Designer Knock-off

Well, I don't know if BCBG really counts as a designer, but the price certainly qualified ($400).  Here's the story: My brother-in-law sent me a link to a dress he really wanted to buy for his wife as a present for their 1st anniversary, "because she would look so beautiful in it".  (I know, awwwwww....gag. Newlyweds.)  But he was right, she would look beautiful in it, and not just because she would look beautiful in anything.  This dress really was made for her.  Here's the BCBG version:

So, I figured I had to give it a shot right?  I didn't tell them what I was doing just in case it turned into my worst failure ever.  The original dress is chiffon, but I couldn't find any chiffon print that didn't look like a 75 year old's resort wear, and I didn't have time to order anything online with my 1 week time budget.  I ended up with a really pretty handkerchief weight cotton that I thought captured the soft colorfulness of the original.

Using my dress form and the very useful fact that my sister-in-law and I are the exact same size, down to height and shoe size, the dress actually came together much easier than I expected.  (Ok, to be fair to her, she is larger in the er, bust area.  But that wasn't hard to account for, as everything sized above a 4 toddler is too big for me in the bust area.  I simply followed the natural and enviable curve of my dressform, Eloise.)

While we were vacationing together, we did a little anniversary photo shoot with the new dress.  Isn't my sister-in-law stunning?

This dress was actually pretty fun and simple to put together, and it helped ease the evening-wear-making itch that I had, since I won't be going to our annual ball this year.  Instead I'll be vacationing in America, attending a friend's baby shower, going to Target, and hopefully eating a philly cheesesteak.  I'll take that over a ball any day.

Update: I'm adding this to seventhirtythree's Knock it Off contest!

Cures for a sewing funk

I wouldn't say I'm in a sewing funk, more so an "I want to sew things I want to sew, not things I need to sew" funk.  I am very proud to say that I spent a whole Saturday doing fiddly little things that just needed to get done.

But rather than show you the mended slipcover or hemmed pants, I thought I'd share a little exercise that might help cure you if you're in a real sewing funk.

Step 1:  Gather everything you can find that you've ever made.  Ever.
Step 2:  Pile it all together.
Step 3:  Photograph it.

That's it.  But let me tell you, the visual you'll have of a huge pile of things you've accomplished just might be enough to get your sewing machine's engine revving again.  You'll probably be inspired by yourself, or at least see something that you always meant to remake.  If anything, it'll be a big fat confirmation that you are indeed awesome.

Here's a closet full of clothes that I've made from scratch.

I thought I'd only need a little space, but I ended up stuffing the whole closet full, and this doesn't include stuff that I've just altered, stuff I've made for my home, stuff I've made for other people, or stuff I didn't feel like pulling out of the laundry.  Now that is self-affirming!

And of course, we can't forget the #1 way to get past a sewing funk - start a new project!

I got a bunch of cute knit prints and I've been busy making things for my girls for this fall and winter.  A lot of blogs are having sew-a-longs for this type of thing if you're looking for inspiration and camaraderie.  I recommend:

The Back-to-School Sew a long at Penny Carnival 
The upcoming Kid's Clothes Week with Elsie Marley
The Sewing 4 School clothing tutorials by Brown Paper Packages

And of course, for immediate sewing-funk relief, there's always overwhelming inspiration at:
J.Crew Kids
MiniBoden
Tea Collection

Hope that gets your sewjo back, if it ever goes missing.

You know you're a crafty mom if...

So, a month ago my 1 year old broke her elbow.  She's now the cautionary tale for all her playgroup friends about why you should not jump on the couch.  You're welcome, other moms.

After getting home from the ER (in a foreign country) at 10 pm on a Friday night with both my kids (husband was traveling, of course), my first thought was, "I MUST MOD PODGE THAT CAST!!"  

These are the dangers of having a crafty blog.  Kid breaks elbow, mom thinks immediately of Mod Podge.  Sparkle Mod Podge.

Every cast needs a little Anna Maria Horner Good Folks, in my opinion.

I almost didn't post this picture because the cast is so disgustingly nasty.  But that's what'll happen after a month on the arm of a 1 year old who has smeared it with ketchup, peanut butter, marinara sauce, mommy's lipstick, and stuffed rice, noodles, and cheerios up in it.  Just be glad you don't have smell-o-vision.

