My latest sundress

Well, it's been a late summer coming to the Pacific Northwest, but I have been anticipating it by trying my hand at making ("designing", if you could call it that) some sundresses. I started by making a couple of very simple shift dresses, which are comfy and cool to wear, but pretty shapeless and not the most-figure flattering items in my closet.

So, I decided to combine the simple-to-make top of the shift dress but combine it with a fitted waist and skirt with pleats. With the skirt of the dress loosely based on Simplicity 2886 , a pattern I love for its pocket placement, I made and remade this dress from a fun border print fabric until it fit. Making it more fitted than the simple shift dresses also makes the construction more complicated -- more pieces to cut and sew together, zipper required to get it on and off -- but I've decided it's totally worth it because I feel better wearing it. Here are some pictures I snapped:




















And, here I am playing around with Zoey and in Photoshop:

Party Dress!

With wedding season coming up, I thought I'd try making a dress I could wear to a couple of them. Here's the pattern I picked, Simplicity 2250 by designer Cynthia Rowley:


I went with View A: a little longer and with wider straps than the other styles. Since the bodice looked complicated, I made a muslin of it first to check the fit and style. I'm glad I did -- I had to modify the fit a bit, and I decided to remove a couple of pleats that were just too much. Some of the pleats actually looked like sewing mistakes to me rather than design elements.The awesome part about making a muslin -- use any color thread, write all over it, it doesn't matter!

The fabric I was using for the dress was flimsy and see-through, so I also used the muslin fabric to underline the dress fabric, following these instructions. I've never underlined anything before, and while it made cutting out the dress take twice as long (since I had to cut every piece twice), it definitely made that flimsy fabric easier to handle once it was sewn to the muslin cotton. Anyway, pictures of the finished product on the hanger:





And wearing it:



And after watching the royal wedding last weekend, now I need to make a fascinator to go with it!

Something useful for fabric scraps and travel

After making a bunch of aprons for Christmas gifts, I had a lot of pieces of fabric left that I hated to throw away, but I didn't have a clear use for them. Luckily I came upon the idea to use them to make bags to put my shoes in when I travel, protecting my clothes from the bottom of my shoes. A quick search brought up these instructions. Changes I made included sewing scraps together to get the initial 13"x18" rectangles and adding a lining (to hide all those seams). Finished product in use:

Christmas break sewing!

Since I had to take 2 weeks off from work at Christmas time, I used the time to make some presents for friends. Here are some aprons I made, in an assortment of colors and patterns. Most fun, I found some colorful buttons I included, just in case anyone needed a button around the neck to get the aprons on and off.

I meant to get pictures of everyone wearing theirs, but forgot. Since Ellie cooked brunch on Christmas day, I did remember to get one of her: