Knits - my love/hate relationship

There is something infinitely appealing about sewing with knits. 

No need for any buttons, zippers, snaps...which means one less complicated step.

Its stretchiness allows for a little wiggle room, which comes in handy when you can't get your 2 year old to hold still long enough to get a really accurate measurement.

There always seems to be an old T-shirt lying about that can easily be remade into something new.

So many of the craft blogs out there make it seem easy to sew with knits.  It makes me wonder what I am doing so wrong.  I've even swallowed my pride enough to ask my mom how to make it work. 

Part of my problem is my poor little sewing machine, the cheapest one available at Walmart that has gotten quite a bit of abuse lately.  It just does not like knits!  It does all sorts of weird things...things I cant even begin to describe.

My stubborn side is pushing me to keep trying until I master this skill.  After much struggling, I have produced one (almost) successful knit outfit.  (I won't tell you about the mountain of failures cluttering my craft area.) 

My favorite part of this outfit is the colors.  In fact, my little Munchkin got LOTS of compliments on the great color combination when we ventured out in public for a few minutes.

I got the idea for the skirt right here.  The orange is from an old shirt of mine, found in the Walmart clearance racks ($3? $5? I can't remember) that I wore a little bit before I made the mistake of wearing it while painting the living room.   There's a huge drip of blue paint hidden behind that flowerish thing on the front.  (Its actually almost the same color of blue as the flower.)  I'm going to add a second, smaller flower to the side and a little above the big one; its so much in the center I think its needs something to off-set it. 

Also, I didnt do a tie, like the tutorial shows, but it turned out better without one I think.

I dont really remember how I made this shirt; it was so spur-of-the-moment that I didnt write any of the process down.  The blue is some ribbing that I had gotten at a yard sale a while back (it was a huge roll, probably close to 5 yards, for $1-although there was staining on the ends, there's still a goodly amount that is just fine. Pretty good deal, if I do say so myself.)  The orange again is from my old shirt, and I cut it in long strips and folded/ironed it in as if I were making bias tape (although I didnt cut it on the bias).  Dont zoom in on the pic; the sewing is TERRIBLE.  So wonky, I almost just threw it out.  But I love how the sleeves turned out.  I think I'm going to make another shirt, especially since she managed to get a huge ketchup stain on the belly and I dont feel like fighting to get it out.

This last pic shows off her personality these days so well!  I had to bribe her with skittles to stand by the wall so I could snap some pics.  And even then she kept wiggling and giggling, knowing what I wanted her to do and defying it as much as she could without being outright disobedient.

Oh, and the clashing Elmo sunglasses were totally her idea.