Round & Round in Circles We Go

I interrupted my scheduled sewing projects last week to do something I’ve wanted to do for some time: participate in the Project Run & Play Sew Along. However, I wasn’t able to finish my project in time to be included in the sew along/contest. :-(

But I did finish them eventually, so now I present you with…

I made my remix of the circle skirt tutorial to be ‘fully loaded’, which means this skirt has

• Pockets
• Full Lining
• Peeking Ruffle
• Modesty Shorts (does this make it a circle skort?)

And it’s a hit! The girls really like them, because they twirl! And because of the pockets. They LOVE pockets. The Wild One came screaming from the other end of the house when she discovered the pockets.

Want to make your own? Click below to see my changes to include the pockets, shorts and lining!

Spring Sewing Has Begun!

I’m sure it began a while ago for most, but I’m just getting back into my sewing room since winter and it feels great! My first finished project for spring was inspired by some rather simple, but cute t-shirts I found at Target for my girls.

These little shirts were just screaming for a white ruffle skirt to pair with them. I love the look of ruffles, but I’ve always dreaded sewing them… their just tedious. Until now!

I’m SO HAPPY Dana posted this fantastic tutorial on ways to gather/ruffle fabric. Her “cheating” way is now my ONLY way to gather a ruffle. SO much easier than fighting with that ruffler foot, which I’ve never really quite managed to get to work on my machine.

I also used Dana’s Layered Skirt tutorial as my basis for making these little skirts, with just a couple of adjustments.

I used a biased cut waistband from Simplicity 2483 and attached it to the top of the last connector piece. I did this so the distance between the waistband and the first ruffle would lay flat under a longer t-shirt and to add some overall length. I prefer longer skirts over shorter ones.

I put in a lining as well, I knew at least in early spring this would be worn with tights so I thought a lining would be good to avoid the skirt sticking to the tights or riding up.

This was a white seersucker from my stash, and just enough of it too, I think I have about 3” of it left!

And the girls really love wearing them. They were so excited to put them on for these photos, they could not hold still for even a second!

The only change I would have made was to increase the width of the last ruffle and connector piece. There is plenty of ease to wear it with, but I think it hangs just a little too strait. I little more a-line shape to it I think would have been just perfect. So, that being said, I moved right into my next project, which also includes ruffles and a little different remix of the same layered tutorial. It turned out SO CUTE!! Just need to get some photos now!

Inspired By: ModCloth Academy Dress

So before I tackle all the sewing on my big coat project, I snuck in a quick project for myself!

I was inspired by this dress from ModCloth: Academy Dress

Source: modcloth.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

 

And I’ve had this in the works for a long time!!! I hinted about it back in September when I worked up this McCalls tunic. Well, when I made that tunic, I knew it was a great base pattern for this dress. With a few modifications, I think I got pretty close!

I was really a fairly easy dress to knock off. I took photos of my process and have put together a tutorial of how I did it. Click below to see the tutorial.

Dress Coats – Lots o’ Prep and Cutting

I’ve started work on my big coat project and it is already a lot of fun! All of my materials and the Oliver + S pattern arrived last week. Here are the details.

All three coats are being made of the same materials, just for the sake of simplicity. I order a black wool coating that is 95% wool and 5% nylon. I am interlining all three coats with 100% cotton flannel for some added warmth. The lining is a 100% polyester Satin Charmeuse, also in black. I haven’t yet decided on my interfacing yet, I have to test a few out and see which works the best with my wool.

Over the weekend I prepped the wool and flannel. The flannel, simply by washing and drying twice to preshrink. The wool I preshrunk using the dryer method, which worked out very well. My piece was 7.25 yards and I did not want to cut it into sections before preshrinking it. So at first tossed my yardage in the dryer with two wet towels and ran it on high for 40 minutes. But it didn’t seem to shrink much, so I laid the whole piece out on my kitchen floor and sprayed it down with a water bottle, making sure the entire surface was good and damp/wet and then put it in the dryer again for another 40 minutes.

