have their moments.

Also remember, some of this comes with experience. If your family has just recently began attending church, being still might be a challenge at first. It is a learning process and they will get the hang of being quiet in church eventually. Try not to get too frustrated with it at first. Most other adults who have young children or older children completely understand. Trust me, when I see a mom struggling with her children and eventually head back to the nursery, I don’t think twice about it. I have been there and I understand so try not to be too hard on yourself!

Here a list on how to keep your toddler quiet in church.

•  Snacks. Sometimes the best way to keep them quiet is to give them something to keep their mouth busy. Cheerios, fruit loops, goldfish, dried fruit, raisins, animal crackers, or whatever kind of  dry snack your child enjoys.  My favorite way to bring some of these snacks are in the Munchkin snack catchers. I bought mine at Wal-Mart. I’ve seen them at Target, Heb, and other retailers but you can also follow the link above to purchase them from Amazon. These are great, inexpensive, and reusable. Toddlers often dump things, knock things off, and are even known to throw things (sometimes at the head of the person sitting in the pew in front of you!) The rubber top keeps things from spilling out if it is accidentally dropped but the rubber is made where they can easily stick their hand in to grab their snack. These also work great for snacks in the car. I also like them because they do not make racket like plastic wrappers and plastic baggies.

• Coloring books. To some this might be an obvious choice. I have coloring books that are not used unless we are in church. To my toddler, these are special coloring books. They can only color in them during church. I also have a separate set of crayons that are always stashed in the bag as well. Kids also love the Twistable Crayons. You could even keep the special crayons in the bag as well.

• Pen and notepad. My daughter loves to doodle in church and at home. She prefers a pen. I don’t know why this one works but it does. It could be because mommy and daddy use pens so she wants to be like us or that she is not allowed to have a pen all the time. She used to write on the couches, walls, toilet seat cover (yes, I have ink marks on the toilet seat cover that I can not get off for the life of me), and whatever else she could find. So she was on a no pen policy for a while. My oldest also enjoys drawing. The picture below is her picture of a butterfly.

• Imagine Ink Books. Kids love these things. There is one marker that only works on the Imagine Ink Book. The kids can color wherever and the colors begin to appear. They come with different characters such as Mickey, Disney Princesses, Hello Kitty, Planes, Thomas the Train and other popular characters. Another member of the church gave my children these and they LOVE them. You can pick them up at Family Dollar for $3. You can also buy the Imagine Ink Books at Amazon but they are more.

• Foam puzzles Don’t underestimate the foam puzzles. Both my daughters love foam puzzles. The simpler ones like the 123 foam puzzle my toddler enjoys and my 6 year old has used the United States and an elephant that is the alphabet. You can find them at Dollar Tree, and Staples carries them at the beginning of the school year for $1! I have purchased the anatomy, brain, digestive system, and more complicated puzzles for home school from Staples to use later on down the road. You can get these online but they are anywhere from $4-$9 which seems to be overpriced when I paid a mere buck for them locally. I keep the pieces in a ziplock baggy when I store them in the diaper bag so we don’t lose the pieces. My toddler also likes to put it together, take the pieces out and put them back in the baggy, and do it all over again. Sometimes she stands in the floor with the puzzle on the pew and sometimes we pull down the bible table (I’m not sure what the correct term is but they have built in tables  to hold your bible or song book in the pew in front of ours that folds down when not in use).

• Quiet Books If you browse Pinterest for activities for toddlers, you have probably came across quiet books. They are basically books made out of felt fabric. You can make your own or buy them from Etsy. The Quiet Book Blog has templates so you can make your own quiet book.  Pinterest also has many quiet book ideas.

• Stickers Such a simple idea but kids love stickers.

