Dresses For Two Little Princesses

While still busy with finishing the Freckled Whimsy quilt (which I'm now going to make 2 more of for my  two sisters' new bubs) and also a keyhole quilt front to send to Corrie at Retro Mummy for the Quilts for Queensland effort she's putting together (more on this in a later post), I've managed to find some time to make some more dresses.

Last time Spotlight had a pattern sale I got this

 

and have since made dress A in some pretty fabric that I picked up at a clearance sale at Spotlight not long after getting the pattern. Its a simple pattern which sewed up very easily and I can see would lend itself to modification will little trouble. I actually changed the way the shoulder straps fixed to the back of the bodice,

wanting to add a hidden button closure instead to make it easier to get the dress on and off.

 

And this is my first buttonhole!! So pleased with myself. Like many other sewing techniques it's a lot more scary as an unknown but so easy once you actually try it.

Front

(dontcha hate it when you discover a smudge on your camera lense AFTER taking all your photos)

and Back 

and modeled.

I've also made a replica of the little pink dress in a smaller size for a friends daughter

which I decorated with some small roses across the bottom of the bodice.

Fingers crossed it fits as neither dress came from a formal pattern and I guessed little Nicola's measurements, making small adjustments to the pattern to fix the things that I would like to change about Little Lady's dress if I were to make it again.

My first squiggly

I finished piecing this together last night:

It's the biggest quilt I've made to date and I think I did a pretty good job of it. But now I have to finish it and I've realised that I can't keep putting it off, I'm going to have to learn how to free motion quilt coz I don't think sewing in straight lines will do this quilt justice. I'm all prepared for it too so despite the fact that it was past midnight I had my first go at stippling on one of the placemats that I made for practicing on. And here's how I went...

Front. This is the placemat I liked the least so it was my first guinea pig.

Some detail. A bit choppy when changing direction but I did notice I was getting better as I went. I've learned that I can't rush through and that I have to sew at a certain speed. All the advice I've read to date says to go very, very fast, the faster the better. I found when I did my lines got more jagged and uncontrollable so I think I've found a speed where my hands and feet are on the same page, which from other bits of advice I've read is really all the speed I need.

And the back. I wound up stippling a lot smaller than I thought I would. I found it easier to control small movements so next I'm going to practice a looser stipple.

Where to begin...

2010 went blindingly fast or maybe it just feels that way because the end of the year always feels like such a rush. My 2 little cheeky monkeys are growing so fast. Little Sir is walking now and babbling away trying to talk, and Little Lady is so independant, choosing her own clothes, brushing her own teeth and washing herself at bathtime. "Mummy, I do it!" They're both so clever and observant. I often wonder if I was like this at their age.

Craft-wise the end of 2010 saw me very busy sewing christmas presents. Normally I'd just buy something for my neice and nephew but this year I wanted to do something from the heart that I put love into. I made something they can use and will be able to use for a while to come yet, a craft apron, and something for them to keep, a little bunny rabbit each. I thought I had started making them too early but I'm glad I did because it took me close to a month to make them between a christening, birthday parties and life in general. The craft aprons were the same design as the one I'd made previously for Little Lady here but I made them slightly shorter and changed the way I sewed on the binding to make it look neater. At Little Lady's instructions I used a rainbow striped fabric for my niece and coloured spots on a blue background for my nephew. Of course I had to make her one too which she chose a blue "twinkle star" fabric for. Forgot to take photos tho.

I got the bunny rabbit pattern from an old Homespun magazine (No. 82 Vol 11.3). The pattern looked a lot smaller than I thought it'd be so I enlarged it 150% and made my first trial bunny (on the right) which Little Lady quickly claimed. Confident I knew what I was doing now I enlarged it to 200% and made 4 more, one for each of my monkeys and one each for my niece and nephew.

I've also started the new Emma quilt with the Freckled Whimsy design:

My trusty ironing board has now been retired as a workbench since I rearranged my sewing area. Poor sucker gets no action anymore since I still can't be bothered actually ironing anything not craft related.

No, I don't eat yoghurt while sewing but the container is handy as a tall skinny rubbish bin for threads and such. I remember thinking "I'll have this quilt finished in no time if its anything like sewing these bits together. Too easy". Famous last words coz then I got to this part...

OMG there were SO many little half triangle squares to iron open and trim down! I got about half of them done in one day and then couldn't use my arm for the next 3 days.

Here they are laid out ready for little stickers so I know what to sew to what. I messed up pattern at the bottom left corner but realised after I took this pic so it's fixed now. Haven't started sewing yet. I've been completely obsessed with watching my chrissy present to myself - Fringe seasons 1 & 2. No hurry. I've only got 2 more quilts I want to make before May (girls you know who for - I'm going to be an Aunty again...twice!! So friggen excited!!!!!) Plus the one I'd love to make for Little Lady to replace her quilt on hot nights like tonight. And a dress like the little pink one I made last year for little Nicola who will be 1 soon. And I bought some patterns to make Little Lady some more dresses - yep actually found a pattern I liked! And a dress or two for me. And....