Here’s a sample of the wool I cut after using the dryer method. Both pieces are exactly 3” x 3”. One I steamed to death with my iron, the other I left alone, then I compared to ensure that they dryer method really did steam/shrink all my yardage completely. I’d say it worked, as both samples are still exactly 3” x 3”!

Saturday I started cutting out the Burda pattern for the girls coats, because I had that one traced already. I have both coats cut out of the wool and most of the interlining. Just a little more cutting to go. But I think tracing and cutting is the most tedious and time consuming part of sewing. While I’m at it, I think I’ll trace off and cut my boy’s coat now and get all of the cutting over with at once.

The other exciting piece of this project is the size tags I found on Etsy this weekend!!! I’ve been searching for a place to buy size tags that didn’t require a 1000 tag minimum of just one size. I sew a lot, but I will not sew 1000 garments in size 4. But I found this Etsy shop and I ordered 100 tags in a combination of sizes from 4 to 7 and in a few different colors. I cannot wait for these to arrive, I’ll definitely post again about what they are like once I see them in person.

So that’s that on the coat front. The girls’ play coats are fantastic now after a week of wear. They are really warm and cozy.

I also decided (about two seconds after reading the post) to enter the So You Think You Can Sew contest over at Mommy by Day, Crafter By Night. It sounds like lots of fun!! I entered my yellow jacket project.

That’s what I’ve had going on this week. Amidst the coat project, I  do have a half finished dress for the girls that is an original design. I’m going to try to get that finished up this week and possibly even get a tutorial up for it.

Bring on the Cold!

I’m in coat making mode! I’ve been planning wool dress coats for all three of my kids over the past few weeks, but my girls needed play coats and fast. It’s getting cold out there! So I thought it would be good to work on a couple of play coats as a warm up to the big coat project I’m planning.

I started with McCalls 5743 which is an unlined fleece jacket/coat, I’ve had this pattern in my stash for more than a year. I actually started to make it last fall, but abandoned the project as it just wasn’t what I was hoping for at the time. This year I found success though!!

I definitely wanted a lined coat, so after tons and tons of fiddling with the pattern pieces, I was able to draft a jacket front lining that worked with the front facing. This is what the assembled lining looked like before it was bagged with the outer coat.

Excuse the messy sewing room floor – I completely tore my sewing room apart last weekend and rearranged everything and it’s not really all put together again yet!

Anyway, I was excited to bag a lining (which I’ve never done before!) and it turned out great!! It’s one of those things I could never understand when reading about it online, but once I did it in real life, it was a piece of cake! Even the sleeves are perfect. Though this may not be the most tailored application of it, I’m glad I got to accomplish this a couple times before starting on the wool coats.

I used a Cuddle Fleece (or Flurr as I’ve recently seen it called – a mix of Fleece and Fur) from Hancock, the lining is a crepe back satin and it is underlined with a 100% cotton quilt batting. It gets cold here in MN, so I wanted to make sure it would be warm enough to last the whole winter. The cuddle fleece was crazy to work with! It shed EVERYWHERE! At the raw edges, not when finished. My sewing machine handled it well, but the pile was so thick that I would actually loose pins in it! The only down side is that the gathering detail around the yoke in the front and back is pretty much lost with the thickness of the fleece. But it’s soooooo soft and cozy, so that makes up for it!

My other big design change was to elasticize the hood. I wanted it to be snug around their little faces to keep the cold wind out. I cut four of the pattern hood piece (instead of just two per the instructions) and stitched them RST at the indicated fold line. Then I stitched again 5/8” from the edge to form a casing and inserted 1/4” elastic. I added the elastic and then placed the hood on one the girls heads and pulled until it fit snugly to get the right length on the elastic. Worked like a charm!

The buttons, as cute and perfectly coordinating as they are, are just for show. I used large sew on snaps for the closers. I just didn’t feel like attempting button holes through this fleece!

