Wide leg overalls.

This year hasn’t been great in the creativity department, but I know it will come back, at some point I will see something and be like, ooh I need to make that! I also didn’t do a very good job at keeping up with blogging about the things I made last year. This was mostly due to my computer going down right as a computer shortage hit, and then being unable to find a computer which made it hard to make blog posts. I did manage to post the majority of things I made but now I am trying to play catch-up on the things I didn’t post. I made these overalls in spring of 2020. They are made using Simplicity pattern #7372 from 1991. I picked up this pattern at a fabric shop probably five or six years ago. It was an amazing fabric store that was about a three hour drive. I would go about once a year and always ended up spending too much money. Even though I swore I would stick to what I thought was a high enough budget, and no way I could overspend. Okay so that was probably silly, it’s always possible to go over budget in a fabric store. And come on it was quite a drive, I couldn’t exactly just drop back by if I decided yeah I really did need that thing I saw but didn’t buy. Unfortunately the woman who owned the store passed away and the store closed down. The last time I was there was about a year before they closed. They had boxes and boxes of patterns from the 1990’s. The store had been around forever so I guess the patterns were stored in the back somewhere only to be uncovered 25 years late and put on clearance. I’m not a huge fan of the styles they had. Apparently not a lot of people are, they had hundreds and hundreds of the patterns ranging from 25 cents to 2 dollars. So of course I had to go through them all just in case there was a treasure. And I found this pattern. It was the only one I liked and it was only 65 cents. How could I possibly pass it up? I couldn’t. If you look up this pattern you will see it is not for long pants. it ‘s for above the knee culottes and mid calf culottes along with a jumper dress and a shirt. For these overalls I wanted them to be full length so I used view 1 and added 8” to the length which turned out to be perfect. I have thought about making them in the shorter view as well but can’t decide on fabric. I also made them in the wrong size. Totally my fault I should have paid better attention and measured the pattern pieces rather than going with what the back of the envelope said. I should always do my own math on patterns, they do seem to be all over the place in actual sizing. It's as if the sizing is more of a guide than an actuality. I ended up having to take it up alot in the back. So the back is a bit different than the pattern shows but it worked. I wish I would have had enough fabric to recut the pieces but alas I did not. So the front is a bit wide for me and the straps have this annoying habit of slipping off my shoulders if I’m not standing perfectly straight. Hmm… maybe a sign I need to work on having better posture. I do wear them though, annoying straps aren’t so big of a turn off that I can’t wear them, I just have to pay attention to my posture and it's all good. I also didn’t have any buttons in the right size that matched (I made these during shut down and couldn't really go out in search of buttons) I made up for it by using some adorable little roller skate buttons I had, they were too small so I used two buttons per strap rather than one. Better to use something from the stash anyway, otherwise you know what happens? Yes, I go get what I need but somehow other things end up coming home to join the stash as well. Ah, Those pesky little impulse buys. I think they turned out way cute though so I am happy with them.

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Brown Gauze top

I realized when I was posting about the bear I made for my mom, I had not posted about the gift I made for her last year. Last year for my mom’s Birthday I made her a top out of a fabric that was a brown Gauze with dark brown embroidered flowers. I used McCall’s pattern # 6487 from 1993. This pattern is from their easy stitch and save series. This pattern was one of my mom’s favorite patterns and she has made it a few times herself over the years. I actually used her pattern since she had it and I knew it was a style she liked. Plus being that the top is not fitted I could guess at what size to make without having to take her measurements. this way she had no idea I was making her something and keeping it more of a surprise. I made sure to wash and dry the fabric before sewing it as I have heard, Gauze has a tendency to shrink a lot after the first wash especially when it is put in the dyer. This gauze didn’t seem to shrink much which was a nice surprise. The fabric sewed together nicely, and the pattern was easy. The best part, my mom really liked it and wears it all the time. When she opened the gift, she was like “did you use my pattern?” I told her yes and she said, “that’s my favorite pattern. I love it.”

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Gray velvet bear

As I posted a while back,I was going to make my mom a teddy bear for her birthday. This bear is made using the same pattern I used to make the other bears I have made, it’s a pattern I found in a magazine several years back and has been my go-to ever since. This makes bear number seven. The bear is made from gray velvet that was a dream to sew on. It had a nice stable backing to it, which is always nice because it doesn’t stretch out of the shape the way some other fuzzy fabrics do, so there was no fiddling and fussing to get it right, it just went together. It was also nice that the nap of the fabric was so short, and I didn’t have fur flying about everywhere as I did with the other bears, I only had to pay attention to the direction of the fabric. I also figured out a slightly easier way to attach the arms and legs. When I made the other bears I tried to line up the buttons on the inside of the leg with the button on the inside of the body all at the same time. While making this bear I thought “why don’t I just stich the button to the inside of the leg with two stiches first to hold it in place; that way I only have to line up and hold one side rather than both at the same time.” that was kind of a duh moment, and made it so much more easy to sew the connecting buttons on. In the future, if I make more I will try to remember that tiny time saving trick. I thought it turned out cute and my mom loved it, so that makes me happy. Maybe this year the bears can get together on teddy bear picnic day and we can all finally see each other and be together again.

