Toddler Tank Tops

Due to the nature of my current career (mostly raising kids with a little office work thrown in for relaxation), I was recently off of the office work portion of my life for a little over 2 weeks.  Now, this is not cool in the payroll aspect of life, but it was fun in the relax with kiddos and shop on ebay side.

Oh yes, ebay.  That addictive auction site.  The one that I try dearly to stay away from for the sake of my checking account.  Everything is on there.  Or, almost everything.  During this 2 week ebay study, I was super excited to find Barney fabric!!!

Barney fabric!!!  The mystical fabric of my year.  I bought it.  It is awesome jersey knit.  The twins saw it coming out of the dryer, and were amazed and excited.  I cut them each a piece of it then, and they carried them around like little treasures!  So, I knew that the Barney fabric had to quickly turn from fabric into clothes, but what?

I needed it to be suitable for pink and blue toddlers, so I decided on tank tops.  I traced tanks that fit nicely, added seam allowances, and serged those babies into trimless tank tops!  Then I went into my fabric for something to use on the necks and arm holes.  I had nothing stretchy that matched!  I then decided to raid the tub of cute striped t-shirts for stretchy material.  Bingo!!!  Green and white stripes for M's tank top.  I still couldn't find anything small manly, so I used the same fabric as the body of D's shirt.

I think they turned out great, and so do the twins!!!  And, sorry for the terrible photos, but there just wasn't time to keep trying to get snazzy ones!

And, yes, they will sit still on their little couch to watch Barney!  And, M has decided that she doesn't like having her hair fixed this week, so I am picking battles carefully.

Barney Dress

For D and M's Barney birthday party, I decided that they needed Barney themed clothes to wear.  (Note to anyone who might care...  Barney fabric does not really seem to exist unless you want to buy old sheets from Ebay.)  I wish I would learn to have these bright ideas more than a week or two before the clothes are needed, but maybe I will learn to do that.  Instead, I was a bit rushed, but I think the clothes turned out cute.

D got some overalls Barney and BJ on the legs.  Cute and really easy! (And yes, I have baby fencing in my house, and I love it!)

M took a little more time, but I love the results.  I made a Barney dress!!!

I combined some ideas that I have seen on various blogs to create this dress.  I used a men's dress shirt for the purple .  I love the way that the front and back of the dress are longer due to the way the shirt was hemmed.  I cut the shirt off (cut straight across, under the arms) based on the length of a dress that fits M well.  Based on one of our Barney toys, I appliqued spots onto the back of the dress.  I used some green tee shirt remnants from D's Peter Pan costume.  I then cut out J shaped arm holes based on the same dress.  With the tie straps, the arm holes don't have to be perfect.

Then, I applied the tutorial that I saw here to create the rest of the dress.  Bias tape is my friend!!!  I chose the width of the front based on the same dress used for sizing. (M was not available for measurements.)  And, I used 40 inches for each arm hole, just like the tutorial.  It looked like a super long piece, probably because it was longer than M is tall, but it worked perfectly for the ties.  It is even long enough to double knot now that she knows that her dress will fall off if she pulls on the ties!

And then, because I have a button addiction...

 Green and purple/pink buttons!!! (I think they came from Walmart.)

Miss M likes the buttons too!  The shirt had hidden buttons, so I got to choose the spacing when I sewed the buttons onto the dress.  And, they are not functional as buttons, but I think they are really cute.  I finished the dress with a whole day to spare!  Maybe I am learning to pace myself better, but I really think it was just luck.

Yay for Barney clothes!!!!!