My hot grandma wearing my week 2 ruffle apron

First things first, week 2 project(s). Yes. I said projects, plural. I did a bag, an apron, and a crib quilt. The quilt is currently at the quilt store being quilted, so no photos of that, but I’ve got bag shots and a cute photo of my g-ma sporting the frilly apron to share. Why is my grandma modeling the apron you ask? Cause I needed a hot model, that’s why. And because she was the proud winner of said apron at my extended family yearly “holiday” gathering last weekend. She picked it in our gift exchange. I was super excited she was the one who walked away with it. 

This super easy apron was made out of 15 jelly roll strips and two fat quarters. A little basting to make ruffles and voila, a frilly Betty Crocker apron anyone can enjoy wearing while baking cookies on a Sunday afternoon.  Boy do I love easy projects. 

Next I went to town on patch-work bag. I’ve made this particular bag before, but needed another for a gift. It came together just as easily as the apron. I promise to do a new pattern soon.   

For week three I found a seemingly easy dress. Got the pattern for .99 and found fabric for $1.95 a yard. Everything was priced right. Unfortunately, I cut the pattern to my normal size, but upon an initial test piecing realized it was going to be tight. Thus, I bought more $1.95 fabric and recut doing my best to add an inch or so to each piece. This proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. 

My frumpy red dress with last week's patch-work bag. Looks alright on dress form, but horrible on a living person.

Although I was able to put the dress together without incident (I think I am finally understanding dress construction) when I tried it on it was a hot mess. Although the waist fit me (which is what I was initially worried about), the bust was WAY too large. Then, somehow I didn’t keep my seam even at the waist causing bubbles of fabric to form in places. Hard to explain, but awful to look at, trust me. As a final disgrace, the back of the dress where the zipper is did not lay flat on my back and pooched in places. A frumpy disaster. I was too embarrased to even take a photo of the dress on me, so I slid it on my new dress form (thank you Amy for the great advice to get one, and thank you mom and Crystal for giving it to my for “Christmas” present. I DO love early-early xmas gifts! And I love the dress form) and called it good. Surprisingly the dress doesn’t look half bad on the dress form; on me it looked atrocious!

I have pieces for another red dress cut out, so maybe I’ll try it again and see if it works better cut out at the correct dimensions. I know, what a crazy thought.

**I’ll try to have this week’s challenge completed by Thursday.

Butterick 5317

The dress was actually simple, in theory. It only had six pieces – bodice front and back – and a front and back for the bodice lining, and a skirt front and back. Each piece had some pleating, but otherwise wasn’t too difficult. I chose to use the pattern option that had cap sleeves.

My first misadventure was that I didn’t have a fabric pen that marked the fabric well enough so I could see the dots and pleat lines. Pencil didn’t write well on the thread-heavy patterned fabric, and my white chalk seemed invisible. A quick trip to the fabric store was all I needed to buy a “disappearing marker” in pink (and purple, blue and green). Funny thing about those disappearing inks – they disappear – really quickly. By the time I transferred all the marks for each piece, they’d faded and I couldn’t find them. I resorted to marking and pinning as I went.

The skirt pleats didn’t go so well, there was a bit of gap between them but I moved on… it was supposed to be simple for goodness sakes! Next was the bodice, then I added the sleeves. Out of pure haste and the frustration with the disappearing marker – literally – I just eyeballed the sleeves – guessing where to attach them to the shoulders of the bodice piece. Um… lesson learned – NEVER EYEBALL WHEN SEWING. After I finished the dress – all except the zipper  - I tried it on. One sleeve was ridiculous and clearly sewn askew from the shoulder. Oops. I gave up for the night – throwing in the towel on finishing by reveal day. (I knew I could wear my finished jacket and skirt from the week before instead.)

Amy's Simple Sleeveless Dress

I ended the evening ripping apart seams, removing the sleeves and preparing to start again. I finally got back to it on Thursday evening. I fixed all the skirt pleats and the bodice where the sleeves were supposed to attach. I just left off the sleeves and convinced myself that sleeveless is more hip anyway.

