This might possibly be my favorite refashion I've done for Penelope to date. I had two shirts (that I loved quite a bit, actually) that both met sad fates. The first (left) shrunk so small, I seriously didn't have to take it in much on the sides (maybe a half inch) in order to fit Penelope. The second (right) got a few too many stains right at the bust line. It's not like my bust sticks out at all, so it's hilarious that that particular area was a magnet for stains. It was sad to see them leave my regular wardrobe rotation, but at least I have a daughter who can wear them in hers! Here's what I did:

• I took in the pink shirt about a half inch on both sides
• lopped off the bottom half of the pink shirt
• lopped off the top 7-8 inches of the striped shirt
• gathered the striped shirt with a baste stitch
• pinned (right sides together) the striped shirt to the pink top
• sewed the two together (using the jersey stitch which looks like this: --^--^--^)
• removed the gathered stitch
• ironed

The striped shirt came with the little sash, so I just wrapped that around her tiny waist twice & tied a little knot. I LOVE how this looks on her. Seriously, the bright pink is such a fabulous color on Miss P. Overall this refashion took about 30 minutes. It was so incredibly sweet to see her reaction when I presented the new dress to her. She squealed, "Ooo, mommy! It's a princess dress!" Aww. . . Pen, you know how to make your mom feel special. She was also surprisingly good about posing for me. Sometimes she's so excited about pictures she doesn't sit still for the 1/125th of a second shutter release, but she was more than happy to accomodate on Friday afternoon. Speaking of cameras. . . I'm selling my Nikon D200. I'm also selling my Sony handycam 40GB hard drive HD video camera, too (as if that wasn't a mouthful). Contact me if you're interested.