Dawson's Nest: Art smocks for the kiddoes

The kids love to do arts and crafts.

I picked up an IKEA pillowcase at the ValueVillage many years ago. With the intention of making art smocks a la Kellie Wulfsohn. I fell for the butterfly and the price tag... $1.

It laid around the house and got moved from box to box to house to house. The other day I pulled it out and started making things up as I went along...

First I unpicked it and (surprise!) it turned out to be one whole piece of fabric!! Wow am I ever pleased.

Some judicious divvying up of the material left me with two butterflies and a beetle and a dragonfly. They were on the skinny long side which isn't a bad thing but I want these smocks to last! So I added a 4 inch strip of broadcloth on each side. I also had a small strip leftover after divvying (I was trying to be fussy and cut out only the cute bugs) and I cut it into four long strips and incorporated them as ties. Not an inch of that pillowcase remains..... From the same color broadcloth, I also cut long sleeves. Unfortunately, in the cutting of those sleeves, I did not take into consideration the extra four inches I added on each side. D'oh! No worries, expert kludger that I am, I kludged the panel up and the sleeves into something roomy and comfy. I want these babies to last for a while!!

I used the rough dimensions of a top from the Ruffled Neckline Dresses, making up the sleeves as I went along.... Just a basic peasant is what I was aiming for and I knew that the neckline was going to be forgiving.

And ta da!! This is what I came up with:

And... on to crafting!!

Girl-chick is a free-ranging kind of crafter, preferring to do her own thing with her own ideas rather than use a kit. We encourage that form of creativity and stock up on all the essential supplies like glitter glue and squeeze paints and a forest full of paper (we do recycle the backs of old pieces of paper too!).

Tater is still in the scribbling-circles-in-random-fashion stage of crafting. She loves, get this, unrolling painter's tape (of which we have LOTS!) and cutting them into strips to line up on the edge of a table. No idea what her eventual plans are with that. She wanders off after a few strips.