Well hello friends! It's now noon on Tuesday morning and time to choose a winner for the 2 Hello Kitty purses. Here's how it went down: I numbered each comment left and added in an extra entry for those who shared the link, plus I gave an extra entry to Carolyn who commented on the link on FB. 
So your numbers were:
1-Tarynia
2- Tarynia
3- Diana
4- Chelsea
5- Kristen
6- Misty
7- Misty
8- Carolyn
Then I headed over to random.org and entered my high and low. 6 was the first number it generated and then it picked 2.
MISTY and TARYNIA You two are the new owners of the purses!!! Hope you enjoy them. :)

Now on to another tutorial.
I went back and forth about whether or not I should do another sewing tutorial or a cooking one or a scrapbooking one or a furniture refinishing one. My deciding factor was a visit to pintrest where I saw this dress:

I needed to make it. And I just happened to have a yard of pink knit fabric that I got in the remnant bin for 50% off that I was looking for the perfect pattern for. So you get another sewing tutorial.

First let me tell you, sewing with knit fabric is not for beginners. It is a pain. If you are a beginner sewer, use this tutorial with a cotton fabric. It will still be super cute.  Furthermore, you need to use a ball point needle on your machine when sewing with knits, so using a serger is out, unless you have a wierd fedish for threading those beasts. Luckily knit does not frey so you don't need to finish your edges, a simple straight stitch will do just fine to keep it all together. And lastly, when you are done sewing with your knit fabric don't forget to switch your need back to a standard one. If you don't it will poke large holes in other fabrics and make you stitch tension not good.

Secondly, this is complicated sewing in general. You will be making your own pattern and doing a few tricks that took me a while to ge thte hang of. I don't want you to think I am discouraging you to try it, I am just saying don't run a marathon until you have trained for it.

Okay, now on with the step by step.
To get make a pattern you are going to need a shirt that fits the person you are wanting to make this dress for, one that fits loosely. Turn the shirt inside out and fold it in half so the sleeves are to your right.  Using newspaper, butcher paper or any other paper large enough trace around the body of the shirt and around the seam where the sleeve joins the body. Like this, adjusting the neck line as you see fit:

KEEP THIS DRAWING FOR FUTURE REFERENCE FOR OTHER DRESSES YOU MIGHT WANT TO MAKE. It is a very standard bodice pattern and can be easily adjusted  for pretty much any dress you make.
Cut this out and mark the line opposite the  sleeve as a center fold.  Now take the cut out where the sleeve goes and trace it in pencil along the edge of paper leaving a space to finish the rest of the sleeve drawing.  You are going to make that first cup shape into more of an S shape, but you need that measurement  from your bodice pattern.

(first trace the arm hole...)

...then soften the edges and make it an S shape.
Measure the arm length of the person you are making the dress for  from the top of their shoulder to the bottom of their wrist. your top line will be that distance, then make a staight linedown about 1.5 inches  for a toddler, 3 inches for an adult (adjust as you need to) and conect the bottom of the S shape to the bottom of the cuff line. Mark the top, longer line as a fold line. You will be keeping this as a basic sleeve pattern, so if you are ambitious, measure the arm of the person for the pattern where different sleeve lengths reach their arm and mark it on the pattern so you won't have to always measure them.

Now that you have your basic patterns for a bodice and a sleeve, you are going to adjust them for this specific dress.
This has a very high waist band- even higher than an empire waist; it is cut at the bottom of the sleeve. So we are going to take our basic bodice pattern and place the fold line on a fold of our fabric and fold the paper patten up to the bottom of the sleeve. Pin it and cut 2 of these.  Then take you sleeve pattern and place the fold line on a fold of fabric and cut 2 of these.
  NOTE: If your fabric has a right and a wrong side you will need to cut out  1 sleeve and one bodice with the top of the  pattern (the side that you wrote on) facing up and one set with the top of the pattern facing down. Knit fabric doesn't have a right or wrong side, so it saves a little time.  Then cut 2 skirt pieces that go from bias edge to bias edge of your fabric and as long as you want the dress to be measuring from under the arm to the deisred length. Kenaley, for instance  had a 19 inch length. You will also need 2 pockets 4 inches by 6 inches with a cupped bottom and 2 pieces for the bow detail on the pocket that are 1 inch by 3 inches, finally you will need strips of fabric that are 2" wide by the width of your fabric- 3 of them, that we will be using for bias tape and the bottom ruffle. 

