Thursday, August 29, 2013

Pintucks

There are twelve of them.



I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked because my sewing machine is too loud to use while Lucy sleeps - every time I have tried to get something done quickly, she comes out of her room and lets me know it's too loud.  Trying to sew while she is awake was somewhat productive, but only as long as she was distracted with pins and a pincushion.  Long story short, my husband convinced me that maybe a newer, quieter machine would be a good idea.  Frugality and thrift runs in my family (though I didn't get a huge dose), so I didn't want to give up my perfectly good free machine from the 80's....but, I found a really good deal (necessary to appease the thrift gene) and caved.  Hello Singer 9660, hello uninterrupted sewing time.  It is a very quiet machine and I am very happy.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Ready to Go

I managed to get to the fabric store yesterday, which is no small feat.  Fabric Corner, the store up the street from me, sells mostly quilting cottons with a huge selection of quilters' batiks, but they also have a large section of upholstery fabric and are expanding their small dressmaking section, which is stocked with high-quality things.  It tends to be an expensive store, but the owner is capricious in his discounts - if you buy more than a yard of something, sometimes he'll give you 70% off, or maybe 30% off, or maybe something for free just because.  You never know how much you may or may not pay.  I think they have coupons and days when there are deals, but nothing is heavily publicized so it's always a surprise to get, oh, free embroidery floss and a 40% off coupon if you come back on Wednesday.  

Anyway, there was a nice bunch of new cotton lawns (said to be English, reminiscent of Liberty) so I picked out a small blue floral print and some coordinating buttons.




 I wanted something dark apricot or peach-colored and wandered into the quilting cottons and found this.  (With some buttons shown, though nothing is definite yet.)


And found some lovely pink mother or pearl buttons for the other fabric I already have.


Pattern is all traced out (phew!) so I'll start working on these off and on for a while.  


Buttons and fabric....  Sewing combined with all the cooking I've been doing (we have a CSA share this summer) makes me feel extra homemaker-y.  





Friday, August 2, 2013

Pretty New Patterns

I ordered a few patterns from Oliver and S, a company whose patterns I have loved for years and years, but never had an excuse to use.  Cue a growing 2-year old girl who needs new clothes for the fall, and there is my excuse.

(These photos are a little blurry, and I can't seem to get my camera to focus well.  It's been one of those days.)

The dress on the left can be shortened to a shirt-length, which I plan to make soon (optimistically speaking).



Out of this fabric perhaps -a peachy-pink cotton I had lying around.  (The only way to get an accurate color was to wave it around the room and check the color on my camera screen.  So that perhaps explains the weird, blurry background.)




And I'd love to make the dress itself.  The dress on the right, I'd like to make with some warmer fabric for her to wear over tights or leggings.  


The pants and long-sleeved shirt patterns are just what I need - a way to find relief from the lime green and hot pink selections in the little girls' clothing sections.  And the jumper is classic.  Too bad the blouse pattern isn't included...it is a separate pattern, but I didn't realize it soon enough.



I'm so excited to start on these sometime soon.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Finished Birthday Dresses

They are done!  It feels good to complete a project, no matter how small.  These were simple to make, but involved twelve gathered tiers of fabric - two fashion fabrics and two lining fabrics, which was a bit time-consuming.  But they came out pretty well.  They're both made of embroidered eyelet with cotton batiste to line them, for anyone who might care to know, using Simplicity 5695.

White (like Mommy's, by request)


(Pardon the trash on the floor.  Everything is a "sticker" these days.)

And yellow.


She has been wearing the yellow dress around for the past hour, so I'd deem it a success.

To hem the dresses, I held her on my lap while sewing.  Desperate, I know.  She held onto the scissors very carefully and handed them to me when I needed to clip threads, and talked about bobbins in the machine, how the needle goes up and down, and how sharp the needles and pins and scissors are.  Who knows, maybe she'll want to learn to sew in a couple years.  That could be fun!


For fun, I pulled out her birthday dress from last year.  It still fit, but is a good 6 inches or more shorter now.