Easter dresses 2012

The pictures aren't that great, but the dresses turned out. They certainly wouldn't win any awards, but they'll do.

The Most Important Question

Last night I dreamed I had a visit with my maternal grandma. Not the non- sewer with the sewing machine. This grandma was an obvious sewer with a sewing room filled with bright and loud 70's and 80's polyester fabric. I have a shirt that she made for me that my almost 5 year old wears now. In my dream, the only question I had for her is what kind of stitch she used in the collar of that shirt. Not only did I not ask her the meaning of life or any other questions saved for those who have gone before, the dream didn't last long enough for me to hear the answer to the seam question.

Threading Grandma's Bobbin

My sister inherited my grandma's sewing machine.  Funny thing is, I never knew of this particular grandma to sew.  I suppose that it makes sense that my sister inherited it since she doesn't really sew either!  My machine is in the shop for its annual check up (it take two weeks uhg).  So I borrowed Grandma's machine.  Problem is I couldn't figure out how to thread the bobbin.  I tried three different ways, wasted lots of thread and then I finally found a helpful post on the internet.  It turns out that this particular Viking Husquvara machine threads the bobbin while the needle is still threaded.  Once I did it the right way, it worked like a charm!  Tried to find an internet picture to show, but alas, I'll have to take a real pic soon.

Pillowcase Dresses

When visiting relatives this summer my oldest daughter borrowed the cutest dress from her cousin. It was a purchased pillowcase dress and I fell in love with how it looked on her. When we got home, I immediately went to the fabric store to purchase some fabric to make some myself.

Cakes in her dress. I think it looks better with a regular shirt instead of the turtle neck.

My daughters have very generous spirits so I actually made 6 of these. Two for my girls, 2 for cousins and 2 for friends. I didn't quite get the lengths right. If I had to do it over I would make my oldest's a bit shorter and my youngest's a bit longer. However, the width is generous so as she grows she can wear it as a shirt with a pair of leggings. The pictures aren't very good to show the lengths. Even though it's shorter, it is cute. It reminds me of a Cindy Brady type dress.

Bug in her dress

On the first one I used regular double folded biased tape for the arm holes. When I used the seam ripper because I missed catching some of the biased tape, I accidentally ripped the fabric. For the next dresses I used extra wide bias tape.

It's hard to get a normal picture of these hams.

The last one I made was for my 20 month old niece. Since she's still napping, I made attached ties with the bias tape instead of a casing and using a ribbon to tie it. Then I put in elastic in the casing to gather it.

The bottom layer on each dress has about 3 inches of white cotton. You can't see in the picture, but there are 2 lines of top stich in a contrasting color.

Get Well Banner

After looking on several websites for ideas, I began this fabric pennant banner. My sweet 6 year old niece Sadie recently had a liver transplant. Her liver failure came on very suddenly and randomly. We live a few states away, so we have been unable to visit her. Hopefully, this will brighten up her hospital room.



When I went to Joann Fabric to pick out fabrics I found a stack of 5 coordinating fat quarters for $9.99. Lucky for me they weren't on sale, so I was able to use my 50 percent off coupon and score them for five bucks. I'm not sure how well you can see the fabrics, but they have princesses, castles, frogs and flowers on them.

To cut the triangles I folded the quarters in half lengthwise so they measured 22x9. Then I used the rotary cutter and cut them to a width of 7 inches and length of 9 inches like this.

Image from http://www.yourhomebasedmom.com

This made 5 double sided pennants of each fabric. The only tricky part is that two of the fabrics have a definite right and wrong way up so I had to rearrange the triangles and only got 2 pennants that were right on both sides. I used the least number of pennants from these two fabrics.



To make the letters I used a tupperware type lid for as the template for the circles. Then I printed out letters from here. I printed them out at %125 to get them the appropriate size. Before I traced and cut letters I ironed on wonder-under to the letters so that I could iron them on instead of pinning. Then I traced, cut, and ironed, and then sewed the letters onto the circles and then ironed and sewed the circles onto the fabric. This is actually a double sided banner. The opposite side says, Welcome Home Sadie.



After I had stitched on all the letters and circles I serged them together so I wouldn't have to stitch and turn. Just be sure at this point that your front and back side letters are matched up correctly.



Finally, I pinned on extra wide double fold bias tape to attach the whole thing together. I pinned tons (about 3 pins per pennant or a pin every 2 inches) and then sewed it all together.