Sewing and soil

First batch finished. Little Lady is already wearing some of them and while she doesn't want to stand still for a picture she does like wearing them and they thankfully fit well.

For Little Lady:

I also made a t-shirt and pants in both the green and what looks like spotty blue but is actually little blue flowers - green set are in the wash and she's wearing the blue flowers ones right now.

For Little Sir:

My favourites are the animal ones in the middle. He's still in his all-in-ones to sleep for now so I only made him one pair of pants. Still got 9 more sets to do but they're going much quicker now.

And in the middle of all this sewing I managed to do a little gardening today. Something has decapitated virtually all my vegetable seedlings which is really disheartening since I spent a year working organic material into the soil which was a solid slab of clay and that's no exaggeration. One metre down and counting and I was still slicing clay off to get it out of the ground. One thing that has grown and not been eaten however is my grandmothers oregano. Legendary stuff this and in our family like liquid gold because it is the most pungent, flavoursome oregano plant ever. I've tried buying oregano plants in the past and they just can't compare to my Grandma's plant. She had to let her stash die off because she can't tend it anymore and now that mum has killed her plant, I'm the sole guardian of this treasure. In my house it is THE herb to use on steak, a little in scrambled eggs sprinkled with Bulgarian feta, on fried mushrooms with garlic, and in my awesome meatballs in homemade spaghetti sauce, in fact anything to do with tomatoes at all. Looks like a weed in this pic but I love it. Culinary heaven.

The Pyjama Sweat Shop

It's been a steep but thankfully speedy learning curve, this sewing actual clothing thing. My babies can't wear polyester and do you know how many 100% cotton pyjamas are out there for little ones, reasonably priced ones that is? I'm a Target girl not Country Road. 10 pairs? 2 pairs? None, nadda, ziltch. I haven't been able to find any at all. Everything is a polyester blend which means my 2 monkeys will sweat and itch and break out in eczema after just one night wearing them. So I opened (temporarily) my own little sweat shop. Thankyou Spotlight for your recent sales which made it all so much cheaper. Now if I could just win that $20,000 which I have been faithfully presenting my VIP card for for years now I'd be eternally grateful. Imagine all the fabric I could buy with that!! But I digress. Pyjamas.

I couldn't find any patterns I liked online, free or otherwise, and even less when flipping thru the pattern catalogues at Spotlight (as usual- are you starting to see a pattern here? Now you know why I so egotistically called my blog/scrapbook M-A's Designs. I'm very rarely happy with other peoples designs, constantly chopping and changing, and brainstorming my own). So knocked up my own based on the kiddies t-shirts and trackies/shorts which I know a lot of other people have done so that's nothing new. I adjusted lengths, widths, sleeves, waists and necklines to give a more comfy fit for sleeping in and then spent 3 days cutting out them all out.

This and this were an enormous help for a newbie trying to figure out how to do the neckline binding and this for general sewing tips on how to sew a t-shirt. I had already read that pants are sewn front and back first then inside leg as a single seam so just winged it. Note to self: used an 80/12 jersey needle which worked really well on the knit ribbed and cotton interlock fabrics. And tho it's all knit fabric I broke out my new overlocker anyway to neaten all seams before top-stitching anything that needed hemming or reinforcing like the shoulder and crotch. I'm now onto day three of sewing them together and should have half of them finished today. In all I will have made 9 pairs of pants, 19 pairs of shorts, 10 tanks tops, and 21 t-shirts. If my models are willing to stand still for 2 seconds I'll try to post pics of some of the finished pieces once they're done.

Little Lady's Adjustable Apron

My little miss loves to 'help' me in the kitchen. Washing the dishes usually involves pouring water from one cup or bowl into the next but she usually winds up absolutely soaked. Cooking means baking peanut butter biscuits or crumbing chicken and it's incredible how much flour she can embed into her clothes. Solution - an apron that will repel water and food. There are loads of patterns available but I wanted one longer and wider, particularly across the chest. Frankly I just can't leave alone when it comes to following someone elses pattern. I also wanted an apron that would grow with her so I drafted my own pattern of one that completely covers her chest and wraps around her sides with loops at the waist and very long shoulder straps to create an adjustable apron.

I used a cotton print layered under thin PCV with some double fold binding made from the same print material to hold it together and finish the edges.

I added a pocket this morning which helps hold the layers together. It looks huge on her but she's defnately covered. And she loves it.

Christchurch earthquake quilts

Deb from Works in Progress is putting together a few charity quilts for some families who lost their homes in the recent Christchurch earthquake. I've been hoping that I can steal some time away to make a couple for her as when we had the Black Saturday fires back in Feb 2009 I felt quite useless that I wasn't able to offer the same help to all those people who lost everything, especially since the fires came within 30kms of my home. So here's my little contribution: