Repair and Update

 The Découpage Dress once again needed repair--I saw that the underarm seam on one side was open, and I initially thought the fabric had ripped.  But!  It turned out that the stitching had just come undone, so I was able to easily re-sew that....and then deal with an area next to the seam that was worn through.

Since I still have the  fabric I cut off of the bottom of the original configuration, I cut a square of that, folded over the edges, and zigzagged it in place.

 

It's not elegant, but it's in the underarm, so it's fine.

Then I sewed over the stitching under the other arm, just in case. 

For the updated dress, I realized that I could use the same approach of adding another layer of ruffle under the existing ruffle to lengthen the Sew It dress, which I do like, but I never wore because it was very short.

I cut pieces 5" wide, to add 3" beyond the dress's existing 2" ruffle.  I cut both of them selvedge to selvedge, which made it a little wider than the seam I'd be sewing it to (oh, and, I had top stitched the ruffle seam, so I did buckle down and pick out allllll that top stitching.)   I just pinned it thoroughly and let it bunch up naturally gather between the pins.

Then I added a row of wide black cluny lace, to make the black of the ruffle extension possibly make more sense.

This print is still so delightfully weird and mildly creepy. 

Covers

Both my sewing chair and my current computer chair have plastic seats, and I've been covering those with towels so my bare legs don't stick to them.  While this is certainly effective, it is also very very ugly.  So!  I decided to make covers for them.

I quickly rejected the idea of making these covers from properly quilted patchwork, because I know that calico cottons don't hold up to upholstery needs very well.  I turned to my stash of 'tapestry' jacquards, most of which I have had for a very long time, saving them for Just The Right Project.

...and, honestly, I didn't feel like this project was that, but I decided to use one of those jacquards anyway.  Since the fabric was so precious, did I make patterns? Mock ups? Any kind of test at all for my ideas about how to make these chair covers (things I have very little experience making)? Nope! I went straight to draping and cutting the irreplaceable vintage fabric. It worked out.

(there's more)

Two and a Half Months Early, or Five Years Late

After I started considering sewing Gunne Sax dresses, I found out about the GunneSaxOween hashtag from 2021.  Me being me, I'm going to sew things from Halloween prints anyway.  So!  Even if it's not trendy now, I have still just finished a Gunne Sax inspired dress that involves Halloween prints.

 

(What I have not yet done, however, is get my better camera repaired.  This plaid print seems to be a challenge for this camera to capture from across the room...)

Wait--I didn't post the Chicken Dress???

I took the finished photos of this on July 29, and shared some of them on social medial but apparently completely forgot to record them here

Basically, I took the "add the peter pan collar to the cut-on sleeve pullover dress" idea that I tested here, made it from a less graphically-bold print, and added appliqué 

It is very silly.

Gunne Saxish

I'll start by saying that I completely forgot about making the Halloween Eyesore dress from the pattern I hacked to be able to make a pull-over version of Simplicity 8729.

So!  I got to the point, while cutting this one out, where I suddenly had enormous doubts that there would be enough room to actually get this on and off over the head, due to the longer upper back and the A-line skirt (in contrast to the high waist and gathered skirt of the pullover dresses I usually make.)

So!  I cut the center back bodice and skirt pieces to make room for a zipper.  I knew that would make the back a bit narrower, but I figured that wouldn't matter with a zipper there.

Then!  The first zipper I installed--vintage, with metal teeth--self destructed when I tried to zip it back up (a lot of teeth popped off.)  Fortunately, the zipper went in and fell apart before the side seams were sewn, so it was easy enough to reach everything to replace it, even if the nylon coil zipper color match was nonexistent.

I dragged myself through the rest of the project, after the doubts and inconveniences had reduced the already tepid enthusiasm about the project, which was meant as a test more than anything (again, because I had forgotten about already having made a dress with this pattern, although, granted, that one wasn't as ruffly extravagant as this one was going to be.)

But I did finish!

 

And then I tried it on and it's still generous enough that the zipper is unnecessary for getting it on and off. 

Well.

That patchwork dress I made last week?

It looks like this now. 

And I just sorted the fabrics and put them away in the small yardage storage...which means there's now more fabric in there than when I started, because I used some fabric from pieces in the large yardage storage.  This makes me grumpy, but not as grumpy as that dress, so it's fine.

Two Too Short No More

After the annoyance of the last dress (I'm still considering my options for what to do with it--I like too many of the fabrics to want to just donate it like I usually do with dud projects), I was happy to have the idea of adding length to some dresses that I liked, but were a bit too short for comfort.  That seemed like something that would be quick, easy, and greatly improve the wearability of the dresses in question.

And it worked! 

