Jalie 3463–Anne-Marie Dress

I’ve made this pattern up in a top before and I really like it and wear it often in the summer I was wearing it on vacation just last week. I kept putting things in that enormous back pocket. Like my phone, lip balm, tickets, car keys, etc. I know it’s supposed to be for tennis balls, but whatever. I realized that a dress version would be just the ticket on vacation. So, when I got home from vacation, I made one for my next vacation.

I did not make this, just so we are all clear, for a sport use. I made this purely for a travel/fun purpose. The CF/CB panels are made with a fun ivory/black scuba knit. The solid black is a Nike Dri-Fit fabric.

I love how the side panels flare out a bit for an a-line shape. 

This is what photoshoots in my house always look like, by the way. Little photobombers just waiting to jump into view.
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I love how it looks like I matched the pocket on the back. I didn’t. That was luck. I love the back on this dress.

Oh, and this dress has a built-in shelf bra which is actually pretty supportive. I love that about a travel dress too.

I love how big this pocket is. I may have to make another one of these dresses in a solid color just because comfort and pockets.

I will also wear this to work with a jacket or cardigan. And I’m talking to my daughter here. She’s a sassy beast.

We Have Returned . . .

Howdy! Just thought I’d share a few vacation photos. We got home a couple of days ago and the four hour time change is driving me bonkers. I keep waking up at 3am ready to start my day! We went to South Carolina and Texas. Luckily, we left the day before the shootings in Charleston. Ugh, horrible . . . Sometimes it’s horrible what people do to one another. We did thoroughly enjoy our time down there though. My dad has 80 acres, cows, a fishing pond, tractors, dogs, etc. It’s a kid’s paradise.

 

Her first bass with proud Grandpa looking on.

 

Sunbathing beauties and Handsome Man. (Jalie swim shirts!!)

 

This was there favorite thing to do by far. I think they are actually fish.

 

Isn’t it pretty here? Every morning we would fish in the pond. At night, we fed the fish. Now that I think about it, that seems a bit mean. It’s like we gave them afternoon treats if they allowed themselves to be caught (we released all of them!).

 

Not growing wild. These were at the Biltmore Mansion.

 

My kids wore the Jalie swim shirts all the time when we were in the water. I know for sure it saved The Boy from burning. He’s very pale.

 

On the sewing front: I have another Jalie pattern to show you. I have three pairs (that’s how much I love this pattern!!!!!!) of the Éléonore pull-on jeans to show you!!!! One is “normal” dark blue stretch denim and two pairs are crazy prints (my favorites!!!!). I have one cropped pair and two long pairs to show you!! I haven’t started by June Burda Challenge but I will get it done before July! *fingers crossed*

Jalie 3247 - Swimsuit!

Tired of me yet? I’ve been posting like non-stop this week. Or, at least I feel like it. I had to just squeeze in one more thing before we leave tomorrow. Something for me!! I love making swimsuits. They are cheap, fast, and they FIT, unlike their retail cousins.

 

I made this using two of the pieces from the 3247 pattern. You’ve seen these bottoms before when I used them on this swimsuit. I cut them about the same. The top though, that’s different.

 

For the top, I used the gymnastics top View C. Originally, I made it just like the envelope except that I lowered the CF by about an inch. When I was done with it, it looked exactly like a sports bra. Hmmmm, not what I was looking for in a swimsuit. Then I tried to figure out what made it look so sports bra-ish. I decided that the 3/4” band on the bottom didn’t help and the straight-across-the boob-uniboob look wasn’t helping either. I pulled out the 3/4” elastic and put in 3/8” swimwear elastic instead. Then I created a gather just using a tube of self-fabric. So this is basically a sports bra that was altered to look like this. I really like how it turned out in the end.

 

I used this fabric before on one of my daughter’s suits. I really like the bias plaid and the color.

 

My favorite part of this top is the criss-cross back. I love that.

 

Because I gathered the top and pulled it down, I had to make the criss-cross straps in the back longer than I would normally. Luckily Jalie has you make them a little long in the beginning. If it’s one thing I hate, it’s turning tubes. Luckily, I only had to do it once.

 

I made view C (the black on upper left) and a shortened view E (the red and white shorts).

 

This baby is super hard to photograph on the ground.

 

I’m just glad that my miss turned into something I could change with minimal seam ripping. I really like it now. Here’s the little tube I turned and stitched together. The only downside is that it travels, so when I go to put it on, I have excessive fabric on one side and it’s all kinda wrong on the other side. It’s easy to fix though.

 

You won’t hear from me for a while. Keep sewing everyone!!! And do your Burda Challenges!!!

