This is my daughter's favorite type of nightgown, and lucky for me, it's quick to make! It's also a great scrap buster and a fast repurposing of an old t-shirt. What more could you ask for?

After selecting a t-shirt to use (looser fitting tees work better, as you will come to find out in this tutorial), choose coordinating fabrics for the bottom, or even another t-shirt. Madeline selected all of the shirts and fabrics for her nightgowns. You can use one large bottom piece or combine prints, as we do here.

Measure your trim fabrics and sew the pieces together, if using two. Be sure to press the seam open. Since this is a nightgown, and she just HAD to have them right away, I used a lot of cheats. Instead of taking proper measurements, I just held the folded piece of fabric against the hem of the t-shirt and added a bit for the seam.

Another cheat here - instead of measuring and sewing the bottom piece into a tube, I pinned the right side of the bottom fabric to the right side of the t-shirt hem, inserting a pin exactly where the two open ends should come together to form a seam.
I unpinned the piece around the seam, pulled the t-shirt fabric back, and sewed a seam.
I pinned the t-shirt back around the seam and made a seam around the entire bottom of the gown, where the two pieces attach.
I pressed open the seams and added a hem. I zigzag my seams to finish them, but if you have a serger you could do that as well. I would, at the very least, pink them, since nightgowns get washed frequently.
This was our final product, but because the t-shirt is quite fitted, it was too tight for comfortable night ware. Lesson learned - loose t-shirts are better! A refitting was in order.
I cut the bottom part of an old t-shirt that I recently hand dyed, and then cut off the original gray t-shirt a few inches below the waist. I seamed these two pieces together to add ease ( and both are jersey, so no need to finish the seams!), then added the patterned bottom to the new blue panel.
Now the nightgown was loose enough for comfortable movement.
This t-shirt had more ease, so I simply added a slit to the bottom fabric for easier movement. If you use an old t-shirt or two for the bottom layers, as we have also done in the past, you should have enough stretch to skip a slit. With old tees this project takes about a half an hour, with fabric strips about an hour for the first one. A quick and frugal refashion!

I found a great deal on an infant car seat before we knew that our little one is a little boy. While I don't feel the need to collect everything in blue with baseballs on it, I do know that :
1. DH would never let his son ride in a pink car seat
2. I don't like the print anyway
So I did what any DIY gal would - I recovered it. Yes, I know some people would not feel comfortable with this, but since I simply replaced the top fabric and used the same underlying pads (and actually kept parts of the original cover), I'm okay with it.  Here is the before:
Originally, I had planned to recover the whole seat. But the top portion is a light brown polka dot, and the canopy is also a sort of taupe color, so why do extra work? I found a blue polka dot print at the local quilt store that matched the brown, and I still had about a half a yard of a fabulous cowboy print in the sewing closet, so I combined those with the brown top and reused the same taupe bias tape that came with the chair. I really don't like those safety stickers printed on the top, but time beat out esthetics on this one! I used a similar method as Make It and Love It used for her tutorial.
Here is the result! Recovering the padding was not very difficult. Time consuming, yes, and you'll make good friends with your seam ripper, but not too hard. The worst part was the bias tape, as I used the nylon tape that came with the original seat, and that's slippery stuff! The canopy... well, that's another story.
I kept the original taupe parts and just replaced the pink trim. I thought that would be easy enough. Wrong! The back channel with the blue trim was easy, and adding the red padded trim to the front was also easy, but getting the front channel in to hold the canopy arms, well, that was horrid! I'm sure the nylon was part of it, but I think I ripped that thing out at least three times! The channel is still a little puckered, but I can live with it. I literally spilled my own blood on that part!
I was able to recycle the newborn head rest, too, just swapping out the trim fabric. This was a very time consuming project, and not the most fun sewing in the world, but I am so thrilled with the results! I saved a bunch of money on the car seat and I have one with a print I really adore, not just one I've settled for.

I love vintage table cloths, but this one my mother gave me really didn't match any of the colors in the house, especially in the dining room. So I pulled out an old cotton mattress cover I had been saving, and used it for the backing. It was already lined with batting, so I simply pinned right sides together and seamed it. I top stitched around the edges, but did not quilt the top.
It adds a nice little cushioning for a summer lunchtime picnic!

Lots of sewing happening during these rainy days: new garments, re-fashions and mending. I've had this khaki skirt in my closet for years, and last year set it aside for embellishing. Since I had the scraps out for other projects, I decided to use some on this as well.
A very quick, simple applique. I decided to straight stitch the edges to keep with a more primitive look, with some intentionally quirky outline stitching around the tops. I continued the pattern around the back a bit, too.
 Sorry for the bad inside shot, but it's gray and blustery outside. At least the skirt looks like spring!