Mommy's Not Really Getting Dressed Today

Hello Readers. I know I am not the only mom that has trouble keeping up with everything I am supposed to do. I do not have it all together. I wish I could say that I got up with the sun everyday so that I could be awake, dressed, organized, and cheerfully ready to face the day. That sounds like the ideal and mature way to live but, it is not how I live.

I heard a term to describe clothes, "athleisure". Exercise clothes that are worn whenever, not just for working out. These kind of clothes are comfortable so, I usually sleep in my athleisure clothes. That way when my 2 year old son (Cute stick of dynamite.) wakes up early in the morning I am already sort of dressed. I can start the day a little bit ready to go. I am dressed enough to exercise, go to the play-ground, or go to the store if I really need to.  No one really knows what I am doing, (Wearing my pj's.) I could be on my way to the gym. 

If I can, I get dressed in real clothes for the day, but if I can't, the neighbors won't see me outside looking crazy. A problem arises when I can't find clothes to fit my very short arms.

Mom's in leggings and hoodies, my solution to crazy mornings.

I could have just cut the sleeves to the right length. But I wanted real long sleeves for the cooler days ahead. I turned the cuff over to see how much I wanted to take off. That pin is marking where I want to make my new seam.

I took the shirt off and stitched a new seam all the way around the sleeve. Then I cut off the excess fabric. I removed about 2" from each sleeve.

Here is the finished sleeve. The length is right and the cuff still looks nice and neat.

I fixed the sleeves of the jacket the same way. The wrist cuffs of this jacket have little thumb holes to keep my hands warm when I am outside. I was able to keep them intact on the cuffs. I removed about 3" of fabric from the jacket sleeves. 

 I could wear it now and use my hands. I like the little thumb holes too.

The shirt and the jacket both fit now and I am feeling the bright pink. I am ready to jog, or watch TV, or go to bed. No one knows for sure, and I'm not telling.

Thanks for reading, now go make something fun for yourself.

The Long and Short of It

Hello Readers. Today's post is about two long dresses and one short woman. I'm not sure if the dresses were really that long, they just seemed really long on me. Most long dresses are much too long on me. I didn't own a maxi dress until I was given this white dress. It fit my daughter perfectly, but she is 8 inches taller than me. I guess that is how much I would need to grow to fit standard off the rack clothes. I am 45 so I am not going to get any taller. I foresee a lifetime of alterations.

This dress is way too long as you can see from the puddle on the floor around me. Because you can't see my feet I look even shorter than normal. I am holding the straps in this weird way because the straps are too long. This happens to me a lot too. The neckline is too low and the shoulders need to be altered. Knit tanks are so easy to fix. Read on and I will show you my quick cheat method.

First, I decided how much shorter the dress needed to be. I turned the dress inside-out and stitched the front and back of the strap together. This made the strap shorter and I just cut off the excess. The fabric is a stretch knit so it won't fray at all. It only takes a few minutes and no one ever sees the raw edges inside. ("Nobody sees, nobody knows". -Hoodwincked)

You can see how much excess I removed in the picture below. This works great for summer tank tops. Now that the top of the dress is pulled up from the top it is a bit shorter. I can shorten the bottom of the dress. If I had shortened the bottom of the dress first, it would have been gotten shorter when I fixed the straps. 

The next thing I did was shorten the length from the bottom hem.Here is a look at how much I cut off the bottom of the dress. The clingy material was difficult to spread out on the floor. It looks like I cut it on a diagonal. It is straight, I promise. 

Here is the second piece of today's post. This long denim dress is a little dated and a little boring. It is also too long on me. I could shorten it, but I had another idea. 

I decided to cut off the top of the dress and wear it like a vest. I cut just below the horizontal seam and ran it through the wash so it would have a little bit of a frayed edge along the bottom. (I love cut-off denim.)

Well, here we are. I am never going to be tall but I don't look as short as I did when you couldn't see my feet at all and I was in a puddle of fabric. I kept the white dress at ankle length. This is a great dress for hot weather.

Thanks for reading, now go make something fun for yourself.