little clothes

Ooh, sewing baby clothes is fun and gratifying if you've been sewing only big clothes for a while.  I made this little dress for one of my faux-nieces, who turned one on Friday. 

The cool thing about this dress? The pattern, Simplicity 5333, is a pattern of my Nonna's that I found in her collection. Even cooler? It is copyrighted in 1981, the year I was born, which makes me wonder if she ever made one of these for me. Mom, any idea?

The fabric is Fairy Tale Friends.  I love it and I think I would wear it myself.  I figured everyone gives little girls pink and flowers so I wanted something cute but different. Guess what else? The buttons were from my inherited stash from my Nonna too.

I only mailed it 2 days after her birthday. I'm getting better.

more to come

Finally getting my Handmade Spring Wardrobe act together (in time for summer, right?).  Hanging up pictures of projects right in front of my sewing machine helped me to actually start cutting and stitching, rather than pinning and pinning (ok, I'm still doing that too).  Uh, and a $50 groupon to G Street Fabrics helped too.

Can you even make sense of my plans?  They might change.

It looks like I'm going to have one of these finished shortly and maybe three more done this weekend?!?  I'm dreaming, but hopefully I can squeeze in at least one more - a three day weekend all by my lonesome has lent itself to do some productivity, including knitting and knitting.

vintage {birthday} shopping in baltimore

With very little spending money on my birthday last week, I took a trip to old reliable - Avenue Antiques!  You know how just when you actually intend to buy something when you shop you can't find anything (as opposed to when you're dead broke and all of a sudden you find everything you love)?  Impossible for me at this store.  The latest goods...

 Flowy, girly, 70's/80's? I need to find or make a slip since it's sheer - I can't wait to wear this.  $25.

The picture doesn't capture the poofy ballerina-ness of this skirt but I love how that style contrasts these colors.  $15 I think?

knot front dress

Boy, have I been spoiled by Wiksten and Grainline patterns!  They hold my hand and walk me so nicely through each step - I forgot that's not what the "real world" of patterns is like!  I've recently discovered burdastyle.com and when I sat down to sew I had a moment of panic when I realized I had to read the foreign language of patterns again after so long.

Surprisingly, I didn't have to rip out a single stitch.

Pattern:  Dress With Knot Front
Fabric:  Dropcloth by Jay McCarroll for Free Spirit, purchased on etsy at Fresh Modern Fabric

Notes

• Piecing the downloaded pattern was difficult and I had to make a lot of adjustments, but I think that was mostly my own inaccuracies.
• This is a tall pattern, and even though I am 5'10" I took another 2.5" off the seam of the short version of the dress correction:  the pattern calls for a 1 7/8" hem allowance, but I chopped off 2.5" and THEN used a 2.5" seam allowance.
• The knot was surprisingly easy and pretty cool to make.
• I just eked out with enough fabric - I didn't notice that it calls for 55" wide fabric and took for granted that it would be standard with 44" - luckily this is an easy fabric to cut any direction so I was able to finagle a strange layout to make it work.
• I love the print, but the fabric itself doesn't have as much drape as I would like.
• The cut of the bust is a little risque unless you've got it all filled out up there!  Camisole underneath.
• Overall OK, but not my favorite creation, I think mostly because this is a silhouette that I kind of find a little boring.  I'm wondering how I could adjust it but still have it revolve around that nifty knot.

Not a great picture, but just to show the length...

scout tee

Scout Woven Tee by Grainline Studio.  I wish picasa had an "iron your clothing" edit, or, I guess someday I'll have to do it myself.

A great, straightforward pattern.  I made a size 6 and it's very roomy, so I might go down to a 4 with the next one.  I wanted to make it a little more interesting than the simple stripe fabric, so I cut it on a 60 degree diagonal.  You can kind of tell here?

I will probably make, like, 19 of these.  In my queue (my actual one, hung up by my sewing machine, not the imaginary 166-item queue on my pinterest) I have the swing back version, once I find a good fabric.  I want to learn how to play around with patterns a little.  I can't wait to see how this looks with the latest cardigan on my needles...