(this picture does not include the 2" strips)

On with sewing!
You are first going to take the 2 bodice pieces and sew the shoulder straps together. like this:

At this point I cheated. Usually you will finish the neck line off with bais tape, by ironing your 2 inch strips 1/2 inch  in on each side and then ironing that in half, pinning and sewing it to the neck line. You WILL unpick and you WILL hate it. I hate bias tape and have come up with this little cheat that only works with knit fabric. Iron your neck line on the right side of the fabric down 1/4 inch- it doesn't need to be exact, just eyeball it and make it even the whole way around. Then take that over to the sewing machine, line it up under your presser foot  and fold it down one more time, don't attempt to double iron this seam because it is too smal and you will just get fed up with it and give up.  Put your presser foot down and lower your needle by hand into the fabric to hold it in place while you fold over the next little bit that is feeding into the machine. STITCH SLOWLY and right on the edge of the double fold.

You are going to have a little bit of a bump at each shoulder seam, open the seam up and then when you are done stitching, clip it off.  Do this same thing with the bottom cuff of your sleeve.
Then you are going to attach the sleeve to the bodice.  You do this by pinning the S shape into the sleeve opening on the bodice.

Like this. Then just line up the two edges of the fabric and straight stitch the edge on bothe sleeves. You should now have what somewhat resembles a very short shirt with sleeves when you fold it in half.

 SEE!!
Okay, now we are going to work on the 2 pockets for the skirt. First you need to iron a 1/4" seam all the way around the pocket. You will more than likely want to use startch when you do this, because its a small seam on a small piece of fabric. Once you have it ironed, stitch just across the top of the pocket (the flat side) then you are goign to take the the little tab that we cut out and iron 1/4 inch on each long side then make the two ends meet in the middle and iron it again, you can see it pictured just above the pocket.

Once you've got both pieces ironed and the top stitched on the pocket we are goign to make the cute bow detail for the top.  Take your tab and pin it 2 inches down from the top in the center of the back. 


 

Stitch it going once forward and once backwards then forwards again. Flip the  pocket over and fold the excess length of the tab so you have about 1/2 inch remaining. Pull it  down so it just goes over the first stitch you made, esentially covering it up  and stitch it the same way you did on the back side. It will look like this:

Now we are going to attach it to the skirt. Fold one of your skirt pieces into quarters, put a pin in the corner of the folds and unfold itf. Fold it the opposite way and put another pin in that corner. You should have 2 pins in about the same distance in and same distance down.  Place the pocket in this general area, but adjust it as you want to. Pin the bottom and sides then make the top edge as staight as you want it to be and pin that down. Stitch right on the edge of the pocket around the sides and bottom, reversing at the top of each side for strength.   (I got a little excited at this point and forgot to take a picture of this step... sorry)

Next we need to gather our top edge of both skirt pieces. We do this by doing the longest straight stitch on our machine then pulling the top thread on each side and evening out the ruffle. As soon as you are done sttiching in that long stitch, switch your stitch length back to a 2.5-3 or you will forget and have to double stitch the next step. Like I did.   Pin the skirt to the bodice bottom and stitch along the gathered stitch so it doesn't show through to the front.

It should look something like this now...

Now we are going to put our right sides together and stitch from the cuff of the arm all the way down to the bottom of the skirt along the edge. Make sure to match the two ends of the cuff up really well, the other seams should match pretty close too, but this will be the one that looks the worst if it doesn't match.
Now we are going to add the ruffle at the bottom of the skirt. Take the 2" strips that you cut and sew them together so you have one long strip of fabric. Iron this in half with the right side out. Then you do do a ruffle in the same way that we did for the skirt. You may want to make a few stitch breaks in the center of the fabric to make gathering easier. Once you have a good even ruffle pin this to the bottom of the skirt with the two edges together. Like this:

Now you are going to stitch the ruffle to the skirt following the rathered stitch so it doesn't show through. Iron your seam up towards the top of the dress and then do a top stitch 1/8 inch from the seam. It looks better with a top stitch and will help the dress from rolling up.  Now we are going to stitch the other side of the dress up starting from the cuff of the arm. 
You just finished your dress!!!!!
It should somewhat resemble this:

SO CUTE!!!!!
I know you can't wait to start one yourself...but if you are intimidaited by the whole process and just don't think you can do it; call me! I would love to come and help you. Or you can buy the fabric you want and drop it off to me and I will make one for you for only $15!!  It's a screaming deal!!

Happy Sewing !!

Look how cute this skirt is...
 I am going to give you a step by step- with pictures on how to make this skirt in (possibly) under an hour. That's how long it took me, but I make no gaunantees. :)

Step 1: The person whom you are making the skirt for needs to be measured.  From the waist (where they like their pants to sit, which is usually just below the belly button) to the length that you want the skirt. I wanted it to fit Kenaley just below the knees, so her measurement was 10  inches. Then you need to add 1/2 an inch for a seam allowance. Then you need to do a little simple math: that number needs to be divided by 3, as close as you can get it. For me it was 3 1/2 inches. 

Next, you are going to cut 3 pieces of fabric remnant to remnant edge, the first one being the length that you want the dress plus 1/2 and inch, the next one being that meausurement minus 1/3 the length (so for me it was 7 inches) and the other being minus 2/3 the length (so for me it was 3 1/2 inches)
Then you will need one more piece of the same fabric that measures twice the width of your elastic that you are using plus one inch, I was using 1 1/2 inch elastic so I made a strip 4 inches wide from remnant to remnant edge.

The last cuts that you will be making are for your trim at the bottom of each layer. These are 2 1/2 inches wide from remnant to remnant edge.  I bought a fat quarter so I needed to cut more than 3, but if you buy just a strip of fabric by the yard, you will only need 3 of these.  Sew them together only if you bought a fat quarter.

Next iron these in half, with the right side of the fabric out.  Then sew it to the bottom edge of each strip of fabric except the waist band. 

Next, you are going to iron these...2 times. First time you are going to iron the right side of the fabric making sure to get the seam ironed out really well. Then flip it over and iron the seam down because you are going to do some top stitching and it sews nicer when you have more than one layer.

Now for top stitching- because it makes it look more finished. You will want to line up the edge of your trim with the inside tooth of your presser foot.
Let me explain that a little better: The front of your presser foot has two teeth, one on either side. Normally when you sew you want a 1/4 inch seam and so you line up your fabric with the outside of your presser foot to gage that seam length. When you are top stitching, you only want an 1/8 inch seam, so you line it up with the inside of the tooth to gage that distance.  You follow??

Next you are going to take both of your short ends of your fabric and sew them together with the right side together, so you essentially have 3 continious loops of fabric. It is more important to line up the bottom edge of your fabric with the trim on it than the top, because the top will not be showing.

Now you are going to take the three layers of your skirt and put them together  with the longest one on the inside, middle length in the middle and the shortest on the outside. Put a few pins in it to hold it in place then stitch it together. You can use a loose stitch, because this is just to make the next steps easier to finish.

Now you are going to take the waist band, sew the two short ends together, then you are going to iron it in half with the right side of the fabric facing out.  Pin this to the skirt and then sew the two together LEAVING about a 3 inch opening  so you can feed your elastic in.

A gap like this.  Measure around the waist of the person that you are making this skirt for, then take off 1/2 an inch from that and cut a piece of elastic.

Now here is my little bonus tip of the day- technically 2 of them. :) When you
feed your elastic in, put a large safetly pin on the edge that you are feeding
in so you have something that is not flimsy to feed through the sleeve. It helps
a lot.
PLUS!! ....

If you double pin the opposite end of the elastic so you don't just pull it through, it will save you frutration in the end. Put one pin going one way and another pin going the opposite way so they won't get pulled out.  Once you get the elastic all pulled through  lay the two ends flat on top of each other, not right sides together or you are going to have a lump inside your waist band, and zig zag over the ends once forward, once backwards and then forward again.  Pull the fabric flat so that you can  sew up the gap and then you are through!!!

SO CUTE!!!. If you are creative enough, you can use three different fabric to make it even funner!!

 I have done it in this similar skirt, but I wanted to try a little something different with this one. 
And sadly, I did not take pictures of when I was making this skirt. I could give you a verbal how to, but no pictures to help out. Just comment below if you want to learn how to make this one as well. :) This one has a tight ruffle on the bottom and a long tailed bow on it as well. I love the way it turned out too.


So you survived all the way through a tutorial blog on sewing....
You should be proud.

AND SURPRISED!!
Because I want some feedback and if you will give it to me, then  you will be entered to win one of these totally cute kids purses that I also made today ...

Here's how you do it:
Enter a comment on this blog, you hated it, you loved it, it made no sense, I talk too much...whatever you feel you want to say.
 
But be kind.

You will be entered 1 time for commenting.

If you want to enter more times, then share my link on your blog/facebook page or pin this tutorial to your pinboard. One extra entry will be given for each bonus item that you do. Let me know that you did such so you will get your extra entries.
 I have 2 purses that I will be giving away so your chances are already doubled!!
Drawing will be done on Tuesday (September 18)  morning so make sure that you get it all done before then and I will announce the winner with a new tutorial as well!!!

THANKS FOR YOUR FEEDBACK!!!