New patterns!!

I just got FIVE new patterns from Violette Field Threads and I can't wait to test them out!

I got these five patterns:

Emmaline- a cute maxi dress                                     Elise- adorable shirt

Vivienne- beautiful skirt                                            Audrey- cute peasant dress

Chloe- party dress

*Tip* If you plan to buy more than one buy them in a bundle from their etsy store instead of their website. It's a little cheaper this way. :)

These patterns include very descriptive instructions, use words even I know ;) and they have a ton of pictures to reference too! I would say they definitely look user friendly!

You can count on a new post featuring one of these projects soon!

*Note* All pictures in this post are the property of Violette Field Threads. Please do not use without getting permission and giving proper credit where it is due.

Thank you!

Lots-A-Ruffles!

I found this great post over at Ucreate with a ton of ruffle tutorials - Of course I had to go through and pick my favorites!

1. A fun party idea, ruffled streamers how-to, over at Dana Made It

Picture from danamadeit.com

2. I have always loved this douvet cover tutorial by Kiki Creates, one day I will over come my fear of making so many ruffles haha!

3. I would absolutely LOVE to recreate this Anthropologie shower curtain also done by Sister View

Picture from anthropologie.com

4. These ruffled curtains are adorable, over at Better Homes and Gardens

5. This fabric combination and ruffle dress tutorial over at iveyc95 is to die for!

Picture from iveyc95

6. Need a new tote bag? This ruffled tote tutorial posted over at Ucreate may be the one ;)

7. I have to make this cute ruffled rugby dress for my little miss! Tutorial posted over at Sumo's Sweet Stuff

8. From An Igloo posted this great tutorial on a ruffle tunic - Could also make a cute dress.

9. Last but definitely not least - A tutorial for you! A simple ruffled shirt tutorial over at Tea Rose Home

Of course these are only my favorites from the list over at Ucreate, so after you're done here go check out what else she has over there! Or if you're looking for more ruffles check out my Once Upon A Time ruffle skirt!

Spring Skirt Tutorial (Part 1)

Well, welcome back! It has taken much longer than I anticipated it would but I do finally have something for you! Raise your hand if, at some point, your life has been on an extremely crazy schedule..... Yep that's exactly what's going on over here haha. Though I promise you this skirt it's self doesn't take long at all, only the figuring out when to squeeze in time for it... Which I did from about eleven o' clock last night until about 12:15 and all I have left is to make / add pockets. If you're a more experienced sewer you could probably whip it out in half the time ;) I had to improvise a bit and that took some stopping and thinking and more stopping and thinking/revising original plans, not to mention I had no plans for this skirt- no tutorials - no sketches... etc. All completely out of my head at the last minute, which is pretty cool NOW that I think about it... Last night I found myself, asking myself, if I was nuts a few thousand times though.

Now to get started...

This is Baby Bella's skirt.

First of course you're going to need to pick out your fabric.... I knew I wanted to use a cute girly pattern and happened to have quite a bit of this sitting in one of the bunches of fabric my sister in law gave me a little while ago, perfect for the spring and I love the texture! **This tutorial is for about a 6-9 month skirt**

You will need-

Main fabric: cut at a slight angle (shown below)

24.5" long X 6.5" wide 

Top strip:

24.5" long X 2.5" wide (I had two 12.5" strips instead of one 24.5")

Bottom strip:

24.5" long X 4.5" wide(I had two 12.5" strips instead of one 24.5")

These measurements include 1/4 in. sewing allowance.

Elastic (1/2 inch) - I did not measure unfortunately, just kind of guessed... About 14.5 inches?

Iron - this is optional but does make it easier to keep things straight and lined up.

Getting started you will want to make sure you cut out all of your pieces so that they match up and you don't have to go back and do that later.

Take your "bottom strip" of fabric and fold it in half long ways....So that it is now 2 1/4" X 24.5". Iron it real quick for the best results - so you can keep it folded & straight. Now fold each of the edges of that (longways) toward the crease you just created. Kind of like this:

Once you have done that you can fold it back in half and start pinning it to the bottom of the "main fabric" and then sew.

**The seam you see in the picture is because my fabric was not long enough - I took two 12 1/2" long strips and sewed them together. If you need to do this also, I highly recommend doing it before you attach it to the skirt (like I have here) and line it up so that both seams will be on the sides of the skirt and not in the front and back.**

Once you have sewn the strip all the way across the bottom of the skirt its time to do the same for the top strip... When you are done with this your "skirt" should look like this (minus the pocket - that is a work in progress/idea at this point):

Take note, the sides are cut at an angle -
This is so the skirt flairs out slightly and doesn't fit too snugly around the legs.

