homemade yogurt: one step closer to hippiedom

I know blogging’s been sparse around here lately. I fell off the vegan wagon and the blogging wagon at about the same time. It’s a good thing though: I’m studying feverishly to try and pass the last step between me and an MA in English Literature: the dreaded comps exam. So, expect blogging to resume something resembling regularity sometime after the first week of April, at which point I’m sure I’ll have cute Bufflo Gals’ 1st Birthday photos.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a new routine going in my kitchen, and it involves living organisms.

No, I’m not raising goats or something out in our rented back yard. I started making my own yogurt and now I don’t even know who I am anymore. I distinctly remember a friend saying she made her own yogurt one time, and thinking to myself, “that’s nutty. Just buy the yogurt, ya weirdo.”

But then I got my almost-one-year-olds off formula, discovered they love whole milk, and discovered further that they REALLY REALLY love whole milk yogurt. And that YoBaby shiz ain’t cheap.

Yogurt faces.

Another problem: though Claire loves to be spoon fed (she lives on purees, after all), Little Miss Feeds Herself wants no part of me lovingly spooning yogurt into her mouth. If I let her try to spoon feed herself, every end but the end with the yogurt gets in her mouth, and it’s an epic mess. If I try to feed her myself, it’s an insane battle of waving arms and yelling at me as she tries to grab the spoon while I’m trying to stick it in her mouth. About every 5th bite gets in there, which is nuts.

So, to solve the “my kids eat 8-16 oz of yogurt per day” problem and the Etta loves yogurt but eating it with her hands is difficult problem, I have discovered two solutions.

The first, as I mentioned before, is making my own yogurt. I basically follow this process from Annie’s Eats. I heat half a gallon of milk to 180 degrees to denature the proteins in it (which is apparently important). Then, I pour it into a Pyrex glass bowl and cool it to between 110 and 120 degrees. Then I add a couple of tablespoons of yogurt (at this point, I use the last bit of my homemade yogurt, but my first batch used plain Stonyfield Farm whole milk yogurt), and stir. Then, I preheat my oven for one minute (which gets it to about 120 degrees) turn it off, and turn on the light. Meanwhile I put a lid on the Pyrex and swaddle the whole thing with a few kitchen towels.

I leave the Pyrex in the oven with the light on overnight, for about 12 hours. In the morning, when I wake up, I go in, take off the lid, and it’s yogurt. Well, yogurt swimming in whey. So, I line a colander with either a couple layers of cheesecloth or a thin dishtowel like a flour sack towel, and set it in a bowl (you could just do the sink, but I’m saving the whey because I’m crazy and want to try making whey ricotta cheese), and strain the yogurt until it’s nice and thick and creamy. Half a gallon of milk left overnight yields 1.5 quarts of yogurt and 2 cups of whey. Scraping it off the towel with a spatula is really as tough as the work gets here.

What the yogurt looks like when I take it out in the morning, pre-straining.

Straining yogurt through a colander lined with a flour sack towel.

Resultant strained yogurt and whey.

Taste-wise, the homemade yogurt is just as good as the plain whole milk yogurt I was buying. It works great as a sour cream substitute, too. To serve it to the girls, I usually mix it with some pureed fruit and some oatmeal baby cereal so they get a complete breakfast. For snacks or when they need a little something after dinner, I just stir in a smidge of agave syrup for sweetness (because they can’t have honey yet).

This brings me to: how do I get the yogurt into the girl who won’t be spoon fed?

I had seen on Pinterest some reusable baby food pouches that are basically the same as those Plum baby food pouches, except the spout is on the side and the top is like a Ziploc bag. So, after searching on Amazon and reading some reviews, I decided to go with the Yummi Pouch (consider this a mini-review, I guess) because they were cheaper than the Little Green Pouch, which I was also considering. They are awesome, y’all. I just fill them with 4 oz. of yogurt, zip up the top, hand it to Etta, and she knows exactly how to hold it and suck the yogurt out of the spout, a feat she figured out within seconds of having the first drops squeezed onto her tongue and realizing that sweet yogurty goodness was inside that thing.

