the house diaries: knot your average tutu...

omg guys. my craft skills {and i use that term loosely} continue to expand! my dear friend venessa had asked me to help make her beautiful daughter a tutu for her first birthday. she found an amazingly helpful tutorial at mammalicious finds that we attempted {quite successfully} to replicate on our own...

it is with great pride i present to you:

the "knotty" tutu tutorial!

crafty necessities {yields 1+ tutus}:

3 spools of tulle {25 ft each}, minimum

1" wide elastic

sewing kit

the entire project cost us only about $25, which isn't too bad considering what these babies go for online and in specialty stores! we ended up purchasing pink, aqua and purple tulle, plus 2 smaller spools of glitter tulle for added flare; this is a first birthday after all!

we used this handy trick from treasures for tots to cut the tulle. we decided we wanted about an 8" long tutu, so we doubled the amount of tulle and added 2 inches {18" total for those who can't add like me}.

measuring a squirmy baby's waist proved less simple, but that is the easiest way to determine how much elastic you will need. the original tutorial said not to stretch it, but we found that the more tulle we added to the elastic, it naturally stretched it out; in this case, i would pull the elastic slightly taut for your measurement.

then we starting knotting away! use a simple knot tying in opposite directions to form a "pretty" knot {i.e., tie it once left to right, then up and down to form the knot}. we then rotated the tulle so that the knot was on the bottom of the elastic waistband.

we continued in this fashion, alternating colors and intermittently throwing in some glittery pieces...

we did push the knots closely together to get more fullness in the tutu, and this is what caused the elastic to stretch out; we ended up having to sew an overlapping piece together to get it to fit correctly...