And Sew On

And Sew On

 

 

I’ve been doing a ton of sewing lately, and on the long drive home from the cottage a few weeks ago, I had the idea to start a sewing YouTube Channel. Out of the blue, the name just came to me: And Sew On. I love watching everyone’s makes and plans for their sewing, and I wanted to get in on the fun! I will be posting at least weekly, and I’d love for you to tell me what kind of videos you would like to see! Here are my first few videos— I haven’t been able to embed them yet, so please click on the title. I’d love for you to have a look and make sure to subscribe— it’s going to be a fun place to be! :)

My September Makes

October Sewing Plans

The Toaster Sweater x3

 

Fabric Haul and Grab Bag from The Workroom

 Follow me on Instagram for all my most recent makes!

 

 

Sequin Skirt Refashion

The beautiful weather yesterday inspired me to do a little sewing. I had this sequin skirt from a Value Village trip last spring. The tag says $7.99, but I'm pretty sure I got it on 50% off day. There was a little fraying at the edges, but since I knew it was going to be a kids' dress, I just cleaned it up with my pinking shears:

This dress was super simple. I just trimmed about and inch and half down each side and sewed them back up again to make a slightly smaller silhouette. Then I measure Audrey's chest size and cut the elastic an inch or so shorter. I thread it through the waistband of the skirt, then used the scraps to create little straps. This was a quick and dirty sew-- nobody look too close!

I think I put the straps on a little crooked. Oh well!

And it needs a steam...

I don't think Audrey minds. She went back inside and did an impromptu ballet:

"Mama, I feel just like a princess."

Unfortunately, Lily is down with a flu today. I think as long as I can keep her fever down she will alright. Poor pumpkin.

Two New Takes on the Sweet Dress

We're off to the beach pretty soon, so I thought I'd make up two new dresses for the girls. These both use my trusty Leila and Ben Sweet Dress pattern! I love that pattern. So easy to sew up, and so easy to modify.

Here's the back:

For Audrey's dress I cut the bodice using the top third of the pattern. I cut the bottom portion out of striped fabric, allowing an inch overlap at the top. Then I sewed them together with a french seam, which created it's own little channel for elastic. The band at the bottom was an afterthought. I wanted the dress a little longer, and I had just the right amount of fabric, so why not? When I held it up for Audrey, she just said "Love it.", then went back to her picture. Apparently Mommy making dresses is already old hat.

For Lily's I did the same process with the bodice, then for the skirt portion I set the pattern about an inch in from the fold to make it a little wider. Then I gathered the skirt a bit before sewing it to the bodice. It makes for a fuller skirt. I also gave her puffed sleeves with a button, rather than gathered with elastic. (By that point, I was pretty sick of working elastic through fabric.)

Awwww.... they always love the cuddle shots.

Silk Skirt to Top Refashion Tutorial

If you read this weekend's post, you know that I went to some garage sales on Saturday with the girls and finally started sewing a few things for myself. I feel so much less pressure when something is a refashion-- because I'm not putting $$$ of fabric at risk! Case in point:

I bought this Tommy Hilfiger 100% silk skirt at a garage sale for 75 cents. It still had the tags on-- it was originally $120! In the past I would have overlooked it, being several sizes too big for me and not a great cut:

This time, though, I knew I could somehow make it great. I remembered seeing a blog post not too long ago that featured a skirt-to-top refashion, and sure enough I found this tutorial lickety split through Google. (It's in french. Put the blog address into google translate and you can read any blog, in its original format, in your chosen language. Amazing.)

The basic idea is to flip the skirt upside down so the waistband of the skirt becomes the waistband of the top. (I know, weird, right?) I'll give you a quick step-by-step, but here is the after:

I have been pinning all sorts of stripes and chevron patterns to my Pinterest board recently, so this fits right in! It's sort of a sassy top-- quite loose fitting, slides off the shoulder sometimes, so I'm wearing a cami underneath.

Here's the back:

There's the zipper peaking out the bottom. Rather than cut out armholes, I just created fold over peekaboo sleeves:

 I made up a quick pictorial of how I made this top, just in case you want to give it a shot! Feel free to take this image and adapt it to your liking. Link me up if you make a skirt top of your own. :)

Hubby took the photos again this time-- he always makes me laugh. A husband should always make you laugh.

 

Dress Refashion for Me!

I finally did it-- put some of my new found sewing skills to use for myself! The girls and I went garage sale shopping this morning (there were probably 30 or more in our neighourhood), and I found this dress for $3:

(Oops. I just realised you can see my bra in this photo. I'm going to assume you've all seen a bra before and move on.)