Now you are ready to pull the elastic through the skirt. This is the fun part haha! Get a safety pin and attach it to the end of your elastic so you will have something to hold onto, then pull it through the "top strip"/ top white section. After this I sewed the ends of the elastic together *shown in the following image* - (you may have a better or easier way to do this - if you do PLEASE SHARE.... I am a total newbie to the sewing world haha.)

Again forgive my picture taking skills, :) this was taken before I trimmed the extra thread but you can see that I have sewn the elastic (ONLY) together.

Finally with the skirt inside out you will want to sew the edge of the skirt closed using a zig-zag stitch or a serger... I do not have a serger so I opted for a close zig-zag stitch. Now that I think about it I should have gotten a picture of that as well... Just make sure you do it really close to the edge - as close as possible without it going over the edge... If that makes sense? I will make sure to get a picture next time.

Now your skirt should look like this:

Now I just need to make and attach the pockets. I'm thinking something along the lines of the pocket shown above, I will post a mini tutorial on that too.

Until then, feel free to share if you have easier / better ways of accomplishing any of the steps in this tutorial, or if you have any questions at all - I would LOVE to read them!

XOXO

My First Dress - Tutorial

Last Wednesday I told you all a little about the first dress I made and promised to figure out where I found the tutorial... Just when I thought I had lost the tutorial for good and there was no hope in finding it ever again... Guess what?! Yep, I found it. Haha, nothing is impossible. ;)

I found this tutorial over at Craftiness Is Not Optional, and it was actually a guest post from Little Big Girl Studio. At the time I just wanted to finally MAKE something with my new sewing machine (that I so cleverly wrecked the tension on... hehe... My last post explains this.), and of course I wanted it to be somewhat simple, cute, not intimidating... This "peasant dress"/MiniBoden knock-off seemed to fit the bill, and would have been easy enough had I not messed up all of my tension settings before hand... So before we start... Fix your tension settings!... Or if you've never touched them before - DON'T touch them. ;)

Now, before we go much further, I want to make it clear that I used this tutorial MOSTLY just for the fabric cutouts/basic instruction and winged it from there. Being fairly new to the sewing world I wasn't comfortable using quite the same technique she did with the elastic thread and opted to use elastic in a casing instead - which I will try my best to explain.

Also, this is for a size 2T dress. If your child is smaller/bigger you may want to research how much bigger your fabric needs to be because I haven't quite mastered all of that...

Basically I followed all of her instructions only making these "tweaks":
I had no fabric marking pen - I used white chalk instead
I had no elastic thread - I used elastic instead
I had no Hem Gauge - I winged my hem :)
I added ribbon and buttons

If you use elastic like I did you may want to add about an inch to your skirt length so that you can fold that over *toward the "wrong side"* 1/4in and then again an inch to create a "tunnel", or whatever you want to call it, for your elastic to go through. Sew close to the edge you folded twice, leaving about an inch open to string the elastic through. AND THEN follow her instructions on how to attach the skirt to the top. *trying not to sew over the elastic*

Before I created the "tunnel" for the elastic I added two button holes to the front of the skirt so that I could attach ribbon to the ends of my elastic and tie them together (making it easier to adjust on her) instead of having just elastic on the inside of the dress... I also thought it would be a cute addition. If you also decide to do this - you don't have to worry about leaving an inch of the casing open because you will string your elastic through one button hole and out the other.

For the elastic I used enough to go around my daughters waist ONLY 2/3 of the way... then added the ribbon to each end (sewing it on with a zigzag stitch).

For the elastic in the neck area she explains pretty well how to make that happen in step 6 of this tutorial.


I hope I didn't make this sound too difficult, it really isn't. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section below and I will try to answer them as best as I can, if I don't know the answer I will find it for you. Sorry also for the lack of explanatory photos, I had no idea at the time that I would be blogging about it. :)

My First Dress

...Well the first dress I've ever made...

I don't remember where or how I got my hands on the tutorial for this dress - I just spent an hour searching my computer AND the internet for something close/something that looked familiar.... and NOTHING... So I will add that to my list of things to keep looking for (haha) or perhaps I will break down and bring the dress out to examine what exactly it was that I did and create a tutorial from there... But for now, here are some pictures:

Please do keep in mind, this was only my second project, so I couldn't sew a straight line for my life! And to top that off, I was having terrible issues with my threading tension *because as soon as I got my machine I had to touch every knob, button, switch on my machine - :( including the bobbin tension (what was I thinking?!!!) Though luckily you cant see all of the imperfections in these pictures (thanks to horrible lighting and all the gathering hehe). And it isn't the WORST second sewing project ever... Right?? LOL.

I was just happy she could actually wear it! Haha

Basically this dress is about three pieces of fabric. The top/back w/sleeves, the top/front, and the "skirt"... Wait plus the pockets - so that's really a couple more pieces isn't it? Ok, I PROMISE I will get a real tutorial up in the next month or so, let me just figure out where I put it. ;)