My Sewing Space

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...

Someone (anonymous) asked where I got the embroidery designs for the tea towels .  I meant to include this info with the initial post, but forgot.  The Christmas ornaments are from a purchased piece of clipart.  The Christmas candle is available here as a coloring page.  The other two designs are from needlecrafter.com .  There are a lot of other designs on this site that I would like to do someday.  For all of the designs, I printed off the design and then traced the back side of it with an iron transfer pencil (against the window to be able to see it better).  Then I ironed it on the towels.  I found this worked well because it reversed the design, making it the right direction on the towel and I also could easily see the placement of the design. The 500th birthday party for John Calvin was a fun evening.  The hat was a hit.  Here it is in action (with "Calvin's" permission): In my previous post , I mentioned an art show t...

The church I'm a member of belongs in the Calvinist tradition.  If John Calvin were still alive today, he would be 500 years old.  Our church is having a "birthday party" for him this week.  His birthday was actually in July, but when it's been 500 years, what's a month here or there?  The Preacher tells me that it is the year that is the significant part.  As part of this celebration, one of the church members is playing the role of John Calvin and he asked me to make a hat as part of his costume. You can think what you want about John Calvin, but you've got to admit that the man had a pretty cool hat .  Even as cool as it is, it isn't a popular style today (surprising, isn't it?!) so I was on my own for making/adapting a pattern.  I started with Vogue 8528 , View C (top left). I added a brim and the (very strange) earflap piece and (after two muslins) ended up with this: Front: Side: Back: The hat is velvet and I was nervous about se...

I dropped off these two wine sleeves at the shop today, along with the first one I made. Now I'm working on a hat fit for John Calvin.  (I'll explain when it's finished). photo from albatrus.org It's been an interesting project... I'm also still stitching away on tea towels.  I'm hoping to have those finished in the next couple of days.