Scrappy Stars and Little Skirts

If you are here for the Advice for New Bloggers series post and giveaway from yesterday, click here.

If you are here to learn more about the Let's Get Acquainted! Blog Hop for New Bloggers, click here.

If you are here because you want to read about my stars and skirts . . .

It has been almost a whole week since I uploaded the photos from my camera to the computer - it was so fun seeing my week in review like that.  I didn't realize how much sewing I had done - so much so that I actually have two posts worth of photos.  For today, I'll write about little skirts and scrappy stars.

I've been attempting to expand my quilting skills by trying new things each week.  This week it was Scrappy Stars.  I started small:

 
Worked my way to this:

That is actually the back of the first one or the other way around (that is a great thing about machine stitched binding - it's reversible!)

And I finally got to this (which was inspired by this little lovely from One Shabby Chick that I have pinned in my Quilty Inspiration Board):

Anyone else make any stars recently?  Anyone have any great patterns, tutorials, or tips for making stars?  Let me know.

And on to skirts:

When I first started sewing, I found this great free pattern from Oliver and S and made lots of little skirts for my girls.  They have been wearing the skirts we made last summer again recently so I was inspired to  make a few more.  The skirt I made following the pattern is the green and blue one with the Erin McMorris Urban Gardens fabric.  If you haven't sewed clothes before (or even if you have), this is a great pattern to start with.  One tip from me - when using this pattern, I find that if I press the casing before sewing up the selvedges, I have an easier time re-pressing and stitching the casing closed.

I also tried this tutorial from Purl Bee to make the cute little triangle dress in Little Folks voile by Anna Maria Horner.  I used the same ribbon method from the Oliver and S pattern to finish the bottom.   I need to find more information about sewing with voile - if you have any tips, let me know.

For the linen-look skirt with the scrappy binding, I kind of made it up as I went along using tips from both of the above tutorials.   I just took a rectangle of a quilting weight solid and used a bright pink thread to machine stitch straight lines in a somewhat random pattern from top to bottom throughout the skirt.  Since the selvedges were cut off, I used the seam finishing method from the triangle dress tutorial.  For the binding, I used my scraps to make a single fold binding and attached it to the skirt similarly to how I attach binding to a quilt (except I always use double fold binding for the quilts.)

I still have a lot to learn about sewing clothes but I am definitely much improved from the skirts I made a few years ago - I might still have trouble sewing a straight line but at least I can now sew a continuous one!  I plan on making more little girl clothes this week and maybe next time I'll post on a "model."  So, another question - anyone have any tips, tutorials, or free patterns for little girl or baby clothes that you recommend I try?

And one more question.  My new thing for this week is Triangles!  Here is my WIP.  If you have any tips or tutorials or feel like trying triangles with me this week, let me know in the comments.

Be sure to visit the great tutorials and posts by this week's blog hoppers.  

Please visit my Links page to see where I like to link my posts.  I'm linking this post to Sew and Tell at AmyLouWho and Quilt Story -both of whom also shared skirts this week as well as Confessions of a Fabric Addict and TGIFF for finishes and Try Something New Thursday for trying stars this week.  Wondering if I should have divided this post into two so that I didn't link one post to so many link ups?!?