An Unfinished Project

I had high hopes for getting so many things sewn this weekend, but it's 11 p.m. on Sunday night, and I have very little to show. Weekends are never long enough!!

On Weekend Eve (Thursday night) while watching Project Runway, I tried to organize my fabric stash. This is a challenge, and while I'm mostly happy with the results, my sewing space still needs some organizational TLC.

Before

After

The boxes are from Ikea, and while they are childish and a little silly and probably not first choice, they were the perfect size for my bookshelf. Also, I know I should have refolded all of the fabric, but that was going to take too.

So far I have six boxes of fabric, but I still need a couple more. Would you believe me if I said I still feel like I need more fabric?? I have a box for all my Anna Maria Horner fabric, a box for my bright and bold flower prints, a box for novelty prints, and this is all I can remember off the top of my head, and I'm too tired to take 15 steps back to my laundry room/sewing space to remind myself of what's in the other boxes.

Then tonight I needed to make a present for a friend, so I chose to make a Taxi Tote out of Anna Maria Horner's Seams to Me book. An excellent book I might add.

The bag will end up looking like this one. Well, different fabrics, but same pattern.

But I got to one of the very last steps, and realized that I don't have enough red thread to sew on my red bias tape. I'm sure I could have just used white thread, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. It wouldn't look as pretty. So, tomorrow I'll be off to JoAnn's, so I can finish the bag!

Not the most exciting post, but life is busy and there are only so many hours in the night unfortunately!!!

I*Heart*Fabric-Streamers, so much!!

Which is why the boy version of our birthday fabric streamers have been hanging in the dining room since December 19th, to be exact. Every other day I think to myself, "I should take those down". But they add such a cheery and whimsical touch to our other wise WHITE dining room that I just can't bring myself to do the chore.

But seeing how we have girl birthdays coming up very quickly, it was time. But, not to overwhelm my soul with sadness over the lack of fabric streamer whimsy (for all of two weeks until the next birthdays!), I had to come up with an alternative.

I stumbled across this imagine and it's been haunting me night and day. I knew there would be no getting onto the next project until I had a heart felt garland all of my very own.

Voila:




Happy to report that Rae is right, this is the easiest garland ever. Cutting was all done during one preparatory Lost re-cap episode. Sewing was done in about five minutes with the assistance of two little ladies who had all kinds of ideas for all those hundreds of felt hearts. Their imaginations span thousands of miles, I tell you. But they were adequately satisfied with a new lovey entry way, ONLY if I'll leave it up for their birthday party.

It's a deal ladies!!

Go ahead, start cutting out felt hearts. You're going to LOVE me for it!

One Yard Wonders: Pleated Girly Skirt

This project was so simple and so fast. Just the way I like them!

I lengthened the size 4T skirt by an inch and next time I'll probably widen it as well. Or maybe next time I might just try to do a zipper on the side seam. This isn't a twirly skirt, so there isn't a lot of give in the waistband, and I think I could figure out a zipper. I can't be to hard, right?

If you make this skirt, and if you haven't used an embellishment in a skirt or dress before, you may want to disregard the instructions in the book. The pattern says to attach your rickrack or ribbon or whatever else at the very end. Out of 8 steps, it was the 8th step. I put my rickrack on before step 3 which is right after you finish cutting everything out. I attached my rickrack to the front skirt and then to the back skirt, and then I sewed both panels together. Just a hot tip from me!

The last change I made to the Pleated Skirt was I just topstitched the waistband closed. I was supposed to slipstitch/blind stitch it close. I didn't have the patience today to hand stitch the waistband, so it got a cute topstitch instead!

I also chose my fabric to coordinate with a cute sweater Grace has but doesn't wear as often as I'd like her to. Hopefully a cute polka dot skirt will do the trick!

In other news, I made two new pillows. That sentence doesn't do my pillows justice. It probably should have been typed in all caps. Doing two pillows at once was just a little time consuming. Just a little. I'm very happy both are done, and I'm mostly happy with them.

The Applique Tree Pillow is a link on our side bar, and if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the tutorial you will see a flower pillow made in the same style as the Tree Pillow. I tried to replicate the flower. When I asked my husband to tell me what was on the pillow he said, "An explosion." I guess maybe it does look like an explosion. Whatever it looks like it's sitting on one of my leather chairs as I type this, and it is staying there! It took me hours to sew around each of those petals!!

This was a great use of scraps, and I found it exciting to dig through my ever growing supply of scraps remembering what I'd made with all the fabric.

I used the Put a Zipper in a Pillow tutorial again. (See sidebar.) Love that tutorial. Amy Butler Daisy Chains and Alexander Henry Birdseed completed the backs of my pillows.

That's a wrap friends! I'm off to bed early tonight!

The "Uptown Jacket" makes me wish we had somewhere to go!

