SECOND Hollyburn

You guys.......... I'm so in love with my second Hollyburn skirt!

Pattern: Sewaholic Hollyburn, view C (plus ~1" in length for this tall lady)

Fabric:Mustard linen/rayon blend

This skirt is more what I was envisionoing when I made my first Hollyburn in a red twill. As soon as I started working on it, I started to realize I had accidentally chosen a fabric that was a bit heavy for the job. The heavy fabric causes the A-line of the skirt to be more pronounced, while this mustard version has a great drapiness to it. 

Also, the mustard color is a great neutral that I can mix with TONS of clothes. I am confident in this cause I have a mustard colored cardigan that I thought I would never wear but OH WAIT it goes with EVERYTHING EVER!!! I love that sweater.

So that's my new skirt. I wore it today and was SUPER pleased with it. I also made my first attempt at flat felled seams (a way to encapsulate the raw edge of the fabric within the seam to prevent fraying, used in a lot of menswear, especially button down shirts). This was definitely useful practice for future projects, but the first round wasn't very pretty...

I'm on a mustard / gold/ neutral kick right now. Check out this stash:

- Greenish tan gingham sleeveless button up I found at Goodwill

- The mustard linen I used for this skirt

- Ongoing knitting project, the color is "honey"

- Recently completed green t-shirt (my best t-shirt to date!)

I have been wanting to make something out of mustard linen cause I keep seeing it somewhere... Eventually I figured out it was on one of my favorite blogs, Delia Creates, when she conveniently mentioned that her coveted and very stylish looking mustard linen is just the stuff on the shelf at Joann's! Where everything is like $10 a yard and almost always 50% off! 

YAY!

Also my blouse is my second Colette Patterns Sorbetto tank. I made my first Sorbetto with the center pleat shown in the original pattern but eliminated it in this second seersucker version. I also ended up taking in the top at least a centimeter on both sides. I plan to eliminate a centimeter from the center fold of the pattern so that the shoulders of any future Sorbettos will fall a bit closer to my neck. This whole shirt is too big!

So I wore this outfit all day and it was work apropro (my job is casual) and comfortable for helping my client do all of his daily tasks like shower and dress and whatever. My job involves lots of squatting, bending, lifting. Also, cool in the 85* and muggy weather. 

Obviously took photos at the dog park again. Thanks, Ricky!

All completed Hollyburns seem to be accompanied by a picture of Xuxa running at the camera. :)

Lucca models again

The beautiful Lucca came over the other night so her parents could go out and celebrate (Amber's birthday! Salute Your Shorts reunion!). She's swiftly turning from a baby-like 1-year-old to a toddler-like 1-year-old. She walked around, said the words "baby" and "dog," shook her head no, laughed a lot when I pretended to eat her book and pretended to spit it out and made a "Yuuuuck" face... She's so much fun right now!

Does this look like a legit toddler or WHAT??

Anyways, I wanted to try a couple of EXPERIMENTS on her.....

That cloth romper that I posted the other day needed to be TESTED. It was designed for stretch fabrics but I was thinking it would sew up find in a woven.

THE ANSWER....

Yup. Just fine.

And the back with the cross straps:

Inspiration for this project was from saw one of my favorite sources for baby sewing inspiration, @yo_soy_luna :

Some differences, but overall pretty similar! 

* * * 

Secondly, my weird experiment: An Izzy Top (free pattern) with a harem pants sort of attachment. 

I was inspired by this Wolfechild romper that I also saw on @yo_soy_luna ...  

... and I made my own attempt without a pattern for the bottom part.

Cute or weird? I think the original version with thin straps is the way to go, but more importantly a lighter/thinner fabric with more drape would recreate the original look much better.

I made the polka-dot romper out of a sheet I found at the Goodwill bins when I was preeetttyy new to sewing. That trip was awesome, I found lots of sheets with crazy prints and other large shirts with funky fabric that I am still using in projects to this day. However, I didn't know a lot about fabrics and how the quality of the fabric impacts the garmet and the way it falls etc. So a somewhat stiff, starchy, thick old sheet falls pretty differently than the (what looks like) a nice lightweight cotton, like for a lightweight blouse.

That's all for now. But for good measure, here is a picture of Lucca cracking up last night as I was trying to read her a book and get her to settle down. She was so not having it that I gave in and was silly for a minute (pretending to eat her cardboard Dr. Suess book) and she was busting up!

My first Hollyburn

I made myself a skirt!! This is the Hollyburn pattern from Sewaholic. Many of my favorite sewing bloggers sing its praises and I was really digging this vision of myself rocking the high waisted skirt all summer  so I took the plunge!

