I’d better hurry. I need to have this dress finished asap and I haven’t finished cutting it out yet. I plan to wear it to my brother’s wedding this Friday. My brother is getting married to a wonderful, sweet woman, and we all couldn’t be happier for them.

So, because I’m in a hurry, I’m keeping this post short, but thought my sewing peeps would want to see what I’m working on.

This fabric, which I’ve had in my stash for about four years. It’s a beautiful soft tie-dye look on embroidered rayon linen. Won’t wrinkle. Sweet!

This dress. The short view, since the wedding is semi-formal. I made it before several years ago, so it should go together fast. I plan on lining the skirt part with a lightweight cotton lining, so you can’t see through the eyelets. I’ll be using a contrasting tangerine solid color for the neckline binding. The scalloped edging on the fabric (which is a double border) will be the hemline, so no hemming required.

And I hope to catch a couple more tanning sessions between now and then too. Pictures after the wedding.

Later, folks.

If you’ve been following me from my Little Miss Sew N Sew blog, you know that I love to sew. However, life has been such that I’ve not had time for sewing lately but boy do I have the itch. There have been no signs of summer here so I’ve had to dream about it. Also, my beau has introduced me to tanning, and I’m enjoying this, and I’m imagining a summer with a tan body (and abdomen) and lots of fun things to do. This leads me to thinking about sewing something cute and breezy for myself because I’m pretty turned off by all the stuff in the stores.

So in my five minutes of spare time, I browsed through some of my patterns and came across this vintage pattern. This is the very first pattern I ever sewed, I think – I sewed a simple skirt and an apron before this, but this was the first wardrobe ensemble. The copyright on this pattern is 1974. I think the lines on the shirt and shorts are fairly classic, and I’ve seen some of these skirts in pictures recently. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or if you think this is totally not a good idea.)

I am wearing the skirt, below, but I also made the shirt and shorts out of the same coordinating fabric. I was 14 in this picture. Don’t you just love the groovy patterns on the fabrics – and my brother’s plaid jeans? My mom as always was rockin’ the runway. LOL.

Believe it or not, I am down to the size that the pattern measurements call for, and I think the little bandeau top and skirt with a coordinating shirt would be fun for the hot weather we’ll have when my mom and I go to San Antonio in July. Of course, I’d pick some more trendy fabric.

Here’s the line drawing. I like how that little top ties in the back.

I also have this pattern (below) from 1987 and I’ve seen a similar skirt – which are shorts in this pattern, and I’d convert it to a skirt – and top online recently.

From nordstrom.com

If I were to make this today, I think I might alter or remove the pockets and reduce just a bit of the fullness in the skirt, but the top (not the shirt) is classic twist-front style and would look cute in a white pique that I have in my stash.

Again, from nordstrom.com

Anyway, enough of my dreaming for today. Must get busy and work and watch the rain outside… and find a sweater.

If it’s not Spring yet, it should be. It’s acting like it outside. The sun is out, the birds are chirping, and not one electronic item broke yesterday, so all is good in the world.

My daughter is still pregnant but all is good there as well. As of right now, she is scheduled to be induced on Tuesday – her due date. We are all amazed she’s made it to her due date. All the doctors felt she would deliver early so this is great. That little granddaughter of mine is going to be so welcomed and loved.

Anyway, on to report about a little bit of sewing I did recently. I made these a while ago for my daughter. She didn’t want to have to wear the ugly hospital gowns when she has her baby and, like her mama, wants to look good in her pictures after she has her baby, so she found a free pattern online for maternity delivery gowns and I stitched them up. I used some pretty quilting cotton that my daughter picked out. I altered the pattern slightly by creating pleats in the front. This way the gown would spread out better across a very pregnant belly. I also left the back opening straight, not curved as the pattern suggests so that the overlap could later be stitched together leaving her with a regular cotton gown after she comes home. The snaps at each shoulder allow her to nurse with this gown as well. I thought about creating slits for openings to nurse, but I didn’t make the pleats large enough in the front to allow for any level of modesty if I did that.

Here’s the original pattern laid out. The pattern is the same for the front and the back, with the exception of the opening.

This the front after widening the pattern, and scooping out the neckline some. After the fact, the first one I made wider this way was just too darn wide. Another example of why you should tissue fit or make a muslin. Oh well.  This also shows how I made the back opening straight.

A closeup of the fabric choices

The finished white gown. I made the other gown with the reverse combination – that is, the pink is the main, and the silver is the contrast.

