It's hard to sew on a cool foggy morning...

One kitty on the dress I'm working on, one kitty sleeping right behind my sewing machine.
Their kitty rules clearly state that hans aren't allowed to wake or move them when they're comfy.

a coat or a dress

ummmm. other than the weight of the fabric, is there a difference?
I put lots of ease in The Bean's clothes, so that they'll fit for a long time, and so that she can run/wiggle as much as she wants....

I drafted this pattern to make her a simple raincoat, but I don't want to cut into the really expensive laminated cotton I bought for this purpose until I know if the pattern works, so I tested it with this simple (and cheap, as it was on sale) cotton corduroy. The Bean chose the fabric, insisting that we "need dat, mama, neeeeeeed dat fowers!"

I had JUST enough to make the coat/dress and matching hat....

D helped me put in the snaps (the bean did NOT help, as she sat there and mixed up all the previously sorted snap parts while my attention was on the press. boo!)

she really likes the strawberries inside the hat!

Huck Finn Cap

I LOVE this hat!
I bought the pattern to make a hat for D, but of course, even though the pattern is supposed to fit up to a 10 year old, my son's head is an whole INCH bigger than the biggest size. So I'm going to have to enlarge the pattern, boo.
I figured before I started scaling, I should test it, right? in a size that already works?
so, since the coat/dress I just made had some scraps left over, I whipped (or labored for 6 hours last night) this little cutie out:

I even used a twin needle to make these pretty topstiches:

of COURSE, I had to find something cute to line it, and it had to match, (and I had to find it without waking children, in the dark)... luckily I had this 1/2 yard of cloyingly sweet strawberries... the Bean likes looking inside her hat to find the strawberries, but I don't have to look at them all the time.


here's the hat with the coat/dress (in this weather, it's a coat, but it snaps all the way down, so it could be a dress, maybe? it's lightweight cord...)

hand vs. machine...

see this dress:

isn't it GORGEOUS!?!?!?!?

I found it in this book, which I got at the library, while looking for girls fashion.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this dress! love the embroidery, love the sash, love the zipper front, love ALL of it.

but it's vintage, and in a book, so, clearly, I can't have it.

...unless I MAKE it!

of course, if I'm going to make it, I'm going to make it perfect for ME, and that means, given my 2 young children, that it can NOT be white. So I found some red stretch poplin at Joanns (thanks for the 40% off coupon, LA Times!), and grabbed a variety of vintage patterns to draft from (and enlisted My Awesome Grandmother to help fit me!), and set to work!

I have been stitching/pattern-drafting away, all week.

I have 1 side totally done, and the other side about 1/2 way done... and I have all the patterns made and tested, although not cut out of the real fabric yet...

I'm having soooooo much fun with just stem stitch and satin stitch!

I realized, however, that while I can finish the two bodice embroideries in time to wear the dress next weekend, I definitely do NOT have time to do the skirt embroidery.... at least not by hand.

Luckily, however, (or, rather, thanks to my AWESOME husband), I have an embroidery machine and the software to design my own stuff.... so here's the design I digitized tonight for the skirt:

(it'll be turned horizontally, obvi)

hopefully this weekend I'll have time to cut the skirt out and start the embroidery process....

we leave on friday.....

Why do I even bother?

I've spent hours hand embroidering a dress/cat bed. Awesome.

roses? maybe a whole bouquet?

I was working on some embroidery tonight, and then after I finished it, I still had 15 minutes of tivo'd Glee to finish watching... so I pulled out a pipe cleaner to make these roses (aren't they amazingly pretty!)... but I don't love it when I do it....

I think it needs the raggedy edge, and I only have rotary cut scrap strips... So I'll have to revisit those later... But I still had 7 minutes left... so I grabbed another strip... and then grabbed a bead, and made this:

isn't it pretty?

I"ll hunt down some felt and a head band tomorrow, and whip out a few more of these, and then I won't have to worry about my hair during the trip....