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Blue Cat dress.

The day before my birthday this year I woke up and thought; I want a new dress for my birthday! Yeah I didn’t give myself a whole lot of time on this one. But to be fair I had planned out the dress well before my birthday, several months before in fact.
I came across the blue cat fabric while searching online for fabric for a baby quilt. I was not supposed to be buying more fabric for myself; I have fabric in my stash that I am supposed to be whittling down. But I didn’t have enough blue fabric for the quilt I was making. That is the only reason I was even looking at fabric. But as is all too common when looking for a particular fabric I fell in love with some other fabric. This time the cat fabric, I wanted it, it needed it, I had to have it, and it had to be in a dress. I thought though it might be a bit of an over whelming pattern for an entire dress though so I came up with the idea of making it a border on a 1950’s style dress and I knew the pattern I wanted to use. Simplicity #2499 it’s from the 1950’s and I have used it before to make myself and my sister a dress.

This pattern is relatively easy to make very straight forward and has a side zipper. I was impressed I had a blue zipper in my stash already so I didn’t even have to worry about the zipper. The lace and ribbon I used it also from my stash.

I ordered the fabric online and was not very impressed with the coordinating solid blue. Online it looked wonderful, it was in the suggestions as a coordinating blue, but when I got it it’s not really a blue I would have chosen in person. I miss the whole shopping in person thing. I had planned on making the dress the moment I got the fabric but when I saw the blue I was a might downtrodden over it and packed it away thinking well maybe in a while I can go shopping in person and find a better color.

As time went by it was becoming more and more obvious that was not going to happen and I had the fabric, and the fabric itself is a beautiful weight. I would buy that kind again it was just not quite the right color (the camera makes the blues look a lot closer than they do in person). I decided to just get over it, I bought the fabric for the dress I was going to use it for the dress even if that particular blue is nowhere in the cat pattern. And I think it looks okay once it’s all sewn up, yeah I would have been over the moon in love with it if it’d been a slightly different shade of blue, but even being the shade it is I love it.

I wasn’t sure I could get the dress done in time for my birthday. It’s been a long time since I did a dress in a day but there is something about having a deadline. I was off that day so I had the entire day to work on it. And it took the whole day. But I got it done finishing it around 9pm. I did alter the design a bit beyond adding the border I gathered the skirt rather than pleating it like the pattern calls for. I don’t think gathering is any easier than the pleats I just wanted it gathered.
The cat border is about 10” wide which I figure is just about perfect. And to finish it off to perfection for this year I made me a matching mask, which will probably get used a lot more than the dress, as I don’t have much of an occasion to wear a cute dress these days. But the days will come, and I will be ready.

A pink bear

For my sister’s birthday I made her a cute little pink bear to match the other bears I have made. So far using this pattern I have made 6 bears. I don’t have any idea of the first two I made even exist anymore, but I do know the latter 4 do. I have plans for at least one more for my mom either for her birthday or Christmas. I have already told her this so posting it where she can read is perfectly ok.

I was a bit nervous about the fabric since its minky and minky can be cantankerous, but this went together nicely. I was impressed, since the white bear I made was also out of minky and it gave me fits. This minky however seemed a higher quality and sewed like a dream. I also find that the more bears I make the better I get at the noses. I think this bear wins for cutest nose. I guess it true about practice making perfect. I really just love the way this bear turned out.

I was kind of sad about making the pink bear this year not because I was upset about making the bear but because I had plans for presenting it I was unable to do.
I had been planning to make this for my sister’s birthday since last year. I was hoping to get together with her, our other sister and our niece for teddy bear picnic day, we would all have our bears and then I would present my sister with hers at the teddy bear picnic. But alas our teddy bear picnic was canceled (the story of 2020 right?) so it turned out to be a quick hand off of the box with the bear and I didn’t even get to see her open it. She did call me after she opened it and said she really liked it though. So plans on for next year, and they will include my mom with her new bear and maybe my cousin if she still has her bear. I think it would be so fun to all get together with our matching bears. And who knows maybe I will make me a cute new dress as well. I am so hoping next year is better I miss seeing my people.


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A baby quilt.

Last weekend I made this quilt for a co-workers granddaughter’s baby.
The Granddaughter went to college only a few blocks from where I work and would sometimes come hang out with her grandmother between classes or at lunch so we got to see her quite a bit for a few years.
Now she has a cute little baby boy and maybe one day she will bring him in to meet us all. I am sure they are going to keep baby at home where it’s safe for the time being. But she is sending Grandma pictures which of course she shows everyone, and he is a cutie.
I did a super simple pattern of every other block a solid baby blue than a block of skateboarding dinosaurs.

