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Showing posts from 2011

Handmade Holiday Happiness

In this post , I mentioned that I've been enjoying more simple handmade things this year. This post is a bit of a round-up of some of those things. Potato Stamping I saw this on Made by Rae and wanted to put some extra packing paper we had to good use. I used paint from a dollar store. I would not recommend it. It worked poorly and smelled like formaldehyde. Scary. Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments Nothing new or novel here, but it was a fun project to do with the kids. Ours didn't turn out that fabulous. I think I rolled the dough out too thin and then they stayed in the oven 40 minutes too long (it was The Preacher's responsibility to take them out. He's been forgiven). Hence, they have a bit of a curl. Next time I'll be more patient and just let them dry on the counter. Felt Christmas Ornament I'd love to have a Christmas tree full of handmade ornaments. For this one I used some lovely wool felt that my MIL gave me and followed this tutorial . M

New Look 6071 - Gray and Yellow Dress

Now that I'm done with the Christmas clothing sewing, I'm turning my attention back to my Dress Warm project. For my third dress this season, I made a lightweight sleeveless knit dress. Sounds perfect for winter in Ontario, right? Actually, it has been unseasonably warm less cold but still a long way from summer-like. On it's own, this dress is not at all seasonally appropriate. But, I made it with the intention of wearing it with a long black cardigan that I picked up at a thrift store awhile back. I liked New Look 6071 when I first saw it and have been wanting to try it out. I give the fabric pretty mixed reviews. I used a rayon jersey - very soft and drapey and nice to touch. However, it was difficult to sew and I think it will keep growing. This dress probably won't last beyond this season, but I'm okay with that. This is the last piece of this type of knit I had in my stash and I likely won't buy any more. My local Fabricland always has a lot of it

Burda 9990 - Glen Plaid Vest

Item No. 3 in the Coordinated Christmas Clothing series is a vest for my son. While my girls have often had matching dresses, this is the first time he has been included. When I asked him if he would like to match the girls he was pretty excited about it. The shirt and pants were hand-me-downs from another family. For the vest, I used Burda 9990 - a good pattern for both the pants and the vest. The front has welts (but no pockets) and the back has darts with a belt. I underlined the front of the vest with a lightweight cotton because the glen plaid is fairly loosely woven and I thought some more structure would help. There are supposed to be four buttons on the front, but I only had three of the same and didn't want to buy more. I also made the black tie. It is completely opposite of everything these ties tried to be. This one is made from a crafty-type tutorial (as opposed to in-depth instructions from an expert). This one is cut on the straight grain to save fabric (as

Ottobre 6/2011 #13 - Glen Plaid Dress

Item No. 2 in the Coordinated Christmas Clothing series is a dress for my younger daughter. I liked this dress in the most recent issue of Ottobre when I saw it and thought it could work for combining the glen plaid and dark red fabric. I'm quite happy with how it looks now, but when I first tried it on my daughter I was not hopeful about it. My first thought was, "I didn't know a three-year-old could look frumpy!" But, cutting off some length helped as did the addition of sleeves. This dress looks better on a body in motion than it does in photographs. Here the back looks a bit big, but it's just a very basic A-line shape. The plaids match nicely at center back, but maybe you notice that the sleeves are cut with the plaid going the opposite way. I was seriously in danger of not having enough fabric and played pattern tetris for awhile to get everything I needed squeaked out. Switching the direction of the sleeves was the only way. I think the sleeves mak

Ottobre 3/2011 #18 - Glen Plaid Jumper

This year I wanted to make coordinating clothes for the whole family to wear at Christmas time. I have no idea why. I've never wanted to do this before. And right now I'm having serious doubts about whether I still want to do it! When I explained my idea to The Preacher, he gave me a please-tell-me-you-are-kidding sort of look. I'm not sure he's on board yet, but that's okay. I'd say the project is 90% complete and I'm hoping to be completely finished by Saturday night. I started with my older daughter's jumper. She had a piano recital last weekend so I used that for an early-ish deadline. I chose a pretty simple pattern from Ottobre 3/2011. This is a summer issue and the pattern is shown as a sundress, but it worked just fine as a jumper. I cut the bodice on the bias and added piping around the top and at the waist seam. The piping at the waist seam made the jumper stand away from her body like she had a hoop in there. Not a good look (but really

More Christmas Sewing

A couple of years ago my mom gave me this kit to make a quilted Christmas wallhanging. This year I was determined to get it made up so I can enjoy it. I bumped it up on the to-sew list over some other things that had definite deadlines. The sewing wasn't at all complicated and assembling the top went very quickly. I followed the layout guide as exactly as I could. Some of the fabrics included were different than those used in the diagram. The red for the ornament was different from the blue and green, so I put it in the middle. But, I didn't consider how that would affect the border blocks. There is a lot of green in the lower left hand corner that I didn't notice until I had it all together. I haven't put the binding on yet, but I really like the candy cane stripe fabric included for it. The ornament tops are machine appliqued. I started hand embroidering the hooks, but it was taking a long time and wasn't looking that great so I ripped it out and stitched

Stash Busting

No new fabric until after Christmas. That's my goal. I love accomplishing a goal. To make it happen I'm cutting out several things at once and then sewing them up. Some of this first batch were things that were necessary for my daughter's wardrobe ( this and that ) and then others are fabrics that I bought for a certain purpose but aren't very exciting to sew, so they have been pushed waaaaay down on the list. First, is this fleece pullover for my older daughter. I bought this fleece as a remnant when the Fabricland in town closed. Each season I like to make sure each of the kids has at least one of these extra layer type garments. My older daughter has been lacking one for awhile now. Ottobre to the rescue. I'm counting on those wrinkles coming out in the wash! This is the "New Generation sweatshirt" (#38) from the 1/2010 issue. I wasn't hopeful about finding a matching zipper and didn't want to buy one, so I went with one that I had and made

Another Twirly Skirt

The first twirly skirt I made was so fun that I immediately cut out another. I had small amounts of all the fabrics left over from this project and combined them in a different way for my younger daughter. This cotton poplin print is really nice to work with. I added piping to the horizontal seams but even with that addition, this was a really quick make. The top is made from an Ottobre pattern (4/2011 #15). I think the style is really cute, but I didn't do a great job with the binding. And there's a lot of binding on this top - sleeves, keyhole at neck, and neckline. Clear elastic is stitched to the edges before the binding goes on. I tried using a double needle to finish the binding on the sleeves, but it doesn't look great. For the keyhole and neckline I just stitched in the ditch like I usually do and that looks better except that I didn't get the clear elastic on very evenly. It should be gathered evenly all around, but there are more gathers in the back. T

Twirly Skirt

My younger daughter continues to prefer skirts and dresses to pants. She gets my older daughter's hand-me-downs, but they aren't always the right size or season. I'm finding that I need to fill in a few holes in her wardrobe for fall and winter. I started by replacing a black skirt that was too short and too tight. Since it was a skirt, my daughter didn't want to give it up. I pledged to replace it with a skirt and decided to copy a simple RTW one that she really liked. It's a very basic three-tiered ruffled skirt. The top tier is hidden by her top here. I used the leftovers from this skirt . This fabric doesn't press all that well, so I topstitched the tier seams to keep them flat. The outfit is really all about the shoes (red mary janes!) which are sadly getting pretty tight. One or two more wears and then they'll be put away. It took me a few minutes to figure out the dimensions of the tiers from the RTW skirt, but once I had them figured and re

Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress

This is a repeat make for me. You can see the first one here . I started wanting to make this dress when I made this basic skirt for my daughter. Oliver + S patterns are a joy to sew and result in classy looking clothes for little people (and now they're available to download at BurdaStyle ). The pattern envelope says this dress has a "slightly dropped waist." I didn't really get that result the first time around, but this time it does look like that. I intentionally made the dress a little big because I want it to be wearable all the way until spring. The instructions for the placket and collar are fantastic. They walk you through each step and it looks great at the end. The buttons are from stash. The pockets are my favorite part of the dress, I think. It's nice to have some detail on the skirt part. This fabric was going to be for me. That was my thought when I  purchased it in NYC last spring . But, my daughter really liked it and I thought it wou

Simplicity 2406 - Corduroy dress

In this post , I mentioned my wanting more fall/winter dresses. Here we have the second dress in this "Dress Warm" project. For this one I opted to use a warm fabric and chose a design that would allow wearing a cami underneath  for an extra layer. The pattern is Simplicity 2406 , view C. I previously made view B here . I used a dark green fine-wale corduroy fabric that I've had in my stash for years. It's so soft and more drapey than most corduroy. I've considered using this fabric every winter for the last few years, but haven't felt like I found the ideal pattern for it. I'm making a concerted effort to sew up stash fabrics and not hoard them out of fear of not getting it perfect. So, did I choose the perfect pattern? I don't really think so, but I still like the dress and a dress in my closet is more satisfying than flat fabric on a shelf. I had just enough fabric to make this dress - only small scraps left, so no matching sash. This is an e