A Sewing Bee (Sewing Love)

By now, many who read my blog will have heard of the devastating losses that have taken place in the southern US. It's very hard to fully understand the pain and grief all the families have had to face.

I have heard of two of the families, and know they are dear friends to a friend of mine. Please take a little time to read this information and join us in prayer for these families. Sewing Love

If you would like to be part of the "Sewing Love" we would dearly appreciate all the help.

Sewing for many people can be therapeutic. In a time of great loss, I would like to see these families be able to have time to focus in on their skills to help them work through their losses and their grief, as time allows for it. The sewing supplies become low on the priority of list of things needing replaced at times like these, which is understandable. We put our heads together and the Lord worked out this small way in which a sewing community could help. These families make many of the garments their family wears. In a very small way, we thought being able to help build up their sewing supplies would not only help in the healing process, but hopefully meet their families' needs.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Blessings to you,

Carol

Another Oliver + S Shirred Popover Sundress

I have been busy sewing various items for young girls. I have made another Oliver + S shirred popover sundress, 4 pairs of pantaloons and a swimdress. The swimdress is the only thing for Olivia. The other items will be gifted to other girls.





For the pantaloons, I used unbleached muslin and cotton lace. They are great for putting under dresses and skirts for little girls to play hard and keep them dressed modestly. ;) I like to use that pattern to pair up with the Girls' Regency Dress Pattern to make lovely pj sets, such as this old picture of Olivia in her Regency nightgown and pantloons, all made from flannel. :)



The shirred popover sundress is made from a quilting cotton and lined with unbleached muslin. I made the navy bias tape from a cotton twill fabric. I was able to perfect my shirring technique with this dress and I'm loving it! I was doubly pleased to find out I could shirr two fabrics together, allowing me to be able to line the dress beautifully! I see lots more shirred items in my future. They are wonderful for making garments more flexible in fit. I can see this being a great way to make garments for girls who are developing into young women.




I have several other items cut out and hopefully will be able to sew them up this week. I will add swimdress pictures just as soon as I get my model to put them on so I can snap some pictures. :) They were finished in time for her swim classes, but we haven't had time to take pictures. :)

Carol

Oliver + S Popover Sundress Shirred

Last year at sewing Expo, I took a class that gave me more hints and such to using shirring for dressmaking. You can see my first project HERE. I have several sketches of the Oliver + S Popover Sundress dancing in my head. One of those sketches was a shirred version of the dress. I have been searching for dress patterns that are quick to make, or that I can make into quick-making dresses for the ministry, Destiny Dresses. I want to make dresses that are beautiful, but also flexible in their fitting. I never know what little girl will get one of these dresses and I want it to work well for several shapes and sizes.

I apologize for the not so nice pictures. They were taken at 1:30 in the morning, before boxing them up and shipping them off, so not the best lighting or anything, but I hope you get the idea of what they look like.

Shirring seemed like a good idea for this dress pattern. I had to make changes to the pattern to make this possible. This is the first test run of the dresses and they appear to have worked well. Now I can sew up some of these dresses for the ministry. :) These dresses are going elsewhere. ;)

These three dresses are made from a nice cotton. I would have loved to make slips to go with these or lined them, but I ran out of time. I am still planning for some slips. I think I might try to see if shirring can be done with a double layer, but I have my doubts on that. It would be great if it worked. :)

The pattern is a free download that you can get HERE just get the PDF link and you can instantly download the pattern. The pattern has all kinds of possibilities. I hope some of you will give it a try, if you haven't already. :)

I will give more information on how to do the shirring, in a separate post.

Good-Night,

Carol

Easter Dress Review

The pattern I used for Olivia's Easter dress is the Oliver + S Family Reunion Dress pattern.

The fabric I used for the dress is mostly cotton/little polyester voile with burnt out dots. I chose to make two cotton batiste slips to go with the dress, using the dress pattern as a guide for the slip.

I did the usual tracing off the pattern, onto "trace a pattern" which is very similar to the Swedish Tracing Paper. You are able to stitch it if you would like, making it great for pinning or sewing for 'tissue fittings'. You can read a bit about tissue fittings HERE and HERE. When I find a possible fitting issue in my tissue fitting, I will always make up a muslin. In this case, I could see there was a possible issue with the armscye (armhole), so I wanted to do the muslin to make sure before proceeding. Olivia fits the exact chest measurement listed for size 8 of the pattern. I made up the muslin and could see that the armscye was starting to cut into Olivia's armpit, causing some wrinkles across the chest of the dress.