Over a month ago I came across these darling patterns, at Make It Perfect. The Uptown Jacket caught my eye as a really sweet style for little girls. I bought it instantly, and it's been sitting in my sewing room collecting dust ever since. Suddenly I remembered this Anna Maria Horner "receiving line" fabric (which I have now learned is discontinued!!), which I had been saving for "something special". I knew that as long as I didn't mess up, this pattern and this fabric could be just that.



The pattern was great. I really don't have any general complaints. My only caution would be about the sleeves. If you haven't done many sleeves, this one might be frustrating.

I've grown accustomed to starting a project and having in done a few hours later. So, when I started tracing my pattern pieces on Friday afternoon, I really thought someone would be wearing the jacket around town on Saturday. But that was NOT the case. It's not so much that it's complicated. In fact, there are only four steps in the instructions. But because it's reversible you are basically sewing two jackets at the same time. So, it was slow and a bit tedious. Finally when it was time to sew the sleeves in, I started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel (too bad it was 1:21AM Monday morning, in Korea)!

As you sew, you work with a certain degree of hesitation. What if it's not going to fit? What if I mess it up? What if I picked the wrong fabrics? And you look at every step along the way for validation that everything is going to work out in the end. For some reason it took nearly until the last step to have that feeling of validation on this project.

But, when Ruby crawled out of bed early this morning, she was so happy to see such a cute and cheerful jacket waiting to greet her. And I was so delighted when she went and picked jeans and a solid color t-shirt because she said it "matched" the jacket. As I watched her walking into school, I knew that it had turned out just as I had hoped it would, and I was finally so very happy.







Anyway, this is NOT a quick project, at least it wasn't for me. But I love the end result, and so I'll probably sew it again.

The only thing I would change next time around is, rather than lining all my main fabric in fusible interfacing, I think I would either try using fusible fleece, or a thin quilt batting. When it was too late to make that change in this jacket, I went online to find what others had decided on that point, and found another lady who said she made it her first time with batting and loved it. I was worried that it wouldn't really be warm enough for a January jacket, but the girls confirmed to me that they were in fact "hot" when they had it on.

Anyway, that's the review. Another great pattern to love and recommend.




In other news, the designer felt arrived this weekend. Maybe my next post will be a review of it's merits, if it has any, other than just being beautiful.

P.S. Remember the pinafore smock?? I kind of thought it was missing something...




...Now I don't think that anymore.

One Yard Wonders: All-Ages Classic Jumper - *With Added Pictures

I finally got to use my One Yard Wonders book!

*Scroll to the bottom to see my model in this dress!*

Sorry, these pictures aren't the greatest. It's late and there is no natural lighting.

I started cutting out this jumper during Quiet Time in my house today. I had read the instructions prior to cutting, and out of the 10 simple steps I just couldn't figure out how the back was supposed to come together. I'm a visual learner, and there was no picture of the back of the jumper in the book. The instructions, without a better illustration, weren't all that I had hoped for.


I did a little google search, and found Amanda Sasikirana's blog , the designer of the pattern, along with a link to pictures of her darling little girl modeling a Classic Jumper. Seeing the back of the jumper was helpful for me, but I still wasn't sure based on the instructions how I was to assemble the straps, and I decided that I didn't want the criss-cross look on each strap in the back of the jumper I made.

I also found that for me it made more sense to assemble the entire front - top band and skirt - and the entire back - top band, straps, and skirt - and then assemble the front to the back.

As for my back, I made a casing for my elastic. I used 2 separate piece of material for the back band. (I made a 3T jumper, and the top band, front and back, was to be 5 inches wide when cut out. I decided to cut out 2 pieces 3 1/2 inches wide. I should have only done 3 inches because I ended up needing to redo my front top band to make sure the seams all lined up. )

Now for my instructions on how to attach the back band and straps!

First I attached the top back band and the straps to the back skirt, right side to right side with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. Then I pressed down the top of the back band a 1/2 inch.

Next, I attached my second top back band to the seam allowance of the first top back band, back band right side to back skirt wrong side. Then press the top of the second back band down 1/2 inch.

I then pressed both top back bands up, away from the skirt and enclosing the straps. The inside and outside of the back of the jumper are pictured above.

I then topstitched the top of the back band and the bottom. Then I fed my elastic through the casing, pinned it to the sides, and stitched it in place.


I then took the front of the jumper and the back, lined them up right sides together, and sewed up the sides with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. I then serged my sides, but you could just do a zig zag stitch instead.

I hope that helps! Good luck!

The fabrics I used are two Amy Butler prints from her Daisy Chain collection.

Add caption

I also added a coordinating band of fabric at the bottom of the skirt, matched the straps to the band, and added some MADE gathered pockets.





In the end, I'd give this pattern a 3 out of 5 stars. Unfortunately I really do not like doing buttonholes. They are so stressful! So I have to deduct a star for that, and then the back was slightly confusing. If I lived in Ohio, I would attend Amanda's sewing class, and then probably I would understand her method for adding the straps and closing the back.





I'm sure Grace will give it 5 stars herself tomorrow. She's girly and a new dress for a girly girl is a little slice of heaven on earth!