This is a Rodier Paris dress-- quite high end, and lovely material. As you can see, it's a bit sackish on me, and too big. It's also too long. I'm trying to move out of Frumpville. You can see in the photo that there is a very wide hem at the bottom. It was double stitched and gave me the perfect place to shorten it to. I just ironed the hem up all the way around, pinned and sewed it, then cut off the excess. I took in the sides a little bit, too, between the arm hole and the pockets. Then, I used the part I trimmed off the bottom to make a wide belt. Here is the result:

No more frump! I love it-- comfy, not too long, with a little shape. Hubby took these photos. He's very proud of himself:

(Yes, I usually put my hands on my hips during photos. Not sure why.)

To make the wide belt I took the left over strip of fabric and cut it to my waist size. Then I trimmed the ends to look like the end of a crayon (can you tell I'm a mom?) like this:

I sewed the right sides together, leaving the ends open and enough room to flip it back right sides out. I pressed the seams, then I cut the original tie in half and fed the unfinished ends about and inch inside the wide belt opening. Then I topstitched over the ends and, voila, wide belt!

I know what I'm wearing the next sunny day...

Scrap Secrets

I have an Easter round up on the way, but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I have been scrapping a lot:

• a layout for the summer issue of SCT
• two layouts for a very special week coming up on the Pebbles blog
• a new DT that I can't announce yet, but I am SO excited about it!

So, the other night when Sonya came over I wasn't in the mood to scrap, and so I made this while she worked on a layout:

Isn't it so cute? I love the fabrics. (She's wearing it over her GAP pjs, and I'm thinking I may add a ruffle to make it longer, or maybe make a pair of matching shorts. What do you think?)

Back view:

I love that I made the whole thing, start to finish, in an evening. It's from an issue of a japanese pattern magazine, Cucito, that I ordered a month or so ago. The pages (and the instructions) read right to left (in Japanese, of course), so I had to refer back to the pictograms over and over again to make sure I was doing everything right. It doesn't look exactly like the photo, but a dress is a dress, and I love the lined bodice. I'm think of making Lily the same dress in another wild pattern. I bought a few big, bold fabric patterns at the CreativFestival last week, and I washed and dried ALL my fabric last night as well. I'm ready to trace out some new patterns and have some fun!

Happy Belated Earth Day

I'll be honest, I didn't actually know yesterday was Earth Day until I started going through Google Reader last night and read about everyone else's enviro-friendly projects. Luckily, I just happen to have one to share-- finished this morning, and photographed with a chocolate bribe.

A while ago I bought two men's shirts, with the idea of making myself a romper out of one of them. Although my romper attempt failed, I did get an outfit for each of the girls out of it, so I consider that a success. Here is the shirt:

Your basic men's cotton shirt, size large, in a cheerful blue and white ticking. It's soft and worn in, but not at all showing wear.

Here is the "after":

Audrey's is basically a pillowcase-style dress with a draw string neckline. I kept the buttons from the original shirt intact, and added ruffles on either side. I knew it was going to be short, so I made little shorts from the scraps. Audrey loves the little pocket-- she wants two, she told me. We'll see. I love the orange accents. Blue and orange is one of my favourite colour combos.

Lily's little capri pants were the first thing I made, using the shirt sleeves. The cuffs are the feature here, and we can undo them and roll them up into shorts. I used the shirt tail to create a waistband, and then added a little white flower button for accent. The top is made from one of her Daddy's old cotton shirts. I added a channel for elastic, and finished the edges. I resisted the urge to add blue and white ruffles to this one because a white top in the summer is so practical. Instead I made a little rosette and just pinned it on. Look closely (or not so closely) and you'll see that the shoulder's are really uneven-- I'm going to re-cut the longer side so they match.

These outfits will be so cute for our trip to the coast of North Carolina next month. Both girls say they are very comfy-- and Mommy says they are very beachy.

 

My Latest Refashions

Here are my two latest refashions-- both from women's tops:

Audrey's was a long sleeve top from Value Village. The sleeves became the tights to go with the dress.

(I think i'm going to remove the ruffles at the neck of the dress. They don't add anything.)

Lily's was a zip hoodie. Again, the sleeves became the tights, then I
sized it down and added an elastic waist. I have to re-size the hood,
but I'm not sure how to do that. :) She loves the pockets, of course!

Big sale at the Salvation Army on Friday-- 50% off! I can't wait to
pick up some more refashion pieces...maybe even something for me. :)

Tracing Patterns

On my learning-to-sew journey, I started with sweater felt mittens and dolls, then moved on to simple on line tutorials, then on to printable patterns--- picking up new skills (and new outfits for the girls) along the way. Finally, I decided to tackle tracing patterns from the Japanese pattern book I bought back in January, as well as the bonus issue of Ottobre Designs that I received with my subscription. I taped some IKEA paper roll (for the kids' easel) to the patterns sheets with low tack tape, held them up on our big window in the kitchen, and started tracing. ("Those are plans for breaking into the Vatican, right?" asked Q, looking at the mass of intersecting lines and curves.)

