The 45-minute dress

I'm obviously undergoing a dress-making craze at the moment. I've pretty much made myself a dress a week for the past few weeks. Not with the intention of achieving that Herculean feat, but it seems to take me about that long to cut, sew, adjust, and finish.

I've learned a variety of new techniques, I'm getting closer to figuring out my size and sewing to that size, which is still a work in progress, as well as the more abstract concept of how a piece of fabric will look with a particular style.

But all of these dresses have been pretty involved. I want to make something cute, but simple. I was trying to explain this to my husband - I just want to make a dress that you can seam up and be done.

"That would be a mumu," he replied.

Well, yes, and that is definitely not what I'm going for.

I've been looking for a nice simple sundress to make. You would think a pattern would be easy to find, but I think I possibly am suffering from too many options. It is hard to know where to look - the big pattern companies, the independent pattern companies, and then the morass that is the web, including vintage patterns on Ebay or Etsy.

As an aside, vintage patterns are all the rage right now among seamstresses online. Who knew?

I settled on this pattern:



Vogue 8723. I'd never made a Vogue pattern before. Ooh la la.

Note this:



Very Easy. The main reason for the selection.

After jumping in, I discovered that a Vogue Very Easy pattern involves:

Full Lining.



Understitching.



Convoluted instructions which resulted in what was probably a bit of a non-traditional construction.



Several days into the dress, I started to become concerned about what a regular Vogue pattern would involve.

The dress is very lovely (and I will give it the respect it deserves at a later time). While creating a fully-lined dress basically involves sewing two dresses at once, the final product is very polished.

But after hemming it up, I wanted something simple. Very simple. And truly easy.

So I dug through my fabric scraps and found this:



Just enough fabric to be modest. I seamed the sides to create a tube, folded over the top for an elastic casing, added straps, and I ended up with this:



(photography by resident four-year-old)

The 45-minute dress. Definitely not as refined or fitted as the Vogue dress, but light, and simple, and immediately available to wear.



"You're done already?" my six-year-old commented. "That was quick!"

Why, yes, it was.

The Hot Dress

It's always nice when my husband compliments my outfit. That doesn't happen a lot around here, largely because there really isn't much to say about shorts and a t-shirt on a regular basis.

So it is nice when my husband declares I look hot in something. This is doubly satisfying when this something happens to be a dress I made.

Can you feel the hotness? I think that he was just impressed that I was in a dress, because that really wasn't the response I expected, but I'll take it.

The glamour shot shows off the princess seams a little more.

These were my first princess seams, and while they aren't perfect, I think they came out well.

This is Simplicity 2588:

I am pleased to say that I got the sizing close to correct, always learning from my mistakes. This pattern had a lot of new techniques for me, including princess seams and attaching a yoke. It's a very well-constructed garment, but it requires a lot of attention to detail in order to get the alignment just right - such as darts on the bodice lining up with pleats in the skirt, or having the yoke actually line up properly.

Ask me how I know this.

I'm not a huge stickler for details, but, then again, if I want my projects to look nice, I'm going to have to pay a bit more attention because I certainly don't want my garments to turn out like Denise's shirt for Theo from The Cosby Show.


I actually think about that shirt a lot while I'm sewing. I watched a lot of The Cosby Show when I was a kid, I guess it is imprinted.

So I find myself focusing in the same way I do when practicing Warrior III, or any other balancing poses. The yoga of sewing.

I just plunged in on the princess seams, but after I finished the dress, I did find a great tutorial online (is there anything that isn't online?) and came up with these quick pointers for next time:

stay stitch the straighter piece and clip the seams, then spread the clipped piece to match the curved piece and pin.

More on this next time.

Detail of the stitching on the yoke:


I'm not sure that I like the stitching, but I wasn't sure how else to attach the yoke, since it has a facing and there was no other way to close the front and the facing over the armholes. The instructions for the yoke attachment were the only confusing part of the instructions. This will probably call for more research.