A closeup of the pleated front. I made one large pleat and then topstitched along both sides of the center to add interest.

One flaw – either with the altering I did (likely) or with the pattern itself – the front doesn’t match up with the back at the sleeves. Ugh.

I didn’t take a picture of the back, but the pattern calls for ties at the back. My daughter didn’t want these, she just wanted snaps at the top. There’s enough overlap in the gown to give her the modesty she needs at the back, so I just put about three snaps down the back at the top.

Oh, another note: I prewashed the fabric a few times before stitching so it would soften up, and over time, these will be very comfy. I can see her using them alot. We can eventually just stitch up the shoulder seams too, to eliminate the snaps. This will be easy by removing the snap tape (and reusing somewhere) and unfolding where I turned over the seam allowance. Brilliant, right?

Modeled pictures to show later, along with baby Laila, when she gets here.

Really. I did. Not that I was on any sort of self-imposed restriction or anything like that. But when I saw this in my inbox from Lucy’s Fabrics, I couldn’t resist.

What I love about this is that it’s chocolate brown and pink and has a border print. This fabric is also 58-60” wide, so you get even more for your money. Gotta love that. I bought 2 yards. I’ve been dying to try out a border print and I’m in the mood to sew up some yummy things for myself for this summer.

While I was there, I also found this. Same width as the one above. I love me some pink. I bought one yard of this one. I haven’t been sewing since last weekend but I decided that I need to insert some sewing for myself amidst all this sewing for everyone else. Plus, since I’m almost to my goal weight and size, I’m ready to try sewing clothes for me again. I can’t wait for UPS to get here next week.

Update on baby Laila: My daughter had to go to the maternity ER a couple days ago. (This is a special triage area of the hospital for their maternity patients.) It was determined that my daughter had some signs of preterm labor and they gave her a special shot to stop the contractions and prescribed modified bed rest. Essentially that means that she needs to take it easy, no extensive walking. We’re not too worried at this point if baby comes early as she’s being monitored for her breathing and heartbeat twice a week and baby is doing great. She’s already practicing how to breathe! And they estimate her weight to be currently about 4lbs 9 oz. We just want her to get more chubbiness on her little body before she joins us on this side of the womb.

…To quote a friend of mine.

I’ve been burning up the sewing machine trying to get rid of the stacks of projects (aka fabric) in my sewing loft. It’s been driving me nuts. In addition, baby Laila will be here in about 7 weeks and she needs receiving blankets. Lots of them. And burp cloths, and crib sheets. I also have projects pending for my other three grandkids from so long ago, it’s embarrassing. Not to mention a bunch of stuff I want to sew up for myself for this spring and summer. So, I have been focused and seem to have regained my sewing mojo.

Way back when… ok, well only about 10 days ago or so… I showed you the fabric my daughter picked out for her baby crib bedding. I wasn’t so sure about using the high loft batting, but as I mulled it over, I decided to go for it, even though I’d already purchased some other quilt batting. It took me 10 days of mulling this over to figure out how to actually quilt this stuff.

Totally flying by the seat of my pants (read: didn’t have a clue what I was doing, really) I sandwiched the batting between the top and the bottom of the quilt, pinned it in place, and then managed to get it into my sewing machine and I stitched along some of the design lines of the quilt. That was a total pain in the patootie as I just don’t have the kind of machine that supports stuffing large quantities of fabric and batting in between the needle and the main part of the machine. It was quite an adventure, but the effect is one my daughter doesn’t just like, she loves! (To quote her.)

Finally, after all that, I stitched on the ribbon blanket binding, and called it good. My perfectionist personality sees so much of this that could be improved, but my baby granddaughter won’t know the difference.

Next, after that, I stitched up two more crib sheets, and five receiving blankets, plus a fleece blanket for my littlest grandson that I meant to make him for Christmas.

Guess which receiving blanket is my favorite? 

Finally, I ended my day by cutting out the panels and bias strips to make the coordinating crib bumpers for Laila’s crib. Once this is done, I can move on to finishing the doggie beds for my brother (sorry, Chris!), which I think I’ve totally hosed up and have no idea how to stuff, but that’s another post. I also have to make some curtains for Cayden before he outgrows Lightening McQueen – if he hasn’t already.

At least I feel like I’m making progress and accomplishing things. Oh, and I did get a 2.5 mile run in yesterday, got my hair done, and went shopping for some pretty unmentionables.

Phew.

