Teddy Bear Cake

Little Garden Skirt

Like I needed another skirt made of quilting cotton...

This Amy Butler fabric jumped out at me so I bought a half yard. It is from the Gypsy Caravan collection, called Windflower in colour Linen. Yes, I know a half yard is basically a quilting supply, so this was a bit risky. But, with a contrast waistband, the half yard was the perfect amount for a summer mini.

I had this cream polycotton in my stash and it was the perfect colour match for the waistband. 100% cotton would have been better but this is what I had. I applied interfacing to both the front and back waistband pieces to thicken it up and luckily the seam allowances don't show through. Much. I should have added another layer of heavyweight interfacing at the buttonholes so they don't pull as much.

How is this for a skirt fastening? I am pretty proud of this. I didn't want to buy new supplies for this project and I have a huge button stash so I decided to fasten the skirt with buttons rather than a zip. To make the opening, I enclosed it in a pocket. It took a bit of working out (and just the slightest bit of unpicking) but I got there in the end.

Here is the pocket when open. You can see the opening where a zip would normally be, it now has a pocket behind it. The pocket bag is not attached to the waistband, only to the side seams. The top of the pocket bag is reinforced with a strip of binding, cut on the straight grain, not the bias. I still need to put in a tiny buttonhole at the top of the pocket and a tiny button on the inside of the waistband, this will help it stay up when the skirt is on.

Here is how it looks, inside out, with the pocket turned out.

For the waistband pattern, I used my standby New Look 6057. The pocket piece is from the Sewaholic Cambie, cut on the fold. I gathered the excess floral fabric to fit the waistband. I liked it better for casual wear, rather than darts or pleats. I hand stitched down the inside of the waistband. I didn't want the skirt any shorter, so I made a bias facing for the hem.

                 
I'm really happy with how this turned out, it is a casual and flexible summer miniskirt. I'm treating the colour as a neutral so that it is not an orphan.

Costs:
 Fabric: floral, £5.19
             contrast, gift
 Interfacing: stash
 Thread: stash
 Buttons: stash
 Patterns: stash
Total: £5.19

Floral Bucket Hats

Two more Oliver & S Bucket Hats to match the new outfits. I made them together, assembly line style, and got them done in about a day.

I made the same modification as I did the first time I made them: adding 1.5cm at the brim. Next time, I will grade out the side seams of the brim to get less of a bucket and more of a sunhat. The wider brim comes down very low.

Rather than make them reversible, these are lined in the same fabric, the Isle of Wight polycotton. I wanted to use it all up. The hat does take quite a lot of fabric. The brims are very curved and it is not possible to lay them out in such a way that one cut line forms the next cut for the next pattern piece. I confess that I did not line up all the brims on grain, you can get a lot more hat for your fabric if you ignore grainlines. I figured with the heavy interfacing, and floppy brim, grain was not  going to matter overly much. I kept all the crown pieces on grain.

I ran out of polycotton for the last brim piece so I used a piece of red quilting cotton. I was too stingy to make the whole inside brim of the red but this makes a nice sunshade and helps us to tell the two hats apart.

I assembled the final hats in the same way as last time, following the instructions up to the very end and then stitching the inside crown by hand. I had no other external stitching and no hatband so I didn’t want the stitching to show from the machine finishing.

These are a really cute addition to the outfits, I recommend making them any time you have about 50 - 75cm left over. Plus, with a free pattern and leftover fabric, they are almost a free hat!

Swallows on Cambie Dress

My first Cambie dress!

I have long been a fan of Sewaholic, but this is my first actual pattern purchase. I took advantage of a sale that Tasia was having to launch the pdf version of the Cambie.

This dress is a best-seller for a reason. It is cleverly designed and the gathered sleeves are the key. They allow the order of construction to be changed so you can attach the lining to the zip by machine. This has given me the best zip-to-lining attachment I have ever had. Then the gathered sleeves come to the rescue for the final step and allow a huge amount of adjustment to take place when fitting over the shoulders. You have a fully constructed and finished dress, even the fastening is done, and you can carry on fitting. I took full advantage of this and continually adjusted right to the very end.

I have never, ever had such a well-fitting back to a dress. I pulled the straps very tight to take up all the slack in the back bodice. Even though I had done a 1.5cm sway back adjustment, there was still more to pull up. I had raised the front of the bodice quite high, and straightened it, even so, this is how much length I took out of the bottom of the sleeves.

