Spring Break Prom Dress Progress

April 5, 20241 Comment

Welcome to the end of Spring Break and the weekly progress report on the Pretty Purple Prom Dresses! Thank goodness for a week off of our normal activities because I needed it to get through a big chunk of sewing of Renaissance’s dress. I think I put in about nineteen hours’ worth of work on this over the past week, which could not have happened if I’d been running around doing all the regular chauffeuring and homework minding that I usually do.

I need a name for Ren’s dress, and I think I will call it the “Celestial Dress” because the colors remind me of the colors of the morning glories in the “Celestial Mix” that I just planted.

I finished up the (third) muslin on Saturday, was busy with Easter on Sunday, felt sick on Monday and got nothing done, and took advantage of the last of the good weather on Tuesday to do some much needed work in the yard. So I didn’t come back to the dress until Wednesday: Cutting Day.

The morning sun was shining through the side window of my craft room and just perfectly caught the color-shift of this “Comet Tail” dupioni! It’s been hard to represent the true color via pictures. After gazing a few more minutes at this luxurious feast for the eyes I got down to business:

I highly recommend a quilt design wall for your sewing room even if you’re not a quilter because you can hang up all your pattern pieces when you’re sewing clothes. Keeping track of these pieces was a headache until I tacked them up on the wall. Bonus: As you finish transferring markings fabric, you stack the used pattern pieces somewhere else and that way you don’t accidentally miss a piece and/or duplicate a piece. Renaissance picked out McCall’s #7091 for her dress, View D, and we’re also going to throw sleeves onto it because the church spring formal has a high level of dress standards (Read: No sleeveless dresses). Sleeves it is.

Happy news: If you didn’t use all of your cans of cranberry sauce and evaporated milk at Thanksgiving, they make fantastic pattern weights. THANK GOODNESS I WAS SICK ON MONDAY and spent the day perusing the internet—I stumbled across someone on some sewing website mentioning that you can’t use regular pins on silk because the holes will show. I do have silk pins that I wisely purchased and had set off to the side for a future silk project, so I busted those out and then used my canned goods to hold down the pattern pieces instead of pinning the pattern to the fabric for transferring.

I also stumbled across the advice to clip your princess seams BEFORE you pin them when sewing and dear goodness, what a difference! My muslin seams were done in the opposite fashion and they were horrific. These ones were almost easy after I applied that information.

Another piece of advice that I had forgotten until Monday was that you need to use a pressing cloth on silk. That wasn’t important until this morning when I actually started pressing stuff, but I had forgotten about it and mention it in case it’s helpful to anyone else.

I needed to order another yard of the dupioni because I forgot that View D was sleeveless and so its listed fabric requirement didn’t have the yardage to also cut out sleeves, and I failed to realize that when ordering. No major worries there, Silk Baron has already shipped it and it should be here soon. I still have the bodice lining and the contrast skirt to work on so I won’t be sitting around twiddling my thumbs as it makes its way to me.

So, as it stands, I have pieced the fashion fabric bodice and inserted the invisible zipper. Excellent progress! Not to where I had originally planned to be by this time, but it’s definitely moving along and I’m thankful for all the extra time I had available this week to work on it.

It absolutely cracks me up that those last two pictures are of the same area of the dress! How the light is hitting the fabric changes the color astronomically, I love it so much!

I don’t know how much time I’ll have to work on it over the weekend; it’s Daffodil Parades tomorrow and I’m not sure if I need to chaperone the marching band for all FOUR parades throughout the entire day. If not, I’ll be in my sewing room!

Finished: Rachel’s Halloween Skirt

February 4, 2022January 30, 2022Leave a comment

I didn’t keep it secret, and I let her have it once it was done, rather than waiting for her birthday. She wore it to church last week, minus the witch hat, which she really wanted to wear for the photos. Rachel really likes the “everyday Halloween aesthetic,” so I decided to make her happy and sew up a skirt that fits the description. When I first saw this floral print, I KNEW Rachel would love it.

Details:

Pattern: I’m surprised at how many people have been asking on Instagram what the pattern is, and I’m so sorry to report that this is a massive mishmash of patterns. The pieces are cut from the “Three-Quarter Circle Skirt” pattern found in Gertie’s Ultimate Dress Book, and I modified the pocket pieces to be much larger. I’ve made this skirt before, and I think I lengthened it? I was working from my traced pattern, so I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s lengthened by a few inches because Rachel is all legs. The waistband is a straight strip of fabric, and I do not know how large I cut it because that piece of paper has gone missing. And then I sewed it all up according to the directions found in Simplicity #1369.

