Ladybug Dress Up: No-Sew Tutu & Accessories

I have a hard time buying gifts just for the sake of buying gifts.  Especially when it comes to kids.  Our kids are lucky enough to not really need anything.  They have more toys and things to play with than any kid needs.  They're really not lacking in the clothing department and if there is something one of them needs, Grammy gets it for them.  If you've seen the pictures of their rooms, you know they certainly don't need anything that sets or hangs on the wall.  So when coming up with a birthday present for The Girl, I had to get creative.

We always try to do something homemade for our own kids and when giving gifts to our nieces and nephews.  I think it's more special than something off of a Target shelf.  For her birthday last year, we made the kitchen.  Our plan this year was to do the fridge to go with it, but with a new baby coming and not knowing for sure how and where everyone is going to be sleeping, we decided to wait and not add another thing to her room.

So, I decided on something every little girl loves.  Dress up.  I've been looking at tutu tutorials forever and decided this would be the perfect opportunity to try my hand at one.  I didn't use one tutorial in particular - I just read over several and went for it.  I knew I didn't want to have to sew, so I went the no-sew route.

The only part that sucked was cutting the tulle.  If I had known it would be such a pain, I would have skipped buying it by the yard and would have bought the stuff on the spool.  Live and learn.  I ended up using 3 1/2 yards of red tulle.  You could get away with less, but I made hers really poofy.  Each section that I tied on to the elastic was four layers.  Two would be more than plenty. 

To get the right size, I just wrapped a piece of elastic around her waist and marked it.  I hand stitched the ends together.  I put the elastic around my thigh to stretch it out for tying the tulle on. That worked really well.

I didn't use the actual knot tying method, but it's hard to explain in words how I hooked each piece on, so just Google No-Sew Tutu and you'll get some good pictures of different methods.  I glued black pom poms on with fabric glue.

Here's the finished tutu:

For the shirt, I bought a cheap white t-shirt and used iron-on ladybugs that I got at Joann Fabrics to decorate it.

And yes, the words are crooked - the iron moved the sheet and there was nothin' I could do about it at that point.

Here's the t-shirt:

(it was in a bag, which is why it's so wrinkled in the pictures - I ironed it before wrapping it)

I found some socks at Joann's as well.

They were with the Halloween stuff on sale for $1-something.

At the Dollar Store, I bought a red feather boa and some silly fabric shoes.

For the antennas, I bought a headband and some red wire at the Dollar Store.

I wrapped the wire around a pencil to make it swirly and then wrapped it around the headband and used glue so it wouldn't spin.

I glued black pom poms on the ends.

She already had some ladybug wings from the Dollar Store that had seen their better day.

My plan was to fix them.

I worked on that yesterday.

Then I shoved everything into a bag and threw it into the laundry room.

What I wanted to do was chuck it out the window.

Tulle, wire, and fabric glue are not my friends.

We'll figure out the wings later.

And last, I bought a felt purse at the Dollar Store.

It had an ugly star on one side of it.

I used the same fabric from the no-sew bunting, pinking shears and some fabric glue to cover that bad boy up.

The glue is still wet in this last picture, but it dried invisible.

I put all the accessories inside of it.

So there ya have it.

The Girl's ladybug dress up birthday present.

I'll be bombarding you with photos of her wearing it soon.  :o)