First was a dress I made a few months ago, which was limited in length by the amount of fabric I had.  I thought I'd added enough of the accent fabric to make it long enough, and, at first, it seemed like I had, but, no--even with my short legs, the dress was a bit too...youthful...for me.

After I had ripped up a lot of what remained of that accent fabric, for the failed patchwork dress, I realized I could have used it to add another layer of ruffle on the previous, much-liked dress.  Fortunately, I had, in the efforts to find fabrics that seemed suitable for that failed project, unearthed some forgotten light blue gingham that could work instead.

 

The light blue gingham that was on the dress already was a smaller scale, but I didn't let that deter me.

I made it the same width as the upper skirt, so there was no gathering necessary.  Side seams were done french, because I didn't want to change the brown serger thread.  The hem was sewn with the quarter inch hem roller.  I sewed the new layer at the same seam where the previous two had been attached.  Fast, easy, and the dress doesn't feel quite so aggressively like a 1990s riot grrrl babydoll dress revival attempt.

The other rehabilitated dress is from late 2023.  Note that the write up blithely talks about shortening it by six inches, and that being fine because I'm also short.  It was not fine, although I do suspect that, even though I'm pretty sure I pre-laundered the fabric, it may have continued to shrink for a few washes.  For whatever reason, it felt more like a generous tunic length than a short dress length.  I did wear other things under it, but I wanted it to be a dress.

When I found the fabric at the thrift store a few weeks ago, I decided to get the floral interlock even though it wasn't perfectly my aesthetic, and it inspired this project because I thought it would be highly amusing to use it to extend this dress, because both fabrics have a very distinct Early 1990s Aesthetic.

They went together even better than I expected.

 

I had drawn the 6"-shorter lines directly on the pattern tissue, so I used that to cut the additional pieces, with the front piece on the fold and the back with a center seam.  I cut the hem off of the dress, right at the stitch line, before sewing the new part on with a 5/8" seam allowance, and it also got a 5/8" hem.  The total length is now 35"--since I absolutely know that I did prewash the additional fabric, I hope it will stay at 35".  I'll find out whenever it gets cold enough to make a long sleeve knit dress practical again, whenever in the unforeseeable future that may be...

Well. Don't like it.

The bodice is Simplicity 9153, which I've used many times (I'm wearing a dress made with it now), and I like the individual fabrics, and I like the way they combine when next to each other, but, overall...no. It's incredibly Not Me.

 

 

Pattern Mash Up Experiment (with a Weird Cheater Quilt Print)

I didn't realize how odd the cheater quilt print was when I picked it out at the craft thrift store--I mostly noticed that it was in colors centering around purple, and that was enough to charm me into purchase.

It wasn't until I started working with it for this project that I realized that it was basically made up of diagonal stripes, and fairly high contrast, too

 

So I played with that, and also encountered a problem with it.  However!  The main point of this project was to try adding the collar, from a 1950s pattern, to the old stand-by 1980s extended sleeve bodice, and that seems to have worked out nicely.

Thrift Cloth! From the Regular Thrift Store!

It's been a long time since I've seen yardage in the regular thrift store, and probably longer since I've seen any I wanted to buy.

I had to run some errands last Friday, and stopped in the thrift store, just because I could.  I have a list of things I'm hoping to find in thrift stores, and I was happy to find one of those: a mechanical Bissel sweeper (in a cheerful blue, too.)

The section where it was is next to the racks where they hang bed sheets, curtains, and other large fabric home goods.  I usually ignore those, but, since I was in that area while making sure the sweeper worked, I naturally glanced over...and saw a print that was absolutely yardage.

I wouldn't say it was calico, because it was also very obviously possessed of a high polyester content, but it did have a 1970s/80s ditsy calico style floral print.  I quickly noticed other pieces of yardage hanging next to it, and then some more a few feet away.  Some of them...I even liked!

Oh, hey! A person clothes!

I have been doing doll things, but decided this week that I should sew a dress with some of the coordinating fabrics I picked out the last time I went to the craft thrift store.

While I had picked them with the intent of making another proper Gunne Sax dress, I don't particularly want to wear a proper Gunne Sax dress right now (they have too much waist definition, and I still don't feel like have a waist.)  What I have enjoyed wearing is the babydoll dress I made a few months ago

except

it's just a tiny bit short. So!  I thought I would revisit that same dress design, but...just...an inch or two longer.

 

(and then I took photos fast this morning before wearing the dress for the day, and then discovered that the full-dress photos are all blurry, because I'm still not used to the 50mm lens.  The close-up pictures are sharper!)