I love using scraps... (I think I might need to get some junk jewelry to put something more sparkly in the middles... I think the Bean might like some barrettes with sparkly flowers... to match her dresses, of course)

redemption

here's the mostly fixed version of the 1930s apple dress... clearly I need to read more Anthro catalogs, because I am HORRIBLE at naming dresses...
I called it the Mavis dress on the pattern pieces I drafted... My wonderful grandmother doesn't like the Bean's real name (Leonora)... she wanted me to name her Devery. (NOPE! not going to happen. Darren and Devery are totally the names of someones pugs, NOT the names of my children!) Anyway, my gram said she liked the name MAVIS (D's suggestion, because he likes the Thomas train named Mavis) better than Leonora.
But Mavis is just such an old-fashioned name! Maybe one who's time has come back around? are there lots of baby Mavises running around? because I could totally see this dress being worn by all the super stylish babies on the block....

the back has 3 buttons to close (but could have snaps or a zipper if preferred)
the collar and sleeves are contrasting, and the skirt has 3 pleats on each side of the center, so there's lots of fullness for running and jumping...

(She's also wearing the leggings I made as part of KCW, and D's first pair of shoes, from when he was 10 months old)

I think I just need to widen the shoulders and cut the bodice of the dress on the bias so you can see the inset part.... it's super cute though, right?

the aviatrix dress...

when I was younger, I totally adored Shirley Temple (if I still had time to watch her movies, I would)...
I particularly love her wardrobe... and now that my daughter can wear dresses, and I can sew, CLEARLY I need to make her some Shirley Temple-esque dresses! (right? RIGHT!)
unfortunately, I can't find patterns... When there are really cute vintage patterns for sale, they're $40+ and I don't think my daughter needs cute dresses THAT badly.
so I decided to draft my own patterns, given my reasonable successes during KCW
first I tried this dress, but it totally flopped, so to clear my brain, I tried to make THIS one.

(Now that I think about it, this is the dude from Stowaway, not Curly Top, so the Aviatrix name doesn't work, but it's already on my pattern pieces... oh well...)
here's my verson:

I think it's a reasonable winner, don't you?
here's the back:

and a close up of the front:

and my awesome model, being very tolerant of her mama's photographic needs....

I'm thinking of attempting to draft this pattern in various sizes (2T-6?), and then maybe selling it as a PDF pattern...
of course, I'll need pattern testers, and input, so if anyone's out there....
(ahem)
... email me?

rough week last week...

last week was a real bummer of a week. nothing ACTUALLY horrible or tragic, just a bunch of crafting problems. but when you're me, that's a MAJOR bummer. so this is my venting post, and hopefully it will be cathartic, so then I'm going to post my redemption...
first up: a pair of socks for my grandfather-in-law.
see the fancy cable pattern? yeah, so it turns out I TOTALLY can't read cable charts. thought I could, after all, I can read lace charts, but cable charts are WAY beyond me. (It might have helped to mark my stopping points, so I could KNOW where I was when I restarted, rather than guessing.... maybe next time?)

so I frogged that. (btw, notice the knitting needle in the upper right? it's a size 1. the lighter colored piece of wood is a TOOTHPICK! do you know how long it takes to knit 3 inches of sock on TOOTHPICKS!)
Then, thinking I was on a roll, I drafted and tested a really cute 1930's frock (so much cuter than a dress), for the bean.... and my sewing skills were NOT up to par:

see the puckering?
I finally basted the inset in by hand, and then sewed it... it's better, but all the manhandling I did (sewing then ripping then sewing, times 3 or 4) has made this totally not good enough... but it was a good lesson to learn! (also learned that I need to use a small directional print on the bias for the bodice)
and lastly, I was working on a sweater for the Bean, but I also had to frog that, after hours of knitting (albeit on larger needles this time!)

so... hopefully all the bad is well past, and next up I have some super cute success stories to share!
(I think failures are as important to record as successes...don't you?)

Check off the stem stitch!

I finally (FINALLY) feel like I have mastered the stem stitch.
Hopefully this dress will get fully embroidered/sewn/finished in the next week so I can wear it to a wedding (!!!!!!) next weekend.