Usually I am the one searching for tutorials on how to make things.  I admit it.  If it’s something that doesn’t really need a pattern, I’m not about to spend the money to buy one when all I need are decent instructions.  So when I was asked to make angelic tutus for the angels in our church’s Christmas program, I opened my big mouth and volunteered to make them.  I figured a few minutes of googling would generate a dozen or so tutorials on what I wanted to do.

I was wrong.  There are dozens of tutorials on how to NOT sew a tutu.  There are a few on how to make tiered tutus a la the peasant skirt.  There are a few on how to sew them onto random things like the bottom of a tank top or a skirt an adult would wear out to a night club.

BUT THERE ARE NO TUTORIALS ON HOW TO SEW A STINKIN’ TUTU!!!

So I made no less than 4 trial tutus before I figured out how to do this simple variety.  And now, because I was so frustrated in trying to do something so simple without directions, I am putting together this tutorial for those who are wanting to make a simple, sewn tutu that works. 

First of all, I feel that I must share what I have learned about the fabrics available out there for making a tutu.  All of the (no sew) tutorials say to run out and buy a roll of tulle.  This is great if you only want a sewn tutu that is 6-9 inches long.  Not so great if you want a long romantic one with a bit of flowiness.  I couldn’t find any tulle on a bolt.  What I did find was “illusion”, nylon net, and can can net at Hancock Fabrics.

There’s a reason they call it “illusion.”  This stuff is light and airy and you can get it in iridescent colors.  It’s 108 inches wide and gathers beautifully.  You spend an hour or so cutting, gathering, and sewing while humming “Waltz of the Snowflakes.”  You put it on your precious darling and after 30 seconds of twirling it looks like she’s wearing a meringue around her waste. 

Yes.  It’s an illusion that it will turn out nice and stay that way.  I think this stuff is better suited for wedding veils or something.  Come to think of it.  It does look a bit like a bunched up bridal..thingy.  If there’s ever a pie fairy who needs a wedding outfit, I know how to make her one.

The can can netting is much denser and stiffer.  It’s 54 inches wide and comes in white.  I’ve made a longer tutu out of it and decided that it is best suited for the shorter Swan Lake style tutu.  You could use this kind in the same way I describe here just as well.  Just be aware that it will turn out stiffer and need less layers.

The 72 inch wide nylon netting worked the best for my romantic tutu.  It also comes in a variety of colors.

I’ll stop babbling already and get on with the actual tutorial!

Materials:
nylon netting
measuring tape/yardstick
scissors
thread
needle
elastic (I used 1/2 inch wide)
pins
sewing machine

1. Start by figuring out how long you want your tutu to be.  Multiply that number by the number of layers you’d like.  This is how much you’ll want to buy.

In this case, I wanted a 16 inch long, 4 layer tutu.
16 X 4 = 64 –> about 1 and 7/8 yards
(this will leave extra if they don’t cut it perfectly even at the store)

2. Cut out your layers of fabric at your desired length.  Don’t worry about the width.  You’ll use all 72 inches of it and gather it to a less daunting measurement.

For this tutu I have 4 layers of 72 inch wide, 16 inch long netting.

It comes folded in fourths.  I leave it that way for cutting.

3. Cut the waist elastic.  Take the the waist measurement of your ballerina and cut a piece of elastic that length plus an extra half inch. 

20 + 1/2 = 20 1/2 inches

4. Overlap the ends of the elastic and sew them together.

5. Gather each layer of netting to the waist measurement.  You could use your long machine stitch and pull the bobbin threads up.  I prefer to do it by hand because I can measure out the thread to the approximate length I want it to gather and not have to fuss with it so much.

Pull your thread out to the waist measurement plus 2 inches.

Double it up.

Thread your needle and knot the end.  I like to use a large, blunt one since the holes are already in the fabric and I tend to prick myself a bit. 

Start at one end of the netting near the top.  Slide your thread through it and tie it to that end.  Work your needle in and out along the top edge.  You don’t have to be exact.  I’ve counted holes to the exact stitch and done it randomly.  the ending result is the same.

Once you reach the end of the netting, tie off the end as close to the needle as you can and snip the thread between the knot and the needle.

You should end up with a gathered length that is pretty close to the length of the elastic.

Do this with all of your layers.

6. Pin your gathered layers to the elastic.  Line up the top edge of the layer with the top edge of the elastic.  I’m paranoid about missing a layer, so I go a little beyond the top edge.

I recommend staggering where you start/stop them so that you don’t have a slit in your tutu.  I have found that I have to pin each layer on individually.  I use the same pins for all of the layers and repin the first layer(s) as I add each additional one. 

7. Sew your layers to your elastic.  Set your stitch to straight.  Sew 2-3 stitches and backstitch 2-3 stitches.  Change your stitch to the longest, widest zig zag stitch on your machine.  (Unless it happens to have a stitch wider than your elastic.  I’ve never seen one that does it wider than 1/2 an inch, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one that does!)  Do NOT stretch your elastic as you sew.  Sew all the way around with your elastic as centered as possible under the presser foot and needle.  When you get all the way around, change your stitch back to straight, sew 2-3 stitches and backstitch 2-3 stitches.

Be careful of getting one of the holes looped over the presser foot!  Going slowly and holding down the netting to the left of the foot as I feed it through helps.

8. Stretch out the elastic.  You will hear the gathering stitches break.  Don’t panic.  The zig zag stitch will stretch with the elastic but the gather stitches won’t.  Look for any loose gather stitches and pull them out gently. 

Note:  It IS possible to pull the elastic hard enough to break the zigzag stitches, but you’d have to be trying to pull the elastic to its limits.  This is unnecessary unless your ballerina’s hip to waist ratio is greater than the stretch of the elastic.  The goal here is to break only the gather stitches, not use the waistband as a bungee cord.  If you do manage to snap the zig zags, you can go around the tutu again with your zig zag stitch and it will still stretch.  I’ve sewn 4 layers on separately this way and still gotten a decent stretch.  It just looked really messy with all the stitching.

9. Flip the tutu. Turn the tutu so that the long part of the netting covers the stitching and the “pokey” top is pointing down.  Only elastic and thread should be on the inside.

10. Put the tutu on your ballerina!

If you want to add vertical ribbons, keep in mind that you will want to put them on before you start to pin your netting to the elastic so that they will be on top when you flip the tutu.

If you are making a dark colored tutu and the blaring white elastic band showing is not desired, don’t flip the tutu. 

For reference, this photo shows the tutu”unflipped.”  The flipping just adds a little more fluffiness.  (My model was done by this time.  Please excuse the pitiful face.)

If you absolutely hate working with elastic, sew the gathered layers together along the top and sandwich them between a 2-4 inch wide piece of satin ribbon folded over.  Sew the bottom edges of the folded ribbon together.  Leave enough ribbon at each end for tying.

Happy sewing!

Out damn Spot!

Out I say!

Now Spot has gone away!

Spray, scrub, repeat.

Who says kids aren’t neat?

The end. 

So began the searching and researching to see how to fix my problem.  Apparently, I had missed the fact that using no detergent at all will leave a build up of ammonia salts in the diapers, which give off no odor at all when dry, but begin to, erm, wake up the faint after a quick pee.  So, time to find a good detergent that will really clean the diapers and rinse away clean without a bazillion rinses to get the “residue” out.

I keep seeing that Rockin Green is the best detergent for such a job.  It even comes in a formula for hard water that tends to leave deposits in diapers.  This sounds great to me!  Deposits in diapers = bad!  It has to!  On top of that it claims to be environmentally friendly and uses many “natural” and “biodegradable” ingredients!  Woo hoo! 

Then I decided to get the scoop on the ingredients listed.  (Thank you wikipedia!)

1. Sodium carbonate aka washing soda or soda ash.  According to this site, washing soda is a natural water softener and laundry booster.  I have this in my laundry room already.

2. Sodium percabonate aka oxyclean or an oxygen cleaner.  Again, this stuff lives in my laundry room.

3. Natural chelating ingredients.  This one was a bit harder to discern for me, but when it comes to laundry, a chelating agent is some sort of water softener.  Following that line of thinking, I look into various water softeners used in laundry formulations.  Three jump out at me as being able to assume the “natural” label: sodium chloride (salt!), sodium citrate (citric acid), and Borax.  I’m putting my money on the last one since the box has it screaming at you that it is “all natural” and it purports to be a water softener aka chelating ingredient.  It could be all three, since ingredients is plural.  Either way, I have salt in my cupboard and Borax in my laundry room.

4. Sodium sulfate.  According to wiki, this is a filler often used in powdered laundry detergents.  Really?  A filler?  This was getting more disappointing by the second.  I was under the impression that being green meant less waste.  Maybe this product meant green more in the penny pinching way than the tree hugging way, and I missed it somehow.  This filler business really irks me.  This is the one ingredient I don’t have in my house.  Somehow I’m not disappointed.

5. Biodegradable surfactants.  I’m going to go with the simplest possibility here since everything else has turned out to be super simple and say that this ingredient is most likely…wait for it…wait for it…SOAP! 

6. Natural fragrance oils.  So this doesn’t really have much to do with how this stuff works.  It just makes it smell yummy.  For the record, I have several essential oils in my washroom as well. 

So, big deal?  Someone has put together a bunch of fairly common, readily available ingredients (minus the sodium sulfate filler) and put them in a pretty package to charge about the same as Tide.  I suppose I wouldn’t have been quite so taken aback if I didn’t already have a jug of homemade laundry detergent already sitting in my laundry room with pretty much the exact same ingredients in liquid form. 

Dang it!  I should have come up with this idea.  Or perhaps I could have come up with some sort of special laundry treatment and just repackaged one of these common ingredients.  No.  Wait.  That’s what Cadie did with RLR Laundry Treatment.  It took a good bit of digging, but it seems that the consensus is that RLR is nothing more than sodium carbonate/washing soda/soda ash.  In my quest for defunking my diapers I saw RLR as being a good way of getting rid of ammonia stink, so I investigated it.  Now if I get the urge to try it, I know I can just dump a bunch of washing soda in my machine and eliminate that as a wonder fix.

Meanwhile, I am going to go back to actually using my homemade detergent on my diapers with a hot rinse and “rock a soak” once a month.  I did it for my last diaper load and the smell is much less, erm, rockin.

When the boys got here, we gave them their dog tags, assigned them to alpha and bravo teams, and painted the faces of those who were interested in camouflage makeup.

Then Chris lined them up and put them through some ceremonial drills.

Then they went on a road march.  That speck is actually boys.

Of course, we can’t do a party without the obstacle course.  It has become a tradition. 

They had to swing across

Walk across a low balance beam and high scaffold then army crawl under the “barbed string”

Through the “jungle”, beat up the “bad guy”, and then up the ladder

Down the slide and under the deck to safety.  (or in this case, silliness)

We let the boys all have a dry run before we set out the “mines” (water balloons) 

After blindfolding them and having them help each other through a minefield, we turned them loose on each other with about 150 water balloons and squirt guns.  Our cameras aren’t waterproof so there aren’t any pictures of that.  Needless to say, the boys had much fun and got plenty wet and dirty in the process.

I let them play “carry the wounded soldier” for a little bit to help them unwind before being asked to be civilized long enough for cake and cheese puffs.  (Thomas requested the cheese puffs.)

I’m going to go a bit on a tangent for a moment and share about the cake.  Thomas requested that I make the batter camouflage, so I mixed it up in 4 different colors and plopped it into the cake pan.  Here’s what the cake looked like when it was mostly done, but before I added the detail work.

And after (Michael said “wow” enough times to make me feel good about all the time I put into it.)

The guests seemed to get a big kick out of it (even though the cheese puffs tried to steal the scene)

Thomas blew the candles out and the cake was history.