Still sewing doll clothes

Including, but not limited to, everything here but the Midge-faced P.J.'s shirt (which is from Generation Girl Chelsie) and cardigan (which as an old Etsy purchase), and Stacey's purse (that's a Zuru MiniFashion piece--someday, I do want to try sewing doll purses)

Things were made from a combination of my own patterns, Japanese doll sewing publication patterns,  person-size pattern piece guides that were scanned and enlarged to doll size, and a few things were made without a pattern.

Another Motorcycle Jacket...but not...

Although I do have plans for more human-size sewing, honestly?  Right now I've sewn a lot of what I wanted to sew for wearing this summer (pull-over dresses.  several of them.)

And while I don't think I'm going to make posts here about all of the doll clothes I'm making, I will make posts for the more involved items, like the overalls in the last post that were made using (mostly) a pattern intended for human size.

This time, the pattern is from one of the Japanese doll publications with scans currently available on The Internet Archive: Doll Coordinate Recipe Volume 5.  On page 18 is a Momoko doll wearing a motorcycle jacket, and.  Well.  You know me and motorcycle jackets.

The pattern is on page 66, at half scale.  I set the PDF at 100%, screen capped it, and took it into a graphics program where I doubled the size, then split it into two to print because it was too big to fit on a single page.  The seam allowances at this size were ¼"/6mm, so I figured everything was scaled properly.  Nope!  The finished jacket ended up significantly bigger than something meant for Momoko, which was actually fine, because I was making it for a Barbie.

 

Yeah no I wasn't going to make it from pleather, who do you think I am?

Doll's Overalls

I wanted to make a pair of proper overalls for a doll--not just pants with a bib and straps, but full vintage-style overalls, with the straps coming off of a narrow high back.

Years ago, I thrifted Simplicity 9563, from 1990. 

At the time, I got it mostly because I thought the extreme 1990-ness of it was funny, and I was also amused by the fact that the fabric store stamp on it had a literal UK High Street address.  What kind of life did that pattern lead, to get from the UK in 1990 to a Nashville-area thrift store in 2014?

I added the pattern to my pattern stash just to giggle at sporadically, until a few years ago, when I saw so many people online making overalls that I thought it might? be fun to make a pair, too.  Other than the short leg length, this pattern has everything I want in an overalls style, including the tall narrow back that the straps are attached to.

When I finally opened the envelope to have a look at what was inside, I discovered that a previous owner had cut the pieces in size 6, and they'd cut off the crotch extensions to make an overalls-style jumper (well, if they were British, I suppose it would be a pinny.)  Adding the crotch extensions would be easy enough, by using another pants pattern, but, the size?  Well...I noticed that the back description called these "Very oversized"--given how everything was already extra roomy in that era, if something was specifically noted as "very oversize," it was going to be enormous.  So, I measured the pattern pieces at the size 6 cut waist, and estimated it would even be generous enough to go on my body.

However.  I hesitated for years to make them, because the shape of my body would, honestly, end up making them look like maternity clothes.  So, I put the pattern back in the stash, figuring I'd never actually use it, but, if I did have a need for proper overalls, well, I'd have the pattern.

And then, when I had the idea to make doll overalls, I thought, oh!  I can use this pattern for reference!  I got my doll jumpsuit pattern (first one here), copied the pieces, and started trying to modify them, looking at the pattern piece guide in the instructions for the Simplicity pattern.  I quickly ran into the problem of not knowing exactly where one part on one side related to the other side.

Then I thought: I'm never going to want to make another pair of doll overalls again, so why put this much work into it.  Why not scan the pattern piece guide, enlarge it to doll size, clean it up by tracing over it with vector lines, then print and use that. So, I did, and it worked pretty well!

...but not without issues.

Remnant Dress

I had enough of the lightweight chintz print cotton twill left to eke out the bodice for another take on Fake Burda 6401.  There was enough for some patch pockets, too, and, once I realized the skirt would be a bit short, I pieced a strip to insert on the skirt.

The rose pink polyester blend used for the edges of this dress provided most of the skirt, and the ruffle and bodice lining used the fabric from the edges of this dress.

 

Is it kind of a mess?  Sure!  Will it work for wearing around the house in summer?  Yep!

Chintz Print Pullover Dress

My pedantry won't call it 'chintz' with no qualifiers, because it's a lightweight twill instead of glazed.  It's also--again, being pedantic--very much the English Granny kind of chintz print, and not the traditional Indian style.

Anyway.

 

Cat Patch for Halloween...Gift...in March

 This is for a friend who likes Halloween

 

 

A Hint of Fairy Tale

Oh, look--another layer cake dress

  

Persicaria

I cut a bodice from some of the fabric I got in the last visit to the craft thrift store, and then realized that I didn't like how the construction of one of the other fabrics (also from the craft thrift store) I had picked for it contrasted with it (the  bodice fabric is a very fine cotton, the other fabric is a great print on a very distinctly poly cotton blend.)  I put aside the bodice pieces, along with the rest of that fabric, which was way too short to make much of a skirt, and poked around in my fabric stash to find something that would work well with the other fabrics I had already cut for the visible facings and edge bands to go with the former bodice fabric.

