Navy and White Polka Dot Spring Dress

This is my new favorite dress: 

I've had a goal for over a year now to improve my church wardrobe and I am slowly making progress.  When I hung this dress in the closet I was pleased to see that it hung next to three or four other dresses I've made in the last year or two, all of which fit me properly and each of which is an improvement upon the last as far as sewing/construction/proper finishing goes.  Physical evidence of progress is great!  Anyway, back to this dress...

This is a knit from Girl Charlee.  When I arrived I was not sure I loved it.  A little too 'royal blue' rather than 'navy blue' and the white dots were bigger than I'd hoped.  Ah, the perils of buying fabric online.  I decided to plow ahead, though, and just make the dress.  I often end up with projects that are more 'blah' than I had hoped (see this dress for evidence) so I bit the bullet and made the dress even though I thought it might be a bit too flashy.  I'm so thankful I did because I LOVE the finished dress.  I think its cute - a happy place in between flashy and blah.  Just plain cute.  AND its knit so its crazy comfortable to wear.  AND I planned ahead and drafted a cute collar for it and had a white belt ready to go so that its a complete look rather than a dress-that-needs-a-little-something.

This was drafted and sewn from my personal pattern.  

I've already put in the hours on previous dresses tweaking fit and adjusting ease so this was a quick sew.  It feels great to reap the benefits of all that previous hard work!   

Yep, this is me from the side.  Skinny as a rail and no bust to speak of.  

My boss at the costume shop says if I stick out my tongue I'd be a zipper.  :)  

I did have to draft the collar specifically for this dress but thats a simple thing for me now and it turned out well.  The collar is white knit interfaced with a tricot fusible on one layer.  It came together easily and lays nicely so I'm happy with it.  

The back has a little cutout at the top neck for ease in getting it over my head, and then closes with a button and elastic loop.  There is a tad bit of pooling/extra fabric at my back waist, but not enough to make me rip it out and redo it.  :) 

Here's a shot of the inside - its fully lined in a white slinky knit I got on sale.  I think its supposed to be swimsuit lining, but whatever it is, it's cool and smooth on the skin and perfect for a dress lining.    (The lining is cut less-full than the skirt so I can't spread the skirt out properly.)  I made the dress using both my sewing machine and serger.

I've worn it a few times now and I love it, love it, love it.  

Next up in the church wardrobe department will be some properly fitting skirts but I'm not sure when I'll get to those.  Its finally decided to be spring here so we've been mostly outside - I haven't been in the sewing room in over a week and haven't worked a stitch on my crochet cardigan.   I think the next project will be zip wallets on lanyards for summer trips to the library and ice cream shop!  

Tote Bags

Sometimes I just have to make a tote bag.  

You have that problem, too, right?  :)  

For me, tote bags are the perfect instant gratification project.  You can make one, start to finish, in a couple of hours with no prior planning.  Nothing fancy, nothing challenging, just cut some squares, sew them together (with or without batting in the middle), make some straps, done. 

With the addition of these two bags to my arsenal I think I have finally eradicated all the old gross freebie-from-stores ''el-cheap-oh'' bags in the house.  I now have handmade bags for Sunday School teacher stuff, Bible study stuff (these are both used weekly nine months out of the year - totally worth a handmade bag, right?) and now a third for yarny projects I want to carry around town.  I'm sure I'll make more when another urge for instant success comes around but for now I'll enjoy using these.  

The mint bag had a secondary purpose - I wanted to try some of that foam stabilizer I've read about so much on blogs.  Eh - its okay.  I don't love it but I don't hate it either.  It certainly gives the bag structure but the added thickness makes for tricky sewing in some spots.  Now that I've used it once I have a better idea of how and where to use it next time.

Mint, white, and a bit of lace...

... pockets for pens and whatnot.

The second one is one layer of quilt batting between two layers of cotton.  Nice and soft and squishy.   The gray knit-print fabric and the navy lining are leftover from 2015 quilt projects.   I curved the top of the bag just a tad on this one.

Here it is flipped inside out - a fun 'stitchy' lining print.  

I've been using it carry around my current crochet project.  

Alright!  I'm almost caught up on blogging recent projects - just one dress left to share but I don't have pictures yet.  Soon, though...  

Happy sewing to all!

Basic-but-Useful Clothes

I spent some time in January and February working on basic clothes.  I made 'wearable muslins' of knit sweatpants for me and some school clothes for Leah.

These were quick whip up clothes for Leah that have happily turned out to be staples in her wardrobe.  I used this Simplicity 1025 pattern, which I picked up for 99cents somewhere along the way.

This is the view we were most interested in.

Leah asked not to have the tee shirt part underneath - she only wanted the crossover 'jacket' part.  I didn't really change the pattern at all.  I simply didn't cut the front panel.  Its an easy, unlined, turn-and-stitch hem/edge finish so that made it even simpler.  Its one of those patterns that takes twice as long to cut as it does to sew.  I made one in purple which she wears at least once a week if not twice.  Since it was so easy and got so much wear I made another one in black and added a flounce to the bottom for extra fun.   She wears them both tied with a belt and they are a great layer over a short sleeved shirt for school.  