Ta…da…😬

Fabric: “Cast a Spell” floral print in the “Spooky & Sweeter” collection that Art Gallery Fabrics put out last year. I bought 4 yards of it and have a good quarter yard left, plus random big scraps.

Thread: Whatever that black thread is on my thread rack. Probably cotton/poly or straight poly.

Notions: Dark Grey invisible zipper from that poorly-chosen purchase of “invisible zippers in an assortment of colors” from Amazon, shortened to the correct length.

Miscellaneous: I bought some new hemming feet for my sewing machine so I could perhaps get through hemming this quickly. I used the foot with the 6 on it, whatever that means. I think it was a rolled hem, about 1/4-inch. I have some larger hemming ones that I’m excited to try in the future, but I figured it would be hard to go any larger on the hem of a circle skirt, so I kept it small this time.

Oh, to be a teenage girl with a mom who will sew you cute little things to further your aesthetic. Ha ha. Enjoy it, Rachie Bug.

#craftygoals: February 2022

February 1, 2022January 31, 20221 Comment

Y’all hanging in there? January’s a hard month to survive, I think. Good job making it to February! Alas, I think February often gives January a run for its miserable money most years, which makes me feel like…

But we’re just going to keep our heads down and go to work on those awesome crafty goals, and we’ll pass this gray, cold month with color in our hands and beautiful stitches to chase away the days. Sounds like an excellent plan! Go forth!

I had a plan for February, but as I went about to start prepping for it, I asked the person I was going to make a thing for if they wanted the thing I was planning to make for them and THEY SAID NO. So…I need some new plans. (It was a dress for Rachel. She’s so thrilled with her new Halloween skirt that she said she didn’t need anything new at the moment, and anyways, that particular dress was something she was “only into for, like, last summer.” 😒 This is why, more and more, I’m against surprise crafting. It often ends poorly. Just ask people what they want and then tell them it’s going to take forever to make. Everyone ends up happy. Even if it takes ten years to finish the thing. Trust me, I have A LOT of experience with this.)

I didn’t mention it in my January #craftygoals post, but I want to try to sew up an article of clothing each month this year. (I didn’t mention it because it would have hinted that “Rachel’s Birthday Gift” was a piece of clothing. Which ended up not mattering because I had to spoil the secret anyway. Gah.) I like the idea of making well-fitting clothes, but it’s a very new skill for me and I avoid it because it’s still kind of difficult to do well. It’s way more gratifying to crank out quilts because I’m already good at them. Clothes, though…eek. Practice, practice, practice.

1. So, with Rachel’s dress off the table, I need to come up with another clothing item to make, and I need a little time to figure that out because reasons.

The other #craftygoals for February are:

2. Finish the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt. I don’t think I’ve ever posted about this quilt, but I started it in December 2019 as a kick-off for the coming year being devoted to sewing up my scraps, and almost got the top completed, actually. And then my first shipment of Blank Quilting fabric arrived and the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt went into hibernation very quickly. The Convoluted Formula™ dictates that it be the next thing I work on. I’m pleased it’ll be completed soon. It’s cute.

3. Continue (maybe finish?) the Far Far Away quilt.

4. Brick House Scrap Quilt blocks #5-8

5. Clementine Quilt Along Month 3 & 4. I didn’t quite finish the Month 3 blocks last month because of my back, but they’re close. Hopefully I can railroad through the fourth month’s blocks, too.

6. Berry Blocks. Not even started, annoyingly.

7. HST Leaders & Enders. Also not started, extra annoyingly. But we’re not going to worry because Scrappy Thursday is for working with scraps at the pace that I can work. There are no deadlines in the Land of Scrappy Thursdays, just a love of scraps. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN, DARN IT.

Hand Stitching-wise, I’m still knitting away on Michael’s Building Blocks sock, and really should be able to finish those up by the end of the month.

I have NO idea what I’ll work on after that. I think I need a portable project for taking to work, and an “at-home” project that is more involved or larger or whatever. Maybe a pair of vanilla socks for work, and resume working on the Stalagmite socks that I started three years ago? Or the Better Days Sweater? I don’t know, but it’s gotta be something yarny. My fingers are so cold in the winter that I have a hard time with hand sewing.