My version it a bit looser and longer than the version on the photo, making for a more relaxed dress. But I think that a different fabric would totally change the feel of the dress, so it could either be casual or dressy. Even though it was a challenge, and I really wanted to find another more simpler pattern, I've already started another one.

The Dress That Was Finally Made: Conclusion

Photo a'la six-year-old.

You will note that this looks nothing like the original pattern. The top of the bodice is the same, but I added extra darts to avoid the tent, then further added a waistband to add more definition to the tent waist, which resulted in a skirt gathered even more than the smaller sizes in the original pattern. The bottom band was added to lengthen the skirt.

I actually finished this several days ago, but it still needs a minor adjustment.



The neckline gapes because even though I managed to get the bust to fit with darts I neglected the width of the top of the bodice. I'm thinking I might just pin the neckline to one side and add a fabric flower, but I haven't decided yet.

So I learned a lot, but I also think that the original dress itself is not what I imagined. From the photo, it looked to be a fitted dress, which it was not at all. It was an empire waist with gathers, made to look like a fitted dress with ties that were supposed to wrap around the waist to add definition (and which I omitted completely since I inserted a fitted waistband).

This was my first test in adjusting the construction of a dress, so I'm now starting to look a lot closer at the line-drawn schematics on the backs of patterns. It turns out that this pattern for some reason didn't have a schematic on the pattern envelope, oddly enough, so that wouldn't have been a help in this case.

But despite that, it did have some fun dressmaking details, including facing, which was both fun (look at this sewing from the inside of the armhole action!):


And terrifying (clipping seams always makes me nervous, but it truly made a difference in finishing the armholes!):


And had another chance to insert an invisible zipper. Those things are so cool.

Remember the skirt from the original ill-fated fabric combination? I added my newfound friend, the dart, drafted a new bodice with a v-neck based on the original pattern, and ended up with this:



Still a bit tent-like, so I will probably add the ties shown in the original pattern, but the darts create a cleaner look than the gathers from the original pattern.

I'll leave you with my continued obsession with the invisible zipper.

Now you see it:


Now you don't:


(Photos are facing opposite directions, pardon any confusion).

Still fascinates me.

The Dress That Did Not Want To Be Made: Part 1

Fresh from the success of my Jamie dress, I immediately embarked upon another project, McCalls 5882:

I bought the pattern a while ago and had the fabric neatly folded in my fabric bin. I planned to make something akin to the dress in the bottom left-hand corner, so I had bought three contrasting black and white patterned fabrics. I was anxious to make something fun and summery, and to test out my newfound invisible zipper installation skills.

I had even made a test top some time ago to make sure I had the right size. Which I sort of had, but I hadn't taken the entire dress sizing into account.



In case it is not clear from the photo, the dress is a tent. That fitted dress in the pattern photo did not translate. Another thing that did not translate was the fabric coordination. Somehow the fabric worked better together when it was just folded up. So, two strikes against it: tent and fabric pairing.

So, bye bye black and white floral dress skirt.



Whew, that was a lot of seams to rip. (Double rips, too, since I had initially sewn the skirt on the wrong sides of the back. But we won't dwell on that.)

You may notice, even from the inside, there there is now a waistband on the dress top. Yes, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the dress and we are going rogue from the initial McCalls pattern. I added the waistband from the Jamie dress, since it fit so well. The problem was that the McCalls bodice was too large to fit the waistband.


Enter the lowly, beautiful bust dart. Those side darts were written into the original bodice. I added the bottom darts, measured to fit the Jamie Dress waistband perfectly.

Now, what to do about the skirt. As always, during the initial fabric purchase I bought more fabric than the pattern called for (I always round way up for some reason), which meant that I probably had enough for another skirt, this time one that would match the bodice.



I shortened the skirt just a little bit, went down a few sizes (which I should have done to start off with) and I managed to have just enough to make a short, flirty skirt to add to my newly reconstructed bodice.

