Like I need another handbag!


Alright, I got sucked into making the LaRue handbag from HotPatterns, too. I download the pattern (there's a link to the download from their homepage) and immediately got to thinking of what fabric to use for this bag. While in JoAnn's on Black Friday, I looked through the flat folds and found some faux snakeskin vinyl that I liked, but it didn't hit me quite right. I already had the houndstooth in the cart, and thought, why not? All I needed was some fusible vinyl to stabilize it. A little black faux suede for the tassel and strap and some side trips to Home Depot and Wal-mart and I was set for supplies. I already had lining and a zipper.

I though the bag was very easy to make. I even made the inside pockets. I usally skip them because I don't use them. The only thing that wasn't marked clearly was where to stop the side seam on the side of the bag closest to the ovals. I found some great pictures of the bag on Amazon, and figured it out from there. I stopped that side seam at 2" above the tab for the D-ring, and the other side seam I sewed all the way to the top of the bag.

I had to do my own photography this morning, so here's the result:

Not a bad bag for less than $15.00!

The early bird gets the . . . .

Fabric! I went to the Jo-Ann's sale early this morning. I had to be back by 7:30a so my huband could go to work, so I got there right at 6a. Besides the zippers, lining and notions, this is what I bought:

Black and white large houndstooth boucle for $2.00 a yard. I've always liked houndstooth, and I'll make it into the jacket for this outfit (Vogue 8319), with the yoke of the jacket and dress in some black crepe I picked up, too:



I also bought this fabric:

This is a silk/cotton blend, again at $2.00 per yard. I bought 4 yards. Not sure what I'll do with it, but I couldn't pass up the bargain. They also had it in an aqua/lavander colorway, but I liked the coral/red better.

Today is the official "Christmas Decoration" day. The kids are excited, plus we're going to Concord to the *other* Jo-Ann's (to pick up stuff the one in Belmont didn't have!) and we're going to Bead It! so they can make necklaces to match Shae's dresses for Christmas and so I can get supplies for my mother's Christmas gift. If I have time today, I'll cut out my daughter's Christmas dress, and work on the AB dress some more. Right now, I've got two very excited children waiting for mom to get off the computer!

Marfy Pants - A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words!

Isn't that true? After I saw the front and back of the first version of the Marfy pants, I knew it was time to step it up and get those things fixed! Digital pictures make it so easy to see the whole garment on you as someone else would. The Internet makes it easy to get fitting opinions and instructions for pattern changes from experts I'll probably never get the privilege to meet in person.

Here's the finished product, second time around. They are better, no bagging in the back and much less pulling in the front. Sorry they're a bit wrinkly and not pressed tremendously well - I was in a rush to get the pictures taken this morning before leaving for school and didn't have the pants quite ready.


I made two major changes which really made a big difference in the pants. First was to take out a fish-eye shaped dart in the back of the pants to take out the excess material under the seat. I used these directions by Debbie that I found on PatternReview.

The other major change was done on the front thigh of the pants. I had several people suggest lengthening the front crotch curve. I tried that first and ended up with more body space in the abdomen area, which I didn't need, and still the pulling in the front. What I ended up doing was adding material to the front of the thigh only, as I have a protruding front thigh. Mother-in-law thinks its because of the weight lifting (she's a gymnastics coach and has seen quite a few buff bodies with the same issue), but I think it's probably more genetic. After some digging on PatternReview, I came across these instructions, by Els, which is what I ended up doing. There's a picture, too, of the altered pattern piece which was extremely helpful.

To confirm my suspicion about the front thigh, I took a pair of scissors to the pants. I put them on, and cut the pants where they were too tight, leaving large slashes down the front. Crazy? Absolutely. The pulling was gone! The pants cost me less than $5.00 to make and were too tight and baggy to wear out anyway. Ok, that sounded weird, how can you have pants that are "tight" and "baggy"? Only on me, I guess. I then pinned in a section of scrap fabric to see how big the dart on the pattern piece really needed to be and where I should place it. I think I could have extended it a bit longer at the top than I actually did, but I'll try that for another pair. You can see the ugly fabric below, pinned in the slit.

After tracing the shape with a marker and removing the piece, here's the resulting shape of the fabric that will need to be added in the front of the thigh. Pretty dart-like, huh?:


After a bit of careful measuring, slicing and taping, I ended up with the pattern piece below. I think I should have made the curve a bit less dramatic on that outseam by reshaping a bit so it's straighter, it wouldn't add that much fullness to the leg. Again, something I'll do next time.


Overall, these are a much better fit! I'm still pretty pleased with them and will wear them after a better pressing job. I feel they need a bit more tweaking, but I'm satisfied for the moment. I learned a lot making these alterations to these pants! From now on, it's front and back pictures for fittings for me!

American Beauty - Dress - Part IV

Let the beading begin!