I Hate to Disappoint Adrianna

Well, folks... Adrianna has been on vacation this week. As she ran out the door, she sent me a message that said "the blog is yours!"

I feel like what she meant was: "Do something amazing! Go! I want to be impressed by your amazingness the moment I get back!"

Uhm..... I'm looking around, and I've got nothing amazing here. Well, not blog amazing. I've been cleaning out the scary area under the basement stairs, and we were able to extricate a rusty metal file cabinet that was put into the closet BEFORE a new water heater was installed, and it's really REALLY amazing that we were able to get it out without destroying anything. While I was under there, I found a really cool vintage ERA march sash from 1978-- extra cool because in grad school I wrote a paper about the potential re-emergence of the ERA.

There's also a fish tank under there that needs to come out. I was all excited about a free fish tank until I peered closer through the layer of dust to see that the stuff in the bottom of the tank would indicate that the tank was actually used for some form of mammal or reptile. Uh... yuck. What if said creature is still IN there? So now I'm looking for macho volunteers to help get that one out. I have no desire to touch it.

In much craftier news:
- Samster Mommy is a mommy of two! Hooray for baby Sophie! Is she SamsterSophie Mommy now?

- I have 16 sets of squares for the I Spy Spoonflower Swap! So fun to go to the mailbox these days. I need to cut my own squares, but I'm a chicken. I figure I can delay until all the other squares are here, right?

- I have 7,434 crafty home projects on the list. I had 7,435 until the fish tank was discovered to be previously-not-for-fish. Therefore I refuse to touch it. One crafty project eliminated.

- Adrianna will be back from her trip tomorrow. And I know for a fact that she has a Mod Podge project on the horizon that is RIDICULOUSLY cute, not to mention completely original as far as I can figure. Which is especially cool since there's still so much disorganization in my life that I do not even know where my Mod Podge is. And it hurts me to write that.

I Spy Ideas: Guest Post from Care of Obsessively Stitching

I feel like I don't need to introduce Care. Either you're reading this blog because you found us through Obsessively Stitching or you already know about her because I've referenced her repeatedly. But I'll introduce her anyway by saying that she got me hooked on I Spy projects and she's totally fun to have as a bloggy friend. Probably fun as a real-life friend, too. We'll work on that. Until then, I'll settle for bloggy friendship. Here's Care!

----

I am completely thrilled to be a guest here at Crafterhours today!  

I am getting so excited to get all the Spoonflower swap squares back (I cut mine yesterday!) – and then comes decision-making time.  
What to make with all those precious squares??

Today I’d like to share a few of my I-Spy projects with you.  Hopefully this will get your creative juices flowing so you can come up with something fantastic to use your swap squares for!

If you are completely overwhelmed by all those squares, and at a loss for where to begin, you can start by sorting.  There are infinite ways of sorting your squares – and that is half the fun!  I have sorted by theme – animals, food, sports, vehicles, girly, boyish, alphabet, etc.  After I’ve spent a little time sorting, ideas seem to start popping into my head.

Another way of sorting is, of course, by color! (Check out Susan’s amazing quilt on my bulletin board there in the background – a daily inspiration!)After spending some time sorting a few weeks back, I came up with a theme that needed only a little bit more filling out before it could become a quilt all its own – KITTIES!

My daughter absolutely adores kitties, so of course she needed a kitty-themed quilt! Certainly there are many other themes that could emerge and become their own personal quilts – food, vehicles, animals, etc.

If you just want to make one fantastic quilt with as many squares as you can, here is a SUPER simple way to make a quilt with sashing and setting squares to break up and calm down all those I-Spies – without having to cut and sew each one of those itty-bitty setting squares and sashing strips.  It’s actually a Disappearing Nine-Patch!  Check out the tutorial HERE.

Now of course you don’t have to stick with just quilts.  You can take those precious I-Spy squares and spread the I-Spy love into a few different projects!

How about an ABC I-Spy Book?

Or soft and squishy I-Spy/Storytelling Blocks?

Or, check out these FABULOUS ABC I-Spy beanbags made by Kiersten, one of my readers.  Are you DYING to make them??  I am!!

I hope these projects get you feeling I-Spy inspired, and ready to tackle those Spoonflower squares!  I am SO READY!

Petal Shirt: A Tutorial

So, last time I made this shirt, I didn't call it anything.  I'm officially naming it the "Petal Shirt".  I know, creative, right?  I didn't inherit my mom's ability to come up with funny pun-y titles.

You'll need a yard of nice soft knit, coordinating thread, some fusible interfacing, and 1/4 inch elastic.  Make sure you use a ballpoint needle.

Step 1: 

Cut out back and front shirt pieces.  The width should be a few inches wider than your person on either side to allow for the drapey bottom.  The length needs to allow for a casing at the neckline and hem.  The back is on the left and the front is on the right below:

Step 2: Sew the back and the front together at the side seams.  Press the arm curves down a half inch to the wrong side and stitch them down.

Step 3:  Press the neckline of the front and back down a 1/2 inch and sew it down, creating a casing.

Step 4: Hem the bottom using a 1/2 inch seam allowance but leave an opening to thread your elastic through.

And now you'll have this:

At this point you pretty much have a blank slate for whatever kind of embellishment you want to do.  You could use colorful cording for the straps and applique coordinating fabric on the shirt:

Or you could go for a natural look with crocheted details:

But for this tutorial we're going to stick to the petals, which brings us to...

Step 5: Make petals.  Fuse together two pieces of knit, wrong sides together.  A fat quarter would be more than plenty, an eighth of a yard would probably be enough.  From that fused knit sandwich, start cutting out petals.  I cut them out in this four-leaf clover type shape.  Cut as many as you like, I used 18 for this brown shirt and more for the pink one.  For more "movement" on the shirt, you could cut some petals out of non-fused knit and intersperse them among the fused ones.  They will tend to flutter and curl up more.

Step 6: Pin them to the shirt in a pleasing manner.

Step 7:  Sew them on.  As you can see, I just went from one petal to the next without cutting my thread.  Make sure you backstitch at the beginning and end of each seam though.  I also created a little crease in the middle of each petal before sewing them down so they wouldn't be flat.

Step 8: Make your halter cord by taking a long 1 inch strip of fabric and serging or sewing the long ends right sides together.  This will give you a long 1/2 inch tube.  Turn the tube right-side-out, thread it through both the back and front casings, tie at the shoulder, and knot the ends.

Thread elastic through the hem casing to fit your hips.

You're done!

This shirt was a gift for my Jennifer Aniston look-a-like friend.

I think this shirt would be a great gift in general as it is pretty much one size fits most.  The halter ties allow you to adjust the length, and by gathering the front and back casings you can make the shirt looser or tighter.  

Happy Petal Shirt making!

Scary Sewing

Today a friend brought over her $170 pair of Seven Citizens for Paper, Cloth, Rock & Republic Jeans.  Or something like that.  You know, the jeans you only read about in the magazines?

And she wanted me to hem them.  As in, cut into them.  As in, irreversibly change them for all time.

I used a method my mom taught me, to keep the existing hem.  This is a great tutorial if you're not familiar with it.  The good thing is that you can sew the new hem without actually committing to anything.  But even when we were sure the hem was perfect, and the new seam invisible, I had a hard time cutting off the excess.  A heart pounding, hand shaking hard time.

My very trusting and generous friend (who along with her jeans, also brought a graham cracker, sweetened condensed milk, marshmallow, m&m, and drizzled chocolate concoction which should be illegal) let me keep the excess fabric from her jeans.  

Considering the cost of these jeans, I figure I'm sitting on about $20 worth of denim here.  What should I do with it?

I Spy Spoonflower Fabrics in my Mailbox... For Real This Time

Ta da!

The first fabrics are here. Paper cranes, alligators (or crocodiles?) superheros and monsters (or aliens?) that look and feel beautiful. These fabrics aren't cut yet-- they were sent directly to me from Spoonflower after two international participants ordered them. Since I am one of those folks who can appreciate the pains of living somewhere other than the USA and wanting to participate... I offered to cut them and save a few legs of international shipping costs. That and I was nervous early on about finding 55 other people willing to participate in this crazy swap, so I was willing to put in the extra effort to make it work. Phew! Turned out to be no problem at all. Who knew there were so many crazy people in the world? Wait, don't answer that. At least these folks are quilty-crazy, not violent-crazy... or purple-crazy or Twilight-crazy. Okay, maybe some of them.

