Little One-Yard Wonders

I have a little bit of special news to share with you today.

Let me introduce you to a new book that will be coming out soon. It is called Little One-Yard Wonders: Irresistible Clothes, Toys and Accessories You Can Make for Babies and Kids by Patricia Hoskins and Rebecca Yaker. It is the third one of the One-Yard Wonders book series, I blogged about the first one here and the second one here.

I am excited to share that one sewing project that I designed made it into the book! The book contains 101 projects total. As you can see, six projects are featured on the cover and how fun that my project is shown on the cover (to say that I am thrilled would be an understatement). Can you guess which one of the six is mine?  It is the red polka dot play set/play mat/table cloth. I designed it and sewed it up four years ago and submitted it for publication for this book two years ago, so it is super fun to see it published after all this time.

June 3rd, 2014 is the official publication date for Little One-Yard Wonders, but it is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

I will share more about Little One-Yard Wonders in the future...

Thank you for taking the time to visit here.

Happy weekend everyone!

Josephine Dress

 The FLIP This Pattern for the month of February is the Violette Field Threads Josephine Dress/Blouse which comes in sizes 2 - 10.

The Violette Field Threads Josephine Dress or Blouse has the following features/options:

• dress or blouse
• long or flutter sleeves
• pin tucks
• tailored collar
• ruffle button tab or not
• dress can have waist sash or not

 I chose to sew up a dress (with all of it's bells and whistles) with long sleeves, the ruffle button tabs, and the waist sash. I even made my own bias tape out of the same fabric (bias tape is needed around the collar). My greatest challenge was matching up the 'stripes'. I wanted the floral stripes to match all the way across the front, back, and sleeves. I also wanted the button tab to be in the solid dark color and the ruffle button tabs and the waist sash to be in the vine part of the fabric. I'm super pleased with the results. I had 2 yards of this fabric and I used up almost all of it for only a size 5!

Project Details:
Pattern: Violette Field Threads Josephine Dress
Size: 5 with 1 inch added in length
Fabric: 2 yards of Alchemy Victoriana (port) cotton by Amy Butler
Notions: Seven 3/8" buttons

I'm thrilled that everything came from my stash.

 This was my first Violette Field Threads sewing pattern. A couple of things that I really liked about this pattern:

• that for one of the rectangular pieces dimensions were given instead of a pattern piece, I have quilting rulers, so I can cut out rectangles quickly and I prefer to do it this way, plus it doesn't waste paper
• measurements were given (for the pin tucks, buttonhole placements) instead of markings on the pattern pieces, I really prefer this, I'm a numbers person, please give me numbers and measurements, for me it's such a drag to transfer markings from the pattern pieces onto the fabric

I really liked the method that was used for making the pin tucks, I had never done it that way before and it has become my preferred method now.

Without waist sash

Be sure to add your Josephine dress to the Flip This Pattern linky party by February 20th.

Sew In Tune Winter 2014

 Sew In Tune Winter 2014 is here! It's an online sewing series where you sew up an outfit inspired by a tune. The hostesses are Melissa from Melly Sews and Stacey from Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy! All this week there are two Sew In Tune posts per day, so check out their blogs to see them all.

 Today it is my turn to play and the song I picked was Waterloo by ABBA.
More specifically about my inspiration:

• Waterloo battle: military inspired jacket
• Napoleon was from France: the jacket sewing pattern I used is from France
• The ABBA music group is from Sweden: Swedish flag (blue with a gold Scandinavian cross)

 For my son, Mr. J, I created 3 pieces: a pair of yellow trousers, a blue jacket, and a white long sleeve t-shirt and here are the project details...

 Yellow Trousers
Pattern: Oliver+S Art Museum Trousers with this zipper fly tutorial
Fabric: yellow cotton twill
Size: 7 with 9/10 length
Sewing notes: My first zipper fly! I have been sewing up a ton of little girl dresses these past few years, but only a handful of pants. I am so happy I tackled the zipper fly. I'm so pleased with how well it went and with the result that I hope to sew zipper flies on all pants in the future.

 Blue jacket
Pattern: Oberweiden (paper pattern in French, comes in sizes 6-12 years)
Fabrics:
Jacket: blue cotton twill
Lining: Kona cotton in blue and gold
Size: 10 years
Sewing notes: This jacket is "demi saison," so it does not close (I am really thankful I didn't have to sew all those button holes, especially because I added 6 buttons instead of the suggested 4). The sewing went pretty well as I knew enough French to get by and there are easy to follow drawings. I'm not a huge fan of putting in sleeves, but these went in extremely easily.
For the lining of this jacket I was inspired by the Swedish flag which is blue with a gold Scandinavian cross. It was really quite easy to add the gold Scandinavian cross. First I cut out the blue lining fabric. Second, I took 2 inch strips of gold fabric, folded under .5 inch on each side, then topstitched them onto the blue lining fabric.
I really like the details on this jacket and am thrilled that it is gender neutral, so hopefully I'll get more use (and therefore my money's worth) out of it.