I've got the center front beaded strap seam done! They're not that hard and surprisingly not terribly time consuming. The deal is finding time to actually work on it. "Life" isn't cooperating, so I'm just stealing a little time here and there to work on it. I think if I squeeze in doing one to two seams a week, I'll be able to finish the dress right after Christmas.

Here's what I've been up to, starting with the beading process itself. This is the same thing I did with the seam on the coat between the quilted portions and the crushed velvet portions - sewed bias strips to the seam allowances, turn them to the back and catch stitched, then basted the seams together, added the beads, and attached a strip underneath with running stitches. Ann also described this technique in a post this fall on the Diva's Blog, look for the post "Slotted Seams: Skirting the Issue".

Close up of the handstitching, still working on the beading and before the basting came out.

Here's the set up, seems like that water bottle sneaks into a lot of my pictures, doesn't it?


Just another close up, but the basting has been removed:


For the moment that's it. I'm just going to keep slogging along on the appliques and strap seams. There probably won't be an update for another few weeks or when some real progress has been made, such as getting past these points and into more real construction.

Tomorrow I will be posting the latest version of the Marfy pants. I think I've solved the fitting issues. I am very pleased with the fit so far. I'm hopeful that I'll still be very pleased after I get the real results from my photograpy crew!

The Other Dress

I finished the other dress for my neice. It's a really pretty plum color, but it was hard to catch on film.

I couldn't make up mind on the embellishment, so this is what I did:

I wanted to do something more intricate, but the pattern on the fabric was so busy. I decided less was more and just put on some butterfly buttons accented with beads.

Look what I got in the mail . . . .

after a complete mix-up and mistake on my part. It's silk dupioni from Silk Baron. This is a yellow shade, but also has pink threads as part of the weave (you can see those on the left). Depending on the light the fabric is either yellow or has a pinkish cast to it. In the photo above, you can see it's mostly yellow on the turn back, but the rest has the pinkish cast. Really lovely and a complete surprise.

This is what happened. I ordered some green silk from the Silk Baron for the appliqued leaves for the American Beauty coat lining. (You can either buy through eBay or from his website.) Right after I hit the "pay" button at paypal I realized that I had payed with a defunct bank account that I never bothered removing. So, I sent a second payment (which for some reason didn't go through right away) and an apologetic email. To shorten this sad tale, I ended up having to send him a money order for the silk. The day after I put it in the mail, the paypal payment finally went through correctly. Since the money order was on it's way, I suggested that he just send me a yard of silk - his color chosing. Here it is. Do take a look at his silks - they're beautiful and there are some colors on eBay that aren't on the website. The prices are very good, and a lot of it is 54" wide. He's very professional and courteous and gets the fabric in the mail pretty quick, too!

What am I going to do with this? I suppose I'll order up some more and make a dress. Probably a vintage pattern - straight style, simple, but interesting like one of these:


The fabric is too stiff for fancy pleating and drapes, and maybe even a full skirt. I really just want something interesting, but that will really showcase the fabric. Any ideas? Vintage or modern, let me know!

Please pass the condiments!

Don't ask what I was thinking when I picked the fabric for this dress. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and didn't occur to me until I was almost done with the dress that is looks like mustard and ketchup. It's actually not all that bad. This is for my neice for Christmas and she's only 2 and can get away with such a color combination. At any rate, this is the first of the two dresses I'm making, the other one will be plum with tiny mauve vines and flowers.

Above is a close-up of the bodice and trim/binding. These garments are so small (size 1 toddler) that it's easy to put too much on them. Scale of prints and embellishments is really important. I might add some red flower buttons down the front if I can find the right ones, but that'll be it. Here's how I did the trim, shown on a sleeve:

First, I basted medium rick-rick to the sleeve, 1/2" away from the edge to be bound. The size of the rick-rack depends on the scale of the garment.

Second, I stitched the binding to the edge. This is the packaged extra wide double fold bias tape. In this case, I put the binding seam line on the basting line on the wrong side of the fabric (the basting line comes in handy here) and stitched on the back and wrapped to the front. Could be stitched from the front, too, depends on your project.

Last, I wrapped the binding to the front and hand-stitched it in place. It could be top-stitched, but I didn't like the results on the inside, where sometimes the stitching veers off the binding. Looks great from the front, but the insides don't look too hot.

On the sewing agenda this week: Marfy pants redo, getting another corner done on the American Beauty coat lining, getting started on the AB dress (got to get white silamide today!), and the other dress for my neice. Better get going . . . .

American Beauty - Dress - Part III

I think I've cut this dress out before . . . .

at least that's how I felt after cutting it out four times. The dress only has 4 pieces, but I had to cut 4 layers - the sheer rose overlay, the white dupioni, the white organza underlining, and the white china silk lining. I still need to cut out and fit the corselette, but I'll worry about that once I get the strap seams done. Just another white layer.