January’s #craftygoals went really good. I finished the Cat Lady quilt, Rachel’s Halloween skirt (pictures coming), the Mini Charm Chiffon Baby quilt (pictures waiting on delivery), and was able to start working on the Far Far Away quilt.

Scrappy Thursday-wise, I got the Brick House blocks for the month done and almost finished the Clementine blocks. As previously stated, I did not get to the Berry Blocks or HST Leaders & Enders. Not much I can do about that. Hopefully everything cooperates in the universe and I’m able to work on them this month.

And in the sphere of Hand Stitching, I finally finished the Nereid Mitts! Huzzah!

Good luck with your #craftygoals for the month!

How to Plan a Birthday Dress

April 11, 2021April 11, 2021Leave a comment

I mentioned in my last post that I’m going to sew myself a dress for my birthday. I mentioned it for various reasons, most of them being that if I say out loud, I’ll feel like I need to actually do it, and by saying it’s for my birthday, it also gives me a deadline and I just can’t seem to function without a deadline breathing down my neck.

Do you get project paralysis when you’ve got a blank canvas in front of you? Too many choices, so you can’t actually narrow down what the heck you’re going to do? This is totally me, and I find that it works best to take any limitations into account, because limitations help hone your choices by booting out the choices that simply won’t work.

So, we have a time limitation with the birthday deadline: Saturday, May 8th (Not my birthday, but I want the dress done for the Sunday before my birthday) which gives me roughly four weeks. In all honesty, my creative brain totally thinks I’m going to be done with this in a week. My logic brain is worried I don’t actually have enough time to finish this because hi, it’s spring (gardening), school sports are starting up again for some of my kids, I have another secret project that’s going to be taking up a lot of my times, and OH YEAH I HAVE FOUR KIDS. (The four kids yelling thing is something my BFF keeps stage-yelling at me every time I get down on myself for not being “more productive.” I’m supposed to now always yell it whenever I’m thinking of things that I need to take into consideration when thinking about starting new projects, according to her.)

The fabric: Kokka Natural Garden Voile, purchased from Miss Matatabi during a sale in December. I have a rule that if I gasp *out loud* because a fabric or yarn is so beautiful, that I really need to figure out how to buy some. I gasped at this, saw it was on sale, and bought the rest of it. Not sorry at all. STALKS OF LAVENDER, people! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

Another limitation is the amount of fabric I have for this dress: 4 3/8 yards (8 meters). I know that seems like a lot of fabric, but it’s not because a) I am a full skirt addict, and b) I’m a plus-size gal with a lot going on up top. Of course, I want to do a beautiful circle or pleated skirt that swooshes around, but I just don’t have the yardage for it. I think I’m going to have to go with an A-Line skirt, which isn’t my favorite…but I can’t fight the reality of yardage amounts. It was end-of-bolt, so I got what I could get, and there’s nothing else I can do about it.

Two other limitations: Modesty (Has to have sleeves and hit below the knee), and I don’t really want to spend any more money on extras for this. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to line this because it is voile, but I’m hoping I already have something on-hand for that. I might buy 1/2-1 yard of a coordinating fabric, if my heart gets set on a contrast extra, like a Peter Pan collar, or cuffs, or a midriff section or something like that.

I haven’t made myself a dress in quite some time, and my measurements have changed a lot since then, so it might be a good idea to keep things simple–basic bodice, short sleeves, a-line skirt. There’ll need to be something extra, but I’m not quite sure what that’s going to be just yet. I’d like this dress to be prettily functional; nice enough for church, and not too nice for wearing to the grocery story on days where I want to be cute as I go about my errands.

OK…that’s not too tough. I’ve done it before! (Let’s just hope it doesn’t take me close to year to get it done like I did with the last one, k?)

Goals for this week:

Choose pattern
Make muslin
Adjust pattern
Buy lining, if needed
Cut fashion fabric and lining

It’s a big list, I know. Any progress will be good progress.

What spring projects are you thinking about right now?

Renaissance’s Easter Dress

April 12, 2020April 12, 20201 Comment

I finished it a while back, but she wore it for our Easter church service at home, and I finally remembered to snap a couple of pictures of her.

