ribbon rose hairbow

for a gift exchange I made this hair bow. I had been going through some magazines and found a tutorial on how to make ribbon roses. it had several different roses in it, however the magazine was not in English so this was the only rose I could figure out by the pictures. I really ought to try looking up the tutorials online. I’m sure it would make more sense if I could read it. anyway this was all hand sewn. my first practice rose was a disaster but once I figured out how to do them they are actually quite easy. my second one was much nicer. one thing I did discover is you need to have a tight enough weave in the fabric or the knot on the starter thread will pop through and when one is half way through a rose that can be quite frustrating.
I completely free handed the beading. which I thought turned out pretty well. the lace was in my stash. and as for the shape of the bow I free handed that as well.
what I want before I go making too many more of these roses, is to get an awl. I think it would help in getting the ribbon through that first and last time, without cutting the fabric. because the knots on the ribbon go on the wrong side of the fabric and the ribbon has to be pulled through the fabric, which is not easy always easy. I had to make holes first and the problem with that is of course if you cut one to many threads on the fabric your hole will be too big and the knot will pull through. so an awl seems as if it would punch the correct size hole without cutting the fabric. I have needed an awl for other sewing projects as well. its amazing to me all the tools one needs for sewing.
I also have a few more things I made for Christmas gifts however those can not be posted till after the holiday, I can’t risk the giftee seeing them after all.

A Christmas skirt.

for work I had to participate in a Christmas festival , and of course had “nothing” to wear. I didn’t want to wear what I had worn the year before that would have just been tacky right?

I found this dress in some stuff someone had given to my mom for my niece, except my niece will not be anywhere near that size for years to come, and rather then store it away for ages I snatched it up. the dress being in child sizing of course meant that it was not shaped correctly for me, though it did fit but looked like a baby doll style dress on me and that was not something I was going for.

I did like the plaid though so in s split decision decided to make it into a skirt! simple right? just cut off the top and sew it back together. well it should have been that. but they put the thing together in a rather complicated manor. so I ended up having to take it apart a bit more then I had anticipated. the lining and outer fabric where sewn together all around the bust. not unusual but I was rather hoping for just thread tacks. I was excited about not having to deal with a zipper it was already installed so I was going to cut it down, which I did and would have worked except I stupidly zipped it all the way up while I was doing a fitting. and pulled the head off. I was able to thread it back on but I had to undo the bottom of the zipper to do so. invisible zippers I have noticed don’t thread on from the top like other zippers but rather from the bottom. I also had to bring in the waist a bit which I did on the sides. I got it all back together thinking it looked really good only to try it on and have the waist gaping. and now here was a dilemma. I needed the waist smaller by about two inches. but having cut the zipper so short there was going to be no way it would fit over my hips if I took it up. so to solve this I opted to put 1/4” elastic at the top of the band just to snug it up that little bit, which did just the trick and of course allows for me to wear it all season and still be able to eat, since you know it will stretch.

so in the grand scheme of things I like the way it turned out. I don’t think in the end it was any easier then making a brand new skirt but that is okay.

and here I am wearing the skirt. you can tell I was coerced into sitting on Santa’s lap by the way I’m sitting. my work was hosting Santa though, so all of us did and I wasn’t the only one complaining. I also made Santa’s boot furs. I think I was given the wrong measurement though because they kept sliding down. but I can only go by what I was told. my coworker and friend actually made the Santa coat and hat. didn't she do a nice job? I thought it turned out really well.

Happy Halloween!

Here is my Vanellope costume being worn! yea! I did Halloween this year on Saturday due to many factors, it was fun I met with some friends and we wondered around the Halloween festivities they had in town.



one thing I was not thrilled with on my costume is I think the sweatshirt is a bit long. I should have done a trial run before wearing it out in public. if (when) I wear it again I am going to take the time to shorten it. that way I wont have to keep pulling it up. besides that though I thought the costume turned out cute.

my hair things!


yeah my costume is a bit on the too blue and too light side, not quite as light as it looks in the pictures though it was really bright sunshine Saturday.

and a reminder pic of how little miss Vanellope looks.
had fun with this one. now its time to start focusing on Christmas.

some non sewing aspects of my costume.

