Sew Grateful

The fashion show went well! After all the stress of preparing, I decided to take a week off of sewing...yea right! Since what I do to relieve stress is sew, that was a confusing day or so! :) lol

Although I actually have not finished anything since the fashion show, I have been working on a few things! I realized I have not posted all the stuff I showcased! So this blog entry is just to catch up on a few things!

I truly love sewing totes. It really is a lot of fun!

This tote is similar
to the flower and
polka dot one I did,
but it is taller and
more narrow and
the opening is a
little bigger.

This tote is way too cute! you take the long handle and slip it through the short handle and carry it by the long handle! It is obviously a little smaller than the other 2, but is super cute!


This is a half apron! I think it is so cute! I had this material given to me and I was clueless as to what to do with it until I thought of making an apron. The black gives it such an awesome "edgy" look to it! I am so glad I did not have any of the other colors that matched it just sitting around. Although, White might look really good too! I unfortunately only have enough material for one more of these...maybe I will make it with white!




I had a friend of mine try on the full apron, so here is a picture of it! I posted this in my last post, but not when it was actually on someone! It was a weird picture in other words!
OK, so here are a few of the things I made for myself. I never posted them and I said I would. I have had a lot of people ask me why I never posted them. I plainly just forgot! Sorry!




This is the same pattern
as the polka dot shirt from
an earlier post, but I did this
one two-tone.









This shirt hangs funny
on a hanger, but looks
pretty cute on.
Of course Polka dot, my favorite!







This is a really cute shirt but
the interfacing I used on the
black collar is too stiff, of course
now I know next time not to use
an interfacing with any stiffness
what-so-ever!






Again with the two-tone shirt
This one turned out a little
more on the dressy side. It
actually would be a perfect
business casual. The Gray top
is a little bit shimmery grey.
I get A LOT of compliments
on this one!


So that is all for now! Next post will be some new stuff I am working on right now.

Posted by Angie at 6:16 PM 0 comments    

Wow, a friend of mine talked me in to showing my stuff at our church Fashion Expo! So I have been crazy getting ready for this event this coming up Saturday!


This pillow is part of the door prize I am giving away. I have embroidered a bit in the past, but nothing that needed to actually look this good! I was pretty excited about how it turned out! I was nervous for a minute! I found that by accenting the pillow with some flowers around the words would take the eye away from any imperfections in spacing of the letters. Although, I think I did OK! :) Using a good fusible interfacing helps to smooth out the lumping in the poly-fil also. I wish I would have used it on both sides! So now I know for next time!



This tote turned out so cute! Above my expectations. This will also be part of the door prize at the expo! This tote called for a piece of card board to be placed in the bottom of the tote, but instead of just placing it, I chose to sew it in to the bottom piece of the tote instead! It was kind of tricky because you have to sew the bottom on 3/4 of the way and then slip the cardboard in before you sew up the last end. The reason it works better to do that is because with the card board in it becomes too stiff to manipulate and sew on.



So then a friend of mine called me about the tote and wanted to know if it was reversible because she LOVED the lining as much as the material. So In order to make this tote reversible I made casing for inside edge and now it is reversible. I do not have a picture yet! I also made me a "Sewing Tote" out of this material I had sitting around with nothing to make out of it! A friend of mine gave it to me and I could not figure anything to do with it! So it makes a great tote for me to show off!



This is an apron (it is hard to take a picture of an apron with out a model) This will also be given out as a door prize in my basket of goodies!

Even though I think this apron turned out pretty cute, it took me WAY too long to make because of all the casing and straps you must make. It might not take me as long now that I know exactly what I am doing! There were a few things I had to improvise on when making this because I was unable to understand the instructions! Regardless, I want one and have a few friends that I will make one for also! :)



I have had this material and pattern FOREVER! I have been wanting to make it for almost a year, but haven't partially because I was afraid of it! The collar just freaked me out! Much to my surprise, it ended up being pretty easy to make! The hardest part for me was to be Attention-to-detail enough to get them even! I loved the sleeves with the elastic on them to give them the distinction between a girls top and a boys top.

This outfit was fairly easy to make, the top button-hole was hard to make due to the collar, I think next time I might make that button-hole before I place the collar on the dress!





This is another outfit I have had FOREVER and not touched because of the straps! I made an outfit a while back ago with straps, and royally messed it up! I did not understand how to make the straps cohesive to the outfit. So this outfit was put on the back burner! So this winter I made an outfit for a friend of mine who was having a baby that had straps. I figured out how to make them a way that worked so I decided to give this one a try again! It turned out ok...although the straps ended up being too long for my daughter, so now I have to adjust them! UGH!

