DIY Inspired by Lalaloopsy

Few weeks before Christmas, my friend called me to ask for help to hunt some toys on the interwebs. It turned out that her kids (3 & 5) were into a new kids show (well, new over here) called Lalaloopsy and she wanted find some play sets that weren’t available in Finland. In the end I found this set on the Ebay and boy, was it a hit with the kids:

via amazon.com

Me and my friend had several discussions about these and reminisced our own childhood. We would have gone nuts over these had they existed when we were kids.

All the cuteness of Lalaloopsy led me to get inspired by them and I got an idea to sew something Lala-related myself. At first I thought about making some kind of play mat and I even ordered bunch of themed ribbons from Ebay. However, I knew I wouldn’t necessary get them on time for Christmas so I decided to come up with a back-up plan and I started doing more research on the dolls themselves. Then I found this image:

I fell in love with the Marie Antoinette’esque dress and then suddenly thought, wouldn’t it be fun if the girls could BE Lalaloopsy-dolls themselves?

Of course it would be.

I went through my vintage fabric stash and pulled all the fabrics that I thought had the playfulness of the dolls. In the end I had six choices:

My first choice was the pink one in the middle but I felt it was too faded to handle kids’ play. Then my second was the yellow plaid but I didn’t have enough for two dresses. The yardage I needed ( and the concept I had in my head) lead me to use the teal plaid.

At first I wanted to do two dresses but knowing the kids, I decided to make a top and a matching skirt and for that I came up with the genius idea altering a T-shirt. Mad rush to H&M and a fantastic deal, 3 for 2 on organic cottons, then back home via the fabric store and I was ready to sew.

I began the process by taking off the sleeves, preserving the seam allowances so there wouldn’t be any unravelling, and used them as a template to create a puffy sleeve:

Winging it comes with a cost. I managed to eff up the sleeves on both tops by forgetting to cut seam allowances. Luckily I have lots of yardage of this fabric. Anyhoo, I sewed a simple puffy sleeve and added an elastic in the hem. I also left a small opening in there just in case the sleeves would be too tight or too loose on the girls’ arms.

Looks so sweet! But a little bit plain for Lalaloopsy-play so I added some details on the front using another one from my fabric shortlist but pictures of that later….

The skirt was very simple to do. Basic, rectangular piece of fabric that I hemmed and sewed together, adding a separate waistband with an elastic inside:

On my mad dash I had stopped by at the fabric store to get some shock pink tulle with a plan to make a light tulle under skirt. In the end I decided to add it on the hem as the skirt was full by itself. Do you want to see the full outfits? Of course you do:

The girls look so cute wearing them! I want to do more of these dresses but I’m not sure if they would realize that this set was also done by me and thus I’d burst their Santa Claus-bubble. I’m all for speaking the truth but some things should have magic as long as possible. Here’s the older kid wearing the outfit:

I am a super-duper sewer and a crafter and a friend indeed. How did your Christmas crafting go? Anything really good and appreciated? If you have any questions about making these, I’m happy to answer :)

-Thrifty Finn-

P.S. A total cost for these two outfits was about 25 euros. The most expensive was the main fabric, which is from 60s.

Filed under: Christmas, Generally Crafty, Sewing Tagged: children, craft, design, DIY, fabric, fashion, kids, Lalaloopsy, sewing, style, vintage, vintage fabric