But this dress had some other ideas. More on that later.

A Summer Dress

Well, it's been a while. But, in the meantime, school ended, we now have a kindergarten graduate, the heat of summer has descended, and, in the chaos of two children home all day again, I decided to start sewing again.

Strangely enough, the kids don't seem to mind when I immerse myself in a sewing project. They will happily play by themselves and not really cause too much of a fuss if I'm working on a project. They truly abhor when I work on the computer or - tsk, tsk - surf the web. Seeing Mommy staring at a screen or typing on a keyboard toggles a switch in them that calls for full parental attention, but they are happy as clams if I'm doing something 'analog'. Housework also falls in this category: laundry, sweeping, dishes.

Already they know that computers suck our attention!

Which is why I returned to sewing, to allow myself a lot of non-screen time.

After I had Hannah, I returned to my formerly full-time job in a part-time capacity, in a slightly different role. I mostly worked from home and ventured into the office only occasionally, possibly once every few weeks. One of the times I happened to go into the office, the costume department sent out an email offering up free fabric.

I had just started to sew, so I rushed to the costume department and chose a stack of fabric. For the most part, it still sits in my closet.

Since that infant just turned six years old, that fabric has been lying fallow for quite some time now. I decided it was high time to jump feet first into a project.

None of my big-name patterns excite me (McCalls, Simplicity, Butterick, etc.), which is probably why they also just sit in my closet. I searched around the internet (web surfing with a purpose!) and focused on small, independent pattern makers. I decided to try out a small company called Sis Boom but there are a lot of small independent pattern makers that I want to try, including Hot Patterns and Collette Patterns, to name a couple.

I chose the Jamie Dress because it is girly and can be dressy or casual. Most importantly, it seemed to look good on a variety of body types. Added bonus, it was available as a PDF download, which meant instant gratification.

The pattern arrived in my inbox at 5:21 p.m. on a Wednesday. Miraculously enough, I finished the dress in time for date night that Saturday:

The most challenging part was inserting the invisible zipper. This was my first time working with an invisible zipper, and I think it was only my second time working with any sort of zipper at all.

After reading at least three tutorials, and examining one of my store-bought dresses with an invisible zipper, I finally figured out the orientation. It went so well I already started another dress, also with an invisible zipper!

30-minute skirt

I have an 88-quart 'wheeled latch box' full of fabric. Stuffed full. That's a lot of fabric. Yards and yards of it. So, now that I am inspired again, it is not time to buy new fabric, but time to use up all of that old fabric.

Like all things (including the unopened broken frame in my closet right next to the 88-quart box), I buy things for a purpose intending to use them, but the moment often gets away from me. So it's time to reclaim that moment. Actually, those moments. Those many moments.

Luckily, about half of the fabric is pink, which means that fabric has an easy home - my five-year-old's closet. She loves skirts and dresses, and fortunately she is momentarily willing to wear my creations, having overcome her phase of refusing to wear anything I made. Possibly that had to do with the fact that I disregarded her color preferences and kept buying cute green fabric for some reason.

According to my wheeled latch box, I evidently came to my senses and started buying pink fabric, but I neglected to use it.

Neglect no more. I present the 30-minute skirt. A strip of fabric twice as wide as her waist, hemmed on the bottom with an elastic waist.

I think she is pleased.

I also made her a dress out of the same fabric, although that was a little more involved.

Now, to figure out what to do with the rest of the 88-quart's worth. I'm thinking of taking up quilting....

A Space of Her Own

When we were looking at new houses three years ago, one of our main requirements was that it have a study at the front of the house that my husband could use for his video studio. That wasn't a difficult demand to fulfill; a study is common in new home construction.

However, when we started looking around, I realized that all of the studies were very masculine - solid wood furniture, dark decorations. The study was decidedly for a man.

I need my own space. I didn't - and still don't - understand why the concept of the study must be of the male persuasion.