As I was nearing completion, Clara tried it on. (Clara the dress form.) It was too small in the bodice area. Although I wasn’t sure how that happened, I decided to give up once again and just have Mark pin me in the dress, as best as possible, just for the photo and blog, and move on.

After I tried on the dress, I decided it might work after all. Instead of messing with a zipper, I just sewed up the seam entirely – the dress still fit over my head. Mark pinned the hem, I sewed it, and the dress was DONE! A few days late, but still worth the effort.

As I’m writing this, it just occurred to me that since the bodice didn’t fit Clara – but fit me… Clara must be a bit more well-endowed than me, huh?

Anyway… the dress turned out okay. The finishing is a bit… or a lot… sloppy. I need to stop sewing when I’m in a hurry to finish – it is a detriment to the final look!

Next week is an easy skirt (I hope) and a Cynthia Rowley top. A combo outfit!

Until then…

Amy

Amy's Finished Jacket (and skirt)

Update: The jacket is done! Joanne was kind enough to invite me over and helped me finish the jacket over the long weekend. It’s isn’t great – it has some issues, but I’m glad I overcame the adversity and difficulty of the pattern and can now say it is completed.

I should have mentioned that the jacket is Simplicity Project Runway 2652 and the skirt is Kwik Sew 3566.

 I had a weekend trip to Kansas City, so my sewing started at about 4 p.m. on Sunday. (I was home by noon, but chose to procrastinate.)

I started with the skirt. It was actually a pattern and fabric Jennifer had purchased a while back and gave me as a hand-me-down, already cut with interfacing adhered. (By the way –  I accept hand-me-downs anytime.) The skirt went together magically, until I remembered I needed a zipper to finish it. So I did what I could then began working on the short jacket. Not feeling that motivated, I thought I’d finish up on Monday evening. I figured the skirt was pretty much done, and thought the jacket seemed basic… boy, was I wrong!

Amy's completed skirt and difficult jacket.

After picking up the zipper for the skirt on the way home, I got started again sewing the skirt at about 7 p.m. but the finishing took much longer than I anticipated, so finally at 9:30 p.m. the skirt was done. It fits, and looks pretty nice – even the zipper went in easily.

So with the clock ticking I started on the jacket. The front and back were easy – even the pleats went fine. Then the instructions got a little tricky when it came to adding the collar. “With right sides together, pin front facing and upper collar to yoke back facing at shoulder and back neck edges, matching centers back and small dots.” Um…. What? Working with a piece that looked like a half donut with teeth, and a sliver moon – just where are the shoulder and back neck edges? After studying the drawing, fabric pieces and reading the directions…. Oh, about 35 times, I gave up at 11:30 p.m., resigned.

Joanne was out of the office this week, so I skipped reveal day. I decided wearing the skirt without the jacket, just wouldn’t do.

Mark read the instructions with me on Tuesday night to help me figure them out. I moved a step closer, but work halted again when it explained how to add the collar and yoke to the front and back pieces. It took a while, but I got them attached – but a bit off kilter. Okay, enough off kilter that I need to rip out the seam and go after it again. I also attached the front facing incorrectly, so I’ll need to redo that step too. At that point it was 11 p.m. and I’d had enough!

So, I can say my project was half completed this week. And my dressform, Clara, is wearing it well.  I’ll work on the jacket more and hopefully finish next week. It looks cute, so far. Wouldn’t you agree?

Until next week…

Amy

A close up of the pleats and better view of pattern.

On to week three of my Project Runway inspired sewing challenge with more fabric firsts. I took advantage of a Butterick .99 pattern sale at Hancock Fabrics (yes, I actually have my own patterns; I don’t just borrow them all from Amy) and picked up a pattern calling for knits only. Although I’d never worked with knits before, Amy and past PR sewing friend Melissa both said knits can be difficult, but because the dress style looked like something I would wear normally (unlike last week), I decided to go ahead and get the pattern and give it a go. Luckily I found

butterick 5488 - loose fitting knit dress

the perfect patterned light-weight knit on the sale rack. I figured for a total investment of $10 if the dress didn’t work out, atleast I could say I tried, right?

