Daisy's Dresses

Sunday night I finished the pink party dress for Daisy. I think it turned out so darn cute.

Finished party dress, ignore the mess in the background

I ended up adding the lace to the neckline and the cuffs. I also changed the order sewing the lining pieces together so that all the seams would be enclosed, especially the scratchy net petticoat seam. The lining is hemmed with a machine narrow hem. The outside of the dress however, I could not get my blindhem stitch on the machine to cooperate, so I blind hemmed it by hand. Tedious but worth the results.


In my stash I also found some cute green-blue cotton with embroidered fishes. A little heavier than the cotton I use for my sundresses, perfect for a fall dress for little girls.

It's a bit more blue than the camera is showing.

For this dress I used McCall's 6273.

I mixed up the elements of the dresses. Used the a-line skirt like the yellow image, but with the round neck and the little sleeves. I also left off the ribbons and the petticoat ruffle. The dress was lengthened 5 inches to be a little more modest, and the ties I cut 4 the full width of the fabric, then sewed them in pairs, and turned rightside out. I've found that the ties on most of the patterns I've used are downright wimpy. An easy fix though. The ties are super long, but now she can either have a really big bow in the back, or wrap them around the front for a bow there. The dress is lined with brown broadcloth and has pockets, like the pink one.

Aren't those little sleeves so CUTE?

You may have noticed, I like big bows

Nana also gave me a slip Daisy had outgrown and asked if I could make a bigger one. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of it, but its a basic white slip. Wide shoulder straps, ruffle on the bottom, and shirred side panels on the bodice part for wider range of fit. An exact copy of the one she'd outgrown, but a size bigger. I used white cotton I had on-hand, but the neck and armholes were bound with bias tape, and that I did not have. Not in white anyway. So, as anyone stuck would do, I googled.

Making your own bias tape is not hard, you just need a bit of patience. This is the first link that came up, and I found it quite helpful.

All-in-all, I was quite pleased with the dresses I'd made for Daisy. Nana loved them and said Daisy would too. :)

I own more patterns than I thought.

This morning I organized my patterns and created a master list so that I won't buy duplicates. I didn't realize how many I actually have. There are 61 patterns for regular clothing (dresses, pants, tops...) and 55 costume patterns in my collection. Judging by the ones I own, I think Simplicity has the best costumes, McCalls the best casual dresses, Vogue the best fancy dresses, and Butterick the best 'historical' costumes. Now, that's just my opinion, and it's based off the things I like to sew. If you have different tastes, you might not agree with me.

Right now my patterns are in two flat-rate USPS boxes, but just barely. I need a better/bigger storage system. Maybe I can clean out the 'junk drawer' on my cabinet and use that. How do you keep your patterns organized?

The box in the back is costumes, the front box is regular clothing

Stash Clean-up

A woman asked me to sew some dresses for her young granddaughter. We'll call her Daisy. I'm not sure of Daisy's age, I'll have to ask again when I see her again, but I think she's about 7. My only rules for the dresses were that they have to have some sort of sleeve, and they can't be "too short." I think no shorter than knee length sounds about right for an elementary school girl. I've decided that I should probably use up whatever fabric I can from my stash (several LARGE storage bins and an overstuffed shelf) before buying new fabric.

So, her first dress will be Simplicity 7462, a pretty party dress in some fuchsia taffeta. I'd ordered this fabric for another project and it was much too bright, but perfect for a fancy tea party dress.No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the lighting to show what color the fabric actually is. It looks red in the pictures. It's bright pink, and slightly iridescent. Depending on the angle, it will look varying shades of hot pink, sometimes purplish.

I wasn't able to measure Daisy myself, but her Nana gave me one of her dresses that fit well. Judging from the measurements of the dress, I cut a size 10. I didn't make many changes so far. For the ties, instead of cutting two and folding them in half, I cut four and sewed the top/bottom and ends to make a fatter bow. I also added pockets on the side seams. My gramma always said everything was better with pockets. :)

Progress shots!

The front of the dress has these really neat pleats. To make them, the pattern piece is pretty funny looking. It's got all these strips on the top, that the edges get sewn together, and the bottom of the stitching line creates inverted box pleats on the outside.

Here's the front piece, with the left side pinned

Completely pinned pleats

I've sewn together as much of the dress as I can without going to the fabric store in the morning. The outside is completely together, and the bodice lining is sewn, but I didn't have enough of the fabric to make the skirt lining, and I don't have a proper colored zipper on hand. I think I will also add lace to the collar and the sleeve bands like the envelope suggests.

Front of the dress, minus sleeves and lace collar.

Back of the dress. Love dresses with big bows.

I should be able to get to the store sometime this weekend, and it'll be done shortly after that. :D

Day One

Hello everyone! As this is my first post, I'll tell you a little about me. My name is Alice. I sew. I once heard someone say that men think about sex something like once every 5 seconds. Whether that's true or not, it's about how often I think about sewing. My hopes for this blog is that anyone even slightly as interested in sewing as I am can keep track of all the new things I'm working on. I will occasionally post links to sites and tutorials that I found helpful, and you're more than happy to ask my advice on things. Along those lines, I'm almost entirely self taught in the ways of needle and thread, so I may or may not tell you the *right* way to do something, but it will still work.

With that out of the way, on to the first project!