So I decided to make my own demand. I wanted my own space. After my husband kept offering up large closets (in one model we looked at the master closet was almost as large as the master bedroom - "This would a great place for your sewing room!" my husband helpfully offered) I decided that I wanted an official room, a nice room, not just a left over bedroom and definitely not a closet.

We ended up with a house that has two studies - a video studio in the front of the house, and a sun room with lovely french doors in the back of the house that I claimed as my sewing room.

So I had my sewing room. But it began to fill up with toys, and when I started working part-time from home, it became more of an office with papers stacked high on my desk and the sewing machines and yarn were eventually packed away in a closet because those tiny little people who live with me needed more space.

As I started getting back into sewing and knitting about a year's respite, I realized I didn't want to pull everything back out into what has now become the office/playroom (although nearly every room in the house could be followed by '/playroom').

I decided to set up shop in our bedroom. I always use the bed to cut fabric, I set up the ironing board in our closet anyway, so this actually works out better. I even have a whole wall to myself, thanks to my previous lack of decorating and for some reason I have more incentive to tidy up after myself when it is in my bedroom than when it was in a 'sewing room'. So win-win all around.

Time to decorate now.

Back at it

It's been a while. My life became insanely crazy - of my own doing - as I decided to take a graduate class, expand my quarter-time job to a part-time job at an organization that I really didn't believe in, and plan a fundraising gala for yet another organization that I actually do believe in. All of that and raise two young children while taking a little time to pay even a marginal bit of attention to my husband.

Something had to give, so I quit the job I didn't believe in and decided graduate school can wait until my little guy is in elementary school. That leaves me with the kids, the husband, and working part-time for the organization I do believe in (Mosaic Theatre Company - check it out).

It also means I have more time for sanity, and, oddly enough, more time for crafting. There is no more naptime around here, but there is still coffee (and tea), and time taken for myself to practice some of the hobbies I love.

I have a lot of unfinished projects, and piles and piles of yarn and fabric. So I got to work. I finished a top (for the second time) that lay festering because it ended up too large. I had unraveled half of it, probably more than a year ago, but never knit it back together. Once I figured out where I was in the pattern, I finished it pretty quickly. It fits perfectly now, but it's a summer top and the weather is actually chilly, so I won't wear it for a while. I knit a stack of washcloths and towels from scrap cotton yarn.

Then I decided I should actually make something useful. Well, something cute that I knew someone special would really like.


Didn't she pose so nicely in her new skirt? She's worn it three or four days in a row now, so I think she likes it. She's outgrown all of her other skirts, so I'll make a few more for her as well. The pattern is from a 2006 issue of Ottobre. I'm glad I'm a somewhat experience novice seamstress because the instructions, while in English (this is a Finnish magazine), are sparse!

Time to go be a mommy!

Still working

I ended up having problems with the hemming, so I wasn't able to finish the dress in time (fortunately the old frump clothes weren't as bad I thought they were). I got close, but my coverstitch decided to go bonkers, so the sleeve hems were completely unpresentable. I think it might be due to the fabric, it's a kind of slinky knit. I'm probably going to hand sew them.

Anyways, the dress turned out great up until that point.



The waist is supposed to be ruched, which it is, but the fabric is a bit slippery, so it falls a bit. It doesn't fall as badly when I'm wearing it, so I think it will look fine.



I like the fabric. It's a fun mod print.

I've also discovered one of the unexpected hazards of letting little ones into my office/sewing room. The obvious hazards are scissors, pins, and the machines themselves. I try to keep those pushed back and out of the way as best I can, and we haven't had any problems so far. I wasn't expecting this:



Those would be crumpled up pattern pieces. I don't even know when they did that, although I'm pretty sure it was the little guy. Oh well. At least he didn't tear them up, although one did have a little hole in it.

Namaste, ya'll

I have lots of things I should be doing right now, but I wanted to belatedly share some of my spoils from my yoga weekend.



I just couldn't resists, it's so ridiculous. Our instructor wore it the last day and none of us could resist.



