Tag Archives: corduroy

Polka-Stripe Dresses

I hate missing deadlines! These dresses were originally supposed to be submitted for Project Run & Play’s week 2 challenge: Stripes and Polka-Dots. I was really excited about this challenge too, because I already had this awesome polka-dot corduroy. I got it last fall to make new Fall Dresses for my girls, but pregnancy exhaustion struck.

So, when last week started I pulled out the fabric and fell in love with it all over again. AND I noticed that the polka-dots actually make a stripe pattern…bonus! Many of the folks sewing along with the challenge were doing interesting things mixing up prints and while that is awesome, it just makes me nervous. I guess my style is much less adventurous than that. The fact that I actually was hitting both polka-dots and stripes in one awesome piece of fabric made me even more excited to get down to work on them. And then…life struck. My children were crazy-pants all week and didn’t actually go to sleep until after 9 pm each night…I had to finish up a couple orders for the Shop…I got a wicked headache that lasted 2 days…our pest control company sprayed the house one morning and then 7 hours later the floors were still soaking wet, effectively locking the small children and pregnant people out of the house…it was just one of those nutty weeks. I was able to work on the dresses here and there, but just couldn’t get them done for the Friday at 8:00 am deadline. Boo. But I plowed on and finished them this weekend and the girls were able to wear them to church this morning.

And now that my whining and excuse-making are over, I present to you my Polka-Stripe Dresses!

Polka-Stripe Dresses-4

Since I bought this fabric I have been going back and forth in my brain over what I wanted them to look like. I decided this week that I wanted to do a simple a-line dress to show off the print on the fabric. But because that would be too easy I wanted to give myself a couple challenges.

The first challenge was the sleeves. I took an existing straight sleeve pattern and expanded it using ikat bag’s sleeve adapting tutorials. I wanted a slight puff at the top and quite a bit of volume gathered into cuffs just below the elbows. Esther’s didn’t turn out as big as Dinah’s, but I love the result of both for each of their dresses.

And the other challenge was to do a real button placket. Um…I have to say this was A LOT more daunting. I looked up several tutorials and settled on this one. Okay, in theory it seemed simple enough. And it was…sort of. They turned out okay, but I need lots more practice to get them to look better. Esther’s is slightly crooked and both of them are hideous on the inside. But on moving children you can’t notice any imperfections and no one will ever see the insides.

Each girl had a different contrast color for the lining, underside of the button placket and the hem facing. And they each had fabric covered buttons (my favorite!) made with some of their color dots.

After church today we went to a friend’s house for lunch and I took our pictures there. Dinah was being a good model again…

…but Esther was a wild woman! This is mostly what she wanted to do…

Polka-Stripe Dresses-Silly Esther 3

These were definitely better late than never. I just love how they turned out (though Dinah’s is a bit big on her right now) and I am glad I set myself new challenges, even if it meant I missed the deadline for the contest.

Next week: my little nephew gets to be the star of the show for Boys’ Week!

So, does anyone have tips for making a better button placket?

Fall Dresses Part 2

So, we did get our family photos back and they are great, but we decided not to share them online yet so we don’t spoil Christmas card pictures or something. So, last weekend I just did a photo shoot with the girls in their dresses. Here they are!

Fall Dresses

A theme that will probably pop up regularly on this blog is my craziness. Even though I was already stressed out by all the balls I had in the air, I decided to throw in one more last week and make fall dresses for the girls in time for our family pictures that we took on Saturday.

Crazy. Christian just shakes his head at me.

It all really started back in August or so. When I walked in the door at the fabric store they had some fall fabrics out and I saw this fine waled corduroy and just fell in love.

It is brown with little lime green pears and turquoise polka-dots. Too cute.

After eyeing this fabric for many weeks, I decided to grab it while on sale a couple weeks ago. It sat there until I lost my mind.

So, next I had to decide what I wanted the dresses to look like. I wanted them to be simple so the fabric could shine and I wanted the construction to be easy since, you know, I’m crazy.

I settled on using the pattern that is the basis for the shirt dress over at MADE. It perfectly fit all my criteria. I took her pattern sketches and made my own patterns for each girl. (I do this with a program called Microsoft Visio. It is actually for creating floor plans and flow charts, but I have found that it is great for pattern making and quilt designing.)

These dresses were so easy to put together. The raglan style sleeve on them means there are very few seams and no fussy armholes to deal with.

As I was constructing Dinah’s I decided the front was just a little too plain and I wanted to add a faux placket and some buttons. I looked through all the buttons that my grandma had sent me, but nothing seemed right…so back to the fabric store we went. (Side note: Dinah both loves and hates the fabric store. She wants to touch EVERYTHING, but I inevitably take too long and her little toddler mind breaks down. So I bribed her. She could pick what she wanted from dollar bins from the front of the store. She chose pink mittens that she wants to wear around everywhere…even though it was still 80+ degrees here until yesterday. Of course she is not still long enough for me to get a picture.) I settled on doing some fabric covered buttons with the pears and dots from the fabric. I never knew how simple it was to create your own fabric covered buttons. This is now my new obsession…what else can I make and add fabric covered buttons? I love them.

The final step of the dresses was the hem. In order to get both dresses cut from the yard and a half of fabric I needed to shorten the skirts a little more than I wanted. I made up for this by using bias tape as hem facing. This allowed me to still get a nice chunky hem, but only lose about 1/4″ of my dress length. It also adds a nice pop of color on the inside of the dress.

And as if I wasn’t crazy enough, I decided the girls also needed new bows to match their dresses. So, I made some.

Is that a ribbon covered button? Yes, yes it is. Obsessed, I told you.

Now the girls have new beautiful fall dresses that were great for our family pictures. We haven’t gotten those pictures back yet, but I’ll post them for you all when we get them.

sew in harmony

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Tag Archives: corduroy

Polka-Stripe Dresses

Fall Dresses Part 2

Fall Dresses

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