Dog Cushion Cover

Awww check out my beautiful lady!  (and her dog bed, the subject of this post.  Do you want the long story?  Too bad, here it comes: 

 

I was browsing around in Homegoods, as I have a habit of doing, and I saw this glorious dog bed - large and round, zebra patterned cushion, iron-look scrollwork.  It was a beauty.  It cost about $60, and steal-of-a-deal I'm sure that was, I'm sure if I spent $60 on a dog bed, Hubs would have freaked. 

So I decided to make River a nice, personalized bed instead, with stash fabric to boot, so the cost would be almost nothing.  Ha!  That foam - with the 50% off JoAnn coupon almost as much as the froufy dog bed from Homegoods.  Sheesh. 

Anyway, here it is.  I put in a zipper so I can take it off to wash it.  It's a bugger to pull on and off, though, so I don't think I'll do that too often.

Love my embroidery machine!  She seems to enjoy it, depending where I put it.  If it's right next to our bed, she will lounge on it during the day, but if I move it to an unacceptable spot (like an open area by the door), she has no interest.

At least she's pretty.

More Baby Clothes

Here is another baby outfit I made recently, this time for my brother-in-law's wee one - about three moths old.

 She lives in Michigan, so I thought a warmer layer was in order.  I came up with a little zippered vest made from the same cozy knit as the pants.  All of the fabric is from JoAnn's.

Red Stripey tee

Here are some bad nighttime photos of a tee I made a couple of months ago.  Not the most exciting thing, but it does get a lot of wear.  :-)  It works nicely on its own or for layering under sweaters.  I particularly like it under this sweater, but my wonderful husband may have told me I remind him of one of Santa's elves.

I just used my usual OOP tee pattern, Butterick 3344, and modified the neckline from there.  This knit has very little stretch, so it is quite snug, but I think it's ok. 

New Vogue Patterns!

I'm so excited about these new Vogue patterns!  In keeping with my desire to sew clothes I'll wear in my everyday life, I won't be showing the cocktail dresses, fabulous though they may be (looking at you, 1339, 1342, and 1340).

I'll be making 1343 ASAP.  I think I even have a good fabric, if I have enough.  With some flat sandals, I can wear this to take the kids to swim lessons and stuff, right?

 

 

1344 is really cute, but I'll probably stick with the one above. 

 

I am drawn to 1337 between the blousey top and wide belt.  Maybe this would be cute over leggings, or maybe i could shorten it to a top to wear with cropped slim pants.  I even like the batwing effect, which usually doesn't excite me.

 

I like the simple shape of this vintage dress, too.  8875 could be another cute, casual dress in a fun cotton.

 

8882 is a very cute skirt.  I'm trying to imagine it apart from my imaginary Italian vacation.

8883 look very cute as the shorts option, but I'm not sure...  Might wait to see these made up a few times first.  :-)

 

8884 looks like a really great jacket.  I do not need any more jackets, though.  For real this time.

8888 looks like some nice summer jammies.  I'm  more the cozy knit jammie type, though.

 

Vogue 1257

Hello, everyone!  This past Saturday, my family had a totally relaxing, stay-at-home kind of day.  I decided sometime mid-morning that I was going to start sewing something new.  I pawed through my patterns and fabrics and came up with this pairing - Vogue 1257 with some deep red ponte knit from JoAnns. 
                 Can I tell you, this stuff is beautiful and washes with no pills or roughness - a really nice beefy knit, and you can't beat the price when it's on sale or with a coupon.  I see much more of it in my future.  I just wish they had some more colors and maybe some stripes or something.

Anyway, here is the dress:

The obvious change is that mine is short-sleeved... not by my design.  I was going with the long sleeves, but they were just way too tight.  After I let them out as much as possible, I could still barely get the dress all the way on and had serious sausage-casing arms.  I'm not sure whose fault this is - the ponte I used has very little stretch and only in one direction, but the pattern calls for 2-way stretch, so that shouldn't have been a problem.  Since the sleeves are cut-on with the front, the are cut from the direction of the fabric with no stretch.  I just hacked off the sleeves very short, and it fits, although the sleeves are still snug around my biceps - I blame all the time I've been spending pumping iron at the gym.  If I make this again (and I may), I will simply cut the sleeves wider.  Luckily, the fit on the rest of the dress is perfect with no alterations.

I cut the skirt portion a bit more A-line than the pattern piece, and I like the swingier shape with the gathering detail.  One part I will pay more attention to in a future version is the placement of the bodice overlap so that it looks more like it's flowing into the skirt detail.  It looks perfect on the pattern envelope, so I'm not sure if I matched up dots incorrectly or what.  It doesn't bug me enough for me to go unpicking seams to fix it, though.

The back view shows how the back skirt is plain but with 4 darts.  I was a bit concerned this would be too tight on my bum, but I think it lays nicely.  I didn't plan to necessarily finish this dress in one day, but that's what happened, so I wore it to church on Sunday.  I think this is casual enough, though, that I could wear it with some flat sandals in summer.  It is SUPER comfortable, and the gathered detail at the waist means I don't feel the need to constantly suck in my tummy.  :-)

I think the profile view is fine and won't elicit any questions about pregnancy, as can be a problem with some gathered above-waist skirts.

Here is a closeup so you can see what I mean about the pleats and gathers not really lining up right with the knot.

 

Headboard!

This is kind of off-topic from the sewing I've been doing recently, but I know my big sister wants to see this, so here is the headboard I made for my little guy about a year ago.

Lest you be too impressed, I just followed these plans from Ana White.  I didn't even make the whole bed - just slapped the headboard onto a $40 Ikea bed.  The green pieces are bits of my other son's loft bed.  They chose to share a room over a year ago and haven't looked back.  It's nice to know we could live happily in a two-bedroom house if we needed to.  :-)

 

Chanel-style jacket - part 1

This is my weekly UFO/refashion post.  I was feeling ambitious this week, so I pulled out a "UFO" that consisted of just the cut pieces of a Chanel-style sweater jacket.  I am not in the habit of cutting out patterns to sew at a later date.  I'm not sure why I cut this one out and never sewed a single stitch, but there it was. 

The pattern is Vogue 7975, which I've never made before.  I remember cutting out this jacket RIGHT before Claire Shaeffer's Vogue 8805 was release, and then I thought, "oh nuts, I should have waited for this one."  Oh well, I'll get around to that one soon enough.  The thing is, I've read all of the recent Vogue Pattern Magazine stories by Claire Shaeffer about making this style jacket, and I read one of her books which discusses this extensively, so when I actually sewed up this jacket this week, I didn't even look at any directions. 

I followed the basic construction I remembered - quilt the shell to the lining, leaving seam allowances free, machine-stitch the pieces together keeping the lining free, and then hand stitch the lining together at each seam.  Time-intensive, yes, but not difficult.  The right neckline looks a bit wonky in this photo, so I may redo that.  What's missing now is all of the lovely trim that makes it special (and the patch pockets I didn't add yet).  I'm planning a hook and eye closure for this jacket.  The fabric is some yummy Linton Tweed I picked up in England.  Oh it was lovely living in Europe.  :-)

Shout out to my mommy and daddy who gave me the dress form for Christmas. :-)  I am having much fun with it!