Here is the resulting outfit:

I love it-- but it's too big. :) In this photo the shirt is precariously positioned on her shoulders, and the pants are hiked up. They're supposed to be capris. Still, at least she will be able to wear them for two summers.

Details on the top, from Happy Homemade Vol. 5:

This is the top from the cover, on the right. I haven't learned to do button holes yet, so I just did snaps. There is a dress version of this that would be sweet to make, and if you just leave the elastic out of the bottom it becomes a tunic top. I'm still totally in love with this fabric.

In terms of figuring out the instructions in Japanese, I mostly just followed the pictograms, although I did use a page of sewing translations to figure out two important words: front and back. After that it was smooth sailing. The top would take about 30% less time if you used a package bias tape for the trim, rather than making your own. I do like the co-ordinated look, though.

The pants are from this issue of Ottobre:

The capri pant pattern is named "Audrey", so of course I had to make them! Audrey's height was in between sizes on the pattern, so I made the larger one. I chickened out on putting in the invisible zipper and went with elastic instead. Still way too big. I'm thinking of adding a drawstring waist, and hemming them up about 3 inches. I love the little side vent!

Still perfecting that "I'm getting my picture taken" face.

After all this sewing, my machine had a little breakdown last night. The feed dog isn't moving the fabric along. Anyone have any ideas why this might be happening?

Maybe she just needs a rest-- my paper trimmer is ready to go, though!

Sewing instead of Cleaning

My hobbies have always provided me procrastination fodder. This weekend I hosted a dear friend's baby shower (photos tomorrow!), and after it was over I just couldn't bear to spend my evening cleaning. I had already run the dishwasher twice that day, not to mention all the cooking and decorating. I needed to do something different, and sewing or scrapbooking feels productive-- and therefore a reasonable alternative. (Isn't it great how we justify things to ourselves?)

Anyhoo, that night I made the cutest little onesie dress for my friend's newborn. I used this tutorial. The onesie used to belong to Audrey, the pink fabric is from my trip to the Salvation Army, and the ruffle is off a crib sheet that I got for $2 in the "As Is" section of Ikea. About an hour of work, and I had this:

As with most projects, it will be much quicker the next time around. My favourite part is that because it's attached to the onesie, the skirt will stay down in place. I used to hate it when dresses bunched up under my babies' arms/necks all the time. The new mama popped by with her little girl last night, and she loved it. I believe she squealed. I also am prone to react to baby clothes with a squeal, too, so I get it!

Sunday was a quiet day, and interspersed with laundry and dishes, I decided to try out the Laila pattern by Yeppar, on Etsy. I want to make a few pieces for my niece, Becca, who turns 7 in April, but I don't trust myself to make something perfectly the first time-- my kids are my test subjects. Good thing, too, because I had to pick apart three different seams on this top-- and I'm pretty sure I sewed the yoke on inside out. (I don't blame the pattern, although some of the directions could be clearer.) It still fits well enough for Audrey to wear, though:

(That's her new "I'm getting my picture taken" face.) Audrey loves the fabric because she can read all the words.

My first button:

I will make the bodice longer next time. Also, somehow the back ended up about an inch shorter that the front. To cover that I took a strip of selvedge and sewed it to the bottom. I think it looks cute!

I always love text as a design element, and, of course, you don't need to hem the selvedge edge! Close-up:

 

One thing is for sure-- shirts are a lot harder than dresses. No surprise there.

Finally, I made these no bake granola bars:

(photo: Kitchen Simplicity)

Every day I have to give Audrey a nut-free snack for school. (I absolutely support a nut-free environment. If a kid's life is on the line, a little inconvenience is not too much to ask.) However, all the nut free granola bars I have found at the grocery store are covered in chocolate, or filled with chocolate chips-- not what I want her eating on a regular basis. Alternatively, most of the granola bar recipes I've found use peanut butter as a binder. Not going to work. This recipe uses a mixture of honey, butter, brown sugar and molasses boiled together into a syrup as binder. Also, it's no bake, which I always appreciate. Now, there are nuts in the recipe-- but I just replaced them with an equal amount of cheerios. Voila--- nut-free. They are yummy-- both girls loved them-- but I think there is too much sugar. I already reduced it a bit, and I think next time I will cut the brown sugar in half, and add some flax seeds. With those changes, I recommend this recipe!