This skirt has three lengths (below the knee, at the knee, and shortish). I figured the knee length would hit me above the knee since it was designed for someone who is 5' 4" and I'm 5' 11". I figured wrong and had to lob off 3 inches to get the length I wanted!

What do you think? I like. Xuxa's like, whatever.

I made the t-shirt in these photos, too. I made another from a royal blue and white version of this fabric. These two shirts were my first attempt at stripe-matching and I didn't suck at it! Go me! I made this with my evolving t-shirt pattern. It's getting closer to perfect.

So far, I've mostly made myself t-shirts and a couple of tank top blouse thangs... All of which will go with high waisted skirts!

I actually paid for this skirt pattern (crazyyy) and it was my first paper pattern, not a PDF I printed out.  Now I'm kind of hooked, especially for any garment that is larger than a T-shirt. If it's only a couple dollars more for a paper pattern, it's worth it. It's not fun spending valuable sewing time doing PDF pattern assembly.

I picked out a red cotton twill fabric at Joann's that was probably meant more for pants than a skirt.... It's pretty stiff!  Oh well.

I already purchased some mustard colored linen for round 2. I picked up a zipper for that puppy this afternoon so I'm ready to roll!

After twill (stiff) and linen (wrinkly), I'm going to try something.... nice and drapey and not crazy wrinkly. Then I will have a trifecta of skirts. I'm thinking blue to round out my primary colors.

This was also the first time I've put a zipper into clothing. We don't need any close ups of that nonsense, trust me...

This skirt has pockets! This was my first time putting pockets into anything (except a decorative one on a baby skirt...). My (ancient, crappy, tiny) cell phone was in the front pocket the whole time and you can't even tell! POCKETS!!

They're functional, but I didn't get any good photos of them.

These photos were all taken at the dog park. Check out this dog on the prowl!

Washed out smiley picture.... Why not.


Also, I got to deliver these baby dresses to the baby-to-be's baby's daddy. Dean gave me two pairs of cowboy boots as a thank you for some baby pants I made him, which was super generous. I felt he deserved more than that one pair of baby pants for such a generous gift. I've wanted cowboy boots for aaaaages and... TWO PAIRS?!  Seriously. Deserves two dresses at least. And I got to try out some free newborn sized patterns from Made By Rae.

Pink horse print Itty Bitty Baby Dress... I enlarged the bodice slightly since newborn clothes fit babies for like 2 hours, from my understanding...?

And this awesome Geranium Dress in corduroy & vintage looking floral print. This is a super popular pattern and she offers the newborn size for free to get you hooked. I gotta say, it is tempting. Everyone loves this dress and it came out great. The little pockets make the dress. Alas, I am only interested in paying for patterns for myself. Bua ha ha.

So many things to sew...

Lucca's new duds

A few weeks ago, Amber and I ordered a bunch of fabric from Girl Charlee. They have a lot of fun and kid-friendly prints (which appeals to Amber), as well as a decent amount of stripey fabric and other nonsense (which appeals to me). My purchases are mentioned in the previous post about destashing my fabric collection.

In this post, I want to show what I have done with Lucca's new fabrics so far! The fabrics arrived Wednesday afternoon and I think I washed them that night. Amber, Aaron, and  Lucca came over Sunday afternoon (Mother's Day) and I had made 3 new items from the fabric already. I was pleased with the turnaround time! I had a few previous makes sitting around for Lucca, and I'm including those too!

Amber picked out these 4 fabrics:
1. Super soft yellow and gray with birds on a wire print
2. Finely striped turquoise and brown jersey
3. Deeeeeeply discounted triangle print ($1.50 a YARD??!), burgundy on a milky coffee color. I previously purcahsed 2 yards of each of the three color combos of this print (burgundy, green, blue)...
4. White-on-gray triangle print

I was very pleased with this bird print dress! We did hem it to knee length, don't worry. 

I used a new-to-me and free racer back dress pattern.

Blue and brown stripes became this awesome shorty romper from Brindille & Twig patterns!

Back side-- cross over straps, so cute.

I made a skirt out of the triangle print. I even made Lucca's normal size. Yet, it was huge! Big enough to use the rollover waistband as a dress!

Go figure! So we just rolled with that... Cause it was so damn cute....

And added a little elastic neck band! It's a single piece of elastic sewed to the front on both sides, so it just slips over her head like a 1950s bombshell swimsuit would. 

Check out this move:

Here are the new magenta moccasins! They needed some editing but they seem to fit now, with room to grow. I'm excited about the color. These photos don't show the mocs very well but.... meh.