The Yummi Pouches claim to be dishwasher safe, but I’m not sure I trust my dishwasher to hold it open enough to get clean. So, I’ve been washing them by hand using a bottle brush, and drying them on my bottle rack. Works fine. One tip I did read in one of the reviews: the lids are easy to lose, but are the same diameter as the disposable baby food pouches, so if you use those, just save the lids in case you lose the lids to your pouches. I’ve tried the lids from a GoGoSqueez applesauce pouch and they worked just fine!

Overall, my newfound yogurt-making hobby is saving me money– a 32 oz. container of Stonyfield Farm plain whole milk yogurt costs me $4ish, while an entire gallon of milk, which yields 64 oz. of yogurt, costs the same. So the homemade is literally half the price, with none of the trash of the packaging. And since I also mix it with fruit purees, we can compare the cost to the YoBaby yogurt, which would be almost $11 for the amount a gallon of milk yields in homemade yogurt! Maybe I’m not as crazy as I once thought my yogurt-making friend was!

a pinner’s manifesto

I admit it. I was initially resistant to Pinterest. Why do I need one more social network? was generally my perspective. But then I tried it and quickly became hooked. Finally, my folders upon folders of bookmarked recipes were actually useful, because instead of scrolling through filenames, I could browse photographs on a “board” to choose what I wanted to cook, the same way I flip through a cookbook or magazine looking at the pictures. As a sewer and crafter, I could collect inspiration to use later, too, like yellow dresses that became my the spirit of my first yellow sundress that I made for myself. Much as I love Instagram for giving me a greater eye for beauty, Pinterest has helped me see all the world as a source of inspiration for making my spaces and meals a more beautiful place. For every critique I see of Pinterest as a place of envy and lust, I would argue that it’s what you make of it. If you collect pins and follow pinners who only share things you’ll never have, sure, you could easily get down and jealous and start to feel inadequate. But if you follow people with a similar vision for life and the world, you’ll never cease to be inspired. Because I judiciously unfollow thinspiration boards and mostly follow people who pin yummy food and quirky outfits and cute spaces, Pinterest has become a Happy Place for me.

But we can make it better.

Let’s face it, Pinterest’s search kind of sucks. But it’s because of us. Pinterest can only return pins to us if they’re captioned with the kinds of terms we use in our search. If I’m searching for pictures of foxes (which I often do because I’m obsessed and want a pet one), but everyone has captioned their fox pictures “CUTE!”, I’m not going to get many results. For a picture of a fox to show up in the results of my search with the keyword “fox,” the word “fox” needs to appear in the caption. Similarly, if I’m searching for images of toddler bedrooms or shared bedrooms to inspire me in sprucing up the gals’ nursery, only pictures captioned with words like “toddler room,” “shared room,” “twin room,” and “bunk beds” are going to return me the kinds of images I’m looking for, while the ones captioned “cute room!” or “idea for later!” are never going to reach my screen.

So, we have to start doing better. We have to start captioning our pins with actual descriptions of the image. Most people already do this with pins of recipes, captioning them with the name of the actual dish. But we need to do it with everything. I need to do it too. Also: did you know Pinterest has been tagified? Much like on Twitter, where placing a hashtag before a keyword turns the word itself into a clickable search that takes you to a page with all other posts that share that tag, putting “#coconut” on a pin for say, coconut rice turns the word #coconut into an instant search for other pins that share that tag. Click that link and see what I mean.

Here’s an example from one of my own pins. The bad pin has just a space instead of a useful caption, while the good pin has a descriptive caption that makes use of keywords and hashtags.

This is my pledge: In order to make Pinterest more useful to us all, I will henceforth caption all of my pins appropriately, describing what is in the image or the content of the blog post the image links to, and making use of related hashtags to make my pins more search-friendly. Will you pledge to do the same?

P.S. If you would like to follow me on Pinterest, please do! I’d love to make more “friends” there!

time flies: a nursery grows up

It’s been months since I posted. It turns out life with twins as a grad student is a little busy, and then you add in the holidays, and you end up with a bit of a hiatus. I also think I’ve sort of been stuck in this rut where, unless a post is some sort of profound meditation on life and parenthood and whatnot, I don’t post it, and frankly, inspiration isn’t easy to find for the sleep deprived whose days are an endless cycle of feeding, changing, snuggling, and playing with babies. So, I’m going to try to get back into posting with less pressure on myself for every post to be some sort of major epiphany.

I figured I’d start with showing you the girls’ room lately, which has gone from a baby space to a space that better functions as a twin toddlers’ room. We’ve changed it around a lot to meet their needs as they are now very nearly ten months old. I know. Two months away from ONE YEAR. It’s insanity how the time has both crept and flown. (You can find the original nursery reveal here.)

I wanted the girls’ room to be more of a play space as they are now starting to be mobile and into everything, and I wanted them to have a safe space to explore. They got a lot of awesome toys from friends and family for Christmas, so we desperately needed some toy storage. Luckily, my husband is a super handy guy, and he built something amazing after seeing a few of my ideas on Pinterest.

To make space, we took out the futon and put in a secondhand chair. I will say, I am SO GLAD we had the futon for the first 8 months. Just to be able to lie down in there, or to rest the babies on either side of me in Boppies and feed both at the same time, was wonderful. I highly recommend a bed or couch in a nursery.

Anyway, here’s the space now, with before and afters for comparison.

Then:

Now:

Then:

Now:

Here’s a closeup of the new toy storage, built by my awesome husband!

The girls can crawl right up and grab blocks and toys out of the bottom bins, and if they’re sitting up, they can reach the shelf. As soon as they’re pulling up, it will be even more accessible. It was important to me that the toys be in view so they could easily see their options and get them for themselves. I had a feeling this would work better than a box or bin, because stuff on the bottom of a bin would be forgotten and never played with.

Then:

Now:

Here you can see the bucket we got to store stuffed animals, as well as one of my favorite things in the entire room, the canvas with the Vonnegut quote. It was a gift from a friend I met through Twitter, a “you survived” gift after all I went through getting the gals into the world. It is from a story in which a character is delivering a baptismal speech for twins, so it’s super apt. It says, “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies– You’ve got to be kind.” I think it’s a great rule.

Overall, the girls have the best-decorated room in our house, and we still haven’t bought a single new piece of furniture beyond the cribs, which were a gift from their grandparents. As I type, the girls are playing in the floor and I’m sitting in the chair.

necessity is the mother of invention

We’ve been having a rough time with fussy Etta lately. When she is happy, she is very very happy, but when she is bad, she is horrid. After a few nights in a row, I was looking for solutions. She loves to be bounced, HARD, in her bouncy seat. And she loves to be swaddled tightly. But those two things can’t be combined very easily, because the swaddle gets in the way of the seat’s straps.

Enter inspiration. I knew there were folks who make “swaddle straps;” I just didn’t want to pay for a baby straight jacket that seemed simple enough to sew myself. But then, I got an even easier idea: why not just cut the swaddle part of an outgrown sleep sack? A little quick cutting, and I had my very own swaddle strap. It worked great, and it was certainly put to the test last night– Etta was up 3 times instead of her usual 1. The problem wasn’t the swaddle strap so much as that she seems to believe she must be bounced at all times, and, well, I want my sleep. Still, I’ll take drowsy bouncing over unswaddled screaming any day.

Pissy baby knows she’s about to be defeated.

And she’s zonked. Just do. not. ever. stop. bouncing.

how to make a simple crib skirt

Baby bedding is a weird racket. Most of the cute stuff seems to come in sets, but the sets include things that may or may not kill your baby in her sleep, like crib bumpers. And they’re awfully matchy-matchy, as if you need curtains, sheet, bumpers, quilt, and skirt to all be perfectly matched. Personally, I prefer things that “go” rather than match. And the matching sets are often SO babyish, completely unable to grow up with a kid into early childhood. My goal with the twins’ room has been to have a room that is girly but not princess pink, to choose things that they won’t grow out of before they’re potty trained, and to use as many unique, handmade touches as possible. So I decided to make my own crib skirts. I think they turned out great:

I initially followed a pattern for the first skirt, found parts of it confusing, redundant, or unnecessary, and decided to simplify the process for the second skirt. I figured other folks might be interested in a super easy tutorial of my method for making a modern crib skirt, so here it is: how to make a modern crib skirt. There are no gathers, no pleats, noting complicated. If you can cut and sew a straight line, you can do this, I promise. Also, I took the trouble to make this skirt with French seams, encasing all the edges of the fabric, so a serger is not necessary for keeping your crib skirt from raveling in the wash. It should be sturdy enough to last for years.