I cut a size 8 and made a few adjustments to suit my apple shape:
-took the side seam allowances down to 1cm at the waistband
-reduced the dart width by 1cm each dart
-increased the waistband size to 10
-reduced the hip of the skirt where the pockets meet to skim closer to my hips

I also changed the sweetheart neckline to a straight neckline, and raised it by about 1cm. I think a square neck suits me better and I prefer to show a bit less skin. I can see from the photos that the bodice is sitting a bit too high, nevertheless, this is a height that I feel comfortable with, so I'll stick with it for now. Next time I would add some lightweight interfacing to stabilise the pocket openings and the neckline, mine are gaping slightly.

The fabric is quilting cotton: Aviary 2, sparrows by Joel Dewberry. I have Roisin to thank for making me brave enough to make a whole dress out of loud quilting cotton.  This is my imaginary entry for the Sew Dolly Clackett competition/wedding gift. Only about 3 months late. It is light and drapey for quilting cotton and I think it makes a great dress. Plus, quilting cotton is about the easiest fabric in the whole world to sew with. I bought it online from the USA at Southern Fabrics. I loved it so much that, after my 1.5 yards arrived, I knew it needed to be a dress so I ordered an extra yard to make the total up to 2.5 yards, in 2 pieces.

I thought hard about the pattern placement. I wanted to use sections that had more orange blossoms, I got the bird in the middle of the front bodice, I had to have one on my left shoulder, and I managed to get all the birds featured down the skirt without any of them pecking me in awkward places or being sliced in half by a seam. I even totally accidentally made awesome pattern matches across the back of the bodice!

The lining is from my reclaimed sheet which is proving to be perfect for any project. I only lined the bodice. I didn't bother with the skirt since this is only suitable for summer wearing and is not clingy. I made the waistband from the fashion fabric. I catch stitched down the lining by hand rather than stitching in the ditch. I actually unpicked all the catch stitching in the front because it wasn't sitting flat and it was making the skirt pull up. So it is open. I pinked most of my seam allowances as I went along so hopefully it will be durable enough.

The dress took me quite a while to make. I started printing and assembling the pattern a week ago. But now that I know the pattern better, and the adjustments I need to make, I am sure that I will be quicker with the next few. And there will be more. I am going to try View B, with the sweetheart neckline in a soft chambray as a casual summer dress, and I'll definitely make this version in a suiting fabric, maybe with a pegged skirt as a work dress.

Costs
 Fabric: Southern Fabrics £21.59
 Zip: Mood £0.60
 Pattern: Sewaholic £6.70
Total: £28.89

PS: I am lying about the location, these are not taken on Cambie Street, Vancouver. One day...

Sorbetto Dress

Have you ever noticed a gaping hole in your wardrobe just as you are about to visit a fabric store? It happens to me all the time ;) There I was, in the Isle of Wight, about to go to a store I discovered last year, when I remembered that I was about to go on yet another holiday and I didn't have a dress that I could wear in the heat.

When I lived in Australia, I had many such clothes. Here in Britain, they are not really needed. I did make a sundress last year but the style is a beach dress so I don't wear it out and about. What I needed was a light, breezy dress. I swooped on this fabric with delight: light and soft, my colours and a great price. Why oh why did I not get 2 meters of it?

I knew the Collette Sorbetto would turn into just the sort of dress I was looking for. I turned the centre pleat into an inverted pleat at the top and left it loose to provide additional ease through the waist and hips. I extended the bottom, adding as much width as I could from the width of the fabric. This one was 150cm wide, so I was able to gain quite enough.

For me, this pattern definitely needs darts at the back. I added them in at the end. They provide some shaping but I'm still not happy with the back. (But maybe I'm just not happy with the size of my bum and the pictures are showing me the ugly truth.) After I made up the side seams and shoulder seams, I realised that I really would have to line the dress. What a torment! The light and breezy fabric would not be light and breezy with a polyester or quilting cotton lining. Those were the only things I had - I was leaving the next day! Then I remembered my trusty sheet which is light and thin. Then I remembered my first Sorbetto, made out of the very same sheet. It wasn't that great, I had used a basting stitch to sew the front darts, there was a mistake in the front binding and I had managed to include a small stain in the front, despite careful inspection of said sheet.

Sorbetto Dress Lining

I unpicked the hem and the front pleat but I left all the binding intact. I didn't have time to pull it all out and get the dress finished in time to actually wear it this year. I wrapped the whole thing inside the dress and did a bias facing on the inside, instead of the exposed facing called for in the pattern. The binding seams are a bit thick and heavy but I wasn't about to unpick all that binding.

I had just enough dress fabric left to add a skirt lining to the bottom. I decided against a pocket, I thought putting anything in it would pull the dress too much, plus I didn't want to interfere with the French seams.

As you can see, I got it made in time and had a lovely holiday too!

Cost:

Fabric: £6.25