The Birthday Dress

When I was in Albuquerque visiting Suzy I picked up some darling strawberry fabric and a coordinating green fabric to make Abbie a dress. Well by the time we got home Abbie decided that she no longer wanted to wear dresses so I put the fabric aside with the intent that I would use it for Abbie's annual birthday dress. A week or two ago I let Abbie look through my patterns and decide which dress she wanted for her birthday dress. Nothing much happened with the dress between then and today because I was just too busy to work on it. Today I decided that the tradition of making Abbie a birthday dress was just to important to miss and I got to work after church this morning. Luckily Abbie picked a really easy pattern and I was able to get the dress done in less that 2 hours. The dress doesn't look that great in the picture but I hope that it will look cute on her. This was my first time using the jumbo rickrack and I am not sure I like how it looks. Abbie seemed to like it when I showed to to her and that's all that matters. This is another of the Oliver +S Popover sundresses that I have made before (here). I love this pattern it is so quick and easy, can be worn year round and can be embellished in many different ways.

American Girl has nothing on me

Remember this year's Birthday Dress? Well I found a great Red, White and Black plaid fabric when I was at quilt camp and decided to make her a Christmas dress in the same pattern. The dress is almost done I just have to go out and get some black piping for the front. Today I decided that Abbie needed a matching dress for one of her dolls. I drafted a pattern based on the one for Abbie and here is what I came up with. I am so happy with the way it came out. I am sure that more of these dresses will be made for both Abbie and her doll.

A Post with pictures even!

Please forgive my absence lately but I have been dealing with some things in my private life. My friend S reminded me the other day that I enjoy blogging and just because there are things going on doesn't mean that I shouldn't do something that I enjoy.

So on to the post. I sewed today! I've noticed that my son's shorts have been getting smaller and smaller so today while the kids were at there grandparents with their father I made my son two new pairs of shorts. The tan pair is from a old pair of pants and the blue pair is from some leftover fabric from making this jacket for Alex. I've noticed that lately Alex checks for the tag on his shorts so to help him out I sewed a small ribbon tag to the back side of the shorts waistband seam. These shorts are so quick and easy to make especially with the serger. It is this pattern that I have used over and over again.

Too Stinkin' Cute

A friend gave me this fabric a while ago and I put it aside with the intention of making clothes for the kids. Now that it has gotten warmer Alex needs some new shorts so I pulled this fabric out and made him a pair. When I got Alex's shorts done I had just (barely) enough fabric left to make Abbie a dress. I started this about 6:30 took a break to put the kids to bed and I finished at about 10. I still need to put buttons and button holes in the dress but I need to go to the store tomorrow to pick up some. The nice thing about the dress is that it can easily be worn as a top as she gets bigger. The friend that gave me this print also gave me a blue polka dot fabric that matches so I think that this winter I'll make some pants for Abbie to wear with it. And yes, I do plan on making them wear the outfits at the same time.

My Craftiness

As promised here are some of the projects that I have been working on lately:



Here is Abbie's dress, I am so pleased with how it turned out. I even made her a pair of bloomers to go with it. I am also planning on making her a headband in the pink fabric to go with it.


Lately I have been thinking more and more about bringing my own bags to the grocery store. It's not necessarily an environmental thing with me, although that is a side effect, it's more that I don't like to waste and it feels so wasteful to use plastic bags. I have a couple of the acme bags from www.reusablebags.com, but they are rather pricey. So, when the dogs recently ripped one of my king sized fitted sheets I decided to recycle it into some cloth shopping bags. I got the pattern from www.morsbags.com and they have been pretty quick to put together.


Lastly this is a project that has been lurking in my sewing room for nearly three years now. Shortly before my son was born a friend gave this cross stitchery to me that she had found in a antique store. It was in a frame that I didn't particularly care for so I took it into my craft room to do "something" to it and it has just sat there ever since. Tonight I was inspired to make it into a quilted wall hanging. I origninally had put another outer border on it and did not like the results so I dug though my stash of 30's fabrics and found this green polka dot that I think is perfect. I don't have anything that I think will work for the binding so I think that tomorrow I'll stop by the quilt store to see what they have, I am thinking either solid green or solid cream.

A nice day with a couple of friends

Two girlfriends and I got together today to hang out and make the handkerchief dresses that I reviewed here. All three of us made Halloween themed dresses and one of us made a cute Hello Kitty one. I am very pleased with how they turned out and they were super easy to make, especially with a serger. I also got some time to work on Abbie's birthday dress today and all I have left is the hem and the buttonholes.

A Review of EZ Patterns

Recently I was reading a post from the freehairbows yahoo group and they were talking about a group of patterns on ebay by a seller named ezpatterns. I was intrigued and immediately went to ebay and checked them out and felt that the patterns were nice and a reasonable price at $19.99 for a complete set. The patterns are either available as electronic delivery or you can have a paper pattern sent to you for an additional $17.01. This is a set of 9 patterns and each individual pattern sells separately for $4.99. After the auction I paid immediately and expected to have my patterns soon after as stated in the auction. After several hours I still had not received the email link and emailed the sender. She responded the next morning with the link to download the patterns. I was able to download 7 of the 9 patterns without incident but with two of the patterns I was told that I had exceeded the allotted number of downloads even though I had not downloaded them at all yet. I had to email the lady twice in order to have her reset those two patters, so for a pattern set that was purchased the morning of July 13th I did not have my complete set until the afternoon of the 15th, not bad but not the instant service stated in the auction.
Now from the description in the auction I was expecting 9 unique patterns, and am a bit disapointed in them. I would say that there are basically 3 patterns and all of the others are variations on a theme. Most of the basic patterns can be found for free on the internet, although I do have to give her credit for the creative variations. The first basic pattern is the pillowcase dress of which the pillowcase dress, romper, peasant dress, pillowcase halter dress and the sun dress/swing top are variations. Try this link for a great pillowcase dress pattern tutorial with pictures. If I were to buy again I would definitely buy the Romper pattern since I think it is the most unique and I didn't find anything like it on the internet. The next pattern type is the t-shirt dress of which the twirl dress, the onesie twirl dress and the bandanna t-shirt dress fit this category. Here are three free patterns: a onesie dress, a t-shirt dress from HGTV, and another t-shirt dress. Of the patterns I would probably buy the bandanna t-shirt dress pattern since it seems to be a unique variation. The last pattern type is the bottoms, of which there are the shorts/bloomers and the capri/long pants. Here is a link for bloomer instructions and making pants out of a t-shirt. Both ezpatters patterns are a good instruction for making your own bottoms, but instead of paying $4.99 I would recommend buying a simple pants pattern on sale and adjusting the length and embellishments to suit your needs. In review, I would have been better off buying the romper, bandanna t-shirt dress and possibly the peasant dress patterns. This would have saved me about $5.00. I would recommend the complete pattern set for new sewers and those not comfortable making their own variations. I would also recommend to the pattern maker possibly offering a website with pictures of the outfits made with her patterns as inspiration for those of us that have purchased her patterns.