There was a quick exchange of gifts before the boys got busy with their water guns again.  They picked up goodie bags and their certificate promoting them from recruit to private on the way out the door.  They all left wet and worn out.  Most of them complained that they had to go home, so I’m assuming they were having fun.  I got a kick out of all the water wars.  Too bad I missed getting those pictures though.

Gloria, on the other hand, seems to be taking to it well.  She hangs out at home in just a dress so that she has the air on her bum and no pants to worry with.  She goes whenever the urge strikes her, or whenever an M&M sounds good at the moment.  Several times over the past few days I’ve heard, “Mommy, you gotta flush my pee pee so I can make some more.”  For the most part, she’s the one deciding when to go.  I do suggest that she go in certain instances (before leaving the house, right after she wakes up) but I do NOT make it a requirement.  Most of the time she tries anyway, but she’ll tell me if she’s not interested. 

I load her up in the car every morning and set her in her car seat on a towel to take Thomas to school.  She stays as she is in the house (nothing on the bum) for the short car ride.  If we go out anywhere she’d actually have to get out of the car, she goes in loose pants and nothing underneath.  I think she’s only had 3 pee accidents since the first day of potty training and these were all while she was wearing pants.

We’ve been up to church to set up and copy bulletins in loose pants with no incident.  We even managed to make it all the way through Sunday school in loose pants with no issue.  Granted, she did have a little accident in the first pair of pants before we left the house, but she did stop herself and managed to finish in the little potty. 

Speaking of potties, the princess will only go in her own, so it goes with her wherever she goes.  Once she used Daniel’s potty because her potty was in the same room with her sleeping aunt and uncle and she didn’t want to make her cousin cry by waking her up.

She’s doing pretty well with number two as well.  She had one accident with that on the floor in the kitchen while no one was looking.  She was very vocal about it and shooed her little brother and her aunt’s dog away from it until her mother managed to clean it up.  She even redeemed herself that same night by sitting on the potty before bed and producing something a grown man would be proud of!

The thing that has surprised me the most about this experience is that Gloria has woken up twice with a dry diaper and announced that she wanted to use the potty.  She has yet to have a nap accident.

I think I’m just lucky.

Daniel, on the other hand, has pretty much told me that he does not want to go on the potty.  He is ok being without a diaper and will go hang out on the potty with his sister, but does not want to actually use it.  He is going through a stubborn streak right now, so it does not really surprise me.  At least he is learning his lower case “m” from all of the M&M’s that have been doled out in honor of his sister’s accomplishments.

I think Gloria might make it through church this Sunday!  Daniel will be in diapers unless he suddenly changes his tune.

For those of you interested, here is a link to the basic “method” that I am using.  Don’t let the title fool you though.  Potty training isn’t a 3 day thing, but the initial learning process is.  I think of it like learning to walk.  Babies take a few steps here and there before they start to seriously toddle around and once they are toddling, they then still have plenty of spills as they learn how to really use their legs. 

And, yes, they will be going around without pants on at home for a good month.  The more success they have with a bare bottom translates into less accidents with pants.  I would rather look at their behinds than clean up mess anyway!

And now, for a couple of “action” shots! 

Notice the strategically placed dress and book.  No, I’m not worried about the book as Daniel just doesn’t want to go on the potty quite yet.

Yes, that is chocolate on Gloria’s face!

This time, however, we had to leave the house long enough to drop off Thomas and our carpool friend at school.  It’s about a 30 minute round trip including the waiting.  I suggested to Gloria that she go potty right before we left.  She refused.  I let it go.  She asked to sit on a towel in the car and I happily obliged.  Right after Thomas got out, she unhappily announced, “Mommy!  I made pee pee on my towel."  It was her only accident of the day!  In case anyone is wondering, the restraints in the car seat protected her modesty and no one knew she was hanging out in a dress with nothing under it.

Since Daniel sprinkles I put him in a diaper for the car ride. 

Once we got home, I made up some blue Kool Aid and waited for the fun to begin. ( It turns out that the orange yesterday was lacking in sugar.  Yuck!)  This time, Daniel didn’t sprinkle.  He power washed!  I pretty much heard it before I saw it every time.  He was fascinated with watching the stream come out.  One time he was standing next to an air vent and that’s right where it went.  Thankfully there is no strange smell when the air comes on!