Materials:

• For the “deck” or the part that goes under the mattress, you need 1 5/8 yards (44″ or 54″ wide) muslin or other cheap fabric. (I got solid cotton that was on sale for $1.99/yd– no one will see this part)
• For the skirt, 3 yards (44″ or 54″ wide) mid-weight fabric (I used a cotton duck that feels like canvas and claims to be soil resistant)

How To:

Cut out your pieces from the fabric:

• For the deck, cut from the muslin a rectangular panel 29″ wide and 53″ long
• For the skirt, cut 6 panels, each 30″ wide by 16.5″ long

Create a hem in each skirt panel by folding up one of the long sides 1/2″ and pressing, and then folding that up again and pressing:

Sew along the upper edge of the fold, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of each hem:

Create a similar hem on the two short sides of each skirt panel by folding and pressing 1/2″, folding that up and pressing again, and sewing close to the inner edge of the folded portion. It may help to pin the corners where the fabric is bulky because of the bottom hem:

After you have hemmed the bottom and sides of each skirt panel, fold the deck lengthwise and gently press a crease down the center:

(Can you sort of see the crease in that picture? It’s basically just there to help you find the center of the short ends of the deck.)

Line up the center of one skirt panel with the center of the deck, right sides of each facing OUT. Pin. (The right side of my deck fabric was hard to see, as it was a solid, so you might want to use a disappearing ink pen to mark “right” on the right side of your deck fabric.)

Sew the two pieces together, sewing very close to the edge:

Press seam open:

Fold over, encasing the edge of the first seam within the fold. Press:

Stitch seam again, sewing close to the edge:

Press seam again, and you’re left with a nicely enclosed edge that won’t fray in the wash:

Repeat process to sew panel to other short end of deck.

Starting at one edge, line up the corner of one skirt piece with the corner of one long side of the deck, again both right sides facing OUT. Pin in place along edge:

(using a grapefruit to keep your fabric from sliding off your table is clearly optional but works great!)

Match the corner of another skirt panel up with the other end of this side of the deck and pin in place. The two panels will overlap in the center:

As with the short sides, sew very close to the edge, press seam open, fold over to enclose cut edges, and stitch again to create a French seam. Repeat on other side of the deck with the last two remaining skirt panels.

Iron out any creases your fabric has gotten throughout the process, and you’re FINISHED! Put your crib skirt on your crib and admire your handiwork:

Note: the skirt will not graze the floor when mattress is raised to the highest newborn position, but should fit nicely for all of the various mattress positions you’ll use as your baby grows.

If you make a crib skirt, I’d love to hear how it goes!

put a bird on it! DIY origami lamp and mobile

Are you ready for more of my baby room crafty craziness? Here it comes!

Origami has long been a hobby of mine, at least since high school. I find it repetitive, mindless, and relaxing, a great project to do with my hands while I watch TV. One year, while unemployed, I made a ton of origami Christmas ornaments, and was sure glad to have them as unbreakable ornaments this year when I first encountered the combo of Tinycat+Christmas tree. I knew I wanted to do something origami-related for Etta and Claire’s room, and after my success making an origami crane-covered lampshade for my friend Naomi, I decided to DIY another origami crane lamp. Consider this a bit of an origami crane lamp tutorial.

First: you need a LOT of origami cranes. Obviously this varies depending on lampshade size, but I’d say at least 200, maybe more. (If you don’t know how to fold a crane, I highly recommend YouTube. It’s so much easier when you can watch someone’s hands actually folding instead of trying to decipher diagrams.)

A lot of evenings were spent in the recliner with Tinycat folding cranes. He wasn't very helpful, but he sure is snuggly!

I folded enough cranes to fill this bag, then got started and realized I needed about 50 more. This is why it's helpful to have more paper than you use, so if you fold more, they'll still match the rest of the group.

Then, hot-glue the cranes to your lamp all haphazard like.

