Bra Conversion Tutorial

Well, it's that time again, Miranda is 17 months now & our nursing relationship is waning. Soooo, to put it mildly, my giganto nursing bras are overkill for my current endowments. I have 2 drawers of bras in sizes from AAA-DD, & most I've not worn in nearly 3 years. I know, it's clutter & I hate to ask for money for smaller bras when I've so many but none of them are for nursing & I do plan on nursing until she's 2. So, you can find these elsewhere, I found one in Cyrillic & the pictures were easy enough to follow, but here it is in English.

Fist select the right size bra to convert. I thought I'd practice on a cheapy one befor trying this on a prettier one. Slice off one strap.

Remove the nursing clasp from your rattiest most worn-out nursing bra that does nothing for proper support and/or the wire that mercilessly pokes you no matter how many times you sew it back in. Loop it through a piece of satin ribbon & sew to the top of the cup. You can certainly machine sew this, but I'm hand sewing in order to not scratch poison ivy/ prednisone during a movie.

Measure (keeping some extra) & sew the ribbon satin side out down below on the elastic taking care to align it w/ your clasp above.

Do make sure you've gone over & bound or zig-zagged the raw edge you created by cutting the strap.

Hmmm, I didn't take the picture showing the clasp being secured to the strap. Do that, secure it to the first clasp you sewed to the bra cup then pull the ribbon through & sew it together.

The nursing flap down:

Nursing flap up. Congratulations, you've saved yourself $15-$30.00, cleared ratty clutter away & repurposed something you've not seen it years!

To Apron or Not to Apron

My favorite house keeping blogger is back so I'm on a domesticity/ housecleaning spurt, please bear w/ me. One of the topics that came on the discussion board was aprons. I don't wear one all day. In fact, mine all look pretty frumpy, but I do have an apron for my different "house stations". The one that gets the most use hands down is my clothespin apron, it comes off & on several times a day & lives on the washer.

My previous clothespin bag was a black purse that I received for a x-mas gift back in 8th grade when I began my goth spurt from my aunt. We've come a long way, yes Aunt S-? It dry rotted last year & wasn't really conducive to this line's placement for some reason. I received this vintage pillow case to practice my machine stitching when I was learning how to sew so I picked out all of the many black practice seams, closed up the open side, cut out some pockets & bias tape & added a waist band. I love it! It holds a lot of clothespins.


By the by, Victor is my photographer; 5 is like a magical age! They can do everything over night. He greatly prefers silly & ghastly faces, so that may be a lot of what you see here for awhile.

This is my yard apron, denim & linen, very sturdy. It is some 70's pattern. I will never make a gathered denim skirt again. I love the pockets though.


It keeps the white hair off of you & any flying muck. A must on rainy days.

This is my cooking apron, I don't use it too often. It's the scalloped reversible from The Paisley Pincushion. It's a bread day & this is my baking side, lighter for flour.

And the sauce side. I made like 7 of these in a row, mine & Charlottes were the first & I put on all of our pockets wrong, but it does the job!

The back view. You can see the crossover straps better on Charlotte's & also where I sewed her pockets on the back instead. Hers is the same denim/ linen combo as my yard apron.

I'm wearing a denim shirt today, it doesn't show up too well but this is my canning apron. This was actually a denim jumper of the potato sack kind. It worked good for maternity; in the later months I would put the jumper on first & then a pretty top, so as to look like a skirt. Mike hated it unless I was actually showing/ pregnant. When we moved here I had 3 people say to me in 1 town day, "Oh, you must homeschool." I cut a strip out of the middle & added a strip of my diminishing linen stash for a waist band. It doesn't match, but it is serviceable.

Back view.

I like this one best; maybe since it was originally a dress the straps don't slip down. But, there is my stash, show yours if you've got them.

Modest Mom Tutorial

Everyone has different modesty standards & mine have changed drastically in the last 5 years. They've evolved to nothing above the knee, skirts/dresses as feminine attire & on top, tight enough to show I'm a woman, loose enough to be a lady. My bottom line is if it is 3 finger widths below my collarbone, I won't wear it out of the house. (I have a few dresses I've made that I neglected to make a muslin run on first) I really think girls have absolutely no idea what constitutes as modest; I certainly didn't realize that absolutely everything sold in stores will make a young man stumble until I read the modesty survey over at http://www.therebelution.com/modestysurvey/ I kind of threw up my hands in despair, because I hate layering & that seems to be the only solution.

