SewMona – Page 15 – A slice of my Florida life

Making A Tiered Skirt – Pattern Hack

Making A Tiered Skirt

I recently made my daughter a Chloe skirt (a yoga waistband maxi skirt by Made for Mermaids). She loved the maxi length and wanted a knee length one too. Well, I didn’t actually measure her when I made the shorter one and it was a little too short (her feelings too, not just mine plus she’s on the tall side so even though it isn’t really short, it looks like it is). I hated to scrap the skirt and was sure there was some way I could add length to it. I thought about just adding a ruffle to it, but I wasn’t sure it would look right. Then I wished I could make it into a maxi length somehow. Tiered skirt to the rescue.

The short Chloe – she really likes it, but wished it either was a couple inches longer or had shorts attached.

I measured the length of the maxi Chloe and divided by 3 (I wanted three tiers). I added an inch to that number for two 1/2″ seams (in my case 33″/3 = 11″ + 1″ = 12″).

Length of the Chloe Maxi

For the first tier, I used the Chloe pattern and cut the skirt at 12″. For the second tier, I cut a rectangle that was 12″ high and the width of the bottom of the first tier + 10″. You should add at least 25% of the width but not more than double. So, if your bottom measurement is 20″, the next one should be at least 25″, but no more than 40″. Repeat for each tier. The longer the piece is, the more gathers it will have. I wanted very little gathering for this skirt.

Sew the short edges of each tier together so you have a circle or fabric. Run a gathering stitch around the top of each tier.

A gathering (or basting) stitch is a long straight stitch with no back stitches at the beginning or end.

Pull up the gathering so that it fits the bottom of the tier above it. Spread the gathers evenly, pin, and sew. Repeat for each tier. Make the waistband per the instructions in the pattern.

I’ve been using my twin needle a lot recently, and I pulled it out again for the hem of this skirt. I love the professional look of two perfectly spaced rows of stitching.

Hem with twin needle

Chloe skirt with Grace top.

Tiered Skirt, Chloe Pattern Hack

How to Find A Campground

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So, you’ve got your camper, you’ve done your shakedown cruise, and now you’re ready to hit the road for a real vacation…but how do you find campgrounds? There are several ways – I usually use a combination of them depending on where we’re going. Here are my top three, plus a few others.

Probably the easiest way is to google the name of the city or attraction and then the word campground. You’ll get a list of campgrounds in the area. Click through them to find out rates and availability. This is probably my least favorite method – I like to know a little bit about the campground.
Two big name campground chains are KOA and Good Sam Club. Both have memberships you can purchase which then allow you to save money on your stays at their campgrounds. When we had our pop up, we paid $24/yr to be a KOA VKR member (it’s now $30/yr). Typically the prices are higher, but when we were camping in a pop up, the extra cost was worth it because it meant that the bathroom/shower facilities would be clean. They also have books with all their campgrounds in them. KOA’s is here and the app is here. Good Sam’s is here and the app is here. Their book and app contain more than just Good Sam campgrounds.
Woodalls – They are connected with Good Sam, but they have a variety of books available so that’s why I’m giving them their own line. This is probably my favorite way to look for campgrounds. The website is full of information and they also have a book you can purchase. I like being able to look at a map and see what campgrounds are nearby, how they rate (based on a third party review) and then look up the website.

Here are a few other ways. I haven’t used them as much, but they may work for you.

Free and Low-Cost Campgrounds – All campgrounds in this book are $12 or less. To get the $12 or less, they use the cheapest price for a campsite – it could be a senior rate or a resident rate. The free campgrounds are normally primitive – no electric, no water, no dump station. I like the idea of boondocking, but right now it isn’t something we want to try – way too hot in Florida! However, in the future, we’re hoping to go on longer trips and staying somewhere free for a few nights would really help the bottom line! Please note that only 44 states are included. Make sure you do your research before heading out.
I came across a website for a family who was going to full time for a year. I started following them on Instagram and followed tags to other fulltimers. There are a lot of great campgrounds out there and these people find them! Plus, you can get ideas for future trips.
A website I have just recently discovered (again, through some of the fulltimers I follow) is campendium. They have a fairly comprehensive list of campgrounds that campers can review and upload pictures. You can register and add your own reviews too.
When we bought our camper, they told us about RV Parks app. We downloaded it, but haven’t used it much. It’s here for Android and here for Apple.