Tinkle, tinkle in the pot.
Boy, my kids can pee a lot.
In the potty Gloria went.
Daniel just peed in the vent!
Tinkle, tinkle in the pot.
Boy, my kids can pee a lot.

Somehow I managed to catch him in the midst of a bowel movement, not once, but twice, and got him on the potty in time for him to finish.  We made a big deal about that and had a flushing ceremony.  He seemed a good bit unhappy during the process but proud of himself afterwards and talked about it a good bit.  I didn’t manage to get him to actually wet on the potty this time.  He did go and sit down next to Gloria every time she sat on her potty without prompting, so that is some progress on his part.

Tinkle, tinkle in the pot.
Show me how much pee you’ve got.
Potty training is such fun!
I can’t wait until we’re done!
Tinkle, tinkle in the pot.
Show me how much pee you’ve got.

Gloria on the other hand would periodically go sit on her potty.  I didn’t keep close track, but I am thinking that she actually produced about one time out of five. 

When Thomas came home and finished his homework, he went into the living room to play his video games and the princess begged to go in there with him.  Since she has been doing so well, I told her that she could go in there only after she went on her potty.  She promptly sat, got a thoughtful look on her face, and did just what I asked her to do.  So I put a towel down for her, at her request, and let her sit next to Thomas.

A few minutes later she came to the kitchen and asked to be let back in and pretty much went straight to the potty, sat down, and announced that she was pooping.  Based on her general attitude about it prior to this, I really figured she would save it and go in her night time diaper.  Upon seeing Daniel’s earlier achievement Gloria gasped , “I NEVER poop on the potty!”  She proved me wrong!  So now Gloria has achieved both pooping and peeing in her potty! 

Now this song is stuck in my head!  I started making up lyrics to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and decided to google it and see what popped up.  I found it in my search.  Let me stress that it is NOT me or my children, but they sure have enjoyed watching it.  Even Thomas gets a big kick out of it.

We may make it out of the house this week!

We got off to a bit of a rough start as Gloria was NOT happy about going in just a shirt and leg warmers.  There were serious tears and fussing and wailing about the fact that she had no diaper on.  During breakfast, she sat on a towel in her booster seat an bemoaned the fact that her beloved diapers were upstairs and her bum was uncovered.  Daniel, on the other hand, seemed thrilled to be able to visit his little friend so easily.

After breakfast, I didn’t hear another complaint from Gloria as she was too busy racing trains around the train table to notice her wardrobe was lacking.  Michael had brought the train into the middle of the kitchen and built a simple, toddler friendly  track around the edges.  The suspension bridges, tunnels, and drawbridges are sitting in the playroom pouting about how they were replaced with boring old straight tracks.

Daniel did a great job of setting the example by sprinkling on the floor every 2 minutes so that I could put him on the potty and explain that he could get some M&M’s if he put pee pee in the potty.  He wasn’t interested in it and protested a bit, but it helped get Gloria in the right frame of mind as she would come sit on the potty next to him.  My personal favorite sprinkle was the one where he stood at the gate and peed on the carpet.  The whole point of spending the day in the kitchen was to avoid this!

I made up some watered down Kool Aid to give them extra ammunition for practice and spent a good deal of time putting Daniel on the potty and cleaning up his sprinkles.  Pretty soon, it was obvious to me that he had a full bladder but wasn’t sure how to do it in the potty.  A time or two he would go over and look at the potty and then walk away and sprinkle a bit.  We tried hanging out on the potties and reading for a while to no avail.  I gave up on that and had them play some more and the sprinkling started again.  So back to the potty Daniel went.  I sat him on on it and tickled him until I thought for sure he would leak.  On a whim I pressed on his tummy a little bit.  Naturally this helped him to produce and we were able to celebrate and hand out M&M’s! 