Since I like to fully disclose my errors though, I will say that somehow I ended up with an extra inch of dress when putting in the collar, so I had to add an extra pleat. Plus the pleats got a little messed up since that was the one part that pinning didn’t really help. Because the style of the dress was so forgiving and the knit draped so nicely, the finished product still worked.

Bailey liked the knit dress so much she posed with me. Loose, but still stylish in my book.

I was a little worried that the dress would look frumpy and “bag-like” because of the style, which was described as ”very loose-fitting”, but I overall I think it worked. Yes, it was baggy so yes, it was not as tailored or as flattering as some of my other dresses, but it was hella comfortable and I liked it, so there! The pattern of the fabric is colorful and stylish and the fit was right on in my book. The collar and sleeves turned out perfectly (which I was worried about, so I was super happy it worked out).

The photo(s) really don’t do the dress justice.

From the word go this dress gave me troubles, but I was determined to see it through. Something about pockets and this type of waist always gives me a hard time.  The pattern also called for collar reinforcement, so I had to sew in an extra layer around the back collar line — like putting in a finished edge for sleeve-less armholes. Sounds simple, yet my finished product lacked the clean, polished look it was supposed to have.

Worst of all I mutilated the zipper. I don’t know what happened exactly, but one of my layers got stuck under the zipper when I sewed it in and short of redoing the entire thing I had to cut the layer that got stuck leaving an awful looking raw edge that could not be fixed. Not to mention that I couldn’t quite figure out how to get the zipper in AND put in the finished arm hole/sleeve that I mentioned earlier so that it looked right. I got it done, but something was definitely not right. Luckily the rad ruffles that drew me to the dress in the first place came out perfectly.

Shay rockin the rad ruffle collar dress

I knew out of the gate this dress was going to be a challenge so I gave myself plenty of time, which was good cause once I put on the finished product it was obvious that it wasn’t going to work for me. The style of the skirt is straight, pencil . . . the waist sinches in, which fit fine, but then either miss measuring or miss sewing caused the skirt to be too tight right in the thigh. I attempted to sit and the seam completed came out. Bummer. With the extra time I threw together an un-notable skirt from some fabric I had on hand, repurposing a zipper from a project I did last year (that ironically didn’t fit either) so I had something to wear on reveal day.

All in all I was proud of the ruffle dress and wish it would have worked out. I learned though that even when making your own clothes you still have to make things that will work for your body type. I NEVER would have purchased a dress like this at the store cause of how it would have fit on my thighs, so why on Earth did I think it would work if I made it? Hmm . . . something to definitely think about next time. So, to show off my creation I had my no-thighs, 18-year old sister, Shay, try on the dress for the photo shoot. She makes the ruffles work and in the photo you don’t see any of the blemishes I know are there.  

This week I sewed a 60′s retro pattern by Butterick (B6582). I purchased the pattern a year ago during the last challenge and considered it might come in handy as part of a Halloween costume. Well, it never did. Joanne by chance had purchased the same pattern separately. So, this week we decided to both make the same dress.   

Butterick B6582 Retro Pattern

As I figured would occur, I didn’t get an early start on my creation. I waited until Friday night to cut out the pattern and Saturday to cut the fabric. Luckily I found some clearance fabric at Hancock Fabrics that was blue and shimmered red at an angle, and was only around $8 for the yardage I needed.   I got started sewing on Saturday evening.  I put in the darts, which went smoothly. Next was finishing the facing pieces of the slit in the back of the dress. The directions were frustrating, so I called it a night.

On Sunday I got back to it in the afternoon. A new perspective brought clarity and I worked through the directions, finishing the facing and putting in the zipper. Next came the interfacing pieces that finished the shoulders, arm holes and neckline. Each part was a bit of a stumble.  Oddly the diagrams or renderings of the directions were opposite or mirrored. I was concerned I’d flipped the fabric (it looked the same on both sides) and put the darts on the wrong side of the front piece. As I worked through each step, the dress came together. I surmise the direction’s drawings weren’t quite right since it did all come together.   