How do you find out about campgrounds?

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Silver Springs State Park Florida

We recently went on a slightly longer (5 nights) camping trip. Because our tow vehicle is older (a 2005 Explorer), we’re reluctant to go much faster than 60, maybe 65 if we’re going down a hill. So, we tend to travel only 200 – 250 miles a day. That puts us on the road for about 4-5 hours. I’m sure we could go farther, but we want to arrive with day light to set up and hopefully enough light to check out the campground (aka get the kids outside to burn off some energy). So, on our recent longer trip, we stopped at Silver Springs State Park for the night. We love staying at state parks in Florida – there’s hiking and normally geocaches.

The campsites here were huge! I purposely picked a pull through site since we were just staying for one night. The plan was to unhook and pull the car straight forward. Then the next day we could back the car straight back and hooking up would be easy. Except things never go as planned.

The camp sites are huge are Silver Springs State Park

Looks good, right?

The camp sites are huge at Silver Springs State Park.

No, Mom, we can’t put our bed down.

We were too close to the post to put one of the beds down.

The slide cleared the water hook up by about three inches!

With such huge sites we still managed to have inches to spare.

These are the things that happen when I’m in charge of where to park. Normally DH tells me where to go and things go much better! In my defense, having a slide and side pop out bed are new and I’m more concerned with getting us close enough to our hook ups! You should know that the above pictures happened after we hooked the camper back up and moved it a bit and after I got back from getting gas! Before we moved it, there wasn’t room for the slide. Of course I could blame it on the fact that we arrived at our campsite with 15 miles of gas left! One thing you must know about me is that I am absolutely paranoid about running out of gas! When the miles to empty gets down close to 50, I’m looking for a gas station and that’s when we’re not towing. I’m still not sure why we let it get that low while we were towing!! So, I was mostly wanting to get the camper parked so we could shut the car off and stop using up our remaining gas! Then, because DH does all the outside hooking up, it only made sense that I would be the one to go get gas. Did I mention that the campsite was almost two miles from the main road?? Did I mention my paranoia? I prayed the whole way to the gas station! When I pulled into the first one I came to, I had 9 miles left! I put 19.488 gallons into a 20 gallon tank. That was way too close for me!! On the way back from getting gas, I got a text from DH that we had to move the camper (DD was with me, I wasn’t texting and driving). Gah! So, we moved it. Got the slide out. Still couldn’t put the bed down. Didn’t care. It was for one night and the kids could share a bed (they normally do anyway – they each have a lightweight sleeping bag).

A few days later, on our way home, we spent another night here in the same site. Only this time we made sure to leave room for the slide and the bed. Then, we decided to go for a hike and see the sink hole. Off we went. The trail was wide and well marked.

Hiking trail at Silver Springs State Park

Hiking along a trail at Silver Springs State Park

I’m always amazed at the oak trees!

The picture doesn’t show it very well, but this is the sink hole. It’s fairly large. We walked down the side a bit, but there wasn’t really a path. Also, about here we remembered that we forgot to put on bug spray. We did so good the entire trip and then the last hike we forget. After we arrived home, we found ticks on both boys and me. No worries though- we went to see the doctor when we got home.
Sink Hole at Silver Springs State Park

Plus, there were spiders everywhere! Not little ones, but bigger ones hanging over our heads. Gah!

Golden orb weaver spider at Silver Springs State Park

A golden orb weaver near the center of the picture.