This was obviously not made with the new fabrics. I found this women's blouse with busted elbows in a free pile and liked the print and the embroidery. I sewed elastic into the top and turned the waist tie into some shoulder straps and... voila!! Insta-dress in Lucca's size.

This striped dress was made out of a men's polo shirt that I found in a free box. I love sea foam and I love stripes so I almost made it into a tank top for myself. I decided to try a Lucca sized dress with contrasting stripes. Sadly, it was not Lucca sized. It is huge! I think I can take it in in a few places and it will work.

Lastly, this cute mother's day photo. I made this cute deer print romper from a previous fabric order from Girl Charlee. Yet again, the romper pattern is from Brindille & Twig. Amber digs the rompers and gosh darn it, that company makes really cute and easy patterns. We bought each of the romper patterns right when they each came out and got discounted promotional prices both times! We're pretty cool.

Fabric Destashing & Self-Imposed Fabric Embargo

I'm always suuuuuuuuuuuper excited when new fabric arrives. Unfortunately, the new fabric excitement tends to eclipse the excitement of whatever fabrics I was previously excited about. It's pretty amazing how it happens.

And this, my friends, is how lovely fabrics end up forgotten in a pile!

I feel bad for all those lovely forgotten fabric dreams. So I have voluntarily cut myself off of fabric purchases for the time being until I address some of the lovelies in my stash. (Voluntarily, though Ricky is very encouraging...)

I'm documenting some of my neglected fabrics to regenerate my interest in them...

Next up: Today I'm going to slice into this beautiful drapey fabric to make a summery tank top with dark straps to match the dark leaves.

Another fun (polyester, sadly) sweater knit. This will be a.... dress? Sweater?? Big bold pattern needs to become a big piece of clothing to be appreciated.

All these stripes will become summer tops. The red and white is almost sweatshirt weight. I'm thinking loose boat neck sweater! The tan and blue shall be T-shirts.

These want to become baby sweatshirts when they grow up. I loved the frog print and I have orange trim to coordinate with, but I've been hesitant to cut into it in case I come up with a better idea. The gray with orange stripes is rather simple, but would also be a cute sweatshirt with orange trim.

Old timey seersucker and floral print... what shall you become? Not enough fabric to make much in the way of adult clothes...

My collection of pretty blue patterns that are hanging around. They're all kind of stiff, so I can't make them into the blouses I had hoped for. They will turn out too boxy. I'm  hoping to find a fitted blouse pattern for them.

Flannel stash! These will become baby bibs or baby shower gifts of some kind... I like geometric patterns!

Goodwill bins finds that I have not really cut into. I have great hopes for all these cute prints! Waiting for the right project.

And finally.... my beautiful double gauze plaid. This was my first purchase from Mood Designer Fabrics! I kept reading about this company on sewing blogs but didn't delve too deeply into their site cause I thought it would be spendy. They ended up having the best price I could find for double gauze fabrics.

Look how beautiful and drapey!

My absolute favorite... What will it become?!?! Dress or blouse? I don't have the right pattern picked out yet.

Butterscotch and teal.. who knew? I love the combo.

SOOO.....

All those have yet to be addressed. But here are some success stories from my destashing efforts!

1. I turned this half a yard of red & white (which looks pink) seersucker into this awesome short summer romper for somebody's baby! Whose baby will it be??

 

I wanted to see if this pattern, intended for stretchy knit fabrics, would work in a non-stretch fabric. The answer: Yes, adorable, but it added even more steps to this pattern which already has enough steps for my taste, what with the straps, the 3 elastic cuffs, the interfacing and ironing...

2. Hot pink and black sweater knit in a funky print .... became this sweater! Surprise! When this fabric arrived I was like, "Huh, that was not what I pictured." But I like this sweater. Sadly it's cheap polyester, don't know why I didn't notice before I purchased. It gets sweaty! Oh well.

Super awkward bathroom selfie time!

3.  I made this gray ponte knit fabric into a super basic but lovely dress using a pattern I bought (I'm not cut off from buying patterns, just fabric, so it's okay I promise...!??!) and I am already excited to make another like it in a brown sweatery knit with 3/4 sleeves. Which I may or may not have purchased during my fabric embargo... but I paid with a gift certificate, so it's different....

ALSO: Ricky actually MADE this tote bag! He made it! It deserves its own post for sure, but let's all admire this stunning navy tote with waxed canvas bottom...

Clearly I enjoy my tote!

Side note: this dress had it's first outing at my cousin's baby's first  birthday party! This is becoming a theme in my life... Sewing things that then debut at baby birthday parties. I'm very okay with this trend.

Idyllic scenery! Cake!

More destashing will happen........ And hopefully no fabric purchases. Though I am considering buying skirt fabric tonight... Jesus christ.