Amy's Retro Dress - Week 2

Once the front and back were finished it was time to sew the side seams and shoulders. I pinned the shoulders and put the dress on the new dress form. (Mark helped me set it up for my measurements.) I pinned both side seams so the dress was fitted to the form. It showed I needed to put in 1” side seams versus 5/8”. The dress was about complete and I tried it on. It fit! Really well. Like a glove. A tight leather glove. Well, at least it was a bit snugger than I prefer to wear. The dress form really worked – almost to a fault! I added the hem and did some top stitching around the neckline and arm holes. It was finished by 8:30 p.m. on Sunday. Overall it was probably one of my best creations, especially considering the difficulty level of the dress. 

The only major snafu was at the base of the zipper. When I removed the basting stitches at the zipper, I ripped out a little lower than I should have and ended up creating a hole in the seam. I couldn’t just put it back in because the zipper obscured the seam. So, I used a zig-zag stitch and overstitched the hole. It wasn’t pretty, but it did the trick.

For reveal day, I decided to style the dress as best I could for the 60s. I attempted a Betty Draper hairstyle, put on some pearls and used liquid eyeliner. All in all it was a success. Likely the only time I’ll wear a cocktail dress to work!

For the record, I hope liquid eyeliner never comes back into style…. It isn’t easy to get right!

Until next week!

Amy

Linen skirt with flirty flounce

Amy was sweet to let me borrow her Simplicity 2655 skirt pattern for my first week of the so-so sewing project take 2. I chose this pattern because it looked relatively simple and a good one to ease back into sewing clothing (I haven’t been sewing much since the end of so-so sewing last season). To my delight the skirt did come together fairly easy. And by fairly easy I mean after I re-cut and then re-attached the waistband from sewing it on upside down (twice). I took it totally for granted that a waistband has a true top and bottom. Even though when I cut it I knew there was a slight arch, I didn’t pay attention to how I was sewing it on and it totally came out convex instead of concave.

 Now, this is an easy error to fix, and it was, once I figured it out. You see, the first time I sewed on the waistband I didn’t realize it was upside down (I know, I know. Should I really be trying to sew clothes). But I DID notice that my waistband was about 4 inches too short. No good. Since I had thrown away all my scrap material, (note to self: keep extra fabric scraps until project is complete — just in case) I could not fix it right then and there. No. I had to wait a full day and go back to the fabric store and purchase another 1/2 yard of fabric. 

The next night I recut the waistband and reattached. THIS time realizing it was on upside down (not sure why I didn’t notice the day before). So I rip out the seam and flip it. When I got to the end, I saw that once on correctly, my new and improved, 4 inch longer waistband was now 4 inches too long. Geez. For those of you not paying attention, this means that had I realized my mistake the day before I would have saved myself a trip to the fabric store, not to mention the $5 extra dollars I spent on fabric.

Had I thought about it for even a second, it totally made the most sense something was sewn incorrectly as opposed to me cutting it 4 inche too small. I mean, cutting is the easiest part. No way I messed that up. So a valuable lesson was learned. If something doesn’t come together as planned, take a moment and think it through . . . look at the steps again to determine what went wrong. I am so used to cutting corners and making my own rules not caring about the actual instructions that I totally jumped to “how can I fix this” instead of figuring out what went wrong first.  

In the end, I got the skirt all put together, and even added in a lining just for good measure. It fit perfectly and I think it looked great. I LOVE the fabric choice (a light-weight linen) and think it was just right for the style of skirt. I’m sure I’ll be making more skirts with flounce as I truly loved that extra little something the skirt had.

Finished pleated skirt, with trim

So, here I am again… back to the same old sewing challenge! Hopefully a little more skilled than the last go-round.

For the first week’s challenge I sewed a skirt – McCalls M5591. I had purchased the pattern and fabric around the Fourth of July. I had a couple days off work and thought I’d put the time to good use. I didn’t get very far. What I thought was going to be an afternoon project became a frustrating debacle due to one itsy-bitsy issue – PLEATS!

A closer look...

I loved the pattern because of them, but they just weren’t that easy when I went to dig in. I blame the technical writers who wrote how to sew them. I’m beginning to believe they are not native to the English language, or if just for fun they make it their personal missions to overcomplicate the directions – it’s their secret revenge against the world of sewers. But anyway, I digress, after completely sewing the pleats into the front piece, and ripping them out THREE times, I put the fabric away for a while.

