A New Outfit for Little Miss Siena, and trip to the Zoo!

2 days ago I made a new shirt for Siena.  I used an old shirt and transformed it into this for her:

 

I started with this shirt:

This shirt was a kids large.  I took the neck in, detached and reattached the sleeves, made an opening at the back of the shirt and put a hook and eye on it, and I made a little gathering detail on the front.  I took a few pictures of these steps, but unfortunately kept forgetting to take pictures, so here's what I do have:
I started out by cutting open the back of the shirt.  I actually ended up cutting all the way down the back and having a seam up the back of the shirt.  This turned out to be perfect for making the back of the shirt smaller, as well as making it easy to create a perfect opening in the back for the hook and eye.

 Since I was working with a knit, I took a woven fabric and stitched it into the back where the opening and hook and eye were going to go.  This helped stabilize the fabric.

 This is the finished product of the opening. It's only missing the hook and eye at this point, but that was the last thing that I did on the shirt.

 Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of how I did the front on the shirt, but I basically cut the shirt like a baby's bib, but backwards.  I then cut a large square that I gathered at the top and attached to the front of the shirt. (let me know if you need a better explanation..)

 I sewed up the side seams

 Shortened the sleeves and took them in a little, then ease stitched the curve of the sleeve.  I then gathered the sleeve and attached it to the bodice.

 These were the settings on my machine for the ease stitching:

After all of that, I just hemmed the bottom of the shirt, attached the hook and eye, and that was it!

To complete her outfit, I wanted to fix up some of her pants.  I got these pants a little while back, and they had frill along the bottom of them and they were super loose and baggy on her legs.  They looked a lot like this:

I really didn't like the frill, so I cut it off right next to the seam(It's a knit, so it doesn't fray-no hemming necessary).  The extra frill came in handy later when I made a little flower out of it and put it on the little shirt I made.  Next I made the pant leg skinnier becasue I wanted them to be more like leggings.  I did this by sewing up the side seam and the inside seam of the pants.  Here's a picture(my stitching is the white thread with some blue chalk lines)

I liked them so much I did it to 2 more of her pants:

They look so much better and are so cute as little legging-type pants.

Here is the final, full product:

 It looked so cute on her! I made her wear it to the zoo the next day, which brings me to my next topic, the zoo!


Siena and I went to the Hogle Zoo yesterday with Beckham, Tricia and her 2 cousins! It was so fun! We saw the animals, rode on the carousel, and took some fun pictures.

 There's a baby elephant in the background..kinda hard to see..

Cute little Beckham!

Tricia's cousin and her baby, Henry

Beckham- chillin & eating cheerios.

Siena, my little gopher..lol

We found yellow monkeys...perfect!

 

So anyway, we had a lot of fun at the zoo! Hope you're havin a great day!