 

• Felt Food I made a simple bag of chips, sandwich, Swiss cake roll (I forgot to include the roll in the picture) and a lunch bag out of felt to put in the busy bag. They are pretty simple and cheap to make. There are TONS of different kind of felt foods on pinterest. Here is just one board on Pinterest that is loaded with different tutorials for felt food; Make!~Felt Food on Pinterest. I have seen pizza with all the toppings, cherry pie slices, pancakes, eggs, bacon, you name it. The sky is the limit with felt foods. If your not the DIY kind of person, Melissa & Doug sell some felt food. Here are some links on Amazon to felt food; Melissa & Doug Felt Food Sandwhich Set, Melissa & Dough Pizza Set, Melissa & Dough Burrito and Taco Set
• Ask other moms Moms have a knack for finding clever ways to keep their children busy. Sometimes, kids find fascination with normal day objects. When I was little, I would sit with another member of the church. She had this calculator but this wasn’t any calculator. The buttons looked like jewels! LOL For whatever reason, I LOVED this calculator. I still to this day remember that calculator and so does the member. She loves to tell the story of how my mom was about to her wits end of trying to keep me busy so she started keeping me during church and I would be a little angel with her lol. I sat with her until her son had a terrible football accident that left him paralyzed from neck down. One day, my daughter scooted down to a member in church and found a fascination with her mirror. I tried to buy a mirror from the dollar store which worked for a little while but obviously the mirror I bought wasn’t as cool as hers. lol

That is my list of goodies that I use to keep my toddler busy during church.

How do you keep your toddler busy during church? What are your tricks of the trade? 

How to get gum out of hair in 5 minutes

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I think every mom has been in the predicament where their child has got gum stuck in their hair. It is never just slightly stuck, they have an act for really getting in there good. I have used the peanut butter method and I’m not a big fan. After you get the gum out, you then have to get the peanut butter out. The reason the peanut butter method works is due to the oil in the peanut butter. So here it the simple solution on how to get gum out of hair. Coconut oil. Yes the wonderful coconut oil. Among the MANY uses of coconut, here is another one!

Last Sunday, my daughter came to me with a big wad of gum stuck in her hair. We had about 20 minutes before we had to get ready to go to the church. I very quickly googled how to get the gum out of her hair. I didn’t want to use peanut butter and I definitely didn’t want to cut her hair. I didn’t know if the coconut oil would work. I went ahead and took before pictures so I could share the results with ya’ll.

I buy the vitacost organic coconut oil. Vitacost is always having sales. I have the 54 fl oz that I purchased for $15 when it was on sale. Regularly it is $21.99. At my local grocery store, the 16 oz jar of coconut oil (non organic) is about $9-10. Since I had coconut oil on hand, I figured I would give it a shot.

Here is the before:

 

 

Sorry the pictures are blurry. She was wiggling when I was trying to snap a photo.

Not quite 5 minutes later, here is what her hair looked like.

The second picture, you can see me pulling the strands of hair where the gum was. As you can see, there is no remains left. I was amazed at how easy and effective this was.

The Process

The process is easy and quick. All I did was get a little bit of coconut oil on fingertips and began working it into the gum. You should start seeing the gum start to separate from the hair and then you can slide the gum out. I got the majority out of her hair the first time I tried to slide it out but there was small remains of the gum left behind. For the remaining pieces, get a paper towel or an unpaper towel and wrap it over the gum. Slide the paper towel or unpaper towel down to ends. Keep doing this until all the gum is out. It actually took me under 5 minutes to get all the gum out and there was no struggling.

Next time, I will try using a paper towel from the beginning. I normally try to use unpaper towels but I wanted to be able to just toss it into the trash. I didn’t know if the gum would adhere to the unpaper towel so this might be something to keep in mind when choosing between a paper towl or unpaper towel.

Just a note, coconut oil is very good for the hair but a little bit goes a long way! If you glob a lot of coconut oil onto the hair, it can make it appear greasy. I have very thick, long hair and with other products, I have to use quiet a bit of product on my hair. But not with coconut oil! I use coconut oil (just a tiny bit) rubbed over my hair. It helps tame the frizz and nourishes the hair.

So there you have it. Easy, quick, and effective!

 There you have it! Hope this helps! What are your thoughts? Have you tried this method? How did it work for you?