What I made Monday! Overalls overhaul

So, I may be the only mom that experiences this (almost daily), but it seems like my child always looks a bit like a hot mess ragamuffin. I buy her clothes- new clothes- and they're super cute, but then we get them on her and she wears them for about 10 minutes and things go downhill. SHE WON'T STOP GROWING. Ugh. Kids these days! Right before I left to pick up my mom from the airport and head off on our road trip, Finley decided she needed overalls. She said that she "knows they make them as dresses" which means, don't even try to buy me a regular pair and tell me they didn't have the kind with the skirt. So, our roadtrip suddenly involved a hunt for an overall dress. We scored pretty quickly at a Tommy Hilfiger kids outlet. $22, which is more than I'd like to spend on overalls, but I didn't want to spend our whole trip hunting for overalls, so I snatched them up. However, when I returned home and she tried them on, they were RIDICULOUSLY short. They're a 4T. Really Tommy?? Really?? Who do you use to size your clothing??
Of course I forgot to take a before picture (one day I'll remember!), but here's an *almost* before picture:

 And on the reluctant model (with leggings because I'm a family friendly blogger like that):

They barely covered the top half of her tush with the ruffle intact. And of course she loved them and wanted to wear them every day. Everywhere. Eeeeeeegosh.  So I needed to make them longer.  I looked allover for a tutorial and couldn't find one, so I just decided to wing it. If you have an old pair of overalls, you'd like to overhaul or just a pair you'd like to make longer, maybe this will help!
So, first I removed the existing tiny ruffle.

I cut a piece of base fabric a little wider than the bottom of the skirt and long enough to cover her tush. Then I cut three pieces of fabric wider than the width of the base fabric. I actually am super lazy and just cut the fabric the width that it came on the ream. Each piece of fabric is folded in half in the pictures (because you have to have a front and back- having just a front wouldn't solve the tush exposure problem).

Then I hemmed the bottom of each ruffle piece by folding up an 1/8-1/4 of an inch and ironing, then folding and ironing again.

See? It's folded twice so there won't be any exposed raw edges.
Then I zigzagged along the top because I don't have a serger, followed by a straight stitch along the top with a longer than default stitch- I used a 4, my default is 2.5. I ruffled each layer slightly by pulling the bobbin thread and lined up my first piece face down, raw edge to edge and sewed them together.

Wyatt helped.

Then I folded it over, ironed flat, and top-stitched.

 Then I did the same thing with the second row, marking with pins where I wanted it placed- about 2.5 inches above the bottom row. This will depend on how large your ruffles are, but you want to make sure you place it low enough that you don't have a gap between ruffles, but high enough that you don't completely cover the bottom ruffle.

For the top ruffle, I didn't bother folding over and sewing because this part is attaching to the overalls. So just pin in place and sew a straight stitch.

 Now fold in half and sew right sides together to make a skirt then pin skirt around bottom of overalls right sides together.

 Then zigzag around the seam and trim excess fabric.

 Then flip down and iron flat, and top-stitch.

Voila!

Isn't she just lovely??

And shy.

Overalls are good for climbing...

And pretending to snowboard...

And for being just plain cute.

How much do I love her?? "THIS MUCH!!!!!!"

What I made Monday!

Poor Wyatt. He doesn't seem to mind, but for the past couple months, he's been riding around in a pink car seat. He got too big for his infant car seat and so I brought Finley's extra out of Shannon's truck and into the car. It's pink. Real pink. With flowers. And gross. And old.

I've been meaning to make him a new cover, and I FINALLY got around to it- yea me! Yea, Wyatt! I used some scrap fabric and pieced together a cover using the original cover as a template. Working with minky is tricky, but it's oh so soft. Soooooooo soft. I used a cotton knit around the arms and sides because it has some give. I thought the green would big boy it up a little. The baby blue minky was kind of screaming baby.  I made a casing for elastic around the edges to help it stay on. What do you think?

  There some extra fabric at the arms, but I'm no seamstress- this was tricky, and again, no pattern. Not that it would have turned out better if I had a pattern (since I've never used one, I'm sure I would mess it up somehow), but I got tired, so this works :)

My definition of failure has changed.

Welcome to my house. Behind these doors is where my definition of failure has changed. Dramatically. It's true.

 Years ago- last year, even- I would have considered finishing Fin's Christmas stocking on the day AFTER Christmas a failure, but now not so much. Now I say: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Job well done. Way to go, Ryanne! You're a rock star. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a tad, but really, when I finished, instead of thinking, "ugh, finally. Sucks that I didn't finish 2 DAYS AGO!" I thought, "Awesome. Done and done!" Who cares if it didn't go up this year. I feel like having 2 small and demanding children and a puppy (I consider the older dog and husband to be a wee bit more self-sufficient) increases the level of difficulty of pretty much everything I do. So on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say to all you (what, 5 people??) reading that this stocking project is a level 2 in difficulty (and only a 2 because it requires the use of a sewing machine). Unless you have a child. Or a puppy. Or even worse, children AND puppies, then I'd say level of difficulty: 8.
But HOORAY for cute polka dot stockings with ruffle trim for my dear sweet daughter (deer- get it??)! For those of you that got one of my cheesy Christmas cards, I apologize for my overuse of this homophone.