hanna knock-off jumper.

i saw this jumper on the back of the latest hanna andersson catalog and fell in love. i love the ruffly layers and the tonal colors.



what i did NOT love is the price. granted, the $28 sale price is better than the $40 regular price, but still a little too spendy for my thrifty nature. so i picked up a few t-shirts at the thrift store, and for a whopping $3 made this:


my daughter could not keep her eyes open to save her life. i was too lazy to hem all the layers, and besides, it's knit, it doesn't fray, and it "adds character" that way, is what i tell myself. if i could go back, i'd place all the layers up another inch or so, as you can see the top of some layers peeking out from the bottom of the previous layer....but hey, live and learn. the next one i make will be better.


a detail of the yoke. i cut leftover strips of material and made bias tape to finish the arm holes.

overall, i am really happy with this, since i totally had to make up my own pattern as i went! thanks for looking!

t-shirt recon.

yesterday i purged my kids' closets/dressers to determine what they still needed for school clothes. i had austin make me a pile of whatever didn't fit/he didn't wear/didn't like. there were 2 hanes t-shirts in the pile, a black one and a grey one. i decided to recon them into a skirt for katie. i wanted more of a tiered twirly skirt, but i was lazy and didn't want to do any more cutting/piecing than necessary so the result is more of a colorblock look. then i decided she needed a shirt to go with it, so i pulled out this white shirt that was stained on the front and covered some of the stainage with some flowers from the leftover shirt remnants. so for exactly zero dollars, i reconstructed/revamped 3 old shirts into a new outfit for katie. it makes me feel good to give new life to something that would have otherwise been headed for the trash or goodwill!




(close-up of flowers)

thanks for looking!