Sunday 19 May 2013

shirt peasant dress

I've had an old shirt of Marks lurking in my stash for a while now. It is a lovely soft Rayon with a brilliantly bold pattern but the button holes had all pulled through and Mark didn't want to wear it any more.

I found this great peasant dress tutorial by Sew Much Ado and thought it would be great with the fabric. Her pattern was for 0-3months and of course Grace was napping and time was short, so rather than do anything sensible like print out her pattern and scale it up, I guessed. I didn't even bother with making a paper pattern. This was not a great idea and as a result it's a bit wonky and rather long.

The first thing I did, after taking the pocket off, was sew up the button placket. As the button holes were all frayed I wasn't going to be able to use them anyway.
Then I cut out the dress pieces, I drew straight on to the fabric with washable marker and had several attempts at the shape. I lined up the centre front on the buttons and used the original hem as the hem of the dress.


I wanted to use the sleeves of the shirt for the sleeves of the dress but once I had opened them out I realized I was a bit short of material. As the hem of the sleeves was quite deep I used it as a ready made casing for the arm elastic. I tidied up the rough top edge once I'd sewn the arms in.
I ran a line of stitching up the middle of the hem to stop my thin elastic from twisting. That also gave the sleeves a nice little frill. But it meant I had to thread the elastic in the arms before stitching the side seams, not a huge problem I just tacked the ends of the elastic in place first to hold it.

Other than that I pretty much followed Sew Much Ado's tutorial.


Tuesday 14 May 2013

another baby book

Another baby in the family means another book, this time for my great nephew Jasper. Despite having a good 7 months warning I still didn't have it finished in time for his birth. And with Grace about I only managed to get it done at all because Mark took her out most mornings on his week off. I hate to think of the hours these books take to make, they are a real labour of love, and I am particularly proud of this one.

Jasper's book has a day and night theme and I used some crazy quilting on the pages as well as the cover. Finishing the edges has always been tricky so I this time I used Made-by-Rae's cheater quilt bind off tutorial over at Prudent Baby. It is a bit lumpy but I really like the way it brings the cover inside.