I’m really proud of how the lamp turned out, and particularly in love with the cute turquoise base we scored on sale at Target for about $20. Here’s what it looks like in the girls’ room:

In the end, I actually had some cranes left, so I started thinking about what I could do with them and realized they’d be perfect for a mobile. I bought some small grapevine wreaths from Hobby Lobby for $4 each to use as the base of the mobile, and picked up a $3 spool of crochet thread to string the cranes on. Other than that, I already had ribbon, cranes, and beads, so this ended up a very cheap project! I learned while making crane ornaments that a bead under the cranes keeps the knots in the string from pulling through the fragile paper, and I used a large needle to string the cranes onto the thread. I’m really proud of my finished mobiles and can’t wait to see them hanging over the cribs! (That will be a project for Jon. I have a feeling I should avoid ladders.)

Just for the heck of it, I decided to see if anyone on Etsy was selling anything similar. I told Jon, “I bet people would pay $30 for these!” Sure enough, the one origami crane mobile seller I found was selling hers for $28 apiece, and they didn’t even have cute nests/wreaths, just plain old hoops! Not bad for something made largely of things I already had!

nursery progress and a lamp DIY

To me, one of the more fun things about being pregnant is fixing up a room for the babies. I knew from the start I wanted to avoid having a “theme.” None of the rest of my rooms have a theme, so why should the babies’ room look any different? I wanted their room to look like it belonged with the rest of the house, and I knew I had to work with the navy blue floral wallpaper that we renters can’t change. So my goal was to incorporate lots of color and lots of handmade touches to make a room that goes with the rest of our house. I figured I’d share some of my progress so far:

The cribs are actually the only “new” thing in the photo, and they’re BabyMod from Walmart. Cribs were a tough decision for me, because I originally really wanted bright red cribs, which apparently do not exist. Then I thought I’d paint unpainted cribs, which also do not exist, unless I want to pay a zillion dollars or drive 4 hours to the nearest IKEA, which, it turns out, didn’t have the unpainted ones in stock anyway. So we ended up with gray cribs that actually blend surprisingly well with the aforementioned wallpaper. The dresser we already had, and there are three smaller nightstands in the room that we also already had. Even the rug was something we already had.

Early on, I decided moving our futon into the babies’ room made more sense than getting a glider, because this way, I could set the babies down on the couch, sit down in between them, and still feed them even if I were home alone. Also, the futon still functions as a place for guests to sleep, in case anyone wants to stay in a house of craziness, or for one of us to sleep in the room with the babies. It’s actually an espresso brown, I just have a sheet on it to protect it from Tinycat’s hair, since he likes to hang out in there.

To go on the futon, I made 4 throw pillow covers with fabric I happened to already have in my stash, that I think goes well with the rug:

And for Christmas, my dad made these four paintings to go on the wall: I think the animals are super cute, and he did a great job choosing colors that go with the other things in the room.

Now, while we’re not doing an animal theme, there will be some other animal touches, including some letterpress prints I already had around, and a vintage lamp my stepmom found at a flea market:

I immediately loved the little elephant, but knew I wanted to do something to spruce up his bland, faded shade. Initially, I thought of trying to cover the shade with the same fabric as the throw pillows, but since I’m making the girls an origami crane lamp like the one I made for my friend, I decided to incorporate the same origami paper I’m using for the cranes to make the two lamps “go” together. I cut each sheet of origami paper into 4 smaller squares and ModPodged them to the lampshade in a patchwork pattern. Then I glued some rickrack trim around the edges. I’m really proud of the results (though everything I ModPodge comes out a little wrinkly), and think the patterns of the paper echo the pattern of the wallpaper in a nice way:

I still need to figure out some sort of changing table/dresser, want to get an ottoman, need to hem curtains, and am planning to sew some crib skirts, among other things, but I’m pretty proud of how the babies’ room is looking so far. I don’t think it screams “baby” or “pretty pretty princess” but it’s still girly and fun and colorful. I can’t wait to get it finished!

before and after: vintage patio set

This summer, I saw this refinished vintage glider on Shelterrific and immediately knew what I wanted for the empty end of our front porch:

The only problem was, I wasn’t willing to shell out hundreds to thousands of dollars for a refinished vintage glider. So I knew I’d need to find one I could refinish myself– and I’d just finished fixing up and repainting a wooden table and chairs I’d found by the side of the road, so I was inspired.

A little bit later, I found the following rusted-out glider with a matching chair on Craigslist, $300 for the pair.

I convinced Jon they could be our anniversary present to each other.