Thursday night, my youngest (the mommy to be) and I went up to my oldest daughter’s house and we got the party favors ready for the baby shower. What a fun time that was. When my first grandson was born, we spent time at my house making candles. I remember my son-in-law and daughter working hard in the kitchen actually melting the wax, adding the scents and coloring, and pouring into something like 4o little candle jars with lids. My house smelled great for days.

Since that was such a hit, we did something similar for this daughter’s shower. I was looking everywhere for pink candles and even with all the Valentine’s stuff out, I couldn’t find what I wanted at a cheap price. We found these boxes of vanilla-ish candles in packs of 12 for $7.99. Gotta love that. Cheaper than the $1.00 ones I was hoping to find at Wally World (aka WalMart). Then my oldest and I decided that we’d tie tulle and ribbon around them. She tested it out of Friday. Fail. We also didn’t have a hot glue gun, so we tried crafter glue – fail. We tried puffy paint – fail. Everything we had on hand, nothing worked.

So, my sweet son-in-law headed out to Fred Meyer and picked us up a hot glue gun. Now we were in biz. Sweet!

All the ribbon and charms prepped, waiting for the glue gun.

A close-up of the candle and charms.

The mommy-to-be stamping cards for the party.

Some of the party favors all wrapped up.

And the final favors all set out at the shower.

(More shower info to come in my next post.) 

And just some fun family pics. Me and my oldest grandson.

The boys eating their dinner at the “kids table” because we took over the main dining table with our craftiness.

What a cute little impish look. His newest thing is sticking his tongue halfway out at me. Stinker!

It’s looking like this year is going to be a very busy year. That’s fine by me, but I’m exhausted already and we’re only on day three.

I started off my year with some sewing – my favorite hobby – next to bicycling and running. I had a choice to go to a New Year’s dance by myself and I might possibly have known more than one person there, but no guarantee, and that’s not a fun scenario for me. I chose instead to stay home and get moving on some creative projects that have been hanging over my head making me feel guilty every time I walk past my sewing loft on my way to get coffee.

My youngest daughter, Stacy, just got her crib and changing table – thanks to her grandma (baby’s great grandma) – and so she needed sheets and a dust ruffle and other fun stuff. She’s so lucky her mama can sew! I plan to do another post on just how much she’s saving by me sewing this stuff.

Stacy picked out some fabric from Joann’s and it’s too darn cute. We searched all over for some pink Tinkerbell fabric suitable for a baby and no success. I think I’m going to write to Disney and Springs Industries (who seems to be the main manufacturer of Tink fabric) and ask what’s up with no pink Tink. Tink IS a girl, after all. Possibly they’re aiming for 8 year old girls with all the blue, lime green, and purple, but they need pink!

Here’s my baby sewing status report:

• Prewashed all the fabrics we’ll be using
• Completed a flannel sheet, a second one almost done – needs elastic and I’ll finish that this morning.
• Made a dust ruffle. For the landing piece (the part that goes under the mattress) I reused a queen-sized dust ruffle that I hated and stitched on the cute baby border print. I have enough of the landing part for another dust ruffle in different fabric.
• Cut out and am prepping the quilt to go with the set but I need some less lofty batting, but not as thin as the Warm & Natural kind. Off to Joann’s today.
• On deck: remaining print from the border print to create bumper pads for around the crib, and additional sheets and receiving blankets.

I hope to have these done in time for her baby shower on Saturday, because you know those girls will all be traipsing upstairs to see the nursery set!

Here’s a closeup of the dust ruffle & the crib sheet:

The quilt top (the flip side is a matching flannel print with the little pink flowers like you see on the border):

You can see in this next photo how high the loft is of the batting I had in my stash. I don’t think my sewing machine will maneuver through that very well.

A shot of the border print – what you see there is what was left in the center of the three yards and the borders already cut off and sewn into the dust ruffle. Perfect for crib bumpers.  Look at the cute faces on that bug!

Oops! My cat, Marie, at the top there vying for attention – she thinks her face is the cutest. Look at this pose! Showoff!

Okay, more later, peeps. I gotta keep busy! 

It’s been record-breaking, bone-chilling COLD outside in our area. I am not a fan of the cold. I prefer to be warm, but here I am in the Pacific Northwest and I am dealing. Plus, there’s significantly less fat on my body this year, thus I feel the cold more. The outdoor thermometer dips down into the low 20s or even teens at night, and I don’t think it has pushed the 30 degree mark in about 5 days. The last time I was out of the house, other than today, was Monday night.