The next project needs to be cleaning my sewing space. I lost my favorite tiny pair of scissors a couple of days ago, and I still can't find them!! When I start losing essentials sewing tools, that means the sewing room is past due for a cleaning!

**This morning I showed Grace her dress and convinced her to be my model. Towels for a runway and some serious bedhead made for an entertaining catwalk. Oh, and probaby I shouldn't sew sleep deprived any more. I realized this morning that I read the instructions wrong on where to place the straps. They should be moved toward the center of the dress an inch. Oh well!!!!

Inspiration hits late at night.

I was perusing one of my favorite blogs, The Purl Bee, it's always beautiful at the Purl Bee. And the featured project tutorial was for some darling rose barrettes, made out of felt. Not being one who enjoys the process of making hair bows or accessories, these caught my fancy, and I really thought I might be able to pull it off.

But even more than the flower, I couldn't stop thinking about the wrap dress that the little model was wearing. I wasn't the only one. The comment section on the barrette tutorial was full of questions about the beautiful little wrap dress. I've been thinking about wrap dresses for some time now. They can't be hard to make, right?!

Well, because I wanted to make the barrettes, I had to try to make the reversible wrap dress too. Tell me that makes perfect sense!

Not sure if I was going to get it right on my first try, I had to use some fabric, that IF I did get it right, I was fine with, but if I DIDN'T get it right, I wasn't going to cry over the lost fabric. So I settled on this little floraly print, and decided, "Why not?!"

Here are a few pictures of my process, in case you want to try to make one too:



Picked a jumper that we already had, and liked the fit of. Traced it out on velum to start to make my wrap pieces.



Here I am making my first cut. My fabric was folded in half, wrong side to wrong side (very important), so that I would get my two front pieces cut out at the same time, in the same shape.


Here was the reversed fabric (or the lining depending on how you want to think about it). This was me cutting out the back piece. Fold your fabric in half, fold your pattern piece in half, cut one back piece out of each fabric, on the fold.



Here I am showing you the two pieces I had (after attaching the front pieces to the back piece) that I was going to sew together. But here is where it starts to get a little tricky, and here is where I had forgotten to sew the ribbons into the side seams, etc. So here is where my trusty tutorial probably ends. At this point I started pining and praying that I was heading towards some sort of workable finished product.

Sewing my two dress pieces together (right side to right side), I left an opening to turn the whole thing right side out, and I also left the top should straps unattached. I wasn't sure how I was going to attach them, but I knew it couldn't happen in this step. After getting the whole dress turned right side out, I struggled with the straps for a while, and then decided I needed to sleep on it. Perhaps inspiration would hit while I slept. Because truth be told, I was stumped. And frustrated.



In the morning I had Ruby try it on to see if it even fit well, and help me decide if I should even try to salvage it or not.



Seeing that the fit was cute, I decided to struggle on with the straps after the girls went off to school. After a whole bunch of top stitching, and two little lines of hand sewing, I think I got it.

I'll have someone wear it tomorrow and see if I like it enough to try it again. Next time around, I'm contemplating the merits of the reversibleness. Maybe it doesn't matter if it reverses, and it certainly would make the straps 1000 times easier to finish. We'll see.



Maybe not too bad for making a dress on a whim, late at night? Oh yeah, and I did make a barrette. I think it's beautiful, but it's obviously not as easy as I had dreamed it would be.



And P.S. Liz, despite our discussions about designer felt, I totally caved after seeing the beautiful collection of barrettes made on the Purl Bee. I now have a packet of designer felt on it's way to my mail box. I feel kind of guilty, but I couldn't resist either!

A Perfect Pillow

"Round of Applause to Anna" Pillow

A couple of months ago I bought a bundle of Anna Maria Horner fat quarters off of Etsy. I thought I'd collect the fat quarter and turn them into a quilt. As I started thinking about my original plan, I realized that I don't have a bed in my house that is in need of a quilt, so I've just had the fat quarters in my stash with no purpose in mind for them.

I've also had a picture of a pillow that has squares and circles quilted together, and I've thought for months that I should make a pillow like it. And then I merged the fat quarters with the pillow ideas, and the results are stunning if I do say so myself. I absolutely love my new pillow.

After making the top piece, I moved onto the back, and I successfully attempted putting a zipper closure in my pillow. This was one of the most reward sewing experiences I've had since I started seriously sewing about year and a half ago. It gives the pillow such a professional look. You can sew one into your next pillow by following the link "Put a Zipper in a Pillow" under "Tried and True Tutorials" on our sidebar. Huge thanks to Erin from House on Hill Road.



Then I place my front piece wrong sides together with my back piece and using bias tape I made, I bound them together like a quilt. Heather Bailey has a nice quilt binding tutorial should you need one.





This pillow was rather time consuming, but what isn't when you are sewing, and I feel like all the time put into it was well spent. I just love it! I've been wanting new pillows in my living room since before the Christmas sewing madness happened. One down, several more to go! Stay tuned!