But have you ever found something you really liked at a thrift store w/ no dressing room? It's a risky buy & just such a thing happened over this winter. I found a denim dress I liked, w/ a high waistline (I was 6 months along.), pintucks & pearly buttons. I like pintucks, I like pearls, I need buttons for nursing & denim always wears well, so I spent the money. I actually have a flowered print in a very similar pattern, just a different neckline.

The dress didn't live up to my expectations. Turns out denim is too heavy for the delicate pearl buttons on it (I'd either pop them off or they would unfasten of their own accord). I lost 2 climbing into Mikes truck. I found one, but the other is gone. I've finally sewn a seam into the skirt part, so that problem is solved. I couldn't sew the neckline closed, it would be useless for nursing. I have these really good "cami's that cover" from http://www.sakurarose.com/. They did well for covering, but made nursing difficult due to their length. So I made a sort of cleavage cover.

A cleavage cover has all of the advantages of a camisole w/out the heat that comes from wearing 2 layers & trying to adjust an undershirt while nursing. Don't laugh at me, this works.
For the purposes of this tutorial you will need a nursing bra & a pair of your little girls panties.



Ha, ha, I bet you're getting the idea. These are a size T2 & I think a 3 would be more comfortable, but she's only 2 as yet. I also do not allow her to wear these.

Slip the crotch of the panties over the middle of the bra like so...

Unsnap the nursing hooks & resnap around the waist line.

Hmmm, that picture looks confusing. Here's the finished product:

It does look scrunchy but it evens out when you wear it. As I said , I probably need a size T3, but my figure changes so much every year, a 2 will probably fit well after she starts solids.

Sewing Adventures

AHHHHH, IT'S FINISHED!!! I finally finished Charlotte's dress, & though it's a very small dress, the way I get to things it still took a month to finish. She kept wanting to wear it before it was anywhere near done, that tickled my vanity to no end. I made it big enough so that DV it'll last 2 years before being handed down. Provided it outlasts the washings. I committed the cardinal sin of dressmaking & neglected to prewash my fabric before hand. This is actually not the first time I've made this dress, it's a Common Sense pattern, the Empire dress. http://www.commonsensepatterns.com/

Yes, they are different now. But this is the first dress I made w/ it.

Goodness, she's gotten so big, I took that picture last fall, that dress is nearly to her knees now. Sigh. Anyways, it was good practice & I found out my true thoughts about the pattern. I don't like it. Rather I like the picture of it, just not the dress I made. It could be the fabric, it was some quilting cotton I had left over. No I don't quilt, I just like the prints. This has led Mike to remark that several of my dresses make me look like a tablecloth. I have a hard time visualizing to the finished product. End rabbit trail.

The first dress looks like a tropical prairie ball dress from the 80's. (The new one is a modern tropical ball dress? I liked the colors for her.) The puffed sleeves are very puffy. The back ties were too short though I used the largest size the pattern had.I don't know what I did, but that neckline is very tight to pull over the head & it's a little low in the back, kind of a little girls regency (think 1810's) neckline. I forgot the interfacing at the neckline for this one too, all of my creations have a fairly big flaw, though I'm finally (somewhere around 10 creations later) making smaller & fewer mistakes. So here's her new dress:

This is the dress where I have finally felt myself to be creative master & confident enough to hack at a pattern. Like anything I make for her, it starts out ankle length so it can grow w/ her. I'm figuring on putting 1 or 2 tucks in it later on, but I really wanted to give it to her since she was stroking it every time she walked by proclaiming "Ress!" Mike hated the sleeves so I ommitted them entirely & tried my hand at bias binding. That's what all the blue edges are called. What a pain that is! I made them too narrow, & so had to redo them several times, but it worked out. I don't know what kind of fabric it is, I lost the slip; it's some kind of stiff weave. It felt as if it could get sweaty so instead of the interfacing, I just lined the bodice w/ cotton broadcloth, the same as her bias trim & sash.



The neckline is plenty big now & was something else I learned I could do. It's ok. to draw your own pattern pieces! Like the pockets. She loves pockets & goes around chanting "Pockie, pockie", hands in her pockets, but not in front pockets, so those had to go too. I made side seam pockets out of the same broadcloth. The sash I drew & made was actually too big for the bodice, it went right up past the armholes so I gathered it at the middle & side seams. It's my favorite part of the dress.

She & daddy were very pleased w/ the dress & I've decided that's why I like sewing. My food gets eaten up, my clean house never stays that way, but making something w/ your hands is a concrete testament of your diligence & creativity. No wonder our foremothers indulged in fancy work. I've not got the patience for it, though I'd like to someday.