I went to Weight Watchers Monday night and did well – nearly  lost that two pounds again that I keep losing and then taking back. Dangit. I’ve been tracking really well this week and trying to make some good choices, but it is too dang cold outside for me to do my usual exercise. I am wondering how I’ll fare in the 12k run I’m signed up for in just 2 weeks. I certainly am unprepared for this one.

Today, I took a break mid-day from work and walked (partially ran, if you believe that, but it’s true) up to the local waterfall that is at the entrance of a subdivision. It’s about .6 miles from my house. The waterfall has frozen over. Pretty trippy too. It was so cold out there that it was all I could manage to get there and back. But I did, and my leg muscles thank me. I just do not have the proper clothing for the bitter cold.

Tonight, I’m actually going to try to sit at the sewing machine and make something. I will probably prepare the pattern for my Christmas dress and hope that I could finish it in time for a party I’m supposed to go to Saturday afternoon. We’ll see. If not, it will become my Christmas 2010  dress. You think I’m kidding.

I have a whole list of things to sew for gifts and I haven’t started one of them because I’m plain exhausted. I don’t know if it’s because of the cold, because of everything on my plate, or my fibromyalgia. Regardless, it seems like lifting lead legs to get myself into my sewing room, even though in my head that’s the first thing I want to do – all the time.

Speaking of fun things, we just finished getting my daughter’s baby shower invites made and in the mail, or hand delivered. Each one was quite the process and were individually hand-made, hand-stamped, and hand-written. It took the two of us, plus an occasional helper, several days to get this done – something I thought would only take an afternoon. Boy, did I underestimate what my daughter had in mind for her invites. She’s a real-live Tinkerbell, so the theme is, of course, Tinkerbell. The shower is early January, and considering the holidays, I don’t think we got these out too soon.

Okay, bloggy friends, I’d better get off the computer. I know that’s the first step toward the sewing room or getting anything done. Stay warm if it’s cold where you are, and if it’s summer in your neck of the woods, stay cool!

So, my evening last night pretty much sucked and didn’t turn out at all like I anticipated. I won’t go into details other than to say I felt very much betrayed by someone very close to me and essentially heard their message loud and clear. There is a saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well, I’m no longer going to participate in the insanity of this situation, but gently, and lovingly, set my boundaries, keep my support system close by, and do what I need to do for myself, while staying available to this person, should they ever decide to ask for my help. There is nothing else I can do when another person chooses something I consider ill-advised. It is, after all, their life, not mine.

That said, today was a “take care of yourself” day, and hence involved a little retail therapy, some time with my little grandsons, and my daughter and son-in-law. I believe it must be a law of nature that no one can be unhappy around a small child. These two boys light up my life in a way no one else does. To walk into a room and see a two year old jump up and down, squealing “Mimi!”, only melts away the worries, sadness, and loneliness. 

One of the stops we made was at Pacific Fabrics where I spied – actually, Cindy spied it – the fabric I’m going to try making my plaid dress out of. (I purposely left all the extraneous stuff in the picture so you could see the size of the plaid. I was too lazy to go upstairs and get a ruler.) I couldn’t find the fabric like in the pattern, so this will do just fine.

I like this fabric because it has a small amount of spandex in it – great for a fitted dress. I’ll probably line it fully so that the fabric isn’t itchy next to my skin. Haven’t completely decided though.

And my new boots also arrived today. I’m thinking they will look awesome with this dress, and some sort of jacket (still undecided.)

And to end on a lighthearted note… I’m thinking of making this fabric into a pillowcase for myself. Then I can say I’ve had multiple men in my bed at one time.

Fabric. Seriously. I want to make this dress and I can’t for the life of me find this plaid (or is it a tartan?) I’ve searched almost every online fabric site, even emailed one great site (no response) and I can’t find it.

So, I’m throwing out the request to any of my bloggy buddies who sew or know fabric to help me find this plaid. I want to make the dress *exactly* like it is on the model. The most important feature in the fabric that I’m concerned with is the size of the repeat. If the plaid is more purples than red, or another color, that’s fine, but I am looking for the black base and large pattern. I think the larger repeat is more flattering on me than a smaller repeat.

To coordinate with the dress, I bought these boots this week online – got an additional 20% off – gotta love that. Just hoping they’ll fit! I’ve not worn boots in years, and I’m feeling confident that I can fit in these.

So, if I can find the fabric, that dress with the boots will be my Christmas outfit this year. And I promise to get pictures even if I have to lug out the tripod and do it myself.