As we got to the end of the trail, we heard something moving around in the brush. We stood quietly for a minute and this deer came out. She wasn’t too concerned about us and even my camera clicking didn’t scare her. Then we got a little too close and moved a little too fast and she was gone.

Deer along trail at Silver Springs State Park

The one thing we really wanted to see was the museum and cracker village. It’s only open on the weekend because during the week it’s used for local schools. So Saturday morning before heading out, we headed to the museum. It’s $2/person and well worth it!

A Columbian Mammoth skeleton – the less hairy, larger relative of the wooly mammoth.

Columbian Mammoth Skeleton

A megaladon (great white shark relative) mouth – they could grow up to 65 feet long!

Megaladon Shark

I would hate to have to use a canoe like this – I’m leery of modern canoes!

Dugout Canoe

This machine looks almost exactly like the one my kids use except that theirs is electric.

Singer Sewing Machine

A cracker (early Florida settler) house. Once a month they have people who come in and bring the cracker settlement to life. All we could do was look at the buildings and peek in some of the windows.

One room school and church building. There’s a geocache there too.

One room school house and church at Silver Springs State Park.

There is so much more to do at Silver Springs! We didn’t leave the campground area. There’s a whole other section to the park that we’re hoping to check out sometime in the near future – more hiking trails, an ornamental garden, boat rentals, and a glass bottom boat ride.

Learning to Sew and Pattern Review: Chloe & Women’s Chloe

Chloe Skirt and Maxi Pattern Review

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Learning to sew doesn’t mean you have to make pillowcases or pillows or other items you don’t really need or want. You can learn to sew and make something wearable and fashionable at the same time! Are you looking for an easy pattern to learn to sew? Or maybe you want to teach one of your kids to sew? Are you looking for a cheap (aka free) pattern? Keep reading to see how to get an awesome deal on this trendy pattern.

I was recently able to test the Chloe and Women’s Chloe patterns by Made for Mermaids. These are simple A-line skirts with yoga style waistbands and a choice of short or maxi length. No elastic to mess with – just four seams. When I saw how easy they were, I knew that it was the perfect pattern for my daughter to learn how to use my machine. Normally she sews on her machine.

Kid Sewing, Chloe Skirt

This time though, she was able to use my machine (which has a stretch stitch) to sew herself a knit maxi. Two long straight seams (the sides), one short straight seam (the waistband), and one seam to attach the waistband (I did help with that – stretching and sewing takes some practice although I’m sure with some guidance she could’ve done it herself). I also did the hem – a rolled hem on my serger.

Chloe Skirt, Sewing with Kids

Maxis are everywhere now and they are so comfy!

Maxi Chloe

We don’t do the matching thing very much, but with something this easy & this comfy how could we not?

Matching Chloes

Short version of the Chloe and the Grace top.

Maxis are perfect for summer weather – lightweight knits make a cool and breezy skirt while still being modest even if you’re chasing after kids!

My version of the Women’s Chloe

Both of these patterns are free – no codes needed, no joing a Facebook group, just follow the links and “buy” the patterns! Then come back and show me what you made.

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Wheel Chocks

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Making sure your camper is secure when it’s parked is very important! This is how our camper is parked when we’re home. Our driveway has a definite slope to it and I will admit to being nervous about parking it there. I had visions of it rolling forward into my van. However, properly secured, it isn’t going anywhere.

When we had our pop up, we only had one axle. We had two sets of wheel chocks that we used to keep the camper stable and safe when it was set up and when it was closed up for storage.

Now that we have two axles, we need another type of chock. We still use chocks (currently some boards) to keep the camper from rolling, but we also have locking wheel chocks that fit between the wheels to keep them from rolling.

There are a wide variety available and they come in all different sizes. The first pair (similar to these) we got didn’t work because our wheels were too close together for them.

Wheel Stop

The second pair (similar to these) fit nicely.

Locking Wheel Chock

Shop around – look online, check out your local RV shop.

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