I have finished my costume yea!

here are some of the non sewing pieces of it. first off the leggings. I bought mint colored leggings, and used Jacquard textile paint I purchased on Amazon for the white stripes. number one lesson this taught me. don’t free hand paint things. I did mark with tailors chalk where I wanted the lines but they ended up a bit sloppy, not quite straight lines and such. I should have used painters tape or something so it would have been more even. I had to do two coats of paint so it took several days to do the painting. but it knew it would from the reviews of the paint. as for the quality of the paint it seems nice. I haven’t washed it or anything yet though so I don’t know how that will effect it. it does have a tiny bit of stretch to it, but not much without cracking. good thing I don’t need too much. if your going to need lots of stretch with the paint I suggest having your fabric stretched while you paint. the purple stripe is just puffy paint I had, painted on with a paint brush.
next is the hair things.

I painted two buttons I had with red paint to make them look like peppermints, then glued them with E6000 glue on to barrettes, and bought some plastic rhinestones, that I then glued onto bobby pins for the round sprinkles in Valenope’s hair.

now the gummy bears were more of a challenge as I had to find them. but I managed to find this really neat place on etsy that sells all kind of cute food things like plastic gummy bears. they look really real. so definitely not something one would want around little kids. I used E6000 glue to glue these to the barrettes as well, and am hoping it will hold. the site says to use silicon glue on the gummy bears, but the E6000 glue seems to be holding them . at least all of them except the green one, not sure why that is, but oh well I just wont wear that one.
delishbeads on etsy

for the candy jimmies I am going to use colored bobby pins. I tried to make some out beads which looked cute and I might use some of them, but my hair was not thrilled with them, tangling in the beads when I tried to take them out and breaking my hair. so I was not much of a fan of the ones I made.

the licorice hair tie is actually sewn! I bought some red macramé rope, cut it to the length I wanted, burned the edges, zigzagged three pieces together on my machine then hand sewed them around a piece of red pipe cleaner. which gives it the stiffness and flexibility I needed. I made three pieces then braided them together. and sewed the ends so they wouldn’t come apart. I then tacked it in a few places to make sure the middle would stay together too.
so that’s it my Venelope Costume is finished!

Vanelope skirt

I finished my Vanelope skirt a while ago, but am just now getting around to posting it. its a very simple skirt with two layers gathered onto brown satin, one layer is shorter then the other to give it the layered look, then I added a waist band with full elastic. like I said super easy. I think it turned out cute and I will probably wear it not only for Halloween but also for everyday wear. all I have left on the costume now is painting the leggings. I need to get to it, time is running out.

Vanellope Hoddie done!

I was finally able to go to the fabric store and found some cute knit with hearts on it. its slightly more green but I figure that’s okay. they had some without hearts but I liked the hearts better so its the one I ended up getting. the construction then went pretty quickly. actually the tiny piece I put in at the front of the hood to cover the stitching on the inside took the longest to put in. it was a piece not called for in the pattern but I wanted it to cover the stitching at the front of the hood. oh vanity can cause such frustrations. I used McCall's pattern #M6614 view D, with only a few minor changes. one being that the pattern is for a zippered front hoddie, and Vanelope’s is a pull over, so I cut the front piece on a fold rather then in two pieces. I also constructed the hood slightly different, since I needed button holes to put the string through and the pattern didn’t call for it. I did all the inside seams with just serging which works great on fleece and knits plus its what the manufactures do. it looked really good till I was trying to put the hood on and it wasn’t working. it was then I realized of course its not fitting, my serger stitch is only a quarter of an inch seam allowance and the pattern calls for five eighths seam allowance, so with four seams I had an extra inch and a half to work in plus the fact I needed to overlap the hood a half inch and the fact of it being cut on a fold not in two pieces added a bit too, so I am left trying to ease in a good three inches, and that just wasn’t happening. so I did some math and went back to the serger where I took off what I needed, and amazingly the hood fit easily after that. yeah that was poor planning on my part. its just one of those things I didn’t even think about till it wasn’t working then it was like oh yeah duh! I opted to go ahead and punch holes into the front with an awl for the red ribbon, since in the end I think it will look the best. so far I’m liking the way the costume is coming, I can only hope we have the perfect day to wear it when the time comes, not to hot, nor too cold, because around here one never knows what the end of October will bring.

