Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Easter Outfit #3

Isabelle's Easter dress is done and I am really happy with it. It is going to look so adorable with Grace's dress and Gabe's romper in our upcoming family pictures. The striped fabric is from Patsy Aiken's Chez Ami line which I absolutely love!! Unfortunately, I don't think they sell it anymore. :( The polka dot fabric is from JoAnn's. I think the two fabrics coordinate well and even though the dress is a little busy, I am ok with it. The pattern is from Simplicity and I have used it before.

I am really proud of two things on this dress:
  1. How the dots match up on the right and left sides. I have been trying to work with fabrics that have horizontal and/or vertical patterns more and get better at lining the patterns up. I got good practice at this on Gabe's romper which has a large plaid. The dots on this dress weren't as hard. Look how great the dots match up on the back even over the bottom of the zipper! It did not work out as well at the top of the zipper because somehow I made the back right piece a little bigger than the left piece. That happens because my seam allowance is not always exactly the same on with every seam like it should be...Oh well.
  2. The second thing I am proud of is the sleeves. I have made this dress before for a Thanksgiving dress and the sleeves were long and sort of midevil-maiden-style (I made that term up). I really loved those sleeves but since this is a spring and summer dress, I decided to go with the short sleeves. The sleeves are pleated at the top (and one pleat at the bottom) instead of being gathered. Something new to try and I really liked it.
One thing I learned from this dress is to be careful of the fabric material you are using if you have a pattern with a solid colored background and an intermittent pattern like dots. Somehow the polka dotted fabric got snagged or it was messed up before I bought it because you can see areas like the one with the pointer on it below where the pink is pulled out and a white squiggle line remains. The fabric feels almost like linen so I guess this is a danger with that type of fabric. It is on the front of the dress but I am hoping that Isabelle's arm will cover it.
With this dress done, all that is left to do is find some warm weather (hello! Where are you warm weather?!??!) and get my munchkins ready for fun pictures.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Easter Outfit #2

This dress is adorable but made me age about 10 years while doing it. I made so many silly mistakes on it which required so much seam ripping!! Argh! I have used 2 different dress patterns for Grace and was not sure which one I wanted to use this time.

Should I use the very easy pleated one?
or go with the more intricate gathered one with sleeves?
I decided to go with the second one since we are having some family pictures taken by a friend of mine and wanted the dresses to be extra cute.
This is a tough pattern though and I would not recommend it for new sewers. The sleeves took a really long time for me but I think they are my favorite part of the dress. The back looks really cute, too! I debated about using the green buttons but I did not have any white or pink buttons so the green won.
One problem I am having is getting my sewing machine to do a button hole where the bodice of the dress meets the skirt. I guess it is too much fabric because the button hole foot gets stuck and won't advance beyond that bump in the dress. Anyone else have this problem or solution to it? I solved it this time by turning the dress and having the button hole run horizontal instead of vertical. It will work but I am eager to figure out how to make the other way work.

Want to see Gabe's coordinating romper? I will have pics of Isabelle's dress soon!

Easter Outfit #1

Gabe's Easter outfit was fun to do because it is the first time I tackled plaid and really focused on all the lines matching up. I have been afraid of plaids before and usually choose fabric that does not require such detailed matching. I decided to do it now because I love the fabric from Chez Ami and it looks great with the other Chez Ami fabric that I am using for his sisters' Easter outfits. It was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. What I learned from this experience is that when you have to match a pattern, you cannot double the fabric over to cut pieces. You need to cut each piece out individually to make sure that the corresponding notches on different pattern pieces line up. Yes, it is a pain to do, but all that tedious work at the beginning really pays off with a nice outfit at the end.

I first made this pattern in Pittsburgh Steeler's fabric for a friend's son. You can see here how I did not match up the notches and how the pattern did not exactly match up horizontally. It did not really matter because the wording and helmets were on an angle anyway. Next time, though, I will be more aware of lining things up better. Oh, how much better we get with time and practice!

The overall pattern is incredibly simple. I still am not a huge fan of pockets but they are growing on me. It is just really hard to make sure they don't shift when you sew them. When they shift, you wind up sewing them crooked and that is really obvious with some fabrics.

I can't wait to see how cute Gabe looks in this romper with his sisters who will be in coordinating outfits. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Pretty in pink

This dress turned out just as cute as I imagined it would be. There is a local line of children's clothing called Chez Ami by a designer named Patsy Aiken. I love a lot of her ideas but her clothes are a bit pricey. She is really good at knowing what coordinates well... like when to accent a flower fabric with a plaid band or when to use dots with prints. What I have started doing is cutting out pictures from her catalog and trying to replicate what she does on my own. One of the dresses that I think is so adorable is a yellow dress with white polka dots with rickrack sewn across the middle. I could not find the picture of the dress on her site so here is the top and bloomers with the same idea.Isn't that cute? I set out to replicate it and had a lot of fun doing it. I have this very simple A-line dress pattern that I have been using a bit lately because it only has 4 pieces and it so simple to do. Isabelle picked out this pink fabric with white dots and then I found cute flower rickrack to go with it. Fun! Fun! Fun! Of course, I used the leftover rickrack to make a simple "I" on the top. I think it tied everything together nicely. The good thing about using the rickrack for the monogram is that I will easily be able to take it out and use this dress for Grace when she gets older.
Isabelle loves her new dress!!! The timing was really perfect because she has been really sick these past few days and I think getting dolled up in pink was just the medicine she needed!!! We have one girlie girl on our hands.
Stay tuned for this fabric possibly to make an appearance in the Easter dresses...