Curtains and pillow covers

A friend hired me to sew some things for her little boy’s room. She went with me to choose the fabric.

Mint stripe flannel curtains. The blackout lining fabric is dry clean only, so I hemmed the linings and buttoned them to the curtains.

Mint minkee (generic) pillow covers, using zippers recycled from bedding bags. These were surprisingly much easier and faster than the curtains. Partly because they are smaller, and partly because there was less figuring to do, and largely because there weren’t forty button holes and forty buttons.

Protected: Ballerina

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Ballerina

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Some recent sewing

Here are pictures of some sewing I recently did for a friend’s little girl.

Added a chin strap to this witch’s hat:

Hemmed these jeans:

These pants had been hemmed last year and needed to be let down again. The original hem was serged, and was starting to fray in places. I don’t have a serger, so I replaced that hem with a lettice edge.

Next week I go to the fabric store with another friend to choose fabric for the curtains she wants me to make, complete with room-darkening lining, and two other friends want some jeans hemmed — one wants me to try the fancy folding way where the original hem is preserved.

Fancy dress continues

I’m continuing to work on altering my fancy silk and velvet devore dress.

I have decided against the long fringed sleeves — the split cap sleeves seem more attractive and shapely.

I put inserts in the right side triangle and the open upside-down V from the waist down. A piece from the center of the old sleeve fit nicely in the triangle. Then I used half of the old underskirt for the lower insert. I cut the fringed edge off the old sleeve and stitched it to the bottom of the insert — that’s an effective and easy way to transfer the fringe.

Because of the bust darts, the back of the dress is longer than the front. I’m not sure how I’m going to address that yet. Maybe I can fold in a bit of the back piece to bring the fringe up to meet the bottom of the insert, and stitch the fold down.

Speaking of the bust darts, they looked fine on the dress form but not on me. I undid one and fixed it, I think. It looks fine when I’m standing with arms down, but the fabric bunches a bit when I lift my arm. Perhaps that’s to be expected.

I put the dress on and pinned the left side together where the armpit and waist meet. I’m not sure that lower right insert is big enough. I thought about that when I trimmed the edges, and I left about half an inch all around — so I could theoretically widen it if need be.

I still wonder if I’ll be able to bend and sit in this thing. It has very little stretch. Side slits would help, but I don’t think it would look right with these v-shaped inserts.

I also still wonder what to do about the left side. I suspect a zipper or other closure would have to open into the sleeve (usually side zippers go to the armpit but stay closed at that point) — otherwise I might not be able to get the dress on and off. The other end would fall around my hip, I suppose.

Fancy dress update

I got this fancy dress in exchange for playing for a fashion show at a little boutique in Ithaca — and for modeling the dress at the show. It’s made of two different rectangular shawls, silk, with velvet burnout designs. The boutique owners designed the fabrics.

Here’s what it used to look like — rather shapeless, and rather more narrow than I am.

I took it apart this afternoon, and started pinning it to my dress form to see what I could do.

Here is the main piece, with bust darts.

There’s a triangular hole under each arm from folding the dart. Also, while the main piece front and back meet at my waist, they don’t at my hip. (Oh, and yes, that’s a pair of aluminum knitting needles holding up the form. And that’s one of my speaker stands. It has holes where you can slide in a little bar for added stability when the top part of the stand is raised.)

Here it is with the sleeve pinned back on and with the lower skirt pinned at the side. I’d still need another piece of something to fill in the triangular hole — I have some black velvet from another non-fitting dress that I could use.

I’m not quite sure how to go about the construction. Certainly not a back zipper. Maybe a side zipper, but it would have to go at an angle down from the waist so as not to mess up the insert fabric’s pattern. I’m thinking maybe ribbon ties. And if I could somehow do that insert fabric so that it’s not actually stitched to the main piece, then that would allow more freedom of movement. No one would know how silly it would look underneath, with two rectangles joined by a band of elastic or something. I’d also probably need to find some matching fringe for those insert pieces.

Unless I don’t use the sleeves — I sort of like the look of the split cap sleeves. In which case I could sew the sleeve rectangle to the other rectangle (the sleeve rectangle isn’t long enough to reach from hem to waist) for the inserts, or else (aha!!!) just transfer the sleeve fringe to the inserts! There we go.

Loose neckline fix

Amy wanted me to wear a dress today, so I did. I pulled out that green linen dress I sewed some time ago. It’s okay, but the princess seams aren’t quite in the right places, and the neck opening is too large, so it gapes a bit front and back. This was before I learned how to do a full bust alteration, so I’d enlarged the whole top of the dress instead. Ooops.

Anyway, while wearing it, it occurred to me to try sewing a casing all around the neckline and sticking in some elastic. And lo and behold, it worked so well! There’s a facing around the neckline, so all I had to do was stitch a line all around and thread the elastic through. This line will also keep the facing from rolling out.

———

Bummer — I thought I had a “before” picture but I don’t.

Protected: And the kitty’s dressed

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This one’s done

Who would have thought the sleeves would be the easiest part?

———

previously here and here

Bag (for sale)

This used to be a Pier One table runner. It’s a tweedy fabric on top with embroidery, a layer of somewhat stiff interfacing, lined with a silky navy polyester.

I added a panel of navy cotton to divide the bag into two compartments. On each side of the divider is a largish pocket with a button closure. Under the flap is a snap closure and a small divided pocket.

For whatever reason, the number $40 has been floating in my head as I’ve contemplated selling this bag. Plus shipping if you’re not local.

Let me know if you’re interested.

———

Sold, received, and liked! And the little mad money got me an exercise ball, a book, and a picture frame.