Posts tagged ‘sewing’

Here’s one of my i-can’t-type-well posts. I found the pattern for this jacket in a bag of handed down linens. It was cut out of a grocery bag and only had the words “5/8 inch seam all around” written on it.

After a little puzzling it out and I came up with this jacket in a 3-6 month size. I graded it to a 12-18 month and made one for my sweet Cressida.

It’s because I broke my collar bone playing soccer last Saturday.

For the sake of keeping blogging short (I have trouble blogging left handed) I will be mostly sharing links and photos until I get my right hand back. In the meantime I’ll be sporting this fashionable sling I altered by hand sewing a panel of upholstery fabric to the blue hospital sling. Yes, I used my left hand for this, and no, I don’t plan to do any more sewing until I can use my right hand again.

This beautiful vintage button belonged to my grandmother.  There’s only one, and I’ve been painfully particular about how to use it.  When guest blogger, Erica, wrote about making a vintage brooch into a necklace, I immediately thought about my button.  But since I’m on a hair-accessories kick, I thought I’d try it within a flower instead.

I used recycled shirt fabric & a vintage button for this flower.  It’s just like this orange flower one I made a while back.  The original pattern & idea came from a fabric flowers tutorial at Wise Craft.

I’m not talking about my “I found this in the car & won’t get sunburnt hat” in the left picture.  And I didn’t buy a hat either.  I did buy a headband though.  Isn’t it pretty?  I met Paula Singleton of What A Great Hat! at the Akron Arts Expo this weekend (she’s wearing pink in the left picture).  Her vintage style hats are each originals with the most delicate & perfectly classy embellishments.  Plus she’s getting ready to begin teaching classes.  I suggested a hat embellishments class where you bring a thrift store hat and learn how to add flowers, beads, feathers, etc.  But she also does the blocking herself for the straw hats, so I’m guessing she’ll teach that as well.  I wish I got a close-up of the brown hat above my right hand.  The base is hand blocked straw of the most wonderful pattern.  I’d take a class to make one of those!

*Update*

Paula send a photo of that hat for us!

hat by Paula Singleton

Here’s the work my students and I did on Friday and Saturday night at Craft Akron. I must say I am really proud of the work they did. The fabric choices are outstanding, the conversation was enticing, and as craft classes always do- it felt more like a girls’ night out than work. This is the Buttercup Bag, which will be put back on the schedule again in August, as it is a great class with a great outcome.

The pattern, for those of you who are advanced enough to not need a class, is free on Made-by-Rae.com. Rae, very kindly allowed me to use her pattern as a class. I must say, that her patterns are quite easy to follow, and adorable to boot. She has a few others on her site worth giving a go, especially the kid backpack pattern.

I made this sweet little bird from an recycled t-shirt and a pattern from the book Sweater Surgery.  Instead of using fiberfill I used dryer lint, which worked really well except for having to pull some long pieces of hair out of it.  I used the bottom half of a snap for each eye.  The beak is made with a piece of dark t-shirt fabric, but I don’t recommend that since it’s a little floppy.  I’ll either use fabric stiffener or perhaps sew some fabric to this piece, considering it a base, to strengthen it.  I hand stitched all the pieces, which took a few hours while multitasking on other things.

I’m still waiting on my swim fabric to arrive in the mail. I am running out of time to finish this project before I leave for the Outer Banks. In the meantime I have been watching videos on Youtube to give me a heads up for what to expect when I get to this daunting task.

This video was very helpful, and is most likely what most home sewers would use to sew in the elastic casing. I have a serger, so I am planning to use it to attach the elastic with nylon thread (it has a bit of stretch) and then when I roll it over I will finish it with a zig zag stitch on the outside. I’ve looked online, but I can’t find a video of the serger/elastic method. If I have any time at all before I go out of town I will make one. This is not a promise, I am running out of time and will probably end up buying a swimsuit I don’t like from Target at this point.

This was probably the most frustrating part of my sew-my-own-swimsuit project. I went to Jo-Ann’s and there were only 8 bolts of swim fabric. None of which were navy blue and yellow. I did manage to find nylon thread for my serger and stretch needles also for my serger. Those together cost me $20.

So I took my search online. I’ll tell you what, swim/dancewear fabric was not easy to find. I eventually found the site Fashion Fabrics Club, and they had pages and pages of swimwear fabrics. They also had helpful descriptions of the fabric choices to help me make up my mind. Oh, yeah the prices were decent too so I’m not $125 in the hole on a project that may not even end up wearable.

But even with all the choices available on the FFC site, I couldn’t find navy blue and yellow stripes. I ended up settling for these:

If anyone knows me, they can see that this is almost exactly the color combo of my kitchen! Not what I had in mind, but I’m not the most adept at finding fabric, apparently. If anyone out there has an awesome source, by all means let me know. If this experiment is successful I will probably sew some suits for my kiddos, too.

Against all better judgment I am attempting to sew a swim suit. I looked online for a suit that I am seeing in my head. Something like this link, but with stripes and a buckle instead. I’m thinking navy blue and yellow?

I'm using old suits for a muslin. The final will be navy and yellow stripes.

I’m feeing confident. The Chicken was successful at sewing suits for her girls, so I know it can be done with home tools. There is only a little more structure to a women’s top, with the shelf bra insert, but I’m excited for the challenge. I’m also excited to not be spending $120 for a suit I like.

This is the muslin I have been working on. I tried it on and the bottoms fit like a glove. I patterned them off my favorite pair of underwear.  I made the top too small, obviously, and need to rework it. But I have some great progress here. Stay tuned for the process.

Once again, thanks a million Cal Patch. Her book, Do It Yourself Clothes , is just awesome. If it weren’t for this book and the principals I learned in it, Olivia wouldn’t have had a costume for her international festival. I waited until the last minute, of course, and my plan to buy a brown hoodie and whip stitch fur to it fell through the cracks when none of the three stores I shopped had any brown hoodies.

Instead I bought some brown fleece and used a hoodie Olivia wears all the time and the directions from Cal’s book to draft a quick pattern. It only took me an hour an a half to make the costume from pencil to sewing machine. And she loved it. Three cheers for Cal Patch! Hip Hip Hooray! And seriously, if you sew even a little bit, go buy her book!