My brother recently returned from Liberia, Africa. He spent a year building wells for Water of Life. He had a great experience and learned a lot about the African Culture. I have always loved traditional African fabric prints – all the bright colors are just fantastic – and I asked him to bring some fabric home for me. Here is one sample I turned into a retro dress.
I love the soft color and the eyelets are very feminine
Because the eyelets are essentially embroidered holes in the fabric I needed to sew a lining into the dress. I chose a pretty periwinkle blue.
Darts sewn into the front bodice
The dainty little collar completes the retro look
Finishing the seams with a serged edge
Setting in the sleeves, I chose a flowing cap sleeve
The finished dress, complete with a sash to hold the dress together.
My friend Rebecca had a little girl almost a year ago. For Ella’s first birthday I decided to make her a very “girly” birthday dress. I found two fabrics that I absolutely loved. One a turquoise floral and the other blue with white polka dots. I decided to start off with a cute pattern from Butterick. Of course I never actually follow the directions. I always end up changing the pattern in some way or another.
Butterick 4712 is a good start to the dress I want to make
My friend wanted a very “girly” dress. I thought this was “girly” even though the color is predominately blue.
Instead of sewing in a zipper, I decided to use decorative ribbon for the closure, perfect for summer.
Closure with decorative ribbon
Final picture of reversible dress – floral
Final picture of reversible dress – polka dot
Ella’s Monogram
A decorative hem finishes the project.
Reba I hope Ella enjoys the dress (and I hope it fits)
One of my best friends just had a baby girl. I needed to find something special to give my friend’s daughter — something meaningful — something that would last a lifetime (hopefully). My friend is a school teacher and loves books. I wanted to find something along those lines, but I also wanted to sew her a gift. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams popped in my mind. I figured I could sew a stuffed bunny to go along with the book. I set out to find the softest fabric and the cutest pattern. Vogue 7760 had a really cute, timeless pattern that happened to look similar to the book’s rabbit. Follow along as my Velveteen Rabbit takes a step closer to becoming a “real” rabbit.
Laying out the pattern.
Sewing both sides of the head together.
The finished bunny head piece.
Bunny body pieces sewn together.
Whole rabbit before stuffing.
Stuffing the rabbit.
Rabbit cottontail.
Voilà, the finished rabbit.
It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I almost forgot how to use WordPress. Things have been so busy lately that I haven’t had a chance to sew since Christmas. Hopefully spring will allow me to sew more. I barely finished my Easter dress on time, see below for the finished product. I didn’t feel much like taking pictures throughout the creating process as I wasn’t sure I would finish the dress at all.
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.
