Tutorial: Short sleeves become long, plus a pair of capris

shorttolongsleeve I never really notice how much my daughter is growing until we try on a long-sleeved shirt in the fall that hasn’t been worn since early spring. I swear, the clothes shrink on their own while sitting in the drawer!

Ashley from Make It and Love It solves the problem of the ever-shrinking shirt by creating a contrasting faux layers. She created a boy version and a girl version. The boy version uses knit yardage for the faux layers, but the girl version uses an adult long-sleeved shirt. As a bonus, she took the leftover fabric from the long-sleeved adult shirt and made a matching pair of capri pants. Waste not, want not! Go to the tutorials – for the boy shirt, for the girl shirt, for the capris.

[photo from Make It and Love It]

Technorati Tags: sewing, tutorial, short, long, sleeves, shirt, child, boy, girl, capri, pants

Ghost crafts are a lot of fun for kids to make and they’re a way to get into Halloween crafting that’s not really scary. Here are some easy ghost crafts for you to make with kids, whether it’s your kiddo at home or a class full.

I love this simple ghost made with a pompom or cotton ball covered in paint and used as a stamp. This one is from Crafts on Sea and you can have kids just hold the pompom or hold it with a clothespin to make it a little less messy.

Use cotton balls and printable facial expressions to make these silly ghosts from Housing a Forest. The post includes the printable templates or you can just add googly eyes.

Little fabric ghosts are a classic, whether you make them with white fabric or fall or Halloween fabric. Buggy and Buddy shows you how to make these little ghosts with a few cute embellishments. Just make one or two or make a garland or Halloween tree full of them.

There always seem to be paper plates lying around, and this paper plate ghost from Crafts by Amanda is a fun one. There’s a printable in the post for the facial features and arms, or kids can draw their own faces (and leave off the arms if you want to keep it simple).

What kid doesn’t love peeling dried glue? Turn that impulse into a craft with these glue ghosts from Friends Art Lab, and don’t miss the tip in the post that helps you turn these into window clings.

This handprint ghost in the window craft from Glued to My Crafts is so cute and easy for kids to make alone or with help. The post shows lots of variations so it would be fun to make these in a classroom and let each kiddo design their own “window” or add embellishments.

These sweet little tissue paper ghosts from Red Ted Art are actually mini pinatas, but you can just make it as a ghost without anything inside if you’d rather.

And you know I love a good kids’ sewing project so I can’t resist sharing these little felt ghost puppets from The Craft Train. Kids can sew them by hand or you can make them out of paper if you don’t want to try sewing them. The template for the ghosts is free to download, and you can also just make little softies instead of puppets if you like.

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