My Sewing Space

Strange to be posting a sundress now, I know. I made this in July, but haven't gotten around the taking pictures or writing about it until now. I admire those who can blog in real time. Mine gets pushed to the bottom of the list most of the time. This is Simplicity 4721 , a pattern that I don't remember buying at all. My copy has a bright orange "SALE $0.99" sticker slapped on the front, but that isn't even triggering any memories. Anyway, it seemed like a good choice when I was perusing the pattern stash for a summer dress for my daughter. I wanted something other than the full, gathered skirt I often gravitate toward. I started with a size 4 and added gobs of length - some to the bodice and more distributed through the skirt. It looks like the narrow straps on the envelope models' dresses are falling off their shoulders. That could probably be fixed by moving them toward the center front more, but I also wanted a little more coverage. So, I changed

I tend to get my back up when I feel like I am forced to make a bad choice. Like I don't have any good options, but I still have to pick one. Hate that. It happens in all different parts of life, some easier to deal with than others. One of the places it happens quite a bit for many people is with clothing. Depending on availability and geographic location, options may be quite limited. There's not much choice to be had on price point, origin, style, fit, color, etc. I love it when I feel like I can use my sewing skills to subvert that. When I finish a project and want to point my finger and yell "Ha!" like I'm stickin'-it-to-the-man, I feel ultra successful. Such is the case with these denim shorts. My summer wardrobe was in need of another pair of shorts and I knew denim would work well. An attempt to buy a ready-to-wear pair turned out to be a waste of time and a somewhat demoralizing experience. Why did I even bother with that when I have a tried-and-tru

Back in July one of my aunts passed on some old jeans to me. They were initially headed for another aunt that makes quilts from old jeans, but lucky for me, I was in the right place at the right time. She had three pair of jeans and one pair of shorts passed on by a friend of a friend or something like that (let me be clear - these were not my aunt's jeans!). Now, these were not just any jeans. These are a size 58 waist jeans. We can only hope that the owner of the jeans didn't pass them on because he grew out of them. So, the challenge for me was to come up with some way to refashion these. Let me tell you, there is a lot of fabric in jeans this size. Everything about them is different in scale. The fly is more than 10" long, there are 9 belt loops around the waistband (four more than your average size jeans), and the back pocket is just really, really biiiiiig. The kids were quite intriqued by these big pants, so we had a little fun with them.... I like the thre