Burda Challenge - Burda 10-2014 #105 Cowl-Neck Dress

I knew I would make this dress from the very first time I saw it in the Burda magazine. I love simple easy dresses like this. Put on some tights and boots and you are ready to go. This dress is just three pieces and super simple to make. Before I put all the pieces away, I plan on making another one out of stretchier fabric (and crazy print).

This fabric is wicking merino wool. It’s super cozy and warm. However, it does not have quite enough stretch for this particular pattern. Well, when you see the back you’ll know what I’m talking about. Doesn’t it look cozy and warm? It’s only 38 degrees out when I was taking these pictures. Brrrrrrrrrrr. No snow yet. Well we did get some, but it melted. That doesn’t count.

 

Here’s the line drawing from Burda. See? Simple cowl-neck dress. The back piece extends onto the front to make these interesting panels on the front.

 

You can see in particular that the arms are very tight. You can also see a drapier fabric would have been better here. The cowl-neck doesn’t want to drape beautifully. It wants to stick up. I may tack it down with a stitch or two. You can barely see that this fabric has a subtle herringbone pattern (there is still more of this fabric up on Etsy).

 

Here you can really see that it’s snug. I’ll still wear it certainly. I really like it, in fact. I think a stretchier fabric will be perfect. I also should add a CB seam and fix the swayback. But I won’t. I’m lazy like that.

 

Next up: a killer shirt. Get it? Killer? Yea, my students never think I’m funny either. This is a blood-splatter lace from JoAnn’s. It has very little stretch also. I used my Jalie 2805 t-shirt pattern to make a basic long-sleeved t-shirt out of the fabric. I made it one size larger than my normal t-shirt size.

 

I should have made the shirt about two inches longer. Other than that, it’s a win. My students, especially in my forensics class, will love this. I have to wear a tank or t-shirt under this as the lace is very see through. Halloween is my favorite season. Yes, season, not holiday.

 

Next up: I think another Burda dress. Oh, and my hand-made Halloween costumes for the children that must dress up like book characters.

Jalie 2805 as Christmas Dresses

Whew. I need a vay-kay from my vay-kay. We spent a couple weeks in California and had fun with family. Before we left, I made a few Christmas dresses out of stretch velvet. I used Jalie 2805 as my base and just added a gathered skirt at the bottom. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Here are a few shots. I never did get a chance to get a normal pose of the dresses. I made four of them. One for little Daughter #3 (that’s the red and black one), and three identical ones for the twins and their cousin.

 

For the black dresses, I used FOE on the neck for the binding. I used a thick red ribbon and stitched it to the skirt where the top and bottom met. I only stitched it in the front and the back of the ribbon was extra long so it could be tied in a bow. I added little red bows at the neck.

 

Here’s a better picture of the FOE elastic at the neck. This picture sort of creeps me out. It’s like her face is melting. It’s by the grace of Sheba that I got the nap to all go the same way. I never sew with this stuff and totally forgot that you need to make sure the nap is all facing the same way. Oops!

 

Here’s the dress for Daughter #3. Hers is red on top with a black skirt. I didn’t have enough to make everyone’s the same. I used FOE on this one too and then added thicker ribbon and three little bows at the neckline.

 

 

Hope you guys had a fantastic holiday (even with your weather in the Midwest!) and start the year refreshed! Look! Even a picture where all of us are looking at the camera!!

 

 

I have so much to show you guys. I just haven’t had time! I might have gotten a fabric haul at the National City Swap Meet, I might have also bought another machine (eep!), and I also might have some fabric to sell you people. I have that same wool knit from the Jalie tunic but in two different colors. I hope to have time this weekend to take some good (natural light) pictures and put it up on Etsy.

Tis the Season

All three of my girlie-girls have gone crazy over my pencil case where I store my doodling stuff. As a Christmas gift, I made them each their own pouch, stocked it with fun pens, pencils, and markers, and found nice drawing pads. The drawing pad in the background shows off the famous Hokusai print. I bought the sketch books at Barnes and Noble for $5.99.

 

I will youngest daughter #3 the smaller purple notebook. She is really obsessed with writing out her name and her letters. Her notebook has lines in it. The other two girlies will get blank pages.

 

I used the same pattern as I used on my case. They turned out pretty cute I think. I love the quilting on them.

 

I love the embroidery too.

 

Here’s a size comparison for you guys. Mine is the big one. Notice that the fabric on the smaller ones looks a lot like gray wool? Notice some of it is topstitched? Hmmmm. I got my revenge on that stupid gray skirt, yes, I did. Mwaaaa haaaa haaa.

 

Here’s what I plan to put in the little pouches. Papermate should be sponsoring my buying habits.

 

I love these thick mechanical pencils. They are 1.3mm and are easy to use when I am doodling and sketching. The kids love them because they are really unbreakable.

 

I love these pens in general.

 

And these Inkjoy pens writes smooth and they come in vibrant, fun colors.

 

I think all the girls will love them. I’ll let you know.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

We had lots of fun opening our stockings and presents. I hope you had a fantastic day too!

 

I made all the girls jammies too. Love her metallic iron-on Pegasus? She loves it!

 

We love My-my!

 

My favorite pair of jammies . . .

 

Remember the stockings? I decided to attach my stocking letters with a safety pin and ribbon. I just tied a cute little bow, put it on top of the green ribbon, and safety pinned it to the inside of the stocking. That way, we can change who gets what stocking every year. All the girls wanted the angel stocking so we did a little drawing to figure out who would pick first.

Here are three of them. With the letters that didn’t have holes (the S and C), I added some hot glue so the letters are firmly attached to the ribbon.

