Spring is finally emerging in Portland so I immediately need to make something summery! This dress is the spring 2017 pattern from Gretchen Hirsch (Butterick 6453) and she’s currently doing a sew-a-long for it.
I bought 4 yards of Cotton + Steel 1″ Checkers gingham in aqua to make it originally. But then I decided I wanted to make it in View B first and I dug out this neat brocade type fabric I got from Joann’s ages ago.
I cut out my standard Big 4 size (18) and got to doing my flat pattern adjustments before cutting it out. It’s a pretty straightforward sew with the addition of the lapped zipper. I met Gretchen at Modern Domestic last month and she said she prefers doing lapped zippers because they are stronger than an invisible zipper and you don’t need an exact color match.
I wanted to sew a quilt for a housewarming gift for a friend and I had this idea that I wanted it to be mountains. I used the Moda Bakeshop Sunnyside Diamond Zig Zag Quilt pattern and arranged my colors from light to dark so each chevron looked like a mountain peak.
Spring has come to Portland!
About halfway through making this quilt I bought myself a 45 quilting ruler from Fabric Depot. I wish I had one when I started! It would have made everything faster and more accurate. Definitely recommend!
The chevrons are all Jennifer Sampou’s Shimmer2 collection. This pattern requires 3 strips of the same pattern for each strip set so I had to use 2 jelly rolls, but that just means I’m going to make another one for myself.
The background is Kaufman Quilters Linen in Platinum. I like the subtle texture and color over using a plain white.
Since this is a nap quilt I used flannel for the background. I didn’t want to have to piece it so I used the 60″ wide Essentials Criss Cross flannel. I made a scrappy binding with the leftover jelly roll strips. The batting is Tuscany Wool from Hobbs Batting.
When I make the one for myself I’m going to change the pattern a bit. I will fill in the bottom part of each chevron with a triangle of dark fabric so the mountain forms a whole triangle instead of a chevron. I may need to see what fat quarters of Shimmer 2 I can track down for this!
Cashmerette is out with another knit dress pattern – the Turner Dress. The Washington dress isn’t really my style so I was glad to see something I would actually wear! I picked this up at Modern Domestic on Saturday and by Sunday Night I had a new dress.
Altogether I think this took me under 3 hours to trace, cut, and sew. I used a rayon/spandex blend which is not the easiest fabric so I spent extra time pinning. The dress is just 4 pattern pieces.
Speaking of fabric, this is from the Nicole Miller collection at Joann Fabric. All Nicole Miller was 60% off so I finally bought some. This particular print is called Urban Movement. It looks almost like a kaleidoscope of abstract city lights. I had to be careful of my pattern placement with this print.
If I had one complaint about this pattern it would be that I had to use 3 machines – sewing, serger, coverstitch. I prefer to do knits with just my serger and coverstitch, but the v-neckline needed to be sewed and the instructions called for under stitching the neckline.
I sewed a 18 G/H and I think the fit is good but the waist might be a little big. I think it’s a very flattering style that I could wear without my spanx as it camouflages my tummy.
This dress is bit fancy looking so I will probably wear it to work. I might make another one out of french terry or some other cozy stretch fabric for more casual wear. Thumbs up, Cashmerette. This one’s a keeper!
It’s finally Fall in Portland! When I left for a business trip to Texas last week it was still warm and sunny and when I got back it was cool and rainy! At least I can finally wear my Kelly Anorak! This is the latest pattern from Closet Case Files and I was a pattern tester. So my version may have a few differences from the final pattern.
This was my first time sewing a jacket and Heather made it easy! Definitely having made button down shirts before like a Grainline Archer will help. The hardest part was probably figuring out the plackets and the zippers. I was in hurry to get this done so I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have and ended up ripping things out a few times. Oopsie. Luckily this a nice sturdy fabric!