the fabric I lined the hood with

the tiny piece that took forever to put in. and it really doesn’t look all that great, but it keeps the serging from showing, which is what I wanted

Vanelope Von Schweetz hoddie

so I made it to the fabric store and bought the underlining for the skirt, and my fleece for the hoodie. here is what I have done so far on the hoodie for my Vanelope costume. the color looked a lot greener in the store, but that’s alright I think its close enough and I’m not entering any contests or anything its just for fun. I could actually be done with this by now but unfortunately ran into a slight problem, one that is totally my own fault! I forgot my list when I went to the fabric store which led to me forgetting to buy lining for the hood. something I feel its needs. otherwise my not quite matching serging shows its a bit darker so I don‘t like the way it looks on the outside. plus a lining will give it a much more finished look, which I want. I went ahead and put as much of the hoodie together as could without the lining. so the hoodie is now on hold till I can make it back to the fabric store. and this is something I really want to buy in person, so as to match colors as best I can. the fabric store is an hour away though so I want to combine it into another trip. I’ll make a special trip if its something I have to now, or for a bigger purchase but I hate to go that far for less then a yard of fabric. when I have six weeks to complete this. and will probably be out that way before then. if not I will make a special trip, but I highly doubt that will be necessary. the other thing I am trying to decide is how I want to add the red ribbon stitching to the pocket. do I want to punch it through the fabric which is how its supposed to look, or do I want to sew it on top without going through the fabric. I’m just not sure I want to put a hole in the fabric for the ribbon. but since this is fleece it wouldn’t really hurt it to do so, I would just have a little hole. and if I poked it through with an awl it wouldn’t be too large. I’m going to think on that one. so far so good on this one, which makes me happy.

bamboo shirt

so as mentioned in my last post I purchased a few new patterns. one of which was simplicity #1692.

so I got right down to it with a bamboo print polyester I had in my stash. its a light weight soft knit with little stretch, which is not in the fabric recommendations for this pattern but I thought would look nice anyway. the pattern calls for a side zipper but I figured with the stretch in the fabric I really didn’t need one and I was right. which made the whole thing go together a lot quicker. I originally put it together exactly as the pattern indicated (minus the zipper of course.) but realized because of the type of fabric I used the neck facing needed to be cut down. especially around the sleeves. the pattern had the facing going a good three inches past the placket and was squared off on the ends. which made the sleeve hang wonky. again I think this is just from the fabric I used. a cotton probably wouldn’t do that. I went ahead and cut the facing down to about an inch away from the end of the placket and rounded it up nicely since the square points stuck out funny.

you can't really see it in the photo but it stuck out really bad.
the other issue I had with the pattern which essentially changed the entire look of the shirt was its length. okay so this was my own stupidity I should have checked length before cutting the pattern. I knew I wanted to be able to wear the shirt with my modern jeans and that this was a vintage reproduction, that should have cued me in to the fact it would be shorter then I wanted. but I didn’t even give it a thought till it was finished. it hung only about a half an inch below the top of my waist band. which would be fine if I stood still and never moved. but yeah that’s not going to happen. plus I wanted to be able to wear it to work, where I definitely wouldn’t want it riding up. since I had a bit of left over fabric, I decided to add a band to the bottom. which I think actually gives it a slightly more finished look then the original hem I had in it. the buttons were also from my stash. as I was putting the shirt together I was thinking how nice red buttons would look on this shirt, but then I couldn’t find six matching red buttons in the right size, and didn’t want to buy any, so I went through the brown ones and really I love the ones I chose. the color is just perfect and once I held them up to the fabric I liked them better then I would have the red, so yea for not having the red.

