Easy 2-hour Sundress

Jenny sent me an e-mail on Thursday asking if I might, perchance, be able to whip-up a sundress for the completely ADORABLE little Anika. It seems that they are having family portraits done and her family chose black, grey & light blue as the colors.  Since the clothes were supposed to be predominantly black or grey, they were having some trouble finding a sundress. Now, how could I say no to that?  Having my own little boy is great and all, but nothing compares to getting to play dress up with this sweet little doll.

I used the standard pillowcase dress pattern that you can find pretty much everywhere (There’s a good tutorial/example at Prudent Baby), except instead of a pillowcase, I used an dark grey, XL men’s t-shirt that cost $3.99 at ACMoore.  There are so many pluses to using a t-shirt!  My two favorites? You can use the hem of the t-shirt as the hem of the dress AND you don’t have to finish the armscyes (jersey doesn’t fray)!  Also, it’s just a comfortable, breathable fabric, perfect for summer.  Why else would they make t-shirt out of it?

I used the dress she was wearing (a little jersey sundress from H&M) to figure the length and the armsyces.  Initially, we were going to use a fabulous polka dot trim on the bottom of the dress but I’m glad we didn’t – I think it would have made the dress too heavy.  I used the serger for the side seams and the sewing machine to make the channels in the front and back for the strap.  We used a stretched out piece of the tshirt to make the wrap around strap and tied it just on one side (like the smaller of the two dresses in the Prudent Baby example).

The flower is a simple yo-yo of light blue linen with a small circle of black felt, a circle of the grey t-shirt and a shell button layered on top.

All told, the dress took about 2 hours, but that includes time for socializing, making decisions about the design, taking pictures and threading my serger. If I’d just been sewing straight through, it probably would have been more like 1 hour!

I case you’re wondering, several years ago I made this type of dress for myself; it’s not only appropriate for wee ones…

Farfalle Baby Quilt

Do you know what Farfalle is?  It’s the pasta that’s shaped like a bow. You know, this stuff:

Did you also know that “farfalla” is Italian for butterfly? Neither did I…

ANYWAY…this weekend, I made a flying farfalle quilt as a well-past-due gift for the baby of some friends.  (The baby is now 4 months old, so it’s not THAT far past due…)

What a fun quilt to make!  I love how this turned out…well, most of it.  I love the wonky triangles and the colors.  I’m not usually a pink girl, but every once in a while I like to let my girlie flag fly. Plus I think the grey and other wonderful colors mitigate the glaring pinkness of it all, even if I did use hot pink thread to quilt it. 😉

Speaking of the quilting, that’s the one thing I really don’t like.  I love my little loop-de-loops that I normally do and knowing that I was on a bit of a time crunch, I should really have stuck with them for this quilt.  But I wanted to try something different and ended up with this loop-de-loop-de-loop design. I guess the results are good, but this little 40″x40″quilt became such a BEAST.  My arms were completely exhaused and I think I started to develop tennis elbow. Add to that my basting spray refused to perform it’s proper function and hold the layers together…UGH!

Still pretty. In the end, I don’t think I can be too unhappy with the results – what matters is that I made a special gift for some special friends and their beautiful little girl. Amiright?

I’ve been trying to find a tutorial to direct you to to make this quilt and I haven’t seen one. Maybe I’ll write one up myself. You’ll be the first to know if I do.

New clothes for me!

I’ve been working on this new blazer/jacket for a couple weeks now. It’s really cute, but it’s also sort of a pain in the butt. I haven’t posted about it yet because I’m still working on the flippin’ pintucks. Plus I think I’m out of interfacing. But it really is cute. Really.

See? Cute. Mine is going to be in this greyish-periwinklish wool/cashmere blend, with vintage silver-backed glass buttons.

A while back (like six months ago) I made myself a new skirt, but it was much too short. Didn’t realize how short the pattern was until too late. 😦 Other than that, I haven’t made any clothes for myself in quite some time. Since before they baby. That’s a long-ass time. So the jacket is taking me a little while.

Not gonna make the hat, though. That would just be way too much.

Just realized that it’s Tuesday so it’s sewing night!