Speaking of which, I got this Organic Cotton Ripstop from Fabric.com. It was $8/yd and its’ 60″ so very economical for a project where you need a bit of fabric. It was lovely to work with too! I decided to go for some red accents so I used red snaps from Snap Source, which I got at Mill End Store. I also got a red zipper and cord, but red grommets are hard to find! So I bought silver grommets and painted them with nail polish. We’ll see how well they hold up!
I made one deviation from that pattern and that was to line my hood. I don’t mind the interior being unlined, but I wanted my hood seams to be covered. This was pretty easy to do using the hood pattern and the hood facing to draw a new hood lining piece.
The pattern instructions call for a bit of hand sewing but I am far too lazy for that. So I did a lot of stitch in the ditch sewing
The biggest issue I had with the pattern is that the placement of the drawstring is too high for me. If you are bigger busted, you may run into this too! Since I had put the grommet in before discovering this I had a big whole to cover up. I put some iron on interfacing from the back and then I sewed on a rectangle to cover the hole. I made it bigger so it looked more intentional. Hopefully no one guesses why that’s there!
I love the details on this jacket like the back vent and the felled seams. I did mine by serging and topstitching.
On Saturday my friend and I raced in the 19th Annual PDX Soapbox Derby in our Jem & the Holograms themed car. It was a glittery pink guitar.
Our sponsor, Pine Crest Fabrics, let us loose on their remnant bin. We managed to find a ton of jems..I mean gems..in there! The only costume we didn’t find great fabric for was mine. There were only scraps of the sparkly stretch velvet, so I grabbed the kind pukey mauve fabric and a sparkly black mesh and figured I would, as Tim Gunn says, “make it work.”
I was crossing my fingers that there was some nylon in there so I could dye it..and there was. Yay!
I hacked the Cashmerette Concord tee into this dress. First I lengthened it into a dress and cut out the front and back in my purple fabric. Then I cut the front into 1″ strips below the bottom of the neckline and spaced them out by 1″ – essentially doubling the length.
I did a wide zigzag over 1/4″ black elastic along the center front and about 3/4″ from each side seam. I basted the ruched front piece to the purple front piece and sewed it together to the back as one. Then I pulled the elastic out of the sides, but left the center elastic in. This let me adjust the gathers to where they were more flattering. I added on the purple velvet sleeves – you’ll see sparkly velvet on all of our costumes. I liked the unfinished edges so the only finishing I did was turning up the bottom hem. This ended up being way more flattering than I expected.
For Jem’s dress I used pink sparkly velvet and the full skirted option on New Look 6301. Because the velvet was thick I sewed the neckline and sleeve finishes as bands. I made the belt from some faux leather from Joann.
For Aja’s costume we only had a small piece of that awesome metallic print for her skirt. So I drafted a skirt with an aqua velvet yoke/waistband to maximize it. I used Cation Design’s free Dolman Sleeve top for a starting point, but I omitted the sleeves, removed the bottom band and shortened the length, and widened the neckline.
Cimberly made herself an awesome Kimber costume. She found a basic white blazer at a thrift store and removed the lining and replaced the back piece with tails cut from an awesome blue sequined fabric. She also added hot pink ruffles to a tshirt and made an asymmetric skirt from royal blue sparkly velvet.
To unify our look, aside from that sparkly velvet accents, we all wore leggings. I made everyone’s leggings using Cake Patterns Espresso leggings. Everyone was stoked to have custom fit leggings made for them. I love that they are so quick and easy to make.
Cimberly and I also covered some helmets with holo glitter so we would be extra blinding in our races. Oh…and we built our car too! Want to see how our race went? Watch our video!
It was a really fun day despite it being ridiculously hot! Everyone loved our car and tons of little girls wanted to take photos with us, which we loved as the only all women team in the derby. My only gripe is that the team who won best costumes had store bought costumes (Elvis, Spiderman, mermaid). It’s always disappointing in any sort of costume contest when the judges don’t take into consideration that some costumes are handmade.
Cimberly and I also covered some helmets with holo glitter so we would be extra blinding in our races. Oh…and we built our car too! Want to see how our race went? Watch our video!