I cuffed the pant legs which again was a first for me. When I looked at this picture I took they looked uneven, so I measured them and tried to figure out why they looked like that and realized, I just had them on the hanger kinda crooked and did not have them presses down enough! I assure you they are even...after ALOT of measuring and inspecting I can assure that much! :)




This is a little girl I made a dress for and she loved it. I am pretty sure I have posted another version of this dress on my blog, but in case I did not, I am going to recap what I have learned. When I first made it, I did not sew the front belt to the dress, I just had it hanging in the front. SO, I learned that if I sewed it on to the dress that is would not hang funny and no matter how big or small the dress was on the little girl wearing it, the dress would keep its form. The hard part about sewing the belt on the dress is keeping the thread line invisible.









These pants were so simple to make!
The pattern comes in Shorts, Capris,
and Pants - Short, Medium, and Long
Skirt!











So I will be showing pretty much most everything I have made. I will have a slide show of all the outfits I have made! Wish me luck! I have ALOT of work to still do before Saturday!

Posted by Angie at 7:25 PM 0 comments    

Labels: apron, collar, cuffs, decorative, pillow, reversible, straps, tote

As some of you know, I will try anything once.

A friend of mine wanted to know if I would make a car seat cover for her car seat she already had. So I ripped the existing car seat cover in to lots of pieces, panicked that I did not know how it went back together, and made a cover!



The material is real silky with the velvet finish in the middle. Very plush...Some of the covers I found online had elastic around all the edges and fit generically. So in the future that is what I will probably do, this way I do not have to deal with the padding because then you just use it as a cover. It was a great experience and really enjoyed doing it!

Posted by Angie at 5:57 AM 0 comments    

My favorite time of year! I love the colors and patterns of Spring!
The kids (including my niece) are all getting pictures taken professionally in a field of Bluebonnets (flowers) next month, so my sister-in-law and I thought it would be cute if the two girls had matching outfits. However, it is not like they are twins, so we thought if we could find the same print with different colors, that might be cuter!


I also made little hair bands out of the ribbon!


Another little spring outfit I have made was for my daughter!


I don't know what that pose is, but she was eating a piece of bacon while modeling! At first this dress looked funky on her because the waistband kept sagging. I thought at first I should make it a little tighter, but after thinking about it I realized it just needed to be tacked down! So I sewed around the middle white edges and it laid down the right way after that!

I said in my last post I had started making some of my own shirts. Well I did not go too Polka Dot crazy, but here is a picture of me in the first one I made. It is my favorite shirt and I wear the heck out of it! I used a stretch knit!
I love the sleeves on this shirt, it has drawstrings with bows and looks really cute in 2-tone!

I have a friend who just gave me A TON of material. I will be very busy trying to figure out cute things to make with it all!

Posted by Angie at 8:11 PM 0 comments    

Labels: bows, butterfly, polka dots, spring

What can I say, I am a horrible Blogger!

First I am just gonna post a few pictures and I will tell you what they are for!















These pillows turned out awesome! A friend of mine called me one day and said she had bought the bedroom set for her soon to be baby's room and there was a valance that she could not use and asked me what I thought we could do with them! So we came up with the idea of buying some matching material and making pillow cases out of them. So we tore off the panels of the valance and sewed them on top of the material and made little pillow cases.

If you have never made pillow cases before, it is truly one of the easiest things you could ever do! You just place the pillow on the ground and with a measuring tape measure from one side of the pillow to the other by touching the floor with the tape on each side, then you cut the material that size. This will give you plenty of room for seams, and makes a customized size pillow case! See, I told you it was easy!

Another thing I was working on before Christmas was matching dresses for a little girl and her doll! They turned out adorable. Although I have not gotten a picture of them in it yet that I can post, The dress it self is cute!

It has little ladybugs on it! This is the back view with a
small little bow. Now I have never sewn a ribbon on to
a dress, wait I am lying! I have sewed ribbon on, but
never silky shiny ribbon. It is a lot different than a
textured ribbon because you can see each little stitch.
The challenge is just being consistent with it! Keeping
the ribbon in place and the stitch line even! Phew! Rough! :)




This next outfit is a Baby Shower gift. You know, I always kid myself when I look at a picture of something I want to make. I do either one of two things, I think it looks easy and ends up being confusing...or think it is going to be SOOO hard and it ends up being SOOOO easy! This was one I underestimated! It ultimately was very easy to make until I got to the lining and skirt attachment. You have to keep right on the previous stitch line from the right side of the material while attaching what is underneath. In other words, you are sewing something you can not actually watch to make sure it is attaching. I have done this before on shirts for myself, but never for such a small little outfit that turned out to be quite a challenge.

I also tried to make a hat. Now this was my first sttempt at making hats! I can say I failed miserably and had no desire to try it again. Much like quillting, it takes way too much prescision and concentration that I do have! I wish I did but I do not. The hats brim was very uneven so I just chose to not give it to her! :)

My newest adventure is making clothes for myself. I LOVE POLKA DOTS! So you might get a little dizzy looking at my next post, I am sure it will be full of them!
:) See ya next time!
Angie

Posted by Angie at 11:57 AM 0 comments    

Labels: baby, cases, doll, dress, ideas, ladybugs, pillow, valance