My Sewing Space

I've been sewing, but not blogging as I have mixed feelings about blogging lately. I think I need to take some time to sort those issues out in my head and then save that for another post. In the meantime, have a look at what's hot off the machine... More angels .  Apparently, my daughter was right and people do want these. This hot water bottle cover is just like these , except it is half the size. S asked me to make a wedding dress wine sleeve to compliment these sleeves . I think this is good in theory, but it needs a better designer than me to make it work. Current wedding dresses don't really have sleeves, much less straps. The Preacher, whose fashion observation skills are pretty close to nil, even mentioned this. If they do have sleeves, they are made from only lace or bell-shaped - neither of which would work well for this wine sleeve idea. I spent way too much time searching online for wedding dresses and in the end I decided to go with a leg of mut...

One of my goals this year was to try patterns from Ottobre since they seem to offer interesting and well-fitting designs for children.  When I was starting to think about spring/summer clothes for my kids, I bought the spring issue. I enjoyed looking through it when it arrived, but I was a bit disappointed as it included mostly designs with long sleeves and long pants.  I think I should have gotten the summer issue (I still might). There are definitely more things in the issue that I will sew (someday), but I started with design #20 - an A-line skirt with a yoke for my older daughter. This is a very simple design and I had no problems putting it together.  Like all patterns I sew for my daughter, I added a lot of length to a relatively small size.  She's 118 cm tall, but according to the size chart, her waist and hip measurements corresponded most closely to the 92 cm size. I think this is the first thing I've made for her (other than dresses) that do...

Tomorrow is my daughter's sixth birthday.  She's having a party on Sunday afternoon with seven friends. My goal for party favors was to avoid junk - both the plastic/toy variety and the edible kind. These headbands were part of my solution. I used Heather Bailey's pattern. The pattern and instructions are great and this was a very quick and easy project. The headbands work well thanks to a piece of elastic inserted between the ends of the band.  The ties are purely decorative. I had a good time working on these together with my daughter.  I did the sewing, clipping and pressing and she turned the pieces right-side-out, cut the elastic, and did some of the assembly. She's very excited about giving them to her friends. Next Up:  I don't know exactly what, but it will be more summer clothes for kids.

I know that a lot of people think that sewing for boys isn't much fun.  I might agree.  But, when you're looking to clothe your family as much as have fun sewing, I find sewing for my son simpler and faster than sewing for my daughters. These shirts are exactly the same as the ones I made last year , just one size bigger.  I wasn't sure that I should do that at first, but I couldn't come up with a good reason not to - other than it being a little weird, but I could hardly consider that a "good" reason.  Anyway, my son is happy with them, I used up more of my stash, and he has more much-needed warm weather shirts. Having new clothes for the kids to wear makes them much more cooperative with getting dressed in the morning.  However, it does not seem to help them with the issue of matching tops and bottoms...   Next up:  Birthday party favors!

I actually made this dress about a month ago and don't remember much about making it.  So, we'll have more pictures than text today.... The border print fabric has paper dolls on it.  The Preacher's grandmother gave it to me a couple of years ago.  There wasn't a lot of it - just enough for the skirt of this dress.  I even eliminated one side seam to keep it as simple as possible. Last summer I asked my mom to pick up some black/white gingham to go with this fabric.  I couldn't find any here and she was coming for a visit. After I had put the gingham with the doll print, I wasn't so sure I liked it. I thought some eyelet trim along the top edges would soften it a bit, but I didn't have any in my stash and didn't have an extra hour and a half to make a trip to the nearest fabric store.  So, I made a ruffle out of the  solid pink at the lower edge of the border.  I'm still not all that excited about it, but my daughter loves  it.  A...

After a few weeks of sewing only window treatments for someone else, it feels good to be back to sewing other things.  Of course, being the beginning of summer, most of those "other things" are going to be clothes for my kids. I used Kwik Sew 3169 for this top.  I've used it before ( here and here ). This knit is not very stretchy, so it worked well for a pattern drafted for wovens. Elastic pinching you under the arms is really unpleasant and I wanted to avoid that. I may have over-reacted to that concern and the elastic around the upper arm could be tighter, but it doesn't look terrible. The next top is from a pattern I haven't used before - Burda 9549. I guess there are some changes happening with the Burda site(s) - I don't fully understand, but I know that I'm not able to find a link to the pattern right now.  Bummer, because it is a pretty cute pattern. I did add length to the top and tapered it at the waist a bit.  If I made it straight from th...

I know I said that this space would be quiet for while I was working on window treatments, but I sneaked in some quick projects between one shade being done and the next ones being dropped off. For this top, I went back to my well-loved Kwik Sew 2918 .  This is for my five-year-old daughter and I think I've got it modified to a place where I really like it for her - a good, feminine fit. I started with size T3, took it in at the waist, added some length, and scooped out the neck. I've made puffed sleeves for this pattern before, but they were always too long.  This time I think they look much better. The ruffles are 3/4" strips of fabric gathered with a single line of stitching using a long stitch length and high tension down the center of the strip.  I just sewed them onto the shirt following the gathering stitches. It took me awhile to decide on the ruffles.  I was initially hoping for some fabric flowers for embellishment, but didn't really like any...