I want to make this pattern again using view D and A, also using one of the recommended fabric types and lengthening it before I cut. I wonder if I can get away with not putting a zipper in it without stretch, or if I will not be so lucky next time. its not that I can’t do zippers. I put them in things all the time its just so much easier and more comfortable to wear something without a zipper.

time for halloween already?

For Halloween this year I have decided on Vanellope Von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph. I found the perfect fabric on ebay for the skirt. its pre pleated which is a plus for me since pleats and I don’t seem to get along very well. they never stay put, or fall right. maybe I should try looking up a tutorial or something on how to make perfect pleats. I mean I see others do it so why have they eluded me thus far? that of course can wait till I need it. this fabric it ready for use, in all of its pleated goodness. I have seen this type of fabric used a lot in formal wear, but never in my local fabric stores, so I was unsure if I would be able to find it or not. but once again ebay saved the day. its amazing all the thing one can find on that site.

as for the leggings I’m going to try and buy some minty green ones and paint the stripes on. I found some paint that is supposed to be good for that and not make the fabric stiff. I’ll write more on that once I get the leggings and try it out. I also need to find some fleece for the hoodie. I looked at one fabric store but they didn’t have what I wanted, so I must look at another later. I did buy a hoodie pattern though, for 99 cents. I love when they put patterns on sale like that except I always end up getting to many. I bought four this time, and that was without looking through the entire pattern book. had I looked at the whole thing I probably would have bought the limit of ten. I worked a bit on the skirt today. which included vetoing the black fabric I had pulled from my stash to use as the under layer. though I had originally wanted to use a dark brown I was content with the black. that is until I tried to use it. the stuff was so full of static it popped and crackled as I tried to iron it out, and when I picked it up it made my hair stand straight up! and it was a good two feet away from my hair. I have enough trouble with static without choosing something like that. especially with leggings underneath and I don’t want to be pulling at my skirt all day. so now I need so get fabric for under skirt as well. I did go ahead and cut the lengths I need for the skirt, then did a rolled a hem on the serger. now I’m at a stand still, Halloween is about ten weeks away, so I have time but I need to make sure not to put it off to long these things somehow just creep up on me really fast.

sonic purse

07/24/2013 I finished this purse for my sister about three weeks before her birthday. and the bad thing about finishing something so early is the fact that I then find the need to add to it. originally I had only put the outside pocket on the purse but then after thinking about it for a while I thought it needed one in the interior as well. I mean really a purse must have pockets! so I pulled out the lining and put in the two pockets inside. a inset zippered pocket like on the outside and a patch pocket for little things such as lip balm and anti bacterial gel, or other small things. I had never done a zippered pocket like that. I don’t do a whole of pocket putting in, and I don’t make a huge amount of bags. in fact this is my first purse I have ever made. I have made tote bags and such but never anything like this. and the zipper was one of confusion, I had no directions and kept assembling it inside out. tearing it back out, pinning, and repeat, finally though I got it. once I had it all put back together and thought I was happy with it I set it aside to finish waiting till her birthday only to decide that the purse must have D-rings! how else can one hook things like key chains and such on the outside of a bag if there is no where to hook it? so once more I took apart the lining, and added what I needed, which was some interfacing for reinforcement to the inside and then the D-rings themselves. once it was reassembled again I was happy with it and instead of keeping it where I could see it I promptly wrapped it in fear I might decide to add another addition it was still a week till her birthday and who knows what other crazy ideas I might have. I think she liked it when I gave it too her, but the comment was made that is was kind of small, which I found interesting because a few months ago she gave me the fabric and showed me a purse saying this fabric would make the cutest little purse like this one. and the one I made was the same size, so..... I don’t know..... next time I make one, if I do I will definitely put the inside pockets and D-rings in first!
here are some more pics. ☺

sigh.....

so I made this dress and..... well I kind of hate it. which is sad because I love the fabric. I like the way the top turned out but the skirt part is not boding well with me. I still have some fabric left, maybe I can figure something out to save this dress. the pattern looked so cute(simplicity 9402 from 1971) , but the reality of it is not quite what I wanted. I’m gong to think on it a while. I have to do something though the fabric is cute to waste. and even though I have some left its not enough to make anything with all on its own. which is why I think sewist horde fabric. we love it, we love the idea of turning it into something we will adore but then something like this happens and its so depressing. because once its cut, its cut, and there is no going back.

strawberry skirt.

