Fit for a princess

March 14, 2012

Fit for a princess

Time flies when you are having fun.... AND when you are in the middle of construction and planning your THIRD baby shower in nine months.

Yep, there is another baby coming, but this time I'm going to be an aunt!

My older sister surprised us all over Christmas with a baby announcement. We couldn't be happier to embark on our new adventure of being an Aunt and Uncle in early July.

So here we go again, baby shower number 3- that is my magic number. After this one I'm retiring for a while from baby showers, and actually, all showers of all kinds (except the daily cleansing one).

Don't get me wrong, I love showers and celebrating exciting things in people's lives, but I am tapping out for a while on being the hostess. I am looking forward to just being an attendee for a while.

So here I am, 3 weeks and 2 days away from the big shower (that's 23 days and counting), and we are still probably 2 weeks away from construction completion (barring any complications).

I'm just really crossing my fingers that all the construction workers have left, the counter tops and floors have been sealed and I can get my house put back together (and cleaned) before 27 of my sister's closest friends and family descend on my newly renovated home.

Do you sense my level of stress??

When I'm stressed I do one of two things. Go running or craft. Due to the rainy/snowy Seattle weather we are experiencing, there is not a lot of running going on. So, I've been crafting.

Actually, my craft room is one of the only rooms in my house that is actually usable at this point.

So I go up there, close the door, crank up the tunes and craft and sew.

One of my fun projects was making a baby tutu for my niece-to-be. I was inspired by this adorable tutu made by Abbie of 5 Days 5 Ways.

Will she ever wear it? Who knows, but it is so dang cute, it was worth the effort.

At a minimum I can use it as party decoration, but I really hope she wears it someday, cause it is stinking cute.

I headed to my favorite store, Joann Fabrics, armed with coupons galore. I found sparkly tulle and I couldn't resist buying 3 different shades of pink. I am a fan of fuller tutus, so I went with 2 yards of each color, but you could get by with 1 yard of each as well.

I also felt all the tulles, and picked the softest one. All tulle is a bit scratchy, but the finer weave tulle tends to be softer. Since I have super sensitive skin, I feel like I'm a good tester for baby skin. If I don't welt or turn red, then chances are, its perfect for a baby.

So when I got home, I laid out my tulle and decided on my sizes. I decided on strips that were 12" long by 6" wide.

The whole pieces of tulle were about 48 inches wide, so I cut them in half (24") then in half again (12") to get long strips.

Once I had the long strips that were 12" wide, I folded the fabric in half and cut it into strips for the tutu, about 6" wide.

You are going to need alot of these 6" by 12" strips, so start cutting a lot. This is by far the most tedious part, but the good news it that you don't have to be exact, because when they are on the skirt, it is just a bunch of fluff, so its no problem if there are some irregularities.

Figuring out the length of the ribbon for the waist was a bit harder, but what is nice, is it can be tied as tight or loose as needed, so this could be a one-size-fits-all tutu for the next year or so. I ended up using a 36" ribbon for the waist- I used double faced pink satin ribbon.

To give myself some structure while I was looping the tulle, I tied the ribbon to boning.

Once I had cut all the strips, I decided that I would stack 1 strip of each color and use all 3 as one loop of the tutu. I ended up using 20 stacks of 3 strips to make my whole tutu.

Basically, you take the stack of strips, fold it in half and loop it around the ribbon and pull it through. I'm not sure if I'm describing it clearly, so look at the pics, or follow the tutorial from 5 Days 5 Ways.