 White long sleeve t-shirt
Pattern: Made by Rae flashback skinny tee for big kids, comes in sizes 6-14
Fabric: I bought an adult size t-shirt from the clearance rack, so I used an existing t-shirt to make a smaller one, using the original hems, cuffs, and neckline ribbing, like in this video.

 If you would like to sew along you can add your Sew In Tune creations to the flickr group.

Many thanks to Melissa and Stacey for the invitation to participate in the series.

PS I created a challenge for myself. I want to complete the following 4 sewing projects before the Great British Sewing Bee Season 2 airs in spring 2014.
These are from the Great British Sewing Bee Season 1 and they are the 'following a pattern' challenges from all 4 episodes:

1. A-line skirt with invisible zip
2. Trousers with zip fly
3. Summer dress with French seams, rows of shearing elastic, and rouleau loop straps
4. Button shirt with collar stand

So with finishing these yellow trousers I have crossed 'Trousers with zip fly' off the list and have 3 more challenges to complete in order to reach my goal.

Flap Collar

 Next up from the 'Stof voor durf-het-zelvers' book I tried the flap collar.

 It's your lucky day, 2 blog posts in a row where you get two dresses for the price of one! I had planned to sew up only one, but somehow it turned into two. The second one is without the flap collar.

 Project details:
Pattern: 'Stof voor durf-het-zelvers' book (= 'Fabric for dare-it-yourselfers') Variation 2: Pattern 8 dress with flap collar and box pleated skirt made from rectangular piece of fabric
Size: 122-128 cm
Notions: 12-14 inch invisible zipper
Lining fabric: white cotton voile for bodice lining
Fabrics:
Saturn Dot Pink Sateen 100% cotton from the Lisette collection
Pink bodice is solid pink cotton

If you are curious to see more items made from the patterns in the 'Stof voor durf-het-zelvers' book check out the 'Stof voor durf-het-zelvers' flickr group.

Pattern 8

 I'm so excited that I got this Stof Belgian sewing book for Christmas. It was only possible thanks to my wonderful longtime friend who lives in Belgium. I already have plans to create several dresses from this book, but for now here are the first two…

 Project details:
Pattern: Stof book. Pattern 8 with C skirt, which is a basic dress with a straight skirt
Size: 122-128 cm
Notions: 12-14 inch invisible zipper
Lining fabric: white cotton voile for bodice lining

 Fabric for first dress:
Dots & Dashes Multi Poplin 100% cotton from the Lisette collection

 I tried several different colored belts with this dress… red, blue, pink, and neon yellow. The red one I borrowed from the Belgian style dress, the other 3 are just ribbons. My daughters favorite belt is the pink one, of course! Which color belt is your favorite? Or maybe you would prefer it without a belt?

 Fabric for second dress:
Pink/white/black vintage cotton floral (I just recently bought this as a vintage shop, it was 2.75 yards, 36 inches wide for $10, I was so happy there was so much because now I can make more dresses out of it)

 The photo was taken before it was hemmed.

I actually sewed this one up first, I was so excited to start that as soon as I traced the pattern pieces I cut out the fabric. I wondered if I was suppose to add seam allowances. I sewed it up and it is a little too tight/small for the girl (although it fits the dress form perfectly). I looked back in the book, typed the steps in google translate and then discovered that yes you are suppose to add seam allowances! That goes to show you how excited I was, I just dove right in without translating the steps first!

If you are curious to see items made from the patterns in the Stof book check out the Stof flickr group.

Off to sew the next dress using this book…

Origami Collar

 I've been wanting to try this origami collar ever since Suz of sewpony posted the tutorial last month. I've been working on it and the dress these past couple of days and now it's done!

 Project details:
Pattern: Tinny Dress, size 4Y, with mods: sleeveless, fully lined bodice, rolled hem
Tutorial: Origami collar
Fabrics:
bodice: green/blue/white vintage floral (I bought this fabric almost 2 years ago at a vintage shop. It was 1 2/3 yards, 36 inches wide for $8.00)
bodice lining: white cotton voile
circle skirt: modern large blue polka dot, "England Swings" by Rebekan Merkle for Timeless Treasures Fabrics
origami collar: dark blue chambray
bias tape on waist seam: dark blue chambray
Notions: invisible zipper

 Everything came from my stash except the invisible zipper.

Well, this was an experiment for me, mixing patterned fabrics, mixing vintage and modern fabrics, and I rarely sew with green, but overall I'm glad I took the risk.

I'm really pleased with the look of this origami collar, it's such an interesting detail. Maybe you'd like to try adding an origami collar to one of your future girl dresses.

LEGO Valentines 2014

 These will be our class Valentines for this year. We decided to put together LEGO rings and a little LEGO play set.

We got all of the LEGO bricks from the pick-a-brick wall at a LEGO store.

 I bought 50 adjustable silver ring blanks with glue pad on etsy.

It's easy to attach a flat 2X2 LEGO brick to the ring with E-6000 glue.

 A variety of unique LEGO pieces can create all different types of rings.

 And the little play set is a fence, bench and 2 red flowers ~ too cute!

I did the same packaging as last year when I made the LEGO mailbox necklaces.

A LEGO minifigure crayon was also added.

I have 50 of these to make, so I better get back to work!