FullOfStitches.com blog.A good laugh leaves me in stitches!

Apparently, this is the only picture of both toys together! About midnight (or was it 1AM?) I remembered that the children were invited to a joint birthday party today. And I didn’t have a gift yet. So, I grabbed the Wee Wonderfuls book and started crafting. I had already decided to make the giraffe and so it was traced, and I cut it out of the leftovers from a dress I had prepped to sew yesterday. The giraffe is for the 2yo boy. His big sister is 4 and I flipped through and picked the Tag-Along doll. I traced the pattern -searched for fabric!- and found a nice medium brown. I cut her legs from pink with polka dots and her dress is blue. I couldn’t find my corduroy, but I finally found it today and she has pretty black cord hair.

I think she came out cute. I had scheduled to be home at 11:30 to get them started sewn, but didn’t leave the coffee shop (where I study) till after noon! I could have used that extra half hour to finish the dress! And maybe make the giraffe a giraffe. Without the tail and horns, oh, and ears, he looks more like a tailless dinosaur, so we nicknamed him the giraffasaurus.

We played sidewalk chalk, pop the balloon, and musical chairs . There was a piñata and bouncy house.

Loads of fun!

I had picked up this blue and brown voile on sale at the fabric store with the Swing Dress in mind. Then I started on the Chantilly muslin and decided that would combine well with the blue for my Resurrection Celebration (Easter) dress.

I added brown piping at the waistline. It seems as if I could have used an 8 at the waist instead, maybe I stretched it while adding the piping.

I did pick up some brown to use with the red muslin top, so maybe I’ll drop down a size at the waist and see how it goes.

The only change i made on the pattern was to add 8″ to the hem. Overall, it fits well, flatters my figure, and is very feminine. I think it’s a keeper!

My Mother-in-law, Barb, sewed these cute dresses for the girls for Easter. Adorable!! The pattern is McCall’s M6312. These are the dresses that I had hoped to help with when she was visiting. We found this adorable silhouette fabric on discount at the local quilt store (no complete selvedges are left, or I’d let you know it’s name). It took a while to find the right contrasts, too!

Barb sewed the dress together and left the buttons/-holes and hems for me to do. On this pattern, the straps are supposed to be buttoned closed, but the straps are so short, it didn’t make sense to take that extra half inch to overlap the fabric far enough down to add the button. And, since it was cut on the pattern size of the girls’ age, with added length, it was too big around. So, my simple solution was to move the buttons over to take in the fullness. The buttons can be moved as the girls grow -MissC’s dress (4 year old) fit MissA (8 year old) with the original button placement.

I like to add something to make the dress individualized for each girl when I make them. Since I was on hem duty, I thought it would be fun to use hem lace -which I’d never used before- in the girls’ favorite color. I went with muted colors instead of bright to go with the dresses. MissA has peach as it is close to pink, MissB has lavender or lilac, and MissC has Mediterranean blue.

Celebrating the Risen Lord!

I went with the size 4 on top and size 10 waist. I think it looks a lot better. The puffiness of the gathers should be lessened by the weight of the skirt.

The back has some movement, good. I had my oldest daughter take another:

This just looks a touch loose to me. Good. Woven fabrics need “ease” so the wearer can move. When this has a skirt, I’m sure it will look fine.

Okay, I bit. There’s a newer pattern company called Colette Patterns that have come out with some gorgeous patterns. I picked up Chantilly and hope to have it made up shortly. My dilemma? According to the pattern sizing, I’m a 4 on top and a 10 from the waist down! Wow, what childbearing can do to a figure! So, it’s time to mock up. In sewing terms, making a pattern, or part of a pattern in a similar yet less expensive fabric is called making a muslin, because traditionally this is done in the fabric called muslin. I haven’t any muslin lying around, so I’m using some pretty red fabric I have. There’s only two yards, so I couldn’t get a dress from it anyway. Maybe if it fits, though, I could get some contrast fabric for the skirt.

I read everywhere that Colette patterns run large. And they’re made for a C cup.. Yeah, so first I tried it with size 4 on top and size 6? For the band. Obvious to me are the side-to-side wrinkles indicating that my well-rounded belly needs more space.

Again in the back, I’m on the right track on top. This size fit my ribcage fine, but I didn’t widen it out enough below that.

More later!

Sunday morning I woke late. I had planned to wash a load of laundry, but there wasn’t time! I looked around and found this “wearable muslin” that I had started. It needed only 3 things: zipper, sleeves, hem.

I cannot recall ever having made or purchased any item of yellow clothing for myself. Until now.

Elegant Musing’s Casey hosted a Swing Dress Sew-A-Long recently. Sense & Sensibility Patterns sells the 1940′s Swing Dress downloadable pattern for about $10. Why not? I need a couple new summery dresses.

I printed the pattern and taped it together, then traced it into interfacing, basted the bodice together, and pin-fitted it.

I took out an inch from the shoulder gathers and an half inch from the length of the bodice, but I think that was conservative as I still have about an half inch too much length! There’s a bit of blousiness built in to this style, and I need some room to move, yes, but I think the bodice is still a bit long for my frame.

Overall, I’m happy with it. I lined the entire dress, flat-felled all the shirt seams, added pockets, left off the ties, used Casey’s zipper instructions, Quietude’s nursing adaptation (I still need to add snaps! I used safety pins so I could wear it to church Sunday), and

Here’s the inside. The lining is eyelet. I set it so it just shows the tips of the lacy edge under my dress hem – I didn’t want to have it fully exposed, but I can easily bring up the dress gem to show off a few inches of eyelet.

Ben says it’s cheerful.

Next time:
-Try taking some under-bust gathers out (see Slapdash’s “I Can Buy Cheap, Cute Bras Bust Adjustment” for SBA hints – I love the hint to reduce the length of the edge on a crossover/ surplice style blouse or dress), then decide if another half inch needs to be gone. I usually have to remove two or more inches from the over bust length of store bought patterns, and the pattern instructions say this is made for a long torso.

-Add a little more ease at the base of the waist curve for my belly (5 babies leave a softened curve).

-Try another style pockets, though these patch pockets are nice.

I found some steel blue fabric and olive green taffeta on the clearance rack and thought that would make a pretty dress. I would make it blue with the green as lining. I bought plenty of each for that, and a grey zipper. After I got home, I just liked the green too much to hide it, so I pulled out some old sheets that had tears and cut that as the lining.

I didn’t measure myself. And as much as I like this dress, I made it too small.

Tada! To form a good head of hair, I ran a line of hair down the center of her wig cap and around the edges. I think that used about 50 strands or so.

Then I filled in every other stitch on the two rounds inside that, every third or so for the rest. Altogether, I think I used about 130 strands of yarn.

Hep Cat has seen better days. And, today became one of them! Is it just me, or do others occasionally find toys without pieces or just the missing pieces? The cat or arm have surfaced many a time over this last year. But this time someone put both on the counter. Hurrah! (I’ve got to set myself up a mending basket..)