Here’s our beautiful holiday mantle. Yes, I live in a construction zone. The gas fireplace is behind the “fire”. It just needs to get hooked up. The kids are funny. They will run over to the “fire” when they are cold and say their hands are getting warm next to it. Funny butts!

Stockings

When you have a family of six, any little project turns into a big project. A while back, I decided to make stocking for all of us. Between cutting, embroidering, and sewing, it’s taken me a while to crank these babies out. I really like them and I love the embroidery. The embroidery is from UrbanThreads and it’s the Yuletide Revelry package. 

 

Each stocking is different but has the same theme thanks to the package of designs.

 

The insides are a fun green Christmas fabric from JoAnn’s. Instead of ribbon hangers, I decided on these clips from IKEA. They are just pinch clips so I can remove them when we are done hanging them.

 

Here are some detail shots. The embroidery turned out fantastic.

 

I added bling to most of them. If you look closely, you can find the crystals on the others.

 

My plan is to do a little lottery for the stockings. All the girls want the angel so we will draw for who gets to choose first. Then, I’ll put their letter on the stocking. These are the flat wooden letters from JoAnn’s.

Happy holidays everyone! I have a lot of things to do before the 23rd! That’s the day we will have all the kiddos so that is when we are doing Christmas this year.

A Little Christmas Sewing

I’m busily working on Christmas projects already. I am going to make six stocking for our fireplace. My plan is to use Urban Threads embroidery to decorate the fabric first and then cut them and sew them up. I am using the Yuletide Revelry pattern pack (includes a bunch of embroidery like the one below). I just had to share with you guys. I love, love, love the little details on these embroidery designs. I love most of their stuff over at Urban Threads. I’m using their recommended colors because I’m pretty bad at being creative and knowing what colors go together. This wreath is my favorite one so far. Well, and I love the text too.

 

Close-up so you can see the scribbles and text behind the wreath.

 

Aren’t the snowflakes fun???!

 

Well, that’s my update. This should keep me busy for a while. I might have to make some matching pillows too or something. I really do like them and it’s not too cheese-ball Christmas. You know I’m excited when I put up a whole post about some embroidery patterns!

Halloween Plans!! You guys'll love this!

Last year I had a blast making (and wearing) my Halloween costume. If you don't recall, I went as Amy Winehouse and had a lot of fun. This year I'm planning on going as Neytiri, the Avatar girl. How much fun will that be?

So I ordered yardage of the Orina Nylon Swimwear fabric from Fabric.com. I am planning on either melding two patterns to make a jumpsuit or making a pant/top combo out of the fabric. I know the combo would be easier and maybe I could wear it for some other occasion (not). The combo would also be easier to alter and change the torso length. Once I cut out the one-piece jumpsuit, I'm stuck with it. I'm planning on making some templates for the stripes and having a friend spray paint stripes on while I'm wearing it. Then I'll make a simple loincloth like above. Then, all I need is a wig. I love wigs! I might even be able to take the Amy wig and braid it and add beads to it. We'll see.

I plan on using Jalie 2215 because I've made it numerous times and the fit is snug for the top and the bottom. Here's one of the versions that I've made. The knit top here is a little loose because it has very little recovery.

I was also a bad girl when I went to Fabric.com. I loved that Slub Rayon Jersey Knit so much that I also bought it in black and grey. Oops!! But I HAD to get up to the free shipping mark of $35. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .

One of my girlfriends wanted me to embroider the tops of her Christmas stockings with their names. I have Embird, the embroidery software, already and like the program. When my friend asked me to do the embroidery I figured I would also buy the Embird Font Engine. It's a bit spendy but I think I'll use it quite a bit. It enables you to turn any font into embroidered letters. Some fonts turn out well when embroidered and some don't. I found these two fonts at www.dafont.com. That is my favorite site for finding free fonts for my computers. These two are Fontdinerdotcom and Faux Snow. After several explicatives and many, many trial runs, I came up with this combination. If you have Font Engine I used Plain Fill (Fill 1) with the Triple Bean Stitch for the border of the letters. For the snowflake font, I chose No Fill and used the Redwork for the border of the "letter". I used a tear-away interfacing on the bottom with a strip of mid-weight Solvy on the top so they letters did not sink into the fleece fabric.

Here's a close-up where you can see the triple stitch along the outside. I think they turned out quite nice.

What my friend doesn't realize (or won't until she reads this) is that I had to take the fleece off the main stocking to make it lie flat in the embroidery machine. So, she'll have to sew them back together and sew them back on the stockings. I would have done it (it's a 20 minute machine job) but my transport system (my mom) was leaving to get on a plane this afternoon so I didn't have time.

Halloween

We had two Halloween parties to attend this year. Because most of my friends have kids, we did the adult party on Friday night so that on the actual Halloween night we could do trick or treating with our kids. My husband is Biker Dude. The tats are all fake but look great. Needless to say, I danced my little toes off and had a great time. My mother was here to watch the kids.

We took several cheesy couples photos before we left.

This is Amy Winehouse being naughty. My husband is so patient.

Here's me after I've had a bit to drink. Do you think I could be smiling any wider?? The doctor is not nearly as into this photo as I am. Part of it is that my hair is all over the place. Like my tats? It's one of those tattoo shirts.

Ginormous hair. The back combed it to within an inch or its life. And, it's really, really, really hard to get that much eyeliner the same on both sides. I figured the worse it was, the more realistic is really would be for ol' Amy.

I made myself leather arm bands to hide the ends of the tattoo shirt. I just cut two strips of leather and added copper snaps.