The girls love them!! They fit really well, they are a little big, which was intentional, cuz these girls grow like weeds.

Excuse the iPod, it was the only way to keep a willing subject for photos!

Goofy girls!

Check out my pattern review here and be sure to check back here on Monday for a giveaway! Now excuse me while I go de-fuzz my sewing room….

Inspired By: Crew Cuts Jitterbug (and a series!)

Today I’m kicking off a series here on this blog – INSPIRED BY.

There are a few other sewing blogs out there that do a great job at taking RTW/Designer clothes and matching them to sewing patterns and fabric to recreate the look for less. I’m always interested in these posts, because that’s why I sew! I love the clothes in many a store out there, but I know I can make the same thing myself, often with better quality, better fit and for a fraction of the cost.

But what I haven’t found is very many posts showing these items actually done! So I’m going to be sharing my recreations of RTW clothes in this series. I’ll show the inspiration piece and how I achieved the look in real life.

This week, I was inspired by the Jitterbug Girls Striped Dress at Crew Cuts.

It looked so cozy and a simple for the cooler weather that has settle in, at least where we live. I found this sweater knit at SR Harris and thought it would be perfect for this project.

I love that I found a sweater knit vs. just an interlock or t-shirt knit. I think it makes the dress just a bit dressier and it will be warm enough for both fall and winter.

I started with my favorite TNT t-shirt pattern, Jalie 2805. Any good t-shirt pattern would work, or even drafting a pattern from a well fitting RTW shirt. I adjusted for an a-line skirt, starting just above the natural waist line and down to, what I thought would be, knee length. Later I found I did my math wrong and it was actually ankle length…

I constructed the whole thing with my serger, which took no time at all. After a quick check for fit on the girls (and discovering the ankle length and needing to remove about 3” off the hem) I determined where I was going to place the bodice gathers.

The inspiration dress appears to have gathers at the waist line, but I decided I wanted them to be just a little above the waist line, about 5 inches down from the neckband. For these three-year-old girls, currently wearing size 4 or 5 (I traced a size I or girls 5 in this pattern) I used a piece of 1/4” elastic that was 5 1/2 inches long. I placed each end 2 inches from the side seams and stretched in between with a zig-zag stich on my machine. I hand stitched on a white ribbon bow.

I made one design change though. I wanted to be sure these would last till spring so I purposely cut the sleeves long. And they were long! So I decided to add some ruching on the sleeves to shorten the length for now, with the idea that when they get a little bigger and the sleeve length is too short, I can add length by removing the ruching.

Here is the finished product. I love how they turned out.

I hope you enjoyed! And please continue to stop by and visit my Inspired By series. Next up will be a great dress for fall for me!

FO: M6203 - A Nice Tunic

Wow, was this a quick sew. Instant gratification! I had this tunic cut and sewn completely in about 45 minutes.




It's a very simple pattern. Per the design, the neck bands are left unfinished. The instruction would have you turn down the neckline and do a narrow hem, then attach the two neckbands. Hum, no. I just layered all three RST and serged. Much faster, and in all likelihood, a much neater neckline. I left the hem unfinished as well, it seemed appropriate considering the unfinished neckline. The cut-on sleeves do have bands that finish them off. The sleeves are also a little long. Partially my fault, since most patterns require added sleeve length for me. I added 3/4", but it looks like I have too-short long sleeves instead of 3/4 length sleeves (if I don't have them pushed up as I did in the photos).

I cut a small and constructed the whole thing on my serger with 1/4" seams. This worked out perfectly.

Overall, I'm happy with it. It's not that fancy, but I like it with grey leggins or my favorite blue jeans. It will be great for taking my daughter back and forth from school this fall/winter.

And as I mentioned before, now that I've made this up and I know the fit, I'm going to use this pattern as a base to make a cute fall dress. And when I do, I'll try to get that up here in a tutorial. I'm excited, I just need a good piece of sweater knit in a dark orange or a rusty red.