I know it's going to take a while and some patience for all of the 56 54 remaining sets of fabrics to get here. Which is sort of good, since my house is a crazy still-moving-in disaster. Our storage stuff came yesterday, and I'm sorting as quickly as I can so that when our stuff from the other side of the world arrives, we'll have places to put THAT stuff when it clears customs, hopefully at the end of September.

When all of the stored stuff went into storage more than three years ago, we were much yuppie-r and had one kid that wasn't a year old or walking yet. After three years of living overseas, having another kid and being a stay-at-home-mom... wow, how our household needs/likes have changed. All sorts of fragile/glass/delicate/topple-over-able things are on their way to Goodwill.

On the way home I'll check the mailbox again. Just in case.

The Belle Dress: A Tutorial

Ha, totally fooled you guys!  I know you thought we were going to do a Sleeping Beauty dress after the success of Snow White, but we're dealing with the whims of a 3 year old here.  So, Belle it is.

Again, I used knit fabric to make this a super comfy dress-up dress, and a peasant dress pattern to make costume changes easier and eliminate the need for zippers or buttons.

You will need:

Your trusty peasant dress pattern and directions

2 yards of yellow lightweight knit fabric

1 yard of a sheer yellow or white fabric with lots of drape (nothing stiff like tulle)

lots of 1/4 inch elastic.  lots.

Step 1: Cut out your peasant dress pieces.  The pieces below are still folded in half, and obviously you will need 2 sleeves.  As you can see, I cropped the sleeve so it would just be a slight cap sleeve.  The bodice pieces should be cut just past the natural waist.  The front bodice piece (pictured on the left) has a lower neckline and a pointed center.

Step 2:  For the skirt, you'll need to cut a lot of rectangles.  Use at least 8.  The more you use, the fuller your skirt will be.  The length of the rectangle will be the length from the natural waist to the ankle plus 6 inches.  I used a width of 7 inches and I thought it worked pretty well.

Step 3: Cut all of your rectangles so they are tapered on the sides by about 2 inches and round out the bigger end, which will become your hem.

Step 4:  Estimate on your skirt panels where you want the swags to sit.  Mine are about 11 inches down. Measure across the skirt panel at that point.  Cut rectangles from your sheer fabric with a width of your skirt panel width plus 1 inch.  The length of the rectangle should be about 12 inches.  Fold your rectangle down (so your 12 inch side is now 6 inches).  Cut the bottom edges so they make a crescent.  That was painful.  Just look at the picture:

Step 5: With right sides together, sew the crescent closed and flip it right side out.  Press.

Step 6:  Pin each crescent to each skirt panel at the same height, making sure to scrunch up the swag on the sides.  Since your swag is slightly wider than the panel, it should gape a little bit in the middle as well.

Step 7: Sew all the panels together, catching the edges of the swags as you go.

Step 8: Sew your bodice and sleeves together using normal peasant top construction directions.

Step 9: Gather the top of the skirt to match the bottom of the bodice and sew them together.

Step 10: Finish the sleeves and neckline with elastic per peasant top directions.

Step 11: Cut 1/4 inch elastic to the length of the skirt panels minus 6 inches.  Pin the elastic to the waist seam on top of one of the skirt panel seams.

Step 12: Pin the other end of the elastic to the hem, again right over the skirt panel seam.

Step 13: Stretching the elastic taut, sew down the elastic, directly over the seam.  Once you've done that for each of the skirt panel seams, it'll bunch up and start really looking Belle-ish.

Step 14: Using the same sheer fabric as you did for the swags, form a circular tube of fabric.  First take a rectangle that is 5 inches x the measurement around the upper shoulders plus a couple inches.  Sew the rectangle right sides together down the long side so you have a long tube. Flip the tube right side out.  Fold the edges of one end to the wrong side and press.  Put the edges of the other side into that side and topstitch down, forming a circular tube.

Step 15: Tack one side of that tube down at the neckline of your dress, centered on the shoulder.  Find the opposite side of your tube and do the same thing on the other side.

Step 16: At the front and back, scrunch the tube up and sew down directly at the center of the bodice.

Step 17 (optional): I made a little rose by rolling up a tube of knit fabric and hand sewing it to the center front bodice.

Now you're finally done!  End the constant "is it done yet, is it done yet, is it done yet?" mantra from your kid.

Super optional Step 18: Use photo editing software to make the MOST RIDICULOUS pictures EVER, much to your daughter's delight.

Any guesses on what princess will be next?