The fabric that started it all, partially unrolled from the bolt:

Cutting out the dress - you can see the muslin/pattern piece and where I've added more fabric into the skirt piece to get the circle skirt I wanted. I stole some circle skirt pattern pieces from another pattern and used them to get the correct width and tapered up to the waistline.

Last, but not least, all the bias strips. For the strap seams, I need 3 strips for each seam. With 8 seams, let's see, that's 24 bias strips. Being a little short on fabric, quite a few of them are pieced. Here's the cutting chaos:

What I ended up doing to make sure I had the correct length and number strips for each seam was to put the correct strips with a label into a plastic baggie, and then put them away. That way, in the next few weeks when I get around to working on the strap seams, I'll know which ones go to which seams. I've got all 24 ready now, so I just need to get with the program. As usual.

American Beauty - Coat - Part XIV

Quick update!

I've got one corner done!

Ruler included for scale freaks. It's an 18" ruler. From a little closer:

One more corner and then the big center back medallion. After that, it's quilt all the lining, do the button/buttonhole and get the lining in the coat, and if I have time, I'll do some extra embroidery on the appliques!

American Beauty - Dress - Part II

Nip, Tuck.

This is my usual mode of taking a pattern that is close to what I want and making it what I want. I make up a muslin and start cutting and re-seaming until I'm satisfied. This approach works for me and I end up with pattern pieces that work after I take my Frankendress apart.

After trying the muslin on and altering every seam except for the princess seams, I think I have a fit I'm happy with. With the beaded strap seams there is no place for alterations. It's either right or not. This dress doesn't have to fit skin tight, but it's pretty fitted in the bust/waist. I have a list on a piece of paper of all the changes, including but not limited to, changing the strap size and neckline, putting in the front insert, moving the zip from the side to the back (not sure if that will stay there), and making the skirt a full circle skirt.

Compare the old dress with the new dress:


When I cut it out, the only change I forgot was to fold out 1" for my short waist. I'm not sure whether I'm going to go back and fix that. I may not always be the one to model this dress. Unless the model is pretty small anyway, they won't be able to wear it, but on the off chance that it's a normal to tall skinny model, I don't think the dress would look good with the waist up under their bust.

I am almost, but not quite finished with a corner medallion (one more piece!) and will post an update and picture soon. I also went back and reworked the sleeve medallions. I wasn't happy with the rose centers, but that's not a surprise, now is it?

I don't think she had this in mind . . . .

Phyllis posted a tutorial on her blog on making beaded tassels in the last week or so (scroll down, it's there!), and it inspired me to make one for a purse that I was working on. Not quite as elegant or understated as her tassels, but it suits my purposes. I made a few changes for this embellishment to work for this project. First, I used a large flat star sequin instead of the flat bead for the neck. The grid in the background is 1" so you get an idea of the scale. I also eliminated the beading on the loop and used a button instead of a the large bead for the tassel head. I stitched through the holes of the button like making the beaded loop, but there aren't any beads and the thread is pulled tight. To attach this creation, I treated it like a shank button, with the gold Nymo thread on the back of the button acting as the shank. It's attached on the outside, positioned right over the magnetic snap.

Here's the back and front of the finished purse, A Night at the Opera. It's made from black fabric with bleached pen words, which originally were yellow. I overdyed them with turquoise, ending up with a lime green color. I didn't like that, so I tried various tulle overlays and two layers of emerald green later I ended up with this deep green color. I needed the tulle to make the little "pockets" for the rhinestones and sequins anyway. With the color change of the whole purse, I decided on green velvet for the flap and green satin for the lining. and green, blue and gold sequins and rhinestones. I wanted a softer bag than the last one, so I used fusible interfacing only.


I'm not teaching today, so I'm going to get started on my neice's Christmas gifts and cut out the American Beauty dress. More on that tomorrow!

Marfy Pants!

I finished these pants last week, but didn't have the digital camera to get the pictures taken.

The jury is still out on these pants. I haven't worn higher-waisted pants in years, so it's taken a bit to get used to them. I also forgot that because I'm short waisted, they ride up even higher than on a normal length torso. I do like the style, and the leg width and they make my legs look longer. Even the 5 year old said, "Wow you look tall, mommy." I did the usual taking in at the side seams and center back and added cuffs for fun because I would have had to take off 5" at the bottom anyway. I did make the pants a bit longer this time, as Isabelle suggested with the last pair.

The inside construction of the yoke area is interesting. As you can see, there are two darts and a curved seam, but no true pocket. I suppose you could draft one up and put one in if you wanted one. I had to take a good look at it and figure out how to construct this. First, I installed the fly zipper. Then, I worked on the yokes. I made the vertical dart first, then stitched the curved edge to the pants front, then folded out and stitched the horizontal dart. After that was complete, I did the topstitching. The pictures below show the inside and the outside.