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I’ve had this pattern earmarked for a couple of years for her. I’d purchased some great dresses from Lands End about four years ago for Emily, and then they were handed down to Ren, and now to Rachel, and they are such a great silhouette that I started keeping an eye out for a comparable pattern somewhere out there in Sewing Land. It appeared one day in the form of Butterick 6450–a bloused bodice with an elastic waist, short sleeves, and a swingy skirt. It works really great for a growing girl.

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This is View C, sewn up in a cotton lawn from Miss Matatabi. I underlined the bodice with white cotton voile for modesty, and attached the same fabric as a lining beneath the skirt. (Note to self: Don’t mix and match underlining the bodice with a lining for the skirt in this pattern in the future–it got messy when it came to attaching the zipper versus the encased elastic waistband. Pick one method of under/lining and go with it for both the bodice and the skirt.) I did not do the gathering on the sleeves, and I was surprised that I ended up using the full length of the View C skirt.

The skirt is seamed down the center front and back on the bias, which is something that I’d like to avoid in the future because I want to sew up a couple iterations of this in gingham prints, but that bias seam will cause all sorts of headaches with a gingham. I know it will be easy enough to throw a different skirt onto the bodice in the future, but sigh…more thinking ahead. It worked well enough with this abstract print, and the skirt has turned out really well and fluttery without the danger of flipping up in a wind gust, à la a circle skirt.

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Construction was easy, with no weird head-scratching moments. I like bias binding on my edges, so I really love that bound neckline–makes me so pleased everytime I see it! The instructions on how to hem the skirt were really good and gave a nice finish. The zipper instructions were a mess and I ended up just hacking the stupid thing in there, but that’s just because I am missing the gene that lets me understand how to put a zipper into anything. Good enough.

I’m planning to sew up this pattern, with a few design changes, at least two more times this year. It’s a great dress!

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Face Masks sewn by Cara Brooke of That Crafty Cara in March 2020

At the End of Week #2 of COVID-19 School Closures

March 27, 2020March 27, 2020Leave a comment

We are now 1/3 of the way through the initial school closures here in Washington State, and are now enjoying the escalated “Stay Home” measures that were announced this week by the governor, dictating that we not leave our houses unless there’s an essential need (groceries, medical, etc.).

The kids are doing really great with their online learning, and I actually learned that their school district is one of TWO that made the immediate jump to online learning for the school closures. Cue the “I’m so glad we moved into this particular house” gratitude. We get to walk down to the bus stop each morning to pick up the school lunch deliveries (practicing safe social distancing of course), and I get to have a quick chat with some of my neighborhood mom friends, so we don’t feel completely socially isolated. It’s not that bad, actually.

Crafting-wise, I basically just sewed up medical masks this week. Not exciting at all, and a little anger-inducing because all I can think about while I’m sewing these up is how frustrating it is that we don’t have enough medical supplies on-hand for something of this nature, despite the fact that scientists have been warning us for years that we were historically due for a pandemic of some sort. And then my thoughts wander down more angry roads, and I just end up steaming mad about lots of things. So…no, I don’t like making medical masks AT ALL. BUT, I have friends who work in the medical field and one of them texted yesterday asking if I had made any because her hospital really needs some, so I drove the twenty I’d made over to her house and left them on her doorstep. I guess I’ll need to make more, but I need a break before I go back to them.

I’m going to use my “break from the masks” to attach the binding to my March Blank Quilting project, which just arrived back from the quilter this week; and I’m starting to work with the “Best Friends Farm” fabric that Jaftex/Henry Glass Fabrics sent me as a bonus for April; and I did my part to support a small business by buying up some yardage of an absolutely gorgeous floral print from Style Maker Fabrics that I’m hoping to turn into a dress by Easter.

So, because goals are my self-love love language, I’ll end this with a “Goals for the Next Week” list:

Finish the Florabelle Hexie Stripes quilt. Photograph it and share it online.
Finish piecing the individual blocks for the Best Friends Farm quilt.
Finish the muslin for my Blue Floral Easter dress.
Photograph and share the dress I finished for Renaissance a couple of weeks ago.
Move forward in some meaningful way with my sewing pattern database/spreadsheet. The plan, pre-COVID-19, was to have it completed by the end of the next week or so, but things got way too crazy to keep up with it, so it’s a minor project that’s limping along at the moment. I’ll worry about it more once things calm down in the future.