I am usually pretty practical with the sewing projects I take on.
But, this year, when my daughter came to me with the idea of making green outfits for
St. Patrick's Day......I must have had a sudden brain lapse. She had it all planned out
in her head and even found some shamrock fabric that I bought a couple of years ago.
So, I thought it would be a fun project to do since it was her idea
and I knew she would be excited about it.
I used a Sandi Henderson pattern for the ruffle pants (which I highly recommend).
I have several of her patterns and find them to be very well put together with
easy-to-understand explanations and good illustrations. Plus, one pattern
covers a wide range of sizes, from infant to 8 years old.
My younger daughter wanted a skirt and I didn't feel like using a pattern so I came up with this
based on simple Gymboree skirt I saw last fall. I just kept the fabric folded in half like it
comes from the store and cut the length I wanted for her. Then I cut along the fold so I had
two rectangles, each around 22 inches wide. I sewed the sides together,
then just rounded off the bottom edges,
gathered a strip that was twice the width of the skirt, and sewed it onto the bottom edge.
For the waist, I folded over the top, pressed, and sewed a basic casing for elastic,
and voila! Easy skirt in around 30 minutes. (Good thing when using shamrock fabric!)
For their shirts, they wanted something fancy appliqued but I knew they wouldn't wear
them again so I just made some simple fabric flower pins from a tutorial
on katiedid. For their hair, I had run out of fabric and had lots of
felt leftover from the playhouse I did a couple of months ago.
I cut out two shamrocks for each girl and sewed each pair together
with wide stitches of embroidery thread and then glued an
alligator clip to the bottom. Easy and different than their usual
hair ribbons.
I had fun with this project and it seems my girls will be
celebrating this holiday all year long!