You can see that in this picture here:



Here's the other side of the muslin with no sleeve. You can see just how close this is to the armpit. If you take up a 1/2" seam allowance, you will end up having this into the armpit.



I did not want to go up a full size in the dress, which would put this into a size 10. Instead, I chose to keep the neckline for the size 8 and just deepen the armscye, extending it to the size 10, plus I added 1/8" to the outer edge of the armcye, all the way around and alter the sleeve to match. This made the dress work.

I'm a bit confused on this as I mentioned, Olivia fits the measurements perfectly. If I had gone up a full size, the dress would have been large overall. I did measure each of the pattern pieces and they measure perfectly to the sizing on the pattern for finished garment measurements.

Other alterations I did to the pattern were:

-I added 1.5" to the length of the sleeve.
-I added 4" to the length of the dress.
-I chose to make the button closure opposite to what the pattern envelop shows, but I think it lines up with the instructions, which is how I usually make button back closures for garments anyway.
-I only put in 4 buttons down the back and then stitched up the rest of the back of the dress. I did not want to have my daughter sitting on buttons, plus I find the dress is more sturdy by having it stitched to the hemline. if I were making this for an infant or toddler, I would be more inclined to have the full button down back, making it much easier for mum to dress child, which is my preferred method for an infant and toddler. :)

Instead of machine stitching the hem facing, I chose to attach it by machine, but to stitch it down by hand. I much prefer the flexibility of a hand-stitched hem for altering the hem at a later stage.

The pattern is a lovely design. The instructions are very well done. Liesl has designed a beautiful line of patterns. The instructions and details she has put into her line of patterns are great! Lots to be learned and enjoyed while making garments from her patterns.

Like any pattern, I will use her designs like a recipe in which I loosely follow the directions and add my own touches to the end product. ;)

Overall, I give this particular pattern two thumbs up.

Happy Sewing,

Carol

Easter Dress for Miss Olivia

Here are a few pictures of Olivia in her new Easter dress. Her dress is made from a voile with burnt out dots. Since the dress is voile, I decided to make coloured slips to go underneath. Using the fabric as inspiration for colour for the slips, I chose an apple green and a violet colour. Her green slip is finished, but the violet one is only cut out. Olivia is wearing her Edwardian coat from last Easter.

I will blog more on the dress and pattern later. For now, here are some pictures from the day, with Olivia wearing her new dress. It's wrinkled as we took pictures after church. You can see the change in shoes and the hole in the tights, after an afternoon of playing outside with jump ropes and crawling around on the floor playing with her Playmobile, that is nestled underneath the piano. It's a great place for a a little girl to play with kings, queens and fancy castles. :)

This is a new pattern released in the last three weeks. I wonder if anyone can guess the pattern?! :) Review to come.......








Good Night,

Carol

Olivia's Skirt

Here are the results of Olivia's first garment sewing project. She did very well and was not scared of the machine. :) We attempted sewing with the machine a couple of years ago, but it was a bit scary for her. Now, she's not scared and I figured out the slow setting so she can go slowly and feel good about her results.



Olivia went to the Sewing and Stitching Expo once again this year. Last year, she only attended the Charity event and looked at the vendor's booths. This year, she went on the Sunday to the charity event, but she also attended a draping class by Jan Bones, and shopped for a few pieces of fabric for her to sew. Olivia was inspired by Jan Bones, and also by the wonderful young people who shared their projects on the run way. Olivia would whisper to me, "did she make that?" Or, in a couple of cases, "did he make that? :) It's great having my 9 year old daughter delighting in the fun of sewing. We are hoping to make Sewing Expo a regular event for us, with Olivia taking a couple more classes next year.

This skirt is called the "Lazy Days Skirt" by Oliver + S company. You can find the instructions on The Blog Page, look on the far right side of the page under 'free patterns'.



Olivia chose green ribbon to finish off the hemline of the skirt. She had many colours to chose from, but green is what she wanted. It looks lovely.





Olivia needed to put the skirt to the 'activity' test to make sure she can move, jump and play in her delightful new skirt.

Olivia is already on to her next project. She is going to attempt a ruffle. :)

Happy Sewing everyone,

Carol

Look Who's Been Busy

Learning to snip threads.



Learning to stitch a straight line.



More stitching.....



Adding some trim.


Olivia is learning to sew and is very, very happy. I love to hear her humming tunes while she concentrates and stitches. She is one excitedly happy little girl right now.

These are a few pictures of what she is working on currently.

More pictures later. :)

Good Night,

Carol