Tag: projects

Finished Laurel dresses with tiny ruffle variation.

Here it is!  After a year delay, the debut of the Laurel dresses.

The woman who owns and designs Colette Patterns is large of bust and long of leg.  Her designs tend to minimize bust and highlight leg.  As I am small of bust and short of leg, I am always dropping her necklines (sometimes by several inches) and hemming her dresses to a longer length.  
After I finished making these dresses, I remembered that this is not necessarily the most flattering style on me.  I tend to do better with a defined waist.  However, these are incredibly comfortable dresses and I think they will get a lot of use.  I’m glad I spent so much time fitting the shirts, as it translated into a pretty good fit on the dresses.
To see all the posts in the Laurel journey, click here.

Colette Patterns Mabel

I walked to Modern Domestic to get the Moneta pattern not Wonder Tape, now that I think about it.  While there I was overcome and bought not just the Monea pattern, but also the Mabel pattern and a yard of material to make me a skirt.  My solemn vow to only have one project at a time on hand seems to have gone by the wayside and I’ve driven to another state.

Tracing the pattern, using my handy “pattern weights” aka cans of food.

Cutting the waistband.

Cutting out the skirt.  My sewing scissors are incredibly dull and I ended up getting out my rotary cutter and 12″x 12″ cutting mat, which made for some tough repositioning.

Laurel finished. And my eye is already on other projects.

This picture makes me think I’m a midgit.  But it’s just a weird hanging height.  I’ll take some pictures wearing said Laurels later.  I can’t believe it took me almost a year to finish this project.  Too many things going on.  But let me say, these dresses are COMFORTABLE!  I really like them a lot, though their length means I have to squat like a lady while at work.

But yeah.  The projects have stacked up.  In addition to materials bought to make another apron (I kind of want to do a new one every summer) I also succumbed to the siren song of knits that Colette patterns has been sounding of late.  The material on the left is so I can make a Moneta of my very own and, if the pattern is as simple and flattering as people say, I may make three more uniform dresses so I can have a new uniform this year.  The material on the right is for curtains for the bedroom window.  I bought them on sale at Lowe’s and I have plans to make them work better than they do now.  

And, of course, I bought material to make a roller shade for the door-with-window in my bedroom ages ago. The colorful fabric is from Ikea.  The border/backing fabric might look familiar to you, it’s the leftover fabric from the uniform project. I’ve layered the two together with a picture of said roller shade so you can get the effect.  The not-quite-blue curtains I purchased at Lowe’s will be integrated with the room by cutting out birds from the excess Ikea fabric (I have enough, I checked) and sewing them on triangles of the uniform fabric and sewing those on the curtains.  I also have plans to run a red ribbon across the curtains, (and possibly on the back of the shade?) to tie it into the red of the comforter.
As you can see, Sentinel is quite excited by this project.

Baby blanket finished!

Nothing like the baby actually being born to motivate the knitting process.
This was made for Mya Rose, Matt’s brand new niece.

I was nearly done with it in March, having knitted most of it while watching Downton Abby this season.  But then I didn’t have any other shows to watch, so nearly done it stayed, until the birth spurred me onward.

Laurel Dress. Making more bias tape and a setback.

I concluded I did not have enough bias tape to complete this project, so I made some more.  Matt helped.  I have good spacial relations, but not good enough to be 100% confident that I could make the bias tape exactly as before with those stripes.  

Also, I discovered my iron has sprung  a leak.  I store it on top of the file cabinet when I’m not sewing and I discovered a wet, rusty mess below the file cabinet.  This involved moving the file cabinet and cleaning under it.

Then I propped it up on bars of soap so air would circulate under and dry the bottom, without leaving rust stains.

I felt very smart to think of this solution.

Should there be any future reference needed, this is the way you slice your stripy bias tape to get bias tape to come out vertical.

Here’s my new bias tape maker!  It’s the yellow thing on the right, nosed against the iron.

Here’s my good helper.

And here I am sewing together sleeves.  You can see where the iron drips.