Sunday, February 23, 2014

Retro Farm skirt combo


So far this year I've managed not to sew a single thing that I vowed to in my New Year's Re-sew-lutions list. Things like a plain black skirt and plain coloured blouses. Instead, I've made a crazy dress and now a crazy skirt.

I went to Spotlight the other week and they had a really great sale. I picked up 11 metres of gorgeous quilter's cottons for $50. One of them was this adorable retro farm print. It has the cutest little scenes on it- check it out!


 


I bought two metres with the plan of making myself a dress. When I got it home I thought it was a bit too crazy and kiddy for a dress but I still wanted to make myself something with it. Then I had the brilliant idea of making a lovely gathered skirt out of it.

I used the skirt of Sewaholic Cambie (pockets included) and my favourite skirt waistband, from my Awesome Skirt. It came together very easily and I absolutely adore it. I got endless comments about it when I wore it to work this week. It makes me so happy just looking at it!




I had read that gathering with 3 rows of stitching is much more effective than 2 rows and I tried it on this. I will never use two rows again. That extra third row, placed just outside the seam allowance, makes the gathers so neat and even! You're probably thinking, "Duh! Everyone knows that!" But I'm so lazy that I skip extra steps whenever possible!



 Upon seeing my marvellous creation, my daughter begged me to make her one. From the two metres I purchased, I only had a few longish strips left (the Cambie skirt uses A LOT of fabric!). I cut the leftover bits into eight 12x4 inch strips, sewed and overlocked them together, covered the seams with ric rac, and whipped up an elastic casing for a waistband. I cut it and sewed it up in about 70 minutes today, and also made her a bedwetting sheet protector thing as we are trying to finally get her out of night nappies.

I wanted all the ric rac to be white but I didn't have enough and Spotlight had none so I got green. 

Cute, yes?



Wednesday, February 12, 2014

New Look 6000

Check this baby out! Isn't it groovy?




It's Montreau drill, the same stuff I've made my last few 'for me' projects from. I loooove the print! I didn't have enough fabric to even attempt pattern matching.




I had to make a few alterations to get this dress to fit me. It was absolutely skin tight from under my bust to my hips, so I had to reduce the seam allowance as much as I could to a tiny 1/4 inch. Then there was heaps of foldy-ness happening at the back so I had to increase the back seam allowance to a massive one and a half inches, tapering down to my waist. Crazy! Easy fixes though. It turned out really well.




I also finished my daughter's birthday presents. As well as the dress I blogged about a while ago, I made her a cute hat and a sweet mouse softie. The softie was very fiddly- stuffing the arms with their less than 1cm opening was tricky! I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to give it to her tomorrow.



 





 



















Here are all of her presents- the Care Bears are vintage from Ebay. I'm slightly obsessed with 1980s toys like My Little Pony (have a huge collection), Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears. I was stoked that I picked up this lot for $40.


 

The only new thing she's getting is the little polo shirt/ skirt outfit, which I got from Aldi for $10.