Then, in August, I found out that our real anniversary present to each other was BABIES. So stripping and spray painting was no longer on the allowable list for me. Thus Jon inherited what was supposed to be my project. He sanded and stripped and took apart and repainted and replaced hardware, and generally worked very very hard to execute my vision for the glider and chair. And THIS, this beauty you see right here, is what he achieved:

If you need me, I’ll be on the front porch.

i sewed my first dress!

About six months ago, I said to Jon while walking through Hobby Lobby, “I wish I could sew cute dresses.” I started sewing in June, and let me just say: CUTE DRESS ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!

Because I’m still a beginner at sewing, I knew I needed to stick with cheap, solid fabric for my first dress attempt. No worrying about matching up prints or stripes, and no sorrow if I somehow botched it beyond repair. I was inspired by this yellow dress worn by Leelee Sobieski (source):

And also by this image I found on Pinterest, which I’m pretty sure is from  J.Crew catalog (source):

So I picked up Vogue 8723 and decided to tackle my first dress in yellow cotton.

I was a little nervous, as the dress would require me to sew my first ever darts, but I tackled them and they weren’t nearly as intimidating as I expected. It’s fully lined and features pockets and a back zip. I finished all my seams with french seams, so it’s nicely constructed. Jon helped me pin and fit my bodice, which was crucial– though I made the size indicated by my measurements, I probably ended up taking the bodice in by about 2 inches, mostly from the sides and back. Getting the shoulder straps right was also tricky, as I have scoliosis, which makes my shoulders crooked. You’ll probably notice that the straps don’t look symmetrical, but there’s no gaping in the back, which is what I was more worried about. All in all, I’m really proud!

I just might wear this dress every day, I’m so proud of it. And I think Tinycat approves:

not shopping, and a chambray skirt

Thanks to my “no shopping” post being featured on the WordPress homepage, a lot of new faces have showed up around here in the last two days! Welcome! Even though I said I wouldn’t be posting daily outfit photos, I will be occasionally sharing photos of items I’ve sewn, and possibly particularly interesting outfits remixed from items in my closet. Though seriously, I need to get a tripod and some self confidence, because I feel sublimely silly posing while my husband snaps photos with our 5 year old digital camera in my kitchen, home to the only bare wall I could find (I like art), while also trying to keep two large dogs from hopping into the picture (I was standing near their food bowls and it was almost dinner time, so they got rather excited).

I thought I’d clarify a bit on what motivated the no-shopping challenge. I identify as a follower of Jesus, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how my consumerism lines up with that identity. I read Shane Claibourne’s Jesus for President with a book group at my church, and I’ve also been reading a lot of Pete Rollins. Basically, I think I undermine my statements about following Jesus and trying to love people like he loved when my dollars every day are a) going toward my own comfort instead of those in need, and b) are perpetuating a system of slavery and oppression in other parts of the world, where the poor are exploited just to make my clothes. And yet: there’s no other way to say this, I want to look cute. Yesterday, while out buying a must-have hair product, in an apparent act of self-torture, I wandered into Forever21, “just to look.” I saw about 20 things that I really wanted. “Wouldn’t that little dress be a great beach cover-up for my upcoming trip to Costa Rica?” I didn’t buy anything, but I realized what an addict I am. I can’t say that I’ll swear off buying clothes forever, and only buy from thrift stores or make my own, though that would probably be ideal. I can’t even say I’ll never buy something from Forever21 again. But I am going to spend the next several months abstaining from buying clothes (I have a feeling trips to Target are going to be torture! I also spotted a gray striped jersey dress there yesterday that I really wanted.),  and I hope to learn something from the experience.

One area I do hope to improve are my sewing skills. I am confident that I can learn to make a lot of the clothes that I want, for myself, for less money than I would spend in retail stores, and in the process, with confidence that my clothes weren’t made in a sweatshop. Now, when I want an item, if it looks “sewable,” I pin it to my Sewing Inspiration board on Pinterest. One thing I had been pinning a lot of lately was chambray skirts (click image to be taken to Pinterest page which links to original source):

So, armed with several skirts under my sewing belt, I decided this covetable item was something I could make myself. And sure enough, I followed this tutorial to make myself an adorable (if I do say so myself) chambray skirt:

I used a double layer of chambray for the skirt, to prevent sheerness and give the skirt more of the full look I was going for. I have to say, I think it turned out just as cute as several of the skirts I had pinned!