Since I have been working on refining both my fabric stash and my ability to keep new acquisitions within a relatively coherent aesthetic, I pretty easily found a piece of fabric I thrifted nearly a decade ago, but was never quite sure what to do with.  There was just enough of it that, at one point, it was probably very close to being turned into a small button-up shirt, but that phase of making so many small button up shirts did end before that happened.  There wasn't quite enough of it to make a full dress, but, when adding more fabric?  Just right.

 

 

Gray and Bright

I got a lot of fabrics, the last time I went to the craft thrift store, that unexpectedly coordinated really well (plus a lot of fabrics I knew coordinated when I chose them), so, of course, my first inclination was to use them in the same project.  Maybe another layer cake dress?  I started pulling other fabrics from my stash that coordinated, and eventually decided to try making a dress or two from a mix of the new (to me) fabric mixed with stuff I've had for a while.  It seemed more...fair?...to mix new with old, instead of using up all the new in its own projects, while letting fabrics I already had continue to go unused.

I also wanted to make a nice, simple pullover dress--no patchwork this time!  ...well...relatively simple, because I did want to mix the fabrics with nods to the Gunne Sax pattern I have, mainly via visible facings, bias binding the neckline, and ruffles and more ruffles.  But.  No patchwork.  So.  It still seemed to go together very very fast.

 

Olive & Aubergine Patchwork

Once again, I opened a fabric storage drawer and said to myself, "This is very crowded, maybe I should use up all of a certain kind of fabric here in a patchwork project."

This time, it was bits of rayon, especially after I noticed they all circled around the same greens and purples...plus one black and white print.  At first, I wasn't going to include the B&W, but I thought it made a nice, unexpected contrast, so I went with it, which helped when it came to finding additional fabrics to mix in.

In addition to the rayons (most of which are challis, but one is faille), there's a vintage linen???, smooth plain weave cottons, homespuns, a flannelette, and a slubby silk cotton blend.

Make-over

 Made a coat dress at the beginning of January.  Didn't like it...like...intensely.  Even if I did address the fit issues, the big problem, for me, was that I did not like how the collar was constructed--unless it's a motorcycle jacket, I like my collar and lapels to be more connected than that.

I do have plans for a patchwork project that uses scraps of the fabric, but I didn't want to turn the whole thing into scraps, because I do like the fabric!  And I bought the buttons just for that project, which is something I almost never do (my stash is expansive, except, apparently, for ¾" black buttons.)  I let the coat dress hang on the closet door in here while I made the patchwork cat jacket, and considered my options.  "Skirt" was quickly considered and abandoned, because I realized I could make it into a jumper!

I'm not sure if I have properly conveyed just how much I like jumpers, because I know I haven't made very many of them over the years, but I do really like them, and have since the 1990s.  In fact, I had a copy of the pattern I used for this project--McCall's 7812--in the late '90s, and used it a few times.  I remembered it so fondly that I decided to re-acquire a copy a few years ago.

I finally cut the tissue for view A and here we are

It has a lot of issues, but, y'know what?  I'm wearing it right now, so it's definitely better than the coat dress incarnation.

Patchwork Cat Jacket

About eight years ago, I made a patchwork blanket based on a quilt block idea I had about ten years ago.  I based the block on 4½" fabric squares.  Early last month, I wondered if I could figure out a version of the block based on the square die sizes I have for my die cutter.

I did a little sketching and math and arrived at cutting the squares at 35mm, the squares that would be cut into half square triangles at 40mm, and the squares that would be cut into quarter square triangles at 45mm.  Because I am not 100% committed to Perfect, I cut those squares into halves and quarters with scissors, so things were...variable...but workable.

The day I posted the previous project (still not happy with that), I cut enough squares and triangles to do a test, and made this 

Success!

Then the tedium started, eventually getting to this

 

 Eventually.

The Ice Storm and Power Outages Have Made Surprisingly Little Impact

I am working on a sewing project, and I started it the day I published the previous post.  It's a little......detailed...

First Time Making a Pattern I've Had Since 1999

 ...or possibly early 2000.  It's Style 2494, and it has a 1994 copyright, but I'm pretty sure I got it when I worked at Joann from mid-1999 to early 2000

 

 Having finally made it, with enough time to develop my sewing skills so much more than what they were back then...  Well.  If I had made it immediately, I probably would have thought the problems were with my skills, and not with the pattern itself.

 

 Now, though, I know enough to be unhappy with the pattern itself.