Tutus or Bowties

I helped host my sister's baby shower recently, and I was in charge of games.  I did a "tutus or bowties" game where everyone chose to wear either a bow tie or a tutu on their shirt indicating what gender they predicted the baby will be.  We were initially expecting about 50 guests at the shower, so I needed to make quite a few ties and tutus. 

These lovely ladies chose to wear bow ties!

I started by ordering bow tie and onesie shaped cardstock pieces from THIS etsy shop.  I don't think I could have cut them all out by hand and kept my sanity.  If you have a silhouette you have this part easy.  I found some adorable trim at Joanne Fabrics and got a yard (I found similar stuff at Hobby Lobby as well) which made the skirts for about 20 of them.  I also found a roll of tulle on clearance and thought it would work well for the other half of the tutus.

Trim that worked beautifully

The trim I just cut and hot glued around the back of the tutu.  The tulle was much more putzy to work with and took FOR.EV.ER for each tutu.  I cut a length about three times the width of the onesie, and folded the tulle in half lengthwise.  Then I pleated it and hot glued it all along the front of the onesie.  You'll want to use a skewer or point of scissors or something to hold it in place while the hot glue dries.  I did not.  Instead, I used my fingernails and lived dangerously.  Although I do always take Martha's advice and have a cup of water nearby when I'm hot gluing so that I can stick my finger in it when I am inevitably burned.

Pleated, folded lengthwise tulle, mid-hot-gluing

Then I used a small piece of shimmery gold washi tape (from Walmart) to cover the waistband of the tutu.

I wasn't as happy with the tulle-skirted tutus, perhaps if I hadn't gotten cheap plasticy tulle it would have gone better.  But I made 20 of these suckers so there was no turning back.

Then, I just used some sharpies to spice up the plain bow ties.

I bought a couple of packages of closable pins and a dollop of hot-glue secured one to the back of each tutu and tie.

All in all, this was a cute little activity to have everyone predict baby's gender.  A very low-key shower activity!

Many of the pins were returned to me, so if anyone is interested in the leftover bow tie or tutu pins, just say the word. They're yours if you want!

A Quick Knit

My son was in need of a hat.  His adorable one (made by the ohsotalented Jamie) disappeared.  After he pulled the pom pom on the top apart while in his carseat.  With the super frigid weather this past week, I decided that the reasonable thing to do would not be to purchase a hat...oh no...I needed to knit one.  So I used some yarn that the ohsogenerous Jamie sent me and cast on the Adelisa Earflap hat. It was a quick and satisfying knit (actually I enjoyed it so much I'm thinking about what other semi-mindless colorwork project I need in my life now).  And it fits reasonably!  I'm terrible at checking my gauge so it's always a gamble when I knit.  It's much better than wearing Daddy's hat around town (sorry I blamed that on you, kiddo).

Look at that modeling!  And I only had to bribe him with water in his new cup!

That's it! Shortest blog post ever!