My pattern making teacher showed us how to make a fun and super easy wrap. This pattern calls for only one yard of fleece fabric, a serger and some scissors. It was so much fun to make that I’m giving all the girls in my family a wrap for Christmas (hopefully they won’t read this post before I give it to them).
One of my co-workers asked me to make an overnight bag for her daughter. Follow along as I make Harper’s bag:
The fabric she picked out was a beautiful red suede and some georgeous upholstery weight fabric with horses. The lining was a shimmery cotton. Usually I work with light weight cotton, but for this project I thoroughly enjoyed working with some heavier fabrics.
I try not to use too many pins for fear of damaging the fabric. Here I’m using a bacon press and some canned food to help me cut the fabric.
After cutting all the pieces out I sew the front pieces together and line up the handles.
Each of the side pieces have a pocket. Can you find where it is? I try to line it up perfectly with the back piece.
An overnight back just isn’t complete without an inside zipper pocket. Here I’m sewing the zipper to the lining.
The most tricky part of making this bag is sewing the sides to the front and back — I have to use pins to keep everything in place to sew.
The bag is constructed and the lining is ready to be hand sewn inside.
Here are pictures of the finished product. Harper, I hope you like your overnight bag!
Shirts! Our next project. Take a look at several variations of a standard t’shirt block.
Standard T’Shirt Pattern
In This T’Shirt I adapted the block pattern to a V Neck
Here I changed the neck to a Boat Neck Shape with Lettuce Edge Sleeves
In this Tee I tried the Wrap Neck in a shimmery Velvet
This week in class we worked on patterns for skirts. We drafted a Flip Skirt and a Stratight Skirt with a slit. Here are two of the skirts from pattern to finish.
Flip Skirt Pattern
Finished Flip Skirt
Slit Skirt Pattern
Finished Slit Skirt with Slit (and really bad photography)
During class this week we learned how to draft a pattern for dresses. We start out by drawing our ideas on a drafting sheet. The sheet contains all the information you need to draft and sew your pattern, including description, fabric, hem length, etc.
Once you have drawn out your ideas you need to transfer them to your dress block. The block is a plain dress cut out on which you draw the neckline, hemline and any other detail you need before you cut out your fabric.
Here is a picture of the finished dress.
After the first week of class I had to dust off my serger. Usually I use my regualar sewing maching to sew purses, but for clothing a serger is more efficient. A serger allows you to finish your seams at the same time you sew them. Unfortunately, a serger also requires more than one spool of thread. Here is a picture of all the thread I had to buy for my drafting class.
In case you are interested, here is a picture of my sewing room. Yes… I have to use my dining room table. Hopefully one day I’ll have my own sewing room where I can leave my projects out all the time.
This fall I decided to take a pattern drafting class through Furman University. The class will teach us how to draft skirts, shirts and dresses. For homework we are asked to sew the patterns we draft. Usually I design bags, but I thought it may be fun to learn pattern drafting for clothes. Here are a few of the fabrics I picked out for the class.
Not only have I been knee deep in a Kitchen Remodel, but due to the recession I’m now the only full time accountant at work. Grateful as I am to still be employed, I’m not enjoying the long hours. Longer hours means shorter sewing time. Instead of sewing I’ve been doing some maintenance on my website and learning Photoshop. My site is now utilizing Wordpress instead of Blogger. I was reluctant to switch, but more options and the simplicity of Wordpress won me over. Even though I still have a LOT to learn about Photoshop, I’m pretty proud of my pictures so far. Check out all of my images on my Gallery page, but here’s a sneak preview:
Laura Ashley Travel Bag
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the quality of the pictures on this site has degraded over the past year. Specifically, the sharpness of the pictures is has been falling off (examples here). Our camera is about 5 years old, and it just doesn’t have the right stuff anymore. Every time I take pictures of a project I’m working on, I have to take them from several different anglers on several different camera settings, hoping that a few of them turn out sharp and in focus. What good is a photoblog without good quality photos? This was the old camera:
It was a good little Kodak, and it’s features were innovative when it was made. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
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We are finally finished with our kitchen remodel! My husband built the wall of cabinets at the back of the room. He also made the pot rack and the island underneath. It has weels underneath so we can move it to the middle of the room if we need to.