I used quilters dream poly batting, which I had never used before. I usually go for a cotton batting. I have used poly battings before and struggled with them but I thought I would try this because there wasn’t much to choose from on the site I ordered from, and it worked really well. I will use this brand again. (I am just mentioning them because I liked it no one asked me too.) The quilt went together fairly quickly. It helped to have nothing to distract me. I couldn’t even go outside because the Sahara dust was so thick last week so I stayed in and finished this quilt in time to give it to the grandmother Monday so she could give it to her granddaughter the next time she saw her.



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Goldfish dress.

There are times when I spend hours looking at museum sites and peoples’ blogs just too look at all the pretty dresses. I love seeing what others have created and getting inspiration from them. I find myself saving pictures especially from the museum websites. And sometimes I even get the bright idea that I want something like that too. This dress is one of those I saw somewhere, saved and decided I wanted.

I don’t know where I saved it from and doing a google image search yielded no results. I do believe it came from a museum site though. I wish I had labeled where it came from but of course I did not. I did however take the time while saving it to put 1960’s in the description so that gives me an idea of what era this dress was inspired or really copied from. Since I would say I just about copied it.

To get the goldfish design, I did some figuring of about how big it needed to be then zoomed in the picture on my computer and traced it onto paper; Yep a nice and old school way of doing things tracing them on paper with a pencil. I find this is one of the easiest ways to do this. I put the brightness up all the way on my screen, lay a piece of paper on it and trace the lines. I have done this with other things before and it works great.

It took tracing it twice, because I wasn’t quite sure how big I needed it to be and should have measured better the first time. I then laid it on the cut out piece of fabric with transfer paper and traced it with a tracing wheel so the design was directly on the fabric.

I started out with the fish, I had thought about just painting the fish directly on the dress but the idea I might mess up freaked me out to badly so went with piecing them out of fabric which worked wonderfully. The orange part of the fish is cotton that I used fabric paint on to keep the edges from fraying. The black part of the fish is a knit that I also used fabric pant on to keep the edges from curling. I did just a thin line with a paint brush along the edges just to keep everything nice and by matching the paint to the fabric it’s hardly noticeable. I prefer this method to fray check which I think makes fabric look greasy, or folding under the edges because that makes it bulky looking or simply doesn’t work because of all the angles.

Once the fishies where prepped I zigzagged them on to the front piece of the dress, then came the hard part, Appliqueing the black lines.
For this I used an embroidery hoop, my embroidery foot, (on my Bernina this is foot#6) and embroidery floss. The embroidery hoop I used is not for a machine, it’s for hand needle work. I figured it would work to keep my knit fabric taut, it did a good job. Knit has this way of bunching up when sewn, especially when using a zigzag stitch. And yes I had to keep undoing and redoing it as I moved through the design, but it sure was easier than doing it without the hoop
The embroidery foot is something I have little experience with and have never attempted to use for appliqueing but it seemed easy enough and I had used the foot to do a crazy hem with fishing line once, and I have done applique like this without the foot so I did have some idea what I was doing.

The foot though was nice because it kept the floss in the center and I didn’t have to try keeping it there manually like I did when I did this with yarn. The embroidery floss is thin enough to thread through the little hole in the foot where the yarn was not. I know that this is not exactly what this foot is intended for but it sure works well for this. It took a little bit for me to get the hang of what I was doing. I did manage to tangle the floss pretty badly at the beginning and had to remove the foot to pick out stitching that was tangled all around it, leaving me to wonder just exactly what I had gotten myself into. Yet I was determined to go on. After picking out I set the thing aside for a few days and when I went back to it, it went easy peazy. It still took a while, a few hours I guess. But I figured out how to not tangle it anymore so that made it seem easy. The secret \is always keep the floss that is being fed through in front to the front of the foot and held taut making sure not turn it too much or too fast.
Once I had the fish on the rest of the dress went fairly quickly.

For the dress I used simplicity pattern # 8415 view c with a few alterations. The dress I was copying had a dropped waist and I wanted to keep that aspect so I dropped the waist and shortened the ruffle. I also simplified the pattern by making it out of knit so I could pull it over my head. I cut the back piece on a fold eliminating the zipper completely. I also redid the collar making a simple bias strip like on a t-shirt.

When I came across the dress in my saved folder I realized I had knit in the right color in my stash and without adding a zipper I didn’t have to buy anything. The original dress looks to be made out of linen but knit is so much easier to care for, plus I had it. I am trying to come up with things to make without going shopping. And while I do have a lot of ideas of what I want to make including some I have all the things I need. A lot of it is impractical though, and I have nowhere to wear it. I thought this little dress would be cute with leggings and can be worn anywhere even if it’s just being stuck at the house. It’s cute it’s comfy and I love it. I hope it washes well because I want to wear it all the time.



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