Also, I started a completely different dress last night. I realized that I have to go to a board meeting for work on Thursday. A sane person would think, 'oh, why don't I just look in my closet'. That sane person, after realizing that there is nothing in her closet because it either needs to be dry cleaned because she hasn't had to dress for work for four years or it is just plain dumpy, would probably work with what she had, dumpy or not. Obviously, I'm quite far from sane because my first thougth was "I can make myself a new dress that I had been meaning to make!"

I think I'm about 1/3 finished. I started last night. Here's a little teaser:



Let's hope for the best, otherwise I'll be wearing some frumpy four or five year old work clothes that just might fit differently after two kids.

Yoga and dresses

I needed a break, so I went on a vacation over the weekend. I left my husband home with the kids (with his blessing), and went on a yoga retreat. I decided I wanted to do something about a month ago, so I got online and started searching for retreats in Texas. Lots of personal retreats popped up, which basically involved going someplace all by myself, staying in a cabin, and spending the weekend meditating all by myself. Not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to get away, but I didn't want to necessarily be by myself.

The next option I found was a spa retreat. Lots of those out there, but I really didn't want to spend the weekend getting massages and facials. Besides, most of those were way out of my price range, for some reason ($1,000 for a weekend and the like).

But then I found this little yoga retreat in East Texas near Tyler called Yoga in the Pines. It seemed focused more on fitness than the spirituality of yoga, which is my main interest in yoga. I don't want to sit around and say 'om' while meditating, but I do appreciate the physical strength that goes into certain yoga poses.

It seemed pretty small, and I didn't know anything about it except what was on the website, but I decided to give it a chance. This past weekend was my yoga retreat, and it was fantastic. It was only ten women, not including the instructor, and we met at her personal studio in the forest in the outskirts of a small town near Tyler. I don't go to yoga classes here in town - I don't really have the opportunity with two little ones - so I was a bit concerned that I would be completely out of my league surrounded by yoga bodies and expensive yoga gear, but all of the other women, while having varying levels of fitness, were very nice and friendly and down to earth. I had a great time. We stayed in a little cabin nestled in the pines, and had homecooked meals the entire weekend. We had sessions every day, and three on Saturday, so I'm a bit sore today, but very motivated to keep it up.

I highly recommend it.

In other news, I finished my knit dress before I left and I even wore it to a work event last week.



This is actually a pattern for a shirt that I transformed into a dress. I added an inch (I'm short and there was a tunic option, I added the inch to the tunic option). The shirt has a little wrap flap in the front, so I had to sew that together. It's not a big deal on a top because there are pants underneath, but it didn't work on a dress.



It has a twist in the front, which is a fun addition.

I think it turned out really well, although if I make it again, I need to remember to make it one size smaller, it's just a tad baggy.

I already started working on another dress, McCall's 5882. This one is a bit more complicated as it involved darts and a zipper.

Sewing again

When we were looking fora new house, my husband's main factor was finding a place where he could have an office/studio. After we started looking at house after house, I realized that I wanted a place for myself, too, since I was pulling out my laptop anywhere I could and sewing on the dining table. I rejected one option that would involved my sewing room being in a closet (albeit the largest closet I'd ever seen in a 2500 sq. ft. house) So he got an office and I got a sewing room. However, his office is now also a media room and my sewing room as turned into more of an office but at least we both have out own spaces that we can close off from prying little hands.

After nine months I finally created a little sewing set-up. I've made several things since we moved, but only with my regular sewing machine. I also have a coverstitch machine and a serger, both for working with knits. I hadn't used either of them since the move, for a couple of reasons. I changed a plate in the serger and have to change the plate back and rethread it to work on something different. And I remember having some issues with the coverstitch machine the last time I used it, before the move. That's been more than nine months, and it's not going to fix itself, so I pulled it out.

So here is my little set-up.



The coverstitch is the white machine on the right, a Janome 1000CP. My regular sewing machine is the silver one on the left, a really simple but heavy-duty Singer CG500.