In the full length pictures, there are some weird wrinkles at both the front and back, and I'd like to get rid of those on the next pair. I've got some fit issues here - first on the back I need to reduce the amount of fabric under the seat area, next I need to do something about the front. I think I need to add some fabric just in the front of the thigh. I was digging around today on PatterReview and found a link to something Els had shown about fitting pants over the protruding front thighs. I have those and I think it will help. Short term, I'm going to let out the side seams a bit and see if giving me some more fabric in the front will help. Fitting divas, let me know what you think, these pants need some tweaking before I make them in an expensive fabric.

I wore the Marfy skirt to school today and got rave reviews from the critical fashion-conscious high school girls. They made so much noise in the hall over the skirt, I had a fellow teacher stop by and ask what was going on. He wasn't too impressed when he found out it was over my skirt. Men.

Presenting . . .

The Little Red Empress! Here she is. I had her put the outfit on tonight for the pictures I should have taken Saturday night. The only difference is the hair and makeup. Her hair was in a low, tight ponytail and she had her eyebrows darkened a bit, some blush and red lipgloss.

Here's the whole outfit. The black shoes are from China, via eBay, of course.

This next pic is of just the top and pants. They're fully lined and have bound seams.

The lining of the coat is made of many different red Asian prints cut in strips and pieced together. You can also see the label of the coat in yellow; the pants and top have the same label. too.

Last, but not least, a close-up. There's the Chinese coin earrings I was able to get (thankfully!) from a merchant at the show. You can just see the bead work on the flowers and the gold lame binding on the collar. All three pieces have the same binding and beadwork.

She was very excited to be in the show and when the ribbons were announced, she told me *she* had won a first place. Right . . . .

I didn't bother to explain the reality of it all and just let her enjoy it!

Good News and Bad News . . .

Which do you want first? Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. I forgot the camera for the Quilter's Gathering fashion show. Duh. I also forgot the jewlery for my daughter's outfit. Luckily at the vendor's mall there was a lady selling Chinese jewlery!

I finally told my daughter about the show after lunch yesterday. Her comment? "Mom, you freak me out!". In a deadpan way I remarked that it probably wouldn't be the last time. She was very excited, but nervous. When we got there, I showed her the catwalk - it was pretty short this time - and showed her how to turn and pose. She caught on quickly and did a fantastic job at the show. I didn't have time to see her on the runway from the wings, as I had to change outfits completely while she was out there. I was a little concerned about fit since she had never tried on or worn the outfit until last night, but it fit perfectly and my husband said the outfit was just right for her.

Now for the really good news. I won a first place with Little Red Empress, a second place and Viewer's Choice for Rising from the Ashes. The three ribbons will be in the mail next week, and I will try to get a picture of my daughter in the outfit to post sometime this week!

Letting the cat out of the bag . . . .

I still haven't told my daughter that she's in a fashion show tonight. Tonight is the night, the Made to Wear Fashion Show of the Eastcoast Quilter's Alliance. I will have to tell her this morning, because I need take her to pick out beads to quickly make some jewlery for her outfit! I should have pictures to post by Monday. The digital camera is at a Volleyball Tournament, so I'll have to take my trusty old Minolta 35 mm to the show. I will also be on the runway tonight, so I need to find and pack up all the outfit accessories, shoes, make-up, etc.

So what else have I been up to? I finished the Marfy pants, and will post pictures either tomorrow or Monday. I'm working on another purse, and got the words discharged dyed, but haven't cut it out yet. I'm waiting on some fabric possibly for the purse to come in. Long story and I'll tell you about that when I get the fabric. I'm still working on appliques for American Beauty and am going to fit that dress today.

We're also in the middle of redecorating our kitchen, which entails painting all the cabinets and drawers (all 29 of them!), painting the ceiling and walls, replacing the countertops and flooring, adding shelving and seating. We're keeping the appliances and sink! Thank goodness.

Back to painting!

On Newsstands Now . . .

Altered Couture.

I have an article in this special publication from the publishers of Belle Armoire. I have had a garment published in the Salon section of the July/Aug. 2006 Belle Armoire, but this is the first written article. The garment featured is the burgundy velvet dress with the fall leaves - a sneak peak of the first page of the article is below:


It's pretty surreal to see your stuff in magazines. The dress is really hard to photograph, and their photographers did a fantastic job. Additional photos are on my website. I also have a garment in the next edition of Altered Couture, due out in May 2007.

Today I'm off hiking Mts. Willey and Field - there is snow now and I should have a good view of Mt. Washington and the rest of the Presidential Range. I was hiking in that area two weeks ago and encounted some dustings of snow along with snow already on the Presidentials.

The Marfy pants are well on their way - I'll have them done mostly likely tomorrow night and have pictures sometime this weekend!