The Family Reunion Dress

Can I put pictures of a wrinkly dress on my blog? I know a few bloggers who would think not, but frankly I want nothing more than true to life on this blog. P LOVES this dress and wore it all day. I suppose I could get it off her tonight, iron it up and take some more "professional looking" pictures of it, but with the joys of summertime and the kids home from school...I just don't have the time or energy.

And I think she looks beautiful in it.



The style of the dress and the weight of the fabric is prefect for summer. It's like muslin with adorable little poodles and dots that looked "stamped" on to the fabric.



I dug through my button jar and chose mismatched buttons for the back. I thought it looked cute that way and saved me a few dollars (and a trip to the store with all 3 kids... priceless!)



The pattern is The Family Reunion Dress by Oliver + S. I was so thankful to have found this Family Reunion Dress sew along! There was a couple spots in the pattern that had me stumped, but the pictures and extra discriptions helped me out a bunch.

My New Couch

I was so excited when I saw this super cool pillow on Cluck Cluck Sew last week! She calls it a sprocket pillow. I've been looking for just the right pillows to go on our new couches. I didn't like anything I saw in the stores and I didn't want them to clash with all the quilts I have hanging in our home. But these pillows look perfect, because they already look so much like a quilt!



Check out her tutorial for how to make this fun and surprisingly easy pillow!

And I thought in case you were wondering about my other, slightly less cool, but fairly cute pillow, I'd show you how I made that one as well...

I used some scraps I had left over from a quilt I made awhile back, but a charm pack would be perfect (love those charm packs!) Sew a collection of 5" squares together...


Create a little template that looks something like this...



Use your template to cut a bunch of pieces out of white (or in my case Kona Snow) fabric. Enough to have a piece on each seam...



Using a 1/4 inch seam top stitch those down, leaving your edges raw...



Add cute buttons to the corners where they meet. Cut out a back to your pillow, stitch all the way around, leaving a whole to turn, and then WASH your finished pillow cover. Your edges will fray and look super soft and cute. After you washed and dried, then stuff and sew up your hole.



Thank you Cluck Cluck Sew for my adorable new pillow, it was just what I was looking for! She mentioned you wouldn't be able to sew just one, and she's right! I've started making a couple for my girls. They reminded them of Little Miss Muffet's Tuffet!

yo yo's

A few weeks back I talked about how we exchange gifts at work for our company party. Here is what one of my sweet and very talented co-workers made for me this year. Aren't they just adorable? I don't know how she made such a perfectly tiny little yo yo!



My favorite use for them so far... bookmarks!



If you would like to learn to make a yo yo, Heather Bailey has a fantastic tutorial HERE!

Button Bracelets

Just a real quick idea and then I'm off to take P to her little cheer leading class. I've seen button bracelets before and lengthy tutorials on how to make them (not to mention costly ones for sale), but I just grabbed some stretchy cord and strung a variety of different sized buttons on it for a really quick and cute project. Best part... if I want to reuse my buttons later on, I can easily snip the cord and have my precious buttons back.

I Bought my stretchy cord at Walmart for a couple bucks. Every time I wear a button bracelet I get so many compliments and everyone wants to know how I made it. I think it would make a great children's craft too. I bet a bunch of 6 year old wanna be cheerleaders would love it!