Jalie 2805 as a water shirt . . .

As you guys know, we are headed down to the hot South here in a few days. I’m worried that my little Alaskan darlings will fry their skin off. To help them (hopefully), I made three water shirts for them to wear. We’ll see if they will actually wear them. They are all made out of nylon swim fabric. I used Jalie 2805 as my base and added the mock turtleneck and used the 3/4 length arms.

 

I’m in love with this fabric. I used it here when I made a twinny a bathing suit. Unfortunately, it faded like crazy. I’m not sure if it was sun or chlorine. Hopefully this top doesn’t fade like the suit. The blue top was used on my running pants here.

 

I used my coverstitcher and sewed the triple stitch on the inside so the outside would look more like this flatlock stitch.

 

I really like the look and it worked well in 98% of the hems. Every once in a while it would do this skipping business. What’s up? I did change all the needles before I started this because nylon is picky anyway.

 

This is the one I made for the boy. For the twinnies, I just made the standard size 8 (L, I think? with no modifications). For him, I made the 10 and made it boxier. Instead of going in at the waist and out at the hip, I just cut a straight line from armpit to hip. I’m hoping this will give it a more “boy” shape.

 

Doesn’t it look cool when it’s working perfectly? I set my coverstitcher on 1.5 on stitch length, that’s why it’s so close together.

 

Don’t you love this fabric? I bought all three of these at Yardage Town in Sand Diego. The swap meet doesn’t have much in the way of swimwear nylon.

 

I used view B, the mock turtleneck with the 3/4 length sleeves. This pattern is soooooo versatile and useful. Four sleeve options and four necklines? It’s 16 different designs of shirts!

I also made myself a swimsuit too!! I should be able to take pictures tomorrow maybe.

Kwik Sew 3578 - Pull-on Knit Dress

Remember how I said I was in a print rut? Well, here’s a another crazy print for you. This one, though is a winner-winner-chicken-dinner for me. It’s comfortable, fits well, and I love the colors. This is KwikSew 3578, a discontinued pattern. This is before they went to the Dark Side. They’ve never had really great pictures or line drawings, but I’ve loved this dress since it first came out. I’ve made it a few times before. Once here, and the other time here (ignore my bad hair, eek).

 

This time I made it a bit longer and added length to the torso like I should have way back in 2008 (holy crap I’ve been blogging a long time now). I understand my body fit much better than I did back then. I have a long torso and usually add an inch or so to most patterns in the torso. KwikSew in particular have short torsos and I usually add two or so inches to make the waist hit where it should. This dress is no exception and I added two inches above the waist.

 

I love the fun details to this dress: the pleats at the neckline, the gathered skirt, the keyhole back, and the self-fabric belt.

 

I think I may make this again and make it in a *gasp* solid so you can see all the details a bit better. I may peg the skirt a little bit more too.

 

You can see the back keyhole facing a little in this picture. They have you understitch it and topstitch it to keep it down.

 

This is a double knit fabric I bought from Fabric Mart when they were having a sale. Wouldn’t this dress be great in a scuba fabric? Like bright red scuba?? I think it could be a knockout.

Jalie 3243 - Shorts

I’m quickly trying to get ready for my trip down south. While it is warm in Alaska, I don’t need more than a couple of pairs of shorts for the whole summer. Hot in Anchorage is 70 or 75. Because I’ll be in the sweltering heat for two full weeks, I figured I’d better make a couple more pairs of shorts. I’ve used Jalie 3243 several times for kids pull-on pajama pants but thought I’d try out the shorts too.

 

And no surprise, I love them. They are made for wovens and I used a sweatshirt knit (you may recognize it from here) with very little stretch. They fit really well with not much bulk at the elastic waist. One of the great things about this pattern, is the waist facing is shaped to make it fit on the body; it’s not just a rectangle of fabric. I made my normal size for these. The recommendation for elastic was 24.5”. I used 26” on mine because I hate tight things around my waist.

 

Not too high, not too low.

 

Pockets!

 

Good butt coverage. Not too short and not too long.

 

Then I made them again. Do you ever get stuck in a color rut? For me, for a while, I was pretty much only making purple things. Now it seems I’m stuck in a print rut. These are crazy print and I’m not sure I love them. Actually I think I do love them, but shouldn’t. I used two different double knit fabrics for the main and pocket fabric. Maybe that was a no-no.

 

You may recognize this top here.

 

They may have been better with either perfectly matched pockets or no pockets. I think I’m stuck with the current pockets since they are sewn in. Oh well, like I said, I kinda secretly love them. Maybe with a different top though.

 

Hee hee, do you love them? OR hate them?