After the five week break, and the launch of the Project Runway Challenge 2, So-So Sewing Project, I decided to give it another go. It still took me two more tries to get them right, but in the end I was victorious in the battle of the pleats. (Amy – 1, Pleats – 0, but I fear we’ll go a couple more rounds before it’s all said and done.)

Since it was simple cotton, the fabric was easy to work with. Other than using a bit thicker interfacing than necessary (leftover from a purse project) the skirt turned out pretty good. I did skip the whip stitch instructions and used my machine to sew on the bottom trim, which caused some unsmooth gaps, but luckily they were in the back of the garment, as was the extra pleat I sewed in with the trim.

Strapless dress sewn over the Fourth of July.

In other sewing news, I did sew a strapless summer dress (McCalls M4440) a few weeks ago. All was fine except the bodice pleats and skirt pleats didn’t quite match up. No one would notice unless they looked close. Oh, and it absolutely didn’t fit on the first try, so I ripped out the zipper and Mark kindly pinned me into the dress, then marked where the two pieces should gather. It all worked out, sort of. The dress is REALLY tight, but I guess there is no chance of it falling down. I did wear it to work – with a cardigan, of course – and I can safely say that it enjoyed its debut and finale all in the same day. I’d forgotten how obnoxious it is to wear strapless – the constant looking down, pulling up and adjusting. I barely worked all day… kidding, of course.

The newest member of the Olson Clan!

And in final news, I’d like to announce the newest addition to the Olson clan. We haven’t come up with a name (Mark’s taken to calling her Amy Jr.), but I’ll come up with something good. I think I’ll go with an old-fashioned standard. Anyway, meet my brand new dressform! I’m just sure my sewing abilities and garment fit will be renewed and instantly improved because of her.  Welcome to the family!

Until next time…

Amy

Here is a quick run down of my last few outfits (although not in order as I can’t remember when I did what).

Look closely at the rick-rack along the bottom -- my favorite part.

The Draw String Skirt
This was a really simple skirt I created using Amy’s skirt pattern book. You take your measurements and the book tells you how to cut the fabric and how much. From the picture you can’t tell that the skirt is actually several inches too large in the waste and sinched in A LOT. I liked the skirts detailing (rick-rack, yeah!), so I’ll plan on reworking it in the spring when I wear it again and will put in a zipper so it fits a little better. Overall, I give this skirt a B.
I think this might be wear I put together my polka dot dress, but since I can’t find the photo, and the dress is WAY too small to attempt at putting it back on after weeks of holiday eating, we’ll move right along with my next creation, and probably my favorite of the project.

Bailey liked this dress as well. See how she looks on approvingly! Check out the fashionable pockets!!

Brown and Blue Pocket Dress
Yet again the measurements I used to cut the size of dress were not as accurate as I had hoped. After working tirelessly to create capped, gathered sleeves and wrap bodice, plus putting in pockets and side zipper, the dress ended up being too large in the top. The low cut front when oversized obviously would not have worked. So, once again I went to work altering the dress as best I could. I put in extra darts in the back, sewed the front together and pinned the sleeves. The pattern did good at hiding my extra seams. My one shortcut: I didn’t line the blue waistline, so in certain lighting you can see right through the midsection. Oops. Overall, I LOVED this dress and wish it had fit better. I give it an A-.

The perfect, all purpose corduroy skirt.

Pleated Skirt in Tan
In my final week of sewing I took on another simple skirt. I used versitile tan corduroy to do a simple pleated skirt. This particular design called for the pleats being sewed down along the front, so it gave the skirt a more sophisticated look, I thought. If nothing else it made the skirt look a lot harder than it was. I put together this skirt in only one evening. The sizing was just right and I had no mess ups. This is the kind of skirt I would wear all the time and is even something I can wear in the winter with boots (as I did here). Overall, I give this skirt a big A+!

I learned a ton about sewing while working on these projects and am excited I did it.  Although I didn’t sew my formal, I did end up sewing 9 aprons for various people as Christmas gifts. In the spring I plan to take on my first quilting project.

Thanks, Amy, for thinking of this great idea and for asking me to be part of it. I had a ton of fun (even with the late night and countless broken sewing needles).