After the initial breakthrough, Gloria went over of her own accord and produced on a grand scale.  After her first success, she would periodically go sit in the hopes that there would be more and thus more M&M’s.  Several times before lunch she went on her own.  Daniel on the other hand, just watered our tile.  Not that I was really expecting him to get it at this age.

After lunch Gloria went another time without prompting!  Then it was nap time and somehow I managed to convince her to sleep in panties and loose pants instead of a diaper and she woke up dry!  Michael was getting ready to make a run to Sam’s Club and the little princess wanted to go.  Now this was NOT in keeping with my plans and philosophy, but I gave her the chance by telling her she had to actually pee before she went.  Surprise!  Surprise!  She did!  Michael kept calling me to ask about things on my list while they were out.  Each time the phone rang I was sure he would be calling to tell me they were changing clothes or something, but apparently he really needed help with my list. 

When she got back, there were groceries to put away, dinner to make, and a big brother to welcome home.  In all that no one thought to take her pants off and she had her first and only accident of the day .    After that it was back to bare bum and sitting on towels!  (And peeing in the potty!)

We shall see how day 2 goes!

Now before you gasp and start thinking that I’m some horrible mother trying to turn her kid into a super reader, realize that I haven’t worked with him on them.  We don’t sit down with flashcards or anything.  I don’t require him to say his ABC’s before he can eat and I’m not shoving letters at him and talking about them all day.  He’s just really interested in them thanks to PBS and his older siblings.

At home he’s been obsessed with the magnet letters on the refrigerator and picks them up and excitedly asks,” What’s dis?”  I really figured that any that he happened to get correct were lucky guesses or were because he recognized that particular magnet, in that particular color, in that particular font. 

Apparently, I was wrong.

After Daniel’s appointment, I went to the church with both toddlers to run off the children’s bulletins.  Gloria was on the floor playing with the Veggie Tales nativity set while Daniel climbed up and examined a wood carving of the word “love” in all capitals.  Then I heard him say “e, y, o, l.”  Say what?  I went over next to him and asked him to identify each one to make sure I hadn’t misheard.  I hadn’t.  He was identifying the letters correctly and consistently.  And in his defense, the V on that carving does look a lot like a Y with a short stem.

At lunch time he gleefully pointed out a “bud-you” (W) on a cup from Manchu Wok. 

At home he began telling me about the letters on the Huggies diaper box in his room.  Did you know that Huggies uses all caps?  At Waffle House, he was looking at the letters on the menu and identifying W, L, E, H, S, O, and U.  Today he has been pointing out D’s.

This is so different than his older siblings.  Thomas was still saying mostly “ack” at this age.  He wasn’t even talking much.  Gloria was talking, but I’m not sure if she knew letters existed outside of the Alphabet Song.  Now we have Daniel who is here to remind us that kids will learn whatever you put under there nose!

Once all the measurements were completed, the nurse prepared to do the finger prick.  Daniel expressed some trepidation when the gloves went on, but calmly sat in my lap and watched in uncomfortable fascination as the nurse pricked his little finger and then squeezed little red “balls” out of his finger and into the straw.  He was going to undo the bandage until I called it a sticker and then he was happy with it.

When the doctor came in to examine him, Daniel was very cooperative and spoke to him a bit.  The doctor was very pleased with his overall health and development and commented that he was speaking well and a lot for his age.  I mentioned something about him trying to identify letters but not really getting them right and he thought that was cute.

Then it was time for the nurse to give him his two vaccinations.  I held Daniel’s hands across his chest while the nurse put the shots into his two little thighs.  Thankfully, he only expressed surprise and then said “Ow!  Ow!  Ow!” when the second needle went in.  He was very interested in getting more “stickers” on his legs and complained more about the urine bag being removed than the shots.  The bag was empty-as usual.  He never pees in that thing.  As the nurse left the room, unprompted, Daniel waved a sad goodbye to her.  By the time we got his clothes back on him and went back to the waiting room, he was all happy again.  I don’t think he even made a tear.  He’s my tough guy.  (Did I mention that Thursday afternoon he fell off the arm of the couch? Onto his head?  And Friday morning he was back on it again.)