The Janome is having some tension issues, mainly due to user error since I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Here's an example.



Those are skipped stitches, which are dropped on the back side and will eventually unravel. Ask me how I know this.



I'm not a fiddler. I don't particularly like fiddling with machines to get them to work. My computer is a mac, and I live with my own personal IT guy, although I rarely solicit him for technical help. My sewing machines are the same way. If they don't work, I really don't want to mess with them to get them to work. But letting a machine sit there for months without use is just ridiculous.

I messed with the tension, played around with the fabric, adjusted the differential feed (which is how fast the fabric is moved under the needle) and I think I got something to work. Even so, I really don't like pulling out a bunch of coverstitching. Regular stitching is much easier to pull out. So I did a little hand sewing and caught the loose loops on the underside, since those slipped stitches were actually on the new project I'm working on. Seems pretty solid now.

I'll let you see the project soon, all I have to do now is sew up one more seam. I'm making Butterick 5185, with my own surprise twist. See you soon!

Nap Mat

The kiddos started preschool this week. The princess goes four days a week and little prince goes two days a week. Oddly, sometimes that doesn'tseem like enough, but they'll be in full-time school soon enough.

The two-year-old class still takes naps, so I had to get a nap mat for the little man. The school recommended something called a KinderMat, which I couldn't find anywhere (although they did say you can get it at Wal-Mart. I don't go to Wal-Mart).

I knew it was covered in some sort of plastic, probably vinyl, so I decided that I wanted something much more cozy for little guy and decided to make something myself. I bought several yards of flannel, a small pillow, and three squarish 1" washable foam inserts. He was supposed to take a mat, a pillow, and a blanket. I initially thought I would make a mat with a pillow and blanket attached (you can actually find those online), but I didn't buy quite enough fabric to easily make a blanket. I could have probably quilted something together, but I only had a day, I didn't really have any matching fabric, and I've never quilted before.

So I decided to make a mat with a pillow attached.



You can see how the foam fits a bit better here:



All folded up:



I remembered that my grandmother (little guy's great-grandmother) made him a cozy pooh-bear blanket, so rather than try to figure out how to add my own blanket, he took that one to school. That's the blanket folded up inside the mat.

Here's the inside of the attached pillowcase:



I'm pretty pleased how that turned out, particularly since I thought to add extra fabric to allow the pillow case to fold over and lie flat on the mat.

His teacher said he slept more than an hour, so it must have been cozy.

What to do with a nasty old shirt

Before:



After:



Collateral damage:



I made up the pattern myself. My husband said, "Yeah, but you could cheat by using the armholes that were already there." Well, no, I told him. Since the shirt was an extra large, and I'm not, I cut it open, cut out two big rectangles, and pretty much just used it like regular fabric.

The shirt is pretty much just two rectangles. I wanted a boat neck, and tried to sew up the easiest way to make that work. I cut two rectangles, sewed the sides together up to where I thought the armholes should go, and tried it on. I adjusted the armhole measurements, and shaped them from there. I sewed very narrow shoulders, and then hemmed the straight neckline and the armholes (When I make this again, I will sew and hem the neckline first. Since it is just a straight hem, it will be easier to hem if the sides are still open).

Because I don't wear gray, and the boatneck prototype turned out so well that I actually want to wear it, I wanted to add a little color to it. I had an old pink tee that had a hole in an unfortunate place, so I cut it up to make a bright border. I cut two long strips from the pink tee, sewed them together, and added them to the bottom of the gray top to add a border with a side tie.

Here's another one. I don't have a before of this one, but it was just a simple women's tee.



(photo courtesy of our resident little princess)

I chopped off the arms, cut out the ribbed neckline, and shortened the armholes. Then I hemmed everything up, and added little bows at the shoulders with the scraps for a little decorative touch.

It's a good thing my husband doesn't like colorful t-shirts, or I would probably cut them all up.