My Sewing Space

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...

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...

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...

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...