From my studio last week: March 28, 2011

It was Spring Break last week, which was both a blessing and a curse.  Those of you with school age kids will know what I’m talking about.  I loved having the little girl around me all week.  But we also needed to have lots of diversions in order to maintain relative calm around the house.  Nonetheless, I did get a couple of projects completed last week.

First up, another dress for the little girl.

I made it from the same pattern as the last dress, but this time I added a couple of ruffles to the front panel.  The ruffled fabric was from an old shirt and already gathered for me.  Yay!  I love it when things are easy.  The ruffles cover up the fact that I didn’t have enough of the striped fabric.  Just an inch and a half above the bottom ruffle is the franken-patching required to make the full panel.

And that striped fabric. It’s actually an old t-shirt that I bleached with a diagonal stripe.  I didn’t use tape or anything to create smooth lines – I like the wonkiness of it.

Also from my studio this week – a set of baby onesies made from recycled knit.  They’re for a dear friend of mine who is getting ready to have her first child.

I was pretty sure that she’d be okay with them being made from old clothes.  Right when I was in the middle of second guessing my decision, I got the invitation to her shower and was sooo pumped to see that it specifically asked for recycled or gently used items.  How awesome is that!!

Here they are up close and personal:

The contrast edging is — you guessed it — foldover elastic. Man, I’m so in love with this stuff!!

I cut apart an existing onesie to get the pattern.  That seemed like such a simple idea, but the fabric was so thin the pieces crawled and shrank once they didn’t have the tension from the other seams to hold them to their right shape.  And they ended up reaaaallly long.  I realize now that I never preshrank the onesie that I traced from.  DOH.  They were supposed to be newborn sized, but maybe they’ll work for 3-6 months.

I used snap tape to make the crotch closures.  The fabric chain stores only had tape with big ‘ole snaps set too far apart for me to use, but a locally owned fabric store had just what I needed.

The snaps are smaller and set closer together for use with children’s clothing.  But because these were made for a newborn, I felt the snaps were still just a tad too far apart.  They’d be perfect for a onesie sized 6 months and up, but I didn’t want the snaps rubbing up against the sides of itsy bitsy newborn legs.  To fix it, I just took little 1/8″ tucks in between each snap.  A zipper foot made that really pretty easy to do.

So that’s it for my studio last week.  On tap this week is a tutorial for a unique home dec item, and also maybe a little something for myself.

Hope you have a happy and productive sewing week!