I finished making the strawberry skirt for my sister. I had to take a break from it for various reasons. I still think the scallops should have been slightly more shallow, but it was the first attempt I ever did at making real scallops so I am content with them. the skirt is fully lined, and has an attached red ruffled with white swirly do’s appliqued on it. which took longer then I had anticipated. I have done appliques this way before on my 1860’s skirt. which was on a slightly larger scale, so I had figured this would not take nearly as long. I was wrong though. it did a little less time but nearly just as long, which surprised me. the skirt is gathered onto a red waist band encasing elastic for a bit of contrast. I also put in three pin tuck pleats on the skirt and lace to dress it up a bit, and to match the dress I made for my niece and the dress I made for me. sometime this summer if we get a full day without rain we’re going to go on a picnic all dressed alike in our strawberry outfits. how cute will that be? definitely something to look forward too, I do adore picnics.
and now for some detail pics.

new skirt.

this is a super easy skit to make. it took me all of like forty five minutes. its made from sleeves cut off men’s dress shirts, and the bottom of a dress I had cut off. basically I took the cut off of four sleeves that had been cut originally to make long sleeve shirts into short sleeve., cut them in half, sewed them all together, making the waist as tight as I needed it, then sewed the yellow ruffle to the bottom of the skirt, and hemmed up the sleeve potion, so the ruffle looks like another layer. I have made skirts like this in the past and have inserted a zipper on the side, but for this one I decided to just use the buttons on the cuff and placket for the opening. the green sleeve didn't have any buttons on them so I just sewed them up. the blue has two buttons on each cuff, which actually makes the waist a bit adjustable. I don’t know that I will need that function but hey why not have it? its easy enough. and really you can be as big or as small you want to wear a skirt like this. if your smaller you can use less sleeves if your bigger you can use more. and to make it more fun you can use all different panels if you like. length is personal too, you can make something like this as long or as short as you want depending on how much sleeve you have to start with, and how much layering you put into it. really you could put several layers on it to make it longer. or just whatever you want too do as long you have fun and love it.

strawberry dress

about two years ago I made my niece this dress. I had actually made one for myself that is nearly identical (in my size obviously) when she saw mine on my dress form she fell in love with it, begging me to make her one just like it. and since I had about four yards left from my dress I told her I would. and since then she has worn it, and worn it, and worn it. the last time I saw her in it though I told her I thought she had about grown out of it. the bodice still fit in the width but, the dress was getting way too short. which apparently her mother had shared the same opinion telling her she would only get to wear it a few more times then that would be it. her face melted when she thought she wouldn’t get to wear it anymore. and come on how can one resist a cute little six year olds tears? I told her since I still had about two yards left I could make it longer for her . indecently this dress is not the skirt I had previously posted about. same fabric though. the plan is sometime this summer to all dress alike and go on picnic. and no I have not finished the skirt, some things got in the way, but hopefully in the next few weeks I will have that done as well.


and so here it is. I lengthened it four inches. I had left enough in the straps to let them down an inch, took out one pleat on the skirt and completely redid the center bodice piece making it two inches longer , which also meant the zipper had to be replaced. I could get another inch out of the hem but that would require taking all the lace off the bottom and for now its long enough with just the four added inches. the piece I replaced is a bit brighter then the rest of the dress but unless you look really closely I don’ t think its that obvious. and it always makes me happy when I make something for someone and they love it. to me wearing something till its worn out is such a compliment.

yellow skirt

just a quick little skirt. I made this from some cut off of a dress I hemmed, I loved the bright yellow and thought it would be a cute skirt. I simply took the cut off fabric , sewed it too a yellow satin and made an elastic waist. the bottom was already hemmed since it was just the cut off, so easy and turned out nice.