Hey everyone! I took my housemates to the Knittin’ Kitten today and went a little pattern-crazy. Here are the ones we got! The first one is going to be the first thing that I make. The second one looks kind of hard, but it is so Mad Men that I couldn’t resist. The third and fourth ones are ones that my housemate Alex is going to make. She’s new at sewing, so I’m going to help her out (not that I’m an expert myself).
Today I finished the skirt! I sewed the three panels together, with a zipper in between two of them. I also put interfacing on the inside of the waist. I tried it on (picture two). I decided it was a little plain- so I put a light pink waist tie on it, and hemmed the bottom into a semi-round shape.
1Hey all! My lovely friend disjointed-ramblings suggested to me that I should include more of the process! So, for this skirt, here is what I am doing: First, I drew a little picture of what I want it to look like (wide waistband, length around the knee, full skirt with folds in it). Then, I decided what the pieces are going to look like- So, it’s going to be 3 different pieces, each including a chunk of the waistband and a chunk of the skirt. A handy tip to go by for full skirts is that the bottom circumference should be 3x the waist circumference. Then, since I have limited fabric, I drew my rectangle of fabric (49 inches by 56 inches), and figured out the best way to utilize the space that I had.
Not ready to cut yet! The next step is to draw the pieces onto the fabric-you need a measuring tape and chalk. I like chalk because it just washes off when you’re done with it, but they also sell special fabric markers that do that too. THEN, when you have all your pieces drawn, you can start cutting. So this is the stage that i am at now.
This is actually the first thing that I made, but I haven’t posted it until now. My school has a celebration/festival thing at the end of each year, and last year was space-themed. I found this print cotton at Joann’s and got workin’ on this dress. It started as two rectangles- one for the bodice and one for the skirt. I had to put darts in the bodice, but it turned out nicely. The skirt, however, shouldn’t have been a rectangle at all! I had to sew another triangle on to the back of it to get the silhouette I wanted, so the print doesn’t match up in the back- but on the whole, I think it’s one of the better pieces I’ve done
Hey y’all! So, I found this great place that has vintage patterns (The Knittin’ Kitten, for you Portlanders). It bins and bins of them, for $5 apiece! I’d never sewn from a pattern before, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I found this vintagey mint-chocolate woven fabric. Great!! Then I tried to make this dress… Not so great!
However, thanks to 1960s dress sizing, I bought way too much fabric for the pattern. My next project is going to be a high-waisted full skirt out of this fabric, hopefully.
Here is another thing I made! This is a skirt for my little sister. It’s this adorable eggplant fabric (not eggplant-colored, actual eggplant images!) on sort of a stiffer white cotton. It was pretty simple to make- I just sewed two parallel lines at the top of the fabric, then pulled the threads to make it bunched up. Then, I put a ribbon as the waist, added a zipper, and hemmed the bottom. It’s high-waisted, and poofs out for a shortened 50’s style silhouette.
Here is another thing that I made! This is footie pajamas, as modeled by my lovely lil sis. I made these for her as a gift. She picked the fabric out herself- it’s blue fleece with little alien spaceships on it.
This is the second dress I attempted. I saw a similar one online, but it was sold out. It inspired me to try. It didn’t turn out quite well enough, because the red fabric at the waist was thicker than the grey and blue fabrics. It ended up pulling on them and having weird seams where the fabrics met. I learned a good lesson about matching fabrics, though.
