Understand I have a 3 year old girl with a lot of wee fairy/princess friends, tu-tu's are all the rage around here. It's a hot topic debate if the tu-tu is considered a dress-up item not to leave the house, or a funky accessory (personally I vote the latter). To solve the problem here is a super easy, super quick, super cute tu-tu that is equally appropriate for both fairy play and a gal on the go.
To start, get some tulle, depending on how long you want the tu-tu you may not need more than 3/4 yard. The finished tu-tu above is 11 inches long so I measured 22 inches of tulle, folded it up so it measured 11 inches folded, and cut.
You will also need 3/8 inch width elastic (wider is fine too)
Fake flower petals
Thread to match the tulle
2 safety pins
Next pin top edges together so they don't slide around when you sew it. About 3/4 inch below top raw edge sew a straight line, then sew another straight line about 1/2 inch below.
Next you will thread your elastic between the seams you just sewed, measure a piece of elastic about 1 inch shorter than your wee ones waist, if she has a 20 inch waist use a 19 inch piece of elastic. Use a safety pin to hold one end of the elastic to the edge of the tu-tu. Attach the second safety pin to the other end of the elastic to help you pull it through between the seams. When the elastic is all the way through the tu-tu, stitch the elastic on both sides.
Now we put our flowers in, this is a fun part to have your little fairy child help you with! Through open hole on either side (see pal scissors demonstrating open hole)
insert flowers or whatever else you fancy.
Almost done, fold open sides to meet and sew shut.
Looky, looky, eeee so cute!
Test on tu-tu lovin child.
Now I can fully appreciate the 'novelty' of a tu-tu soooooooo I made one for myself and my tu-tu lovin pal Lori. We will be running the
Dirty 6 mud run. 6 muddy miles with 9 obstacles including the always popular slip-n-slide, jealous??
So the race started and we were off to run 6 miles, we are a good pace match so we were able to keep together and still kick arse on the course. This was very important because I know there were many people out there that day thinking "there is no way I'm letting some tu-tu wearin prissy girl beat me". Well we came in before 518 of those people and considering only 662 people were out there, that is pretty good. Some of the obstacles took a while to get through, and some of the runners out there skipped by them for a faster time, well we got our time fair and square thank you very much. There were 2 slip-n-slides, 2 obstacle inflatable bounce house type thingies, a few big dirt hills, a shallow river crossing, major hose spray, and the piest de la resistance, a ginormous mud pit waiting for us at the end.
My only regret is that I did not enter the mud pit with more flare. I did a snazzy jump, but in preparation for next time I want to have Lori show me some real leaping ballerina type moves, cause I will be doing events like this again no doubt.
Head to toe and everywhere else muddy
This was just stupid delirious fun. It's a shame we didn't get pics before we hosed off, we hardly look dirty in the after pics.
I suppose I should care that I am 31, I may be getting a bit old for this silly fun. Honestly I really don't care and I swear that I will never give up the tu-tu. Plus it was really cool to hear kids in the crowd yelling "ballerina's, I saw ballerina's".