(I made the black one super-long on purpose so she can hopefully wear it to school next fall as well - she's shooting up so we'll see if it lasts.)

Then I also worked on comfortable lounge-wear knit pants for me.  My go-to pair of stretchy pants is getting so old that I really can't wear them out of the house anymore.  I decided it would be worth my effort to make some even though I knew I'd have to monkey around with the fit to get it just right.  As it turned out, it only took two pairs (so one set of adjustments) to get a pretty nice fitting pair.  I made the black ones first and the grey ones second, out of two different kinds of knit fabric.  All of the fitting adjustments (other than overall leg length) were in the back waistband/above the butt area - I always have a big gap there because I have a skinny waist yet I like higher rise pants.  No low-riders for me!  It was a pretty straightforward adjustment and now I have a go-to pattern for knit pants for me to use again and again and again.  Drafting skills come in so handy!  Now the struggle will be finding quality knit fabrics that will last - these were made from Hancock cheapy knit for tweaking the fit.  Now at least when I find good quality knit my pattern is ready to go and I have two extra pair of pants for lounging in.

Thanks to Leah for taking the pants pictures.  Grace tried first and all I got was blur after blur.  :)  After seeing the pictures I'll probably adjust the crotch area a bit too - there are some drag lines there that would be easy to take care of in the next pair.  

On one hand, its not very exciting to make plain old stretch pants.  On the other hand, they'll get worn again and again and again so its awesome to have a pair (or three!) that fits.  These projects were all one-day-whip-ups over the late winter and early spring.  I've got a few other bags and a cute dress to blog too...

Colored Pencil Roll - Art Supply Case for 100 Pencils

My thirteen year old niece requested a roll-type pouch to hold her colored pencils.  She's quite the artist and has collected a zillion different fancy colored pencils and drawing pencils.  I measured some pencils we had around the house and drafted up this cool roll/sleeve.

It holds 100 pencils, as requested.  She wasn't kidding when she said she has a lot!  

I remember that the overall height was around 9'' (to be sure to hold a full unsharpened pencil) and I think the length is probably 40-50''.  It has already been mailed to her and I forgot to measure its final length.  (I just sewed the elastic on until I got to 100 loops and then trimmed the fabric to match.)

 It is two layers of sturdy twill fabric with 1'' wide elastic in little 'bumps' to hold the pencils tightly.  I tried a few different measurements on my test pieces to get the dimensions just right and ended up with 5/8'' of elastic stitched down every 3/8''.

These pictures are using a random selection of Crayola colored pencils from around our house.

Here is a picture she sent when she received it and filled it all up.  

Clearly, she could almost use another one!  

It rolls up and ties with self-made fabric ties.  

I also made a zip pouch from the scraps I had left over.  

I used teal as the accent color on all these because it'll match the tote bag I made her for Christmas that she now uses to hold all her art stuff.   May the drawing continue!  

Hard working Pincushion from Anna Graham's (Noodlehead) Handmade Style book

Hi there!  Its time to catch up on posting finished projects again.

I vaguely follow Anna Graham (aka Noodlehead) - she's local and I like her minimalist style on most things.  I received her book (Handmade Style) for Christmas and was in the mood for an instant gratification project last month.  Thanks to her pattern, I now have an uber-useful pincushion for my sewing table.

It has pockets on all sides to hold all sorts of goodies... 

 I really enjoyed hand sewing portions of this project.  I hand pieced all the pockets and then added a little pink floss around the edges for a little fun contrast.  I used less interfacing than the pattern called for to make the hand piecing easier and just because I'm not a big fan of fusible interfacing - it just annoys me sometimes.  So my pincushion is a bit plumper than its probably supposed to be due to the lack of rigidity in the sides, but I still like it.  I tweaked the pockets to fit what I use.  (This end one is the seam ripper pocket, incidentally, which was missing in action when I went to take pictures.)

I customized the top with these little embroidered 'spots' ... 

... to be a home for my machine needles when I swap them out of the machine but they still have life left in them.   One spot for a used-but-still-good stretch needle, and one for a universal.   I don't know about you, but once the needles are out of their cases I'm at a loss for what kind they are.  I know there are microscopic size numbers on the needles but it seems I can never make sense of the color coding when I need to.   Now I'll know.  

Here is the pincushion in its new home, right by my other essential supplies 

(bobbin holder, magnetic pincushion, and box of assorted presser feet, a good smelly candle, and two very faded tissue paper flowers in sand bottles that were mothers day gifts from my girls when they were each in first grade)... 

... between my machines.   

(I know, a machine and